Editing. This Word. It Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means.
Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 4:30PM 
Though I've read a truly great book on the topic "The Conversations", know a few editors, and have experimented with this completely fascinating craft in college, this morning when I woke up, I learned that I must have literally no idea what it means. The American Cinema Editor's Guild pulled the rug out by naming Tim Burton's Eyesore in Wonderland the best edited of all comedies in 2010. I realize that my hatred for the movie is self-feeding, ever-growing and thus deeply irrational but still... I watched it in full and all I saw was interminable rhythmless agonizing ugly incoherence.
The ACE Awards
Best Editing, Drama The Social Network's (INTERVIEW)
Best Editing, Comedy or Musical Alice in Wonderland
Best Editing, Animated Toy Story 3
Best Editing, Documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop ("UNSUNG HEROES")
Best Editing, TV Half Hour Modern Family "Family Portrait"
Best Editing, TV Hour The Walking Dead "Days Gone Bye"
Best Editing, TV (Non Commercial) Treme "Do You Know What It Means?"
Best Editing, TV Miniseries Temple Grandin
Best Editing, Reality If You Really Knew Me "Colusa High"
Perhaps the editors know something we don't? Perhaps Burton's footage from Alice was even more ghastly than what we saw in the final cut and Chris Lebenzon is being rewarded for true sorcery or merely for surviving it? Lebenzon has done fine work in the past -- even on other Burton films! -- so we don't begrudge him his kudos but this year??? When you stop to consider the other nominated efforts (The Kids Are All Right, Easy A, Made in Dagenham, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and how well those movies flowed and/or maximized their laughs with exceptional comic timing and/or carved out a magical performance or two, it's enough to make you straight up weep and reach for the booze.
The decision is even stranger when you look at the other winners and find that they are all relatively easy to comprehend as noteworthy work. (For instance, I'm not the world's biggest fan of The Walking Dead but that pilot episode was a master class in cumulative thrills, scary but not cheap-scary cutting, and overall pace.) The same people voted for those achievements. Temporary insanity?
IN OTHER NEWS: Final Oscar Predