A Guide To Best Editing From The Pros

By Katey Rich

This is the time of year when even the most experienced Oscar followers have to start putting down their bets on what will win, and inevitably, everyone hits a wall. Who on earth sees all the documentary shorts? How do you tell the difference between sound mixing and sound editing? What's the difference between the fancy dresses of Elizabeth, The Golden Age and Sweeney Todd?

A sticking point that comes up year after year is the Best Editing category. It's hard enough to gauge a film based on what you see on screen, but editing is all about what's not there. You have to draw back and imagine the effect of a certain scene had the camera lingered a few seconds longer on Daniel Day-Lewis' face, or if we had seen Woody Harrelson's death from over Javier Bardem's shoulder. Then you think about these guys sitting at the editing bay, who don't have the finished product to look at like we do. How do you sit there and know which cuts will play the best when the whole thing is up there on the big screen for the world to see?

The ever-reliable Slate has put together a video that at least helps you get in the proper frame of mind to think about editing. Mark Helfrich, who edited Rush Hour and X-Men 3, among others, plays videos of each of the five nominees and discusses the effect editing has on each scene. It's fascinating to hear the input from an insider, not to mention just being a treat to see clips from some of these films, three of which I haven't seen since last fall. Putting Into the WIld and The Bourne Ultimatum side by side makes you realize how much can be done differently with what's essentially a small bag of the same tricks.

The editing category is one of the tougher to predict this time around-- Bourne won the editing guild award, but No Country has all the momentum. Giving the Coens--ahem, excuse me, Roderick Jaynes-- an editing award would be the first station on their way to the four points of Oscar history: editing, screenplay, directing and picture awards, all in one night. Can they do it? I sure hope so, if only to see what happens when the entirely fictional Roderick Jaynes is called up to the stage. Someone over at Awards Daily (which also pointed the video to my attention, thanks guys) suggested that Steve Buscemi could walk up there as Jaynes and collect it. I sure wouldn't stop him.

Below is the video. Enjoy, and maybe find it a little easier to tick that box on your Oscar ballot.

Today's Film News: Nick Hornby Helps Us All Come of Age

By Katey Rich

Orlando Bloom, Alfred Molina, and recent Berlin Silver Bear winner Sally Hawkins have joined the cast of the British coming-of-age tale An Education. Producers announced a few days ago that Emma Thompson, Peter Sarsgaard and Olivia Thirlby, among others, would also star. Novelist Nick Hornby is writing the screenplay, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber.

Sounding kind of like the other side of the mirror from The Watchmen, graphic novel The Boys will be getting its own big-screen adaptation thanks to producer Neal Moritz at Sony. Written by Darick Robertson and Garth Ennis, the book follows a CIA squad assigned to keep superheroes in line. The Watchmen, if you recall, is about superheroes who are under suspicion by the government. And the movie industry, if you recall, is so jam-packed with superhero stories that's it hard to do anything with this story than just throw it onto the pile, no matter how good it might be. Variety has the full details if you didn't already hear the phrase "graphic novel adaptation" and tuned out.

Given the amount of CGI work in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it's not a real surprise that their director, Gore Verbinski, will be headed next into a fully animated project. Graham King, who produced The Departed, will team up with Verbinski to produce the under-wraps action-adventure film; King has a first-look deal with Warner Bros., so it seems likely the project will head there first. The Hollywood Reporter also tells us that Sweeney Todd screenwriter John Logan will write the thing up, with sequels obviously in mind. The connection between Pirates and Sweeney makes me hope for Johnny Depp to appear as a Sweeney-Jack Sparrow hybrid, which is pretty much the only thing to get excited about since there's not a single plot detail available. Cold comfort, but a girl's gotta dream.

I don't even have it in me to tell you about the 600th graphic novel adaptation announced by Warner Bros. in the last year. This time it's the six-volume anime graphic novel series Akira. Variety has the full details, and I'll leave it to you to tell me if this is promising or just the same-old same-old.

There Will Be Oscars, But Will There Be Viewers?

By Katey Rich

It's Oscar week, and that means that the top-shelf talent is clearing out of New York to go to L.A., meet with stylists, starve themselves and try to prepare for the big night. Probably no one is busier, though, than Jon Stewart. The New York Times featured him as he prepares for the ceremony only a week after the official end of the writers' strike allowed him to get to work. "Now it's like: I can name that tune in seven notes. I can do the Oscars in nine days. No, I can do the Oscars in eight days," Stewart told the Times.

