OVP: Film Editing (1999)

OVP: Best Film Editing (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Tariq Anwar & Christopher Greenbury, American Beauty

Lisa Zeno Churgin, The Cider House Rules

William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell, & David Rosenbloom, The Insider

Zach Staenberg, The Matrix

Andrew Mondshein, The Sixth Sense

My Thoughts: All right, we are moving into the Best Editing category, which here also means that we are moving into the Best Picture nominees of 1999.  Four of these films were cited for Best Picture, which is generally what you'd see when you were looking at the 1990's.  Best Editing is an easy corollary for Best Picture, to be honest.  I've done Oscar My Ballots from 2000-23, and only 13 of the nominees (and one gold medalist) weren't in the Best Picture field (albeit it's a ten-wide Best Picture with a five-wide Best Editing, so the 1999 corollary doesn't really work as if they were both a Top 5, it'd be different, but I digress).  The point is, most people associate Best Picture with Best Editing and they do it for a reason.

I mean, look at something like The Sixth Sense.  The movie, a mammoth hit for both its scares and its twist ending, is a textbook definition of good editing.  Not only does Andrew Mondshein's careful cutting of the film allow for the movie's big reveal at the end, but it also heightens the entire film's gaze.  Much of the movie is alternating between a few well-timed jump scares and a growing sense of isolation, the way that Osment's character can find his mother and his friend (Willis's character) and give them a sense of connection in a world that they otherwise can't.  That spacing is really critical, and something whose strength comes from the editing.

The same can be said for The Insider.  Thrillers, more than any other genre, are reliant on strong editing, giving us moments of quickness followed by moments where the audience is dangling, all while building a case behind the front of the story about where this is finishing.  You get that in the way that the team approaches the 60 Minutes interviews in this picture, the pin-drop silence that happens when there's no way to escape the camera's glare.  This is also a really smart film-there's nothing dumbed down here to make the audience understand the stakes.  We get it...we don't need spoon-feeding (the way this 100% would've needed you to understand where this stood on the partisan divide in a modern thriller makes me groan).  Really tough stuff.

American Beauty is more dreamlike in the way it approaches the editing.  The film includes Kevin Spacey's Lester's flights-of-fancy, some of which have been borrowed from so ferociously in the years that followed that you'd be forgiven for thinking the original is bordering on cliche...but it's not.  This is really solid filmmaking, particularly in the way that it gives us several unfolding mysteries (Lester's death, specifically, but also how everyone will end up a part of it) all at once.  I just wish the script gave them a better way to handle the last 15 minutes of the picture, when much of its bitterness gives way to pablum.  Otherwise, a strong movie.

The final Best Picture nominee was The Cider House Rules, and while I like this movie way more than its reputation now (though nowhere near as much as Oscar did), I think this nomination is stupid.  If anything, the film's editing is a weak point.  The picture over-telegraphs messages of morality (particularly when it comes to the handling of both Erykah Badu and Paul Rudd's characters), and if you don't see the "surprise" twist at the end coming, congratulations on watching your first movie.  The sappiness is effective (Michael Caine & Rachel Portman see to that), but it's not helped in the editing room.

Our final nominee is not from a Best Picture nominee, though in a ten-wide field it certainly would've been.  The Matrix got statues for all of its nominations, and the one win it took that pretty much no one expected in 1999.  I think this is an inspired victory, though.  The movie, like The Insider, is smart without ever indulging in intellectual naval-gazing (and with this high concept of an idea, that's not easy).  I loved the use of the visual effects, the repetition and visualization of them, as well as the pacing at the beginning of the movie that feels frenetic, so it's more pronounced when the picture slows down.  There's a reason this inspired a generation of filmmakers in terms of its style-it's that good.

Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have ten nominations.  For Comedy/Musical we have Being John Malkovich winning over Analyze This, Election, Man on the Moon, & Run Lola Run, while Drama went to The Matrix against American Beauty, The Insider, The Sixth Sense, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.  American Beauty took the BAFTA against Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, & The Sixth Sense.  I know Being John Malkovich got two precursors, but I am not totally sold that it's the next one up (though it could be).  Ripley or The Green Mile would also make sense...but Being John Malkovich also got in for writing and directing, so perhaps I'm just being obtuse here.

Films I Would Have Nominated: If we're going to include The Sixth Sense's distinctive style and twist ending, why can't we also include David Fincher's Fight Club, another movie that spawned dozens of copycats and had its own surprise finish.

Oscar's Choice: In one of the biggest upsets of the night, The Matrix completed its sweep, besting presumed frontrunner American Beauty.

My Choice: When Oscar gets it right, he gets it right, and The Matrix was the right choice, though I wouldn't have been mad if The Sixth Sense (in second) had taken it.  Behind these two are (in order) The Insider, American Beauty, and The Cider House Rules.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are we all good with The Matrix taking this statue, or is there a favorite we're missing from Oscar's selections?  Why do you think Oscar randomly decided to go for a non-Best Picture nominee here (the only time in the 1990's it happened)?  And was it The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, or The Talented Mr. Ripley in third place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Film Editing Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

OVP: The Naked City (1948)

Film: The Naked City (1948)

Stars: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Frank Conroy

Director: Jules Dassin

Oscar History: 3 nominations/2 wins (Best Cinematography*, Editing*, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

When it comes to film noir and Oscar, it's largely an "admire from a distance" situation.  Oscar did give a Best Picture statue to a film noir (The Lost Weekend), though it was one with a much more serious tone & tenor than you'd normally find in the genre, and usually they kept the statues at a distance.  There are exceptions, though, and one of them is The Naked City from 1948, which won two Oscars (for Cinematography & Editing), and was nominated in one of the writing categories.  The Naked City is probably the most famous American film we're going to get to this month, and certainly the most-lauded.  Hailed as a landmark in 1948, it would be formative in entertainment in the years that followed, particularly when it comes to television.  In many ways, The Naked City eschewed some of the more traditional aspects of the film noir genre, and instead created the formula for the police/detective procedural that would be popular in everything from The Untouchables to Law & Order.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Dan Muldoon (Fitzgerald), an aging detective who is assigned a case to investigate the brutal murder of a young ex-model named Jean, who was drowned in her bathtub.  The motives are not clear as to why she was killed, though robbery is suspected (her jewels are missing), but Muldoon wants to know more, and starts to investigate the people in Jean's life, including Frank Niles (Duff), his chief suspect when it becomes clear that he has had a relationship with both the dead model and her friend Ruth (Hart), whom he's actually engaged to.  Frank eventually confesses to stealing the jewels as part of some con jobs he and Jean had perpetrated, but he turns out not to be a killer.  In a long chase that happens on the Williamsburg Bridge, it's another accomplice who killed Jean, and Frank is cleared on the murder.

The movie, as I said, is questionable when it comes to being a film noir, more so being a "crime picture" as Hart's character is surely not a femme fatale in a normal sense (the dead Jean, who has ruined multiple relationships as a corpse, is far more fitting of that title but she never actually speaks).  Instead, it feels more like a police mystery, which we don't really have anymore (because those are largely relegated to television), but in 1948 was still a thing that you couldn't see in your home.  Because it's formative, it does toe-the-line between being a bit dull even if it was exciting in 1948, but it still is a mystery you genuinely want to get to the end of when Fitzgerald solves the case.

The Naked City's coolest attribute is where it was filmed.  The movie takes place in New York City...but so does the production.  The picture includes a title card at the beginning calling out that it was actually filmed in New York, which means that the chase at the Williamsburg Bridge is actually on the Williamsburg Bridge.  This adds an authenticity that you wouldn't normally find in a movie like this, and it shows up in the more naturalistic cinematography, particularly during the chase sequence at the end.  Combined with the editing techniques (building suspense alongside real-world onlookers), and the way it capitalizes on a lot of twists and turns, I get why this is considered a classic of the genre, even if it's not a movie that stands out in the same way that Out of the Past or The Third Man do years later.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

OVP: Film Editing (2023)

OVP: Best Film Editing (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Lauren Senechal, Anatomy of a Fall

Kevin Tent, The Holdovers

Thelma Schoonmaker, Killers of the Flower Moon

Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer

Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Poor Things

My Thoughts: I always feel that the first two rounds of the OVP Ballots are kind of fun-quirky, giving us the personality of the year in some fashion.  And then we hit Editing, and it's all about those Best Pictures, honey.  That's the case this year.  In the era of ten-wide Best Picture nominees, Best Film Editing either goes 4/5 or 5/5 with Best Picture, and this was the latter, with all five of these showing up for the top spot.  The movies aren't quite what I'd guess would be the "real five" nominees that would've made it in a pre-2009 universe (I think Barbie would've still found a way given its box office), but this is darn close to that list.

