My Award Nominations: Best Film Editing

Today I've got a couple of post-production elements to add to my growing awards ballot. Starting things off is Best Film Editing. The temptation was great, but I resisted the urge to merely load this category with Best Picture nominees (this ain't the Oscars!), and tried to branch out where I could. The following five films are not only extremely well edited, but they also display a very wide cross-section of editing styles. Variety is the spice of film awards!

Check 'em out after the jump.

Mourning in the American 'Wild' and the Irish 'Sea': Double Feature Review

Late December is often a time of great celebration. No matter what your faith or customs may be, there's always an extra emphasis on enjoying time with our loved ones this season, as we prepare to close the book on one year and eagerly welcome another.

But, inevitably, the closing out of the year also becomes a time of solemn reflection, to remember what we've lost while cherishing what we still have. 2014 somehow feels like a disproportionately painful year for the filmmaking community; The tragic premature deaths of geniuses like Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman punctuating an already long list of cinema giants who finally left us after significant, fruitful lives.

Perhaps that's why it's been so much on my mind as I've frequented the movies this year. I don't want to be responsible for giving anyone a case of the holiday blues, but it's been impossible for me not to notice a similar thread running through a number of 2014's major releases; A thread about the way people deal with loss, process grief, and ultimately find closure; A thread about how mourning varies from individual to individual, yet is universally human.

A pair of distinctive and radically different films that are currently in limited release, Wild and Song of the Sea, suddenly seem like distant cousins when viewed through this thematic prism.

Early Best Picture Predictions

I've been slower than usual this year at pulling myself out of March's Oscar withdrawal and gearing up for next year's awards, so my apologies to all two of you who have been impatiently itching to see my early predictions. Rest assured they'll be posted on the sidebar by the first of May (my normal deadline for early guesses), but I'll only bother doing a write-up for one category; Best Picture. And here it is:

One Category at a Time: Film Editing

As I mentioned about a week ago in my ACE Eddies recap, this is one of those categories on which the jury is out. The BAFTAs failed to clarify the issue, and traditional logic tells us that we should predict one of the ACE winners to take the Oscar as well (only three times in the last 23 years did the Oscar go to a film that did not win the Eddie), but it would be foolish to ignore the potential sweep that could make an Oscar winner out of an Eddie loser.

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 - Dallas Buyers Club

The year is 1985, and Texan electrician Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) sits frozen on a hospital bed, paralyzed for a moment in stubborn disbelief at the life-changing news he's just received: He's not going to live to see 1986. He's not even going to live to see the end of the month, as the calendar on the wall of his trailer reminds him with a sting. He's contracted HIV, and at a time when the virus is so misunderstood and under-researched that odds of surviving the next 30 days are slim.

Forced to confront his own misconceptions about the disease and the prejudices of his so-called “friends”, Ron remarkably manages to turn his darkest hour into the most meaningful seven years of his life, as he uses his considerable wiles to acquire all manner of unapproved but effective treatments to keep himself – along with hundreds of other AIDS patients – alive to fight another day. He founds the Dallas Buyers Club, also the title of this terrific new film that chronicles his true story, so that sufferers can circumvent the FDA's corrupt regulations and receive symptom-relieving drugs directly from Ron's makeshift office/motel room.