OSCAR 2011 PREDICTIONS: Film Editing

I shudder at the quality of the nominees masquerading in the film editing department of this year's Oscar race. It's to be expected that the frontrunner is always a player, so I'll forgive "The Artist". Of all its below-the-line skills, editing isn't the most deserving, but it'll suffice more than the others. My greatest complaint of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was the choppy as all hell editing job, and it's only beat out by how obscure the work on "Hugo" was and how plainly unimaginative "The Descendants" was. If the world is a good place, they'll give it to "Moneyball", the unsung technical marvel of this year. But that won't happen.

Awards 2010: American Cinema Editors (ACE) Winners

I feel glad that now that we're past the craziness of The King's Speech dragging in an inappropriate amount of guild awards, we can finally get back to awarding what actually deserves reward, kinda. I say "kinda" because Alice in Wonderland took the award for Best Comedy Editing, and aside from the fact that it's still not a comedy, there were other more deserving films. The Kids Are All Right may be better than the whole lot, but try not to pummel me to death when I say that the editing wasn't its strong suit. I think many would agree that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World would have been far more deserving in this field, but I thought that the editing in Easy A was quite recommendable.

Inception didn't take away the Best Drama Editing award, as you could've suspected from the Oscar omission from the category. Instead they gave it to the ultimately deserving The Social Network. The rest falls cleanly into place with no surprises in the slightest. Toy Story 3 and Exit Through the Gift Shop won what they were fated to win, because there wasn't any real opposition. If anything, I now feel moderately safe with my prediction for Best Film Editing, and no longer vexed by fear of The King's Speech stealing it.

Best Drama Editing: The Social Network
Best Comedy Editing: Alice in Wonderland
Best Animated Editing: Toy Story 3
Best Documentary Editing: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Oscar 2010 Predictions: Film Editing

One of the slightly butchered categories at this year's Academy Awards has to be Best Film Editing, if only because it seems that they don't know what they're awarding anymore. Three years ago, The Bourne Ultimatum won this category, and it wasn't nominated for anything above the technical level. It won because it displayed excellence in the craft for which it was nominated. I have my doubts in the Academy's ability to properly judge the race this year, strictly because of what wasn't nominated. I know that many are obsessed with Christopher Nolan being shut out of Best Director, but I'm far more shocked by Inception's omission from Best Film Editing.

Anybody who saw Inception would agree that Lee Smith's editing is second to perhaps only one. It takes a lot of work to blend the several layers of the dream world together in a way that doesn't break the trance the film has on the audience, but Smith did it. Now that he's inexplicably out of the race, there should be only one reasonable alternative, and that's Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter for The Social Network. The film is briskly paced, and the editing moves things forward in a wondrously organic way. It never feels slow, and it never feels unnecessary. It's a work of pure precision.

That should be the end of it, but somehow it just isn't. The film that was pretty much destined to be nominated, though I don't think it deserved to be, was The King's Speech. The other films nominated really displayed a unique craft, with 127 Hours' hyper-kinetic split-screens, Black Swan's dark and elegant subtlety, and The Fighter's raw brutality. They all earned their place in this field, but The King's Speech didn't display much craft in the editor's approach. It's plain and straightforward, much like everything else in the film. The weight of how many nominations it pulled off brings into question whether or not that will be enough to win. I certainly hope not, but there have been far too many unhealthy surprises this season. Why not another?

1. The Social Network
2. The Fighter
3. Black Swan
4. 127 Hours
5. The King's Speech

Should/Will Win: The Social Network
Possible Upset: The King's Speech
Should Have Been Nominated: Inception