We'll start as our entry point, therefore, with Oppenheimer, the winner and the big winner in general at the Oscars in 2023.  Oppenheimer is one of those omnipresent films with Oscar that I liked but didn't love, which can be a challenge to write about because it feels like I'm criticizing it more than I need to.  For its editing, I think this is one of its better attributes.  Nolan covers a lot of ground, and Jennifer Lame brings it together, tying the stories in connected patterns without always giving us all of the road maps of where we're going, an appropriate strategy for a film about wandering through the dark of scientific discovery.  No complaints here-this is a really strong start to the category.

And it continues with the film's chief rival, Killers of the Flower Moon.  Thelma Schoonmaker is a legend, and there's an inclination at this point to just give her all of the accolades in the way I kind of want to do for people like Roger Deakins & John Williams whom I always love, but it needs to be said-the editing here really ties it together.  Look at the ways that Schoonmaker builds the story from both directions.  We have lots of characters (but particularly Robert de Niro's William Hale), whose actions are only understood scenes later, and Thelma both obviously telegraphs that with the way that reaction shots & hints are put throughout the movie, while never telling the audience it in an opaque way.

Poor Things does something similar.  When an actor wins a statue for their performance, there's usually at least one tech category that they owe it to, and for Emma Stone that is most assuredly her film's editors.  The best part about her evolution is that you see, in fact, her evolution in front of you.  Each scene pushes her Bella Baxter further & further toward her destiny.  The editors do this, and they do it with a large amount of CGI and green screens, some that feel sort of disconnected from reality (and therefore harder to place in this very real story), with great precision.  Poor Things needs that pruning (and maybe honestly less of it, given that we could've used a bit more growth from the side characters), but if this is meant to be Bella's story, it shows.

Every year there's at least one movie that gets into this category less because it has a lot of or good editing, and more because it theoretically could win Best Picture and this branch doesn't like to skip the Best Picture winner.  The Holdovers, for me, is that film in 2023.  The movie doesn't necessarily have bad editing (it's frequently funny, which needs decent editing-comedy is so reliant on this category it's a shame we don't see that more often in the nominations), but it also doesn't standout.  There's nothing here that feels like the editors are adding anything to the conversation, or aiding it.  Editing is the invisible art, but if we're handing out an Oscar nomination, you've gotta give me something to judge.

Anatomy of a Fall on the flip side, is our one example of bad editing in this bunch.  I am grading this by the American release of the film (I don't know if international films had this), but opening the film with a title card instructing the audience to go to a website called "Did She Do It?" is about as insulting of a way to get you into a 152-minute movie where you realize from the opening frame that you are going to get no resolution by the movie's ending.  The film's over-use of the prosecution to underscore its misogyny message, combined with the inability to come up with a decent ending are the true reasons I'm going to score this low, but I will totally be honest-wasting my time with that title card & giving a spoiler in the movie (the first time I've ever seen that) is weighing on my rankings as well.

Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy and Drama, so we have ten nominations.  For Drama, we of course have Oppenheimer winning against fellow Oscar nominees Anatomy of a Fall & Killers of the Flower Moon, as well as Maestro and Past Lives, while The Holdovers won for Comedy against Poor Things, Air, Barbie, and American Fiction.  BAFTA also gave its statue to Oppenheimer, here against the exact Oscar lineup except we skip The Holdovers in favor of The Zone of Interest.  The sixth place is a challenge, because I think it's a question mark as to when The Zone of Interest's momentum picked up steam.  Did the film already have some momentum enough to get in here, or were its wins secured when people started watching it more post the nominations?  If it's the latter, Barbie for sure makes sense here given its strength otherwise (for the nominations, at least), but I buy either argument.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm for sure going to give this nomination to The Zone of Interest when I get the chance.  The movie's terrifying ability to have a domestic drama taking place in the confines of a truly horrifying look at the Holocaust and the "banality of evil" is built by the editing team's judicious use of longer tracking shots combined with quick peaks at what's beyond the wall.

