Dracula Presents: The Eleventh Annual Golden Stake Awards

You know, I was actually gonna mention the foot chase from Baby Driver as my favourite chase from the film. Definitely deserved its win for Source Music.

The use of Immigrant Song in Thor was good but didn't strike me as a wildly creative choice, certainly nothing as interesting as the way it was used in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo not that long ago.

Kingsman sucks. Move along...

Best Set-piece
Set-piece is kind of a vague category that’s meant to award any kind of action/visual scene that doesn’t easily fit in the other major action scene categories. Previous winners include stuff like the embassy siege from Argo or the dawn of life scene from Tree of Life, so as you can see the range of possibilities is pretty large.

Plane Crash/Rescue – Dunkirk: This is an interesting nomination for a couple of reasons, but mainly because it starts at one point in the movie and finishes later as the timelines converge. It begins up in the sky with Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden getting into a skirmish over the English channel in order to protect a minesweeper from a German bomber. They save the ship but Lowden’s plane is damaged and he needs to try landing on the water. This then continues later when the “sea” plotline catches up with the “air” plotline and Lowden finds himself trapped in his plane trying to get his cockpit open as it fills with water. You really feel the danger he’s in before he’s finally rescued by Rylance’s son.

Kong Vs. Helicopters – Kong: Skull Island: This early scene from Kong: Skull Island is the big reveal of Kong and it wastes no time getting to the destruction from there. In it our band of soldiers fly in in Vietnam era helicopters and suddenly see this giant gorilla and their first instinct is to start shooting at it. Bad move. Kong immediately starts swatting these choppers like flies and before you know it most of the squadron is dead. The bluntness of the scene works for it as gives the audiences what they paid for quickly and it also establishes why the Samuel L. Jackson character is so angry at this monster.

Everything Goes to Shit – mother!: In its second half the movie mother! becomes increasingly surreal and it begins to be impossible to view literally. In this sequence the house begins to be over-run by the Bardem character’s admirers and it becomes like the party sequence from the first half but on speed. These admirers become increasingly unruly and destructive and eventually straight up start shooting people and burning shit down to Jennifer Lawrence’s horror. Following the film’s metaphor this is supposed to represent the start of modern civilization and the development of warfare on the Earth.

Monkey Man – The Square: This is a bit of an unconventional choice for this category as it isn’t exactly an expensive action scene but it is nonetheless a distinct sequence that is driven by visuals and as such I think it belongs. In the scene we see a high society crowd at a banquet at a modern art museum when suddenly a performance artist is brought out, almost as a form of entertainment. This performance artist, played by a guy named Terry Notary, does a rather impressive job of mimicking the mannerisms of an ape in the room and gets so into the role that he starts to make the guests really uncomfortable. This is apparently inspired by a real incident involving an artist named Oleg Kulik and it shows how a lot of these people claim to have a genuine interest in “edgy” art but really have pretty short limits on what they’re willing to accept.

Opening Battle - Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi: I would have rather this altercation had not been introduced with a “yo mama” joke but once things get underway it’s a very harrowing scene. It begins with Poe Dameron flying close to a dreadnaught in order to distract it and take out its surface cannons. Once those are destroyed he convinces the rebel bombers and their escorts to launch an attack and take out the weakened dreadnaught. The concept of bombs falling in the vacuum of space is a little odd, but it works as a tribute to World War II dogfights and it leads to this really suspenseful sequence where Paige Tico needs to retrieve the detonator to drop the bombs.


And the Golden Stake Goes To…

mother! is a movie I ultimately liked, but unfortunately, it'll always have a negative association in my mind in that about two and a half hours after finishing it, I became violently ill.

Great choice with Dunkirk, though.

Yeah, that one seems like a lock for an Oscar too.

Best Sound

Of all the awards I created for this thing the sound award is the one I’m consistently unqualified to judge. I’ve been doing it for years now though, so I can’t stop now. Let’s get this over with.

Baby Driver: As with most chase movies Baby Driver has all kinds of revving engines and skids as well as some of the usual gunfire and the like, but unlike most chase movies this one needed to do the sound effects on beat. Most of the sound effects are laid out in the film to synch up with various pop songs in a variety of interesting ways. Those songs of course need to be well mixed into the film in the first place and there are also some interesting moments where the music needs to suddenly stop as earbuds are taken out and of course Baby’s tinnitus is well rendered in various scenes.

Dunkirk: Movies that win sound awards tend to be pretty loud. You know what places tend to be loud? Warzones. So if you make a movie set in a warzone that’s probably going to get you some sound nominations. Here we have all sorts of gunshots and dive bombings as well as a great number of sinking ships but what really makes the sound here special are probably the aerial sequences in which the planes are desperately trying to outflank each other with constant propeller sounds and machinegun fire.

Kong: Skull Island: Kong: Skull Island has a variety of action movie sound effects like helicopters and explosions and the like, but it also needs to contend with a lot of creature sound effects. King Kong himself needs to roar in all sorts of ways and his fellow creatures also have distinct roaring sound effects. It’s a movie where a giant gorilla chows down on a giant octopus, that’s probably not easy to come up with how that’s going to sound.

Logan: Out of all the superhero movies this year, Logan is the one which made the most sense in this category for a handful of reasons. For one thing the movie has a lot of scenes where people get stabbed, complete with a lot of neat gory sound effects for each stabbing. It’s also got those scenes where Professor X has his episodes and everyone stands still, which have a neat sound in the background. On top of that there’s the usual action movie stuff like gunfire and car crashes and stuff.

The Shape of Water: The Shape of Water is probably the least noisy of these nominees, but it makes up for it by having some unique challenges. For one there’s the whole vault thing with the water tank, that probably isn’t easy to mix for. Then there are the various sounds that the film’s signature creature ends up making. Between that and the dripping water in that one scene and a couple other neat little scenes this makes sense as an audio achievement.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

Yeah, that logic makes sense. I feel like Phantom Thread deserves a nod for the one breakfast scene alone.

An interesting list of nominees.

Agreed.  Though both A Cure For Wellness (props to you for nominating it) and The Shape of Water were both strong contenders as well.

I'll take that into consideration.

Tough category, but I think you made the right choice.