The question being asked elsewhere is, just how popular is this thing going to be? Everyone remembers that when Stewart hosted two years ago, it was one of the lowest-rated Oscar broadcasts in history. Plus, only one Best Picture nominee (the ever-present Juno) has made more than $100 million, which means there won't be a whole lot of die-hard fans to tune in and root for their favorite. Variety credits Gil Cates for boosting the star power with presenters, but also reminds us that the Academy could have nominated Brad and Angelina, and well, they didn't.

The x-factor involved is that the strike is just over, and we've heard more about the Oscars this year than ever with all the "Will the show go on?" speculation. That could mean that the Oscars are on everyone's mind more than usual; conversely, it could just be Oscar junkies like me who cared to begin with. But just like Jon Stewart says he and his writers are "like puppies right now...It's a lot of adrenaline and enthusiasm," I think everyone will be so happy to be trekking to the Kodak Theater that the vibe could be as loose and enjoyable as the Golden Globes. I have to imagine that Stewart's writers have been saving their best material for Oscar night, with those long months of the strike, and will be able to pack a punch they didn't quite accomplish two years ago.

Of course, I'll be watching anyway. But it's a lot more fun to look forward to something that you actually think will be good.

Today's Film News: Will, I Am X-Man?

By Katey Rich

OK, this is just a weird trend. For the second day in a row a member of the Black Eyed Peas is part of a casting announcement. Yesterday it was Taboo in Street Fighter, and today it's frontman will.i.am, joining the cast of the X-Men spinoff Wolverine. He and Ryan Reynolds have been cast in key roles against Hugh Jackman's titular character, as John Wraith and Deadpool, respectively. As has been long-rumored, archenemy Gambit will also make an appearance, played by "Friday Night Lights" regular Taylor Kitsch. Variety suggests that Fox will aim to make a spinoff based on Reynolds' character, though given the middling performance of Definitely, Maybe over the weekend, that might not be the best plan. But given will.i.am's bizarre rendition of "Mack the Knife" at the Grammys last weekend, he's probably not spinoff material either.

I know the sitcom "Back to You" isn't exactly a smash hit, but is Kelsey Grammer really this hard up? He's agreed to play Ebenezer Scrooge in An American Carol, not to be remotely confused with the version of A Christmas Carol Robert Zemeckis is doing over at Disney. This one is an indie parody, and it's directed by the man responsible for Scary Movie 4, David Zucker. Granted, he's also the man responsible for Airplane!, but we're not revering Nick Nolte for his great work nearly 30 years ago, so why  hold Zucker to the same standard? Variety tells us that the movie will lampoon modern American culture, with a particular focus on Hollywood. Oh, brother.

The Ellen Page Money Train keeps rollin' along: ThinkFilm will distribute the Canadian film The Tracey Fragments, which is up for six Canadian Genie awards this month. Page plays a depressed teenager on a hunt for her missing younger brother. The distributor will roll out the film on a small scale in May, and will bring it wider if it becomes a success. I'm a bit doubtful: Page is a hit when she's a clever pregnant teen, but an unconventional narrative and a Canadian production? That's a little less of a surefire hit.

Finally, The Hollywood Reporter has a numbers-heavy article on the future of Marvel, which is aiming to become a bona fide production company with this summer's dual releases The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man. Basically, fortunes over there aren't so hot, even though some are still saying they may release as many as two films in 2009. Character names being tossed around include Ant Man, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers. Ant Man? Is it unkind to suggest we might be scraping the bottom of the barrel here?

Today's Film News, Afternoon Edition: Street Fighter!

By Katey Rich

Proving that even the silliest, most nonsensical video games can be turned into movies, Fox is setting up a cast for its adaptation of 80's arcade staple Street Fighter. Kristin Kreuk (TV's "Smallville"), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) and Chris Klein (American Pie) have been added to the cast, which also includes Moon Bloodgood (TV's "Pathfinder"), Hong Kong action star Cheng Pei Pei, and Taboo, a member of The Black-Eyed Peas. Wow, what a collection we have here. Andrzej Bartkowiak (Exit Wounds) is directing. Street Fighter fans can check out the Variety article for the dish on who is playing who, though you've probably guessed already that Kreuk is playing Chun Li. And that's the extent of my Street Fighter knowledge, so moving onward...