Oscar's Choice: Best Picture winners as certain as Oppenheimer always win Best Editing, and I don't think anything else was even that close.

My Choice: I'm going to favor Killers of the Flower Moon, whose editing I think picks up the movie more, over Oppenheimer, a sweep win that totally holds up to post-ceremony scrutiny.  Behind these two would be Poor Things, The Holdovers, and then Anatomy of a Fall, in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone staying in the Oppenheimer camp, or does someone want to join Thelma & I in Oklahoma?  Am I missing something with The Holdovers editing nomination (or is this just a default situation)?  And was it The Zone of Interest or Barbie in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Film Editing Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: The Nun's Story (1959)

Film: The Nun's Story (1959)

Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger, Mildred Dunnock

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Audrey Hepburn, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Like many women who wore the title of "America's Sweetheart" Audrey Hepburn's critical acclaim has been questioned through the years by some, claiming she was a "limited" actress.  This feels like an odd thing to point out for Hepburn, who more than almost any actress we're going to profile this year, received a lot of critical acclaim.  Hepburn was cited for five Oscars in her career, winning for Roman Holiday, and that didn't include her lauded work in My Fair Lady, which was widely-expected by many to be a spot for her to get a nomination.  She also was one of the first people to win an EGOT (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, & Tony) and did so as a performer.  Today, we are going to discuss one of Hepburn's Oscar-nominated turns, the final one that I had yet to see, and one that I think shows the versatility of her acting, rather than calling it (as her critics have) "one-note": The Nun's Story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the life of Gaby, a young postulant who for most of the film is known as Sister Luke (Hepburn).  She has, before the start of the film, decided to devote herself to a life as a nun, something that we don't get a lot of insight into the rationale why, though we think it's to become a nurse in the Congo (there's a throwaway line about a boy she liked late in the film, and I rather liked that this might be a secondary reason for her, because it adds a depth to the film even if it might also be a touch antifeminist to assume she couldn't just want this for a career).  Of course, being a nun is not just about nursing, but instead also about devotion to God, and throughout the film we get to see Sister Luke struggle with a crisis-of-faith, trying to find a way to help those around her through her scientific skills, but also to get back to her devotion to the church, and wanting to show that she can be worthy of her new calling, and not just being a nurse.  As the film progresses, it becomes evident that she cannot, and in the final moments of the film, she leaves the convent forever.

The movie was cited for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it's worthy of most of them.  The film is wonderfully-structured, giving us a glimpse not only into the life of a woman trying to become a nun, but giving it two-dimensionally.  I have read that some (particularly composer Franz Waxman) were critical of the Catholic Church, but I'll be honest-I don't think the story gets that across.  If you want to debate the Church, you've got your evidence there-the constant critiquing of Sister Luke for having human impulses feels cruel in parts.  But there's also a spot for those who are sympathetic to the church, showing how becoming a nun isn't a calling for everyone, even for the most kindhearted of women (i.e. there's more to being a nun than being good).  I loved that approach, and honestly really liked this movie.  There are critiques to be had (I don't think that it gives us enough connection to those around Sister Luke for us to really understand why she ultimately gives up the church after sacrificing so much), but they're thin.  Zinnemann's approach, the film's lovely cinematography, and the way that it wordlessly adds depth to the ending by foregoing Waxman's score as Hepburn leaves the convent, rather than giving us a dramatic swell, is marvelous.  It's clear at that moment that Sister Luke is picking the only way out, but she's not sure if it's the right one, and the music not giving the audience any indication this is the correct path is really well-designed.

Hepburn's performance here is really stellar.  The cinematography & makeup work are helping her cause, to be fair.  I love the way we start to see the angelic Hepburn's eyes start to become sallow with the weight of the world on her, highlighted by the constant focus on her face (in many ways copying what cinematographer Arthur C. Miller did for Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette).  But Hepburn is also giving something extra to her work here.  Her internal struggles, the way that her inner-monologue never shuts off, particularly when we see that she can't speak to other people, is very reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, and it's very effective.  Hepburn shows here she might always look like a pixie, but she also was able to use that to create versatility.  She's up against actresses like Simone Signoret & Katharine Hepburn, generally considered to be "better" actresses than she is, but her performance honestly is more nuanced and stronger in the way it highlights the picture than either of those two more celebrated thespians.  Hepburn's critical reputation from some snobbish cinephiles as one-note is, well, wrong.

OVP: Film Editing (2000)

OVP: Best Film Editing (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Joe Hutshing & Saar Klein, Almost Famous

Tim Squyres, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Pietro Scalia, Gladiator

Stephen Mirrione, Traffic

Dede Allen, Wonder Boys

My Thoughts: I think, at best, the ten-wide Best Picture field has been a double-edged sword.  In theory, it's a good idea.  There are tons of movies a year, and having ten nominees for Best Picture actually gives us a better sense of the year-it theoretically includes blockbusters alongside independent films, room for non-English language movies & animated fare.  But in reality, it ended up just being boring, an overly predictable list of ten films that, even worse, take a lot of the charm out of the remaining categories.  Take Film Editing, for example, where we have only three Best Picture nominees...that surely would've been five with the Best Picture race being ten-wide.

Almost Famous absolutely gets into the Best Picture race in a five-wide field.  The movie was a cultural moment in 2000, bringing Kate Hudson into the lexicon as a proper movie star, and despite its tepid box office (it was a flop), the "Tiny Dancer" sequence would become iconic in the years that followed.  In terms of its editing, it's fine.  The movie doesn't have a lot of really inventive editing, and while it's very good, it leans a bit too much into the schmaltz as it goes.  But scenes like the "Tiny Dancer" song really do work well in the movie, giving it a warm glow even if it's pretty standard for this particular aspect of the picture.

The same could be said for the other nominee for Best Film Editing, Wonder Boys, except that the film itself isn't as good.  The construction here, with a ticking clock to see what happens to both Grady & James, isn't presented in a compelling way.  Think of moments like Tobey Maguire reciting all of the famous Hollywood suicides, and there's nothing really growing in the list...it doesn't lead anywhere.  The same with Maguire's relationship with Robert Downey, Jr.  It's easy to see what Downey (all charisma & magnetism in this-he's the best part of the film) sees in Maguire (he's young, cute, and a prototypical twink), but Maguire's performance, and the way the film is cut, give us little indication as to what he sees in the reverse (he doesn't once read gay until he wakes up in bed with Downey).  Honestly...this is one of those cases where a film's lead performance is so out of sync with the film itself that it's hard to judge a lot of the technical merits, because the right thing to do would be to cut Maguire's part down considerably.

Michael Douglas' other film in 2000 is much better, and started something of a revolution when it came to film structure in the 2000's.  It's not Traffic's fault that it spawned movies like 21 Grams, Crash, and Babel, all inferior projects about multiple stories coming together into one tale (I'm aware Traffic wasn't the first...that doesn't mean it didn't start this select trend).  What Traffic gets credit for is the way that it does it the best of the bunch, welding together different stories of drugs & addiction into a coherent overall narrative, while never abandoning (or boring) the audience by giving too much to one tale within the film.  That's totally on the editors.

Crouching Tiger doesn't have that multiple-story structure, but it sometimes feels that way in how the editors present us two simultaneous love stories.  Crouching Tiger's epic feel isn't just the dancing in the trees or the way it gives us gorgeous vistas across China.  It's also about the similarities between the two, the way each generation makes the same mistakes when it comes to love, and how some of that is a choice and some of that is inevitable.  But the editing here isn't just about storytelling-it's about the way that the fight scenes are constructed, always believable, specifically the fighting in trees, making the magic realism truly seamless to the tale at-hand.

Our final nominee is Gladiator.  I'm about to watch another Ridley Scott epic starring Joaquin Phoenix tonight (if you don't which one guess correctly, I'll banish you to Elba), and I'm curious if he'll have the same mistakes in that one.  There's something in Gladiator in the way it looks (everything is gorgeous, including Russell Crowe), but it's also terribly boring.  The film's fight scenes, except those in the arena itself, are dull-they come too often, the pacing in the movie is all-wrong, and they become indistinguishable the further we go.  This is on the editors-they needed to trim this overlong movie down, and maybe spare the audience from really lifeless violence at every turn.

Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have ten nominations.  For Drama, the victor was Gladiator against Billy Elliot, Cast Away, Crouching Tiger, and Traffic, while Comedy/Musical went with Almost Famous over Best in Show, Chocolat, O Brother, Where Art Thou, and Shanghai Noon.  BAFTA also went with Gladiator, here against Billy Elliot, Crouching Tiger, Erin Brockovich, & Traffic.  Sixth place was likely either Erin Brockovich (never count out a Best Picture nominee, and it was closer than Chocolat which really didn't factor in the tech categories even though it's a pretty movie) against Billy Elliot, which dominated the precursors and was a just-miss for Best Picture.  I'm going to go with Billy, but not in a convincing way.

Films I Would Have Nominated: One movie that has aged very well since 2000 even though Oscar totally skipped it (it would've gotten nominations in 2023) is American Psycho, which does marvelous things with its editing, particularly as we try to understand Patrick Bateman psychologically.  I definitely would've thrown that into this race.

Oscar's Choice: In something of an upset, Traffic's unique approach to its story was able to beat more traditional choices like Gladiator and Crouching Tiger.

My Choice: I am also going to go with Traffic, which I think does something really special with its editing & even if it's a little gimmicky, it's a gimmick that adds to the story (which is the whole point).  Behind it, I'll go (in order) Crouching Tiger, Almost Famous, Gladiator, and then Wonder Boys.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone aligned with Oscar's somewhat refreshing choice of Traffic, or do you want to favor something else?  Do you feel like the ten-wide Best Picture race has taken some of the mystery out of the behind-the-camera categories?  And was Erin Brockovich or Billy Elliot the near miss in this category?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2000: Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Film Editing Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Film Editing (2001)

OVP: Best Film Editing (2001)

The Nominees Were...

Mike Hill & Dan Hanley, A Beautiful Mind

Pietro Scalia, Black Hawk Down

John Gilbert, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Dody Dorn, Memento

Jill Bilcock, Moulin Rouge!

My Thoughts: On our third outing here, I think it's worth noting something that's going to become a recurring theme.  2001 was, as I mentioned in our kickoff, a year where I was paying attention to the Oscars in a big way, but it was also a year where I was starting to gain my own perspective.  For years previously, I think my maturity level was still growing, and so what I found fun wasn't necessarily what Oscar found fun.  This was the first year where those two tastes really merged (looking at my "Oscars" from that year, I cited a number of films that resonated with the Academy), and as luck would have it, a lot of my taste has stayed the same in the years that followed, so this is going to be one of my favorite years to write about because Oscar honestly had great taste.

That's very true in the editing category, where we have movies like The Fellowship of the Ring among our nominees.  Peter Jackson's films in a lot of ways understood where movies were headed, giving us installments of a gigantic story rather than concrete, stand-alone pictures.  But what's terrific about his movies is they don't read that way, especially when you first see them.  The way that Fellowship is structured it's simultaneously telling one small story (about how a group of friends were willing to go into the impossible together, and find their own bravery along the way) as well as the larger story of the destruction of the ring (which would stretch across three films...honestly six if you want to look at some of the Hobbit's subplots).  Combined with perfectly introducing a couple dozen important characters and a complicated backstory with relatively little fat, Fellowship is a brilliant example of editing.

Memento, on the other hand, is an example of how editing can be used to tell a story.  One of Christopher Nolan's earliest movies, the film takes place backward, where we see what happened last first, and the way that it will unfold as a murderer with amnesia can't understand his previous actions (and we, as the audience, don't know whom to trust).  I love Memento-I always like Nolan as a director, but am not always sold on him as a screenwriter, but here he pulls off every trick, and that's largely to do with his editing team understanding the assignment.  We get specific repeated imagery, scenes cut in ways that make a rewatch of the film like a puzzle we already know how it will be put together...the mysteries of the film have to both make sense & be unsolvable so that the film will end in the right spot.  The movie's editors pull that off.

A Beautiful Mind is the one film in this bunch that feels off to me, like the Academy was simply citing it because they figured the Best Picture winner should be here somewhere (this has become less of a harbinger of success, but there was a time that the Editing branch always called the Best Picture winner amongst its nominees).  This film's editing tricks are the shifting lights & floating numbers as we get into the mind of John Nash, but I'll be honest-I feel like that's more a testament to Russell Crowe's expressive eyes & James Horner's remarkable score.  The film itself plays out so it's easy to spot the twists around Paul Bettany & Ed Harris, and it's too conventional to really marvel at from any angle.

This isn't the case for Black Hawk Down, a good war film that has largely been forgotten in the past couple of decades (this is the risk of representing a war onscreen that isn't one that dominated newspaper headlines or CNN banners).  The editing is quite well-constructed.  With a war movie like this, it needs constant tension, and the way it moves it's not letting up.  I can say other things about, say, the script (which uses way too much cliche in the dialogue), but the titular scene is mesmerizing, and we get nice interludes into many of the soldiers' lives so that we actually care as we go.

Moulin Rouge! is not the most technically difficult (Memento is) or the movie that had the most piecing together (Lord of the Rings and Black Hawk Down would've had more effects sequences to combine), but it is the film that is playing with the most risk of alienating the audience.  Combining the old (this is a 19th Century tale) with the new (songs by Elton John & Sting), you have to find a way to make the movie feel gleeful, sporadic, romantic but not too edgy, silly, or disjointed.  They do that-this is a movie that teeters on a knife's edge into self-parody, but never crosses it, and becomes both singular & genuinely moving.  That's a miracle from the editing room.

Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have eleven nominations here (they got greedy).  For Drama, Pietro Scalia got the statue for Black Hawk Down atop A Beautiful Mind, Harry Potter, Memento, and The Fellowship of the Ring, while for Comedy/Musical, we got a six-wide field that featured a victorious Moulin Rouge atop Amelie, Gosford Park, Monsters Inc, Shrek, and The Royal Tenenbaums.  BAFTA gave its statue to Mulholland Drive (I didn't remember that either), besting Amelie, Black Hawk Down, Fellowship of the Ring, and Moulin Rouge!.  In terms of sixth place...Harry Potter or Amelie are the best bets...I kind of think Harry Potter, which was more of a threat for the Best Picture field than I think you'd assume given the film's subsequent reputation as being a building block in the JK Rowling franchise rather than one of its best entries.

Films I Would Have Nominated: If Fellowship pulls off somehow being multiple things at once, and Memento tells a tale backward as if it's forward, AI: Artificial Intelligence's editing trick is how we constantly want to reach back.  The climax of the film doesn't work unless we understand how ephemeral it is, and that means structuring the picture so that you keep seeing mistakes that can't be undone.  I love that aspect of the film, and would've wanted it in a pretty strong field.

Oscar's Choice: In a wide-open field, Black Hawk Down pulled off the victory against the two Best Picture frontrunners.

My Choice: In a tough race, I'm going to give the edge to Memento, dealing Peter Jackson's Fellowship (my silver) its first loss for the Oscars.  I think it's more technically impressive, and it's hard to ignore how central the editing is to the success of the movie.  Behind them I'd go Black Hawk, Moulin Rouge, and then A Beautiful Mind.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to go with the Academy's love of war films or would you prefer to solve a mystery with me?  Why do you think Oscar ignored both of the Best Picture frontrunners in a category that is famous for being a coattails win?  And was Amelie or Harry Potter the near miss in this category?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2001: Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2001

Past Best Film Editing Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Film Editing (2022)

OVP: Best Film Editing (2022)

The Nominees Were...

Mikkel EG Nielsen, The Banshees of Inisherin

Matt Villa & Jonathan Redmond, Elvis

Paul Rogers, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Monika Willi, Tar

Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick

My Thoughts: Editing is one of the Academy categories I struggle with discussing on here, because it's largely known as the "invisible science."  Knowing the truly best editing is a challenge, because you don't know which wretch of a picture was actually a terrific salvage job all-things-considered (looking at you, Don't Worry Darling).  This is true for 2022 in particular because there's a lot of movies that I wanted to include in the Best Editing race for my own ballot.  I'm not sure if any of these ultimately get in with me, but three stand out as exceptionally strong & maybe I should rethink my lineup.

The first is Top Gun: Maverick.  My trepidation with this film is that it handles almost all of the non-effects scenes (save for the ones with Val Kilmer) really poorly.  The dialogue & scripting are so schmaltzy, and read like we're watching an army recruitment video in the way they are pieced together.  But the flight sequences are so ingenious.  They feel like we're actually in the air (which in many cases, we are), but also that they are melding the CGI and the real so well, and every single aerial battle feels unique & well-constructed.  This is due to a crack team of editors piecing together admittedly strong work from the VFX branch.  If the WGA strike hasn't taught you anything, it should've taught you that film is a collaborative art, and this is very much the case for Top Gun.

The other film that stands apart is Tar.  The movie unfolds like a metronome, and I love the way that it uses long-shots (like with the scene where Lydia is arguing with a student, and both of them are making poor points to each other, even if Lydia ends up winning) to establish our titular character.  The movie's final third sometimes feels like we're borrowing a bit too much from a movie like Laura (where it's not clear if we're in a dream sequence or not), and it's weird to give a film this long consideration for editing, but it's masterfully-constructed & gives us the best lecture on Lydia.

The Banshees of Inisherin is a comedy, and while it's oftentimes forgotten by major awards bodies, comedies require good timing (and thus, good editing).  This is true here-the back-and-forth between the four main quartet, the pacing of each scene and the increasing escalation between Farrell & Gleeson's characters is breathtaking stuff, and the editors do a strong job of keeping some of the melancholy that informs the movie very on-the-surface, so that the late-film surprises feel shocking but not out-of-place.  Unlike Tar or Top Gun, it doesn't show off much (we don't get a lot of technical wizardry), but we don't need that for this be well-edited.

Our final two films, I'm sorry, aren't in the same league, even though they both have the showiest editing touches.  Elvis is told across decades, but the swooshing surrealism of the film takes out as often as it puts us back in, and while some sequences are played for the appropriate amount of comic effect (I have to assume the "he's white!" scene is meant to be hilariously greedy, and that's on the editing team more than anyone else), the way that the film unpacks in the final third feels too edited, too reliant on Elvis the Myth and not the Elvis we've seen for two hours.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a movie we're going to discuss a lot (it dominated with Oscar), and since it's our first outing, I'll only say that I do, in fact, like the movie, but am not as enamored as most are so I'm going to probably come across as a hater even though I give it (and most of its technical aspects) a thumbs up.  That's true for editing-it's fun, and the way that they play with the dual character of Stephanie Hsu's Joy/Jobu is well-handled.  But it's trying too much, veering into incoherence, the further we get.  The central message of family is always there, but it feels like it's too long & repetitive toward the end, trying to pad the inevitable.

Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have ten nominations here.  For Drama, the victor was Top Gun atop All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis, Tar, and The Woman King, while Comedy/Musical favored Everything Everywhere All at Once atop Banshees, Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, & The Menu.  The BAFTA's went with Everything Everywhere All at Once also, and kept the entire Oscar lineup verbatim.  This lack of creativity makes me assume that the sixth place was probably a strong Best Picture nominee, so...The Fabelmans?  It was in Pic/Director, so this couldn't be that far off.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I didn't realize until I said this the other day to a friend, but Avatar 2 is apparently a controversial choice here?  For me, it seems only logical.  The movie is generous not just in what we get in terms of feeding the action (the entire last hour is the best action film I've seen since the 1990's), but also in the way that it has the patience to give us establishing shots, welcoming us into this new portion of Pandora.  It's gorgeous, and it's also essential to the long-term vision of James Cameron's movie that we have scenes that are just pretty, not necessarily about plot (film's a visual medium, that's okay).  Totally earned, and should've been cited here like the original was.

Oscar's Choice: The EEAAO train was not stopping here, though one wonders if Top Gun at least got it to slow down a little bit.

My Choice: I could see the merits of all three winning, but I'm going to give the trophy to Tar against Top Gun (silver) and Banshees (bronze).  I'm doing it because it has the most consistency, and uses the editing the best (this is, after all, not the Best Picture category but the Best Editing category, so tricks are worth giving some bonus points).  EEAAO and then Elvis follow.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you prefer the mutiverse layering of EEAAO or the decrescendo throughout Tar?  What makes the Academy randomly pick some comedies but ignore most others?  And why do you think Oscar skipped Avatar here when they went for the original?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2022: Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2022

Past Best Film Editing Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021