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For movie fans, Oscar Night — which happens this Sunday — is an unofficial holiday, a celebration of the motion picture.

It's also a time for movie critics to show off their skills, or embarrass themselves completely, by trying to predict the winners.

Today, The Cricket launches his annual effort to predict the Academy Award winners in all 24 categories. We'll start with the technical categories — followed by the craft categories on Wednesday, the specialty features (animation, documentary and foreign-language) and short films on Thursday, and the top awards (Best Picture, director, and the acting and screenwriting categories) on Friday.

The 89th annual Academy Awards will be handed out Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood — and televised live, with Jimmy Kimmel as host, starting at 6 p.m. on ABC, KTVX, Ch. 4. The Cricket will be live-tweeting the event, so follow along at @moviecricket.

Film Editing

The nominees are • Joe Walker, "Arrival"; John Gilbert, "Hacksaw Ridge"; Jake Roberts, "Hell or High Water"; Tom Cross, "La La Land"; Nat Sanders and Joi McMillan, "Moonlight."

Who will win • With one exception ("Birdman"), no movie since 1981 has won Best Picture without being nominated in this category. This year, the Best Picture favorite, "La La Land," is most likely also win for editing.

Who should win • Walker's work on "Arrival," deftly interweaving strands of a story that jumps through past and future, gets my vote.

Sound Mixing

The nominees are • Bernard Gariépy Strobl and Claude La Haye, "Arrival"; Kevin O'Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace, "Hacksaw Ridge"; Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee and Steve A. Morrow, "La La Land"; David Parker, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson, "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"; Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Mac Ruth, "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi."

Who will win • The musical mix of "La La Land" will take it.

Who should win • Hard to top the happy vibe the sounds of "La La Land" produce. (Fun fact: Kevin O'Connell, the head of the "Hacksaw Ridge" team, is the Susan Lucci of sound mixers; this is his 21st nomination, and he's yet to win.)

Sound Editing

The nominees are • Sylvain Bellemare, "Arrival"; Wylie Stateman and Renée Tondelli, "Deepwater Horizon"; Robert Mackenzie and Andy Wright, "Hacksaw Ridge"; Ai-Ling Lee and Mildred Iatrou Morgan, "La La Land"; Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman, "Sully."

Who will win • The one exception to the expected "La La Land" sweep will be here, as the battle sounds of "Hacksaw Ridge" will likely take the Oscar. (The difference between sound mixing and sound editing is simple: Mixing is for how all the sounds are put together, while editing is piecing together the audio effects in creating sounds that didn't exist before.)

Who should win • The sonic assault is what gave the war scenes of "Hacksaw Ridge" their power.

Visual effects

The nominees are • Craig Hammack, Jason Snell, Jason Billington and Burt Dalton, "Deepwater Horizon"; Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli and Paul Corbould, "Doctor Strange"; Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones and Dan Lemmon, "The Jungle Book"; Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean and Brad Schiff, "Kubo and the Two Strings"; John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel and Neil Corbould, "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."

Who will win • The realistic animals of "The Jungle Book."

Who should win • So many cool things in this category, from the complete world in "The Jungle Book" to the origami cities of "Doctor Strange." But the dreamlike images of "Kubo and the Two Strings" stick in the mind long after the movie is over, and show that stop-motion animation still produces some of the most luminous visuals in film.