What Roman Polanski could not do, Stone Village Entertainment will now attempt. The production company has optioned the rights to Mikhail Bulgakov's Russian novel The Master and Margarita, a book once banned that also served as inspiration for the Rolling Stones album Sympathy for the Devil. It concerns the devil's return to Earth in the form of a mysterious man in World War II-era Moscow. Polanski had adapted the novel in the mid-80s and was set to direct it until Warner Bros. pulled the plug. Stone Village embarked on another literary adaptation last fall with Love in the Time of Cholera, with little domestic succcess.

You'd think that a product called HD DVD would have had an edge in the HD DVD market, but manufacturer Toshiba has admitted defeat against the mighty Blu-Ray. In the last few weeks many studios have followed Warner Bros.' lead and committed to the Sony-backed Blu-Ray format. When Wal-Mart announced that it would stock only Blu-Ray discs, the jig was pretty much up. Now consumers can finally commit to HD DVD players and discs without worrying that the technology will become instantly obsolete. We've all pretty much come to terms with the fact that it will all be obsolete in 10 years, no matter what we do.

And finally, another day, another vampire movie. Summit Entertainment has rounded out the cast for its upcoming thriller Twilight, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Peter Facinelli (TV's "Damages"), Elizabeth Reaser (The Family Stone) and Jackson Rathbone (TV's "The O.C.") have joined, and will star alongside Kristen Stewart (Into the Wild) and Robert Pattinson (the Harry Potter franchise), who had already been cast in lead roles. Pattinson plays a young man who comes from a family of vampires, with Stewart as a girl with a crush on him. Summit reportedly hopes to turn the film into its first franchise series.

For Your Friday Enjoyment: Michael Bay and His Awesome Tiger

By Katey Rich

Oh goodness gracious, you know it's a slow movie news day/a Friday/the beginning of a three-day weekend when the only thing that grabs my blogging attention is a viral video starring Michael Bay. Scratch that-- a viral commercial starring Michael Bay. The man who we never thought had a real sense of humor-- the "jokes" in Pearl Harbor do not count!-- has actually come across pretty well in this Verizon commercial, in which he shows us conclusively why our lives are mundane and his life is, well, awesome. Check it out below (and extra thanks to Culture Vulture for pointing it out):

And because it's that kind of Friday, and because the jubilation over the end of the writers' strike has never been quite so aptly represented, here's a clip from Wednesday's "Colbert Report," pointed out to me by Editor Kevin. Who knew Colbert had such an all-star writing team?

And that's pretty much it for today. Next week, though is Oscar Week, so expect a lot of prognostication and wildly off predictions come Tuesday!

Today's Film News: Ellen Page Is Keeping Busy

By Katey Rich

I'm getting a little worried about Ellen Page. Her name seems to be attached to every other casting announcement, and she's not exactly taking on easy cameos. She's already signed up to play a roller derby star in Whip It!, not to mention getting dragged to hell in Sam Raimi's next project, and at some point this year the movie American Crime will come out, in which she plays a teenage girl tortured to death by her neighbor. Now she's joining Cillian Murphy in the psychological thriller Peacock. Keep in mind Cillian Murphy's most recent American roles have been as a psycho (Red Eye) and a psycho supervillain (Batman Begins). Variety reports that the film is set in a small Nebraska town, and Murphy will play a man with multiple personalities who convinces the town he is both husband and wife of a couple. Hello, Norman Bates!

Since fantasy hasn't been working out too well for New Line lately, they're moving into 3D CGI animation with the upcoming Planet 51. Now the voices that will participate in the film have been announced, including Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jessica Biel, Seann William Scott and Justin Long. Kind of a who's-who of "Used to be a big deal and then what happened?" and "Is supposed to be a big deal now but I still don't know who this person is." Except for The Rock, who seems to be on a family comedy roll with The Game Plan's success. I guess that explains his presence here?

Another day, another supernatural thriller with a completely insane premise. Melissa George, most recently seen in 30 Days of Night, will star in Triangle, about a group of people on a yacht who get caught up in very spooky weather conditions. Maybe they'll track down the island from "Lost"? The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Icon Entertainment will be in charge of distribution.

Sony-based Red Wagon Entertainment is on the right track for a biopic about Nascar icon Dale Earnhardt, who died during the Daytona 500 in 2001. Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher, in charge of the production arm, have secured the deal through son Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and widow Teresa, though the two have had a strained relationship recently. I'm going to resist the racing puns for now (well, except for that first one), but don't expect me to hold back for very long.