Oscars 2012: Film Editing

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

**Updated 2/26: Hugo for the win, y’all!

BEST FILM EDITING

1. HUGO

2. THE ARTIST

3. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

4. MONEYBALL

5. THE DESCENDANTS

Missing: Drive

This category is all about process of elimination.

All were nominated for ACE Eddie Awards (which ceremony will take place on February 18) — so no help there.

Only nine films have ever won Best Picture without being nominated for Best Film Editing. Of those nine, seven were nominated for Best Director, and all seven won Best Director — there goes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘s chances. But don’t feel too bad for those slicksters Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall — they nabbed an Oscar last year for their superior work on The Social Network.

That makes The Artist the clear winner here — boy, that was easy. The film essentially marks Anne-Sophie Bion’s first time editing an entire film by herself (though she shares credit with director writer-director Michel Hazanavicius). Edited in the traditional silent-film manner of  the music being composed upon the film’s completion, there was no need to sync sound, and if a word or sentence happened to be cut during the editing process, so what? (It’s not like we would’ve heard it anyway.) So while there are some fun structural issues — like when and how to use those old-school dialog cards –The Artist is, in many ways, the most straightforward of the nominees.

First-time nominee Christopher Tellefsen had it a bit tricker with Moneyball, deftly transitioning between long periods of silence and Aaron Sorkin’s (and Steven Zaillian’s) typically super-speedy speech, while also smoothly integrating archival baseball footage and documentary-styled flashbacks.

Though his fifth time working with director Alexander Payne, The Descendants marks editor Kevin Tent’s first nomination for his ability to keep the quirky to a minimum, with slow, subtle shifts from the humorous to the deeply sad.

Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker on the set of Hugo. Photo by: Jaap Buitendjik.

If there’s to be a spoiler, it’ll be in favor of Hugo. Scorcese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, has been nominated six times and won three of those times (The Departed, The Aviator, Raging Bull). Not only do they make the most adorable of collaborators (left), but with Schoonmaker’s prowess, they cut a film — in 3D, a first for both — that is unapologetic in its loving deviations from the central story to the quirky characters on the periphery. Some will complain that it’s indulgent, and too much time spent away from the titular hero, while others — like me — wished we could’ve  lingered longer.

Oscars 2011: Film Editing

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST FILM EDITING

1. The Social Network

2. Black Swan

3. 127 Hours

4. The Fighter

5. The King’s Speech

Missing: Inception

As with his composer, A.R. Rahman, you know when you’re watching a Danny Boyle film — and a lot of that has to do with his signature editorial storytelling, headed this time by editor Jon Harris (Snatch, Kick-ass, Layer Cake).  127 Hours deftly, and rather beautifully, transitions from claustrophobic caves to dream sequences and back again.  Black Swan‘s editing by Andrew Weisblum stands out for its intimate understanding of — and respect for — the horror genre (how often can you say that about an Oscar nominee?).  Employing tricks of the trade, Weisblum and Aronofsky’s primary focus was always on ballerina Nina’s subjectivity, how she obsessively perceived herself — sometimes accurately, but often with paranoia — and the film seamlessly engages the two, constantly and quite remarkably blurring the lines between realism and impressionism. The result is an enormously distressing,  frightening, and overwhelming film.

I have no idea why The Fighter or The King’s Speech are represented here — neither relies heavily on editing to tell its respective story and certainly neither stands out in this area. The real surprise is that the uber-ambitious action flick Inception didn’t make the cut for its dreamy cross-cutting.

Widely acknowledged as the front-runner, David Fincher’s The Social Network, tells what could have been an uber-dull and ungainly (nerdy kids typing away on keyboards) story into one of the most exhilarating films of the year. Sure, Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue helps as well, but it’s Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter’s expert flashes back and forth between numerous time lines that puts the Facebook Movie on lock as the easy winner here.

Oscars 2010: Cinematography + Editing

How a film is shot and cut creates the mood and feel of a piece, and is  also essential to the effectiveness of the overall story and its development. So let’s explore the merits of some of the year’s best storytellers via the cinematography and film editing categories.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

1. Avatar

2. The White Ribbon

3. Inglourious Basterds

4. The Hurt Locker

5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

cin·e·ma·tog·ra·phy
n.
The art or technique of movie photography, including both the shooting and development of the film. Involves the composition of a scene, lighting of the set and actors, choice of cameras, camera angle, and integration of special effects to achieve the photographic images desired by the director. Cinematography focuses on relations between the individual shots and groups of shots that make up a scene to produce a film’s effect.

Working from the above definition (whether flawed or not, it covers the core elements of cinematography), I’m not sure anyone could not vote for Avatar. It’s beautifully shot, the special effects are fully integrated and essential to the overall effectiveness of the film, and the fact that on top of all its lush, detailed pictures, it was also crafted (perfectly) for 3-D, places Mauro Fiore’s work high above the competition. Of course, I wouldn’t mind an upset, particularly if it was in favor of the artsy, über-German The White Ribbon. While I detested this film about strange, horrible events that occur in a small German village on the eve of WWI (talk about ritual punishment…), Christian Berger’s use of black and white film makes the story’s bizarre events all the more gruesome and striking. Truth be told, I find all of the nominees worthy of a trophy, not the least of which, Inglourious Basterds, is vibrantly filmed in what one can only describe is the old-school classic Hollywood style.

FILM EDITING

1. The Hurt Locker

2. District 9

3. Avatar

4. Inglourious Basterds

5. Precious

Let’s mix it up a little and award the little-war-movie-that-could instead of the big and bad CGI-fest, shall we?  It’s true that Avatar does have a real shot at this one (especially if it wins many of the other smaller categories), but I think voters will (and should) note how much the suspenseful The Hurt Locker’s success rides on the tightness of its expert editing to create such an enormously tense film. Though its ludicrous to believe District 9 possesses a better chance of winning than Avatar in this category, Julian Clarke’s editing is no less essential to the story it tells : the choppiness of the film, as it veers from media coverage to disturbing views of African slums to chaotic interactions between man and “prawn,” fantastically establishes the atmosphere of chaos and desperation. On a less positive note, Precious’s editing was messy and manipulative, and the film’s creators shouldn’t expect any awards outside of the acting categories.

Next up: Best Original + Adapted Screenplays