My Award nominations: Editing

Had to make some heartbreaking decisions to whittle this category down to five. Lots of terrific Editing work this year, and in different ways too. Here are the five I ultimately settled on (although I could just as easily substitute any of my "just missed" picks at any time):

Review - All Is Lost

The 'old man and the sea' concept gets amped up to eleven in J.C. Chandor's arresting new survival drama All Is Lost, in which Robert Redford (referred to simply as “Our Man” by the closing credits) struggles to keep a sinking yacht afloat in the Indian Ocean.

Chandor's screenplay, which barely runs 31 pages due to its virtual absence of dialogue, is elegant in its simplicity; a refreshingly radical U-turn from the dense verbosity of his 2011 debut Margin Call. Our man wakes up from a nap on his 30' luxury yacht, the Virginia Jean, to discover water pouring in through a hole in the hull. He must rely on his resourcefulness and stoic determination (albeit one that's slowly ebbing away) as his situation constantly deteriorates from bad to worse to worse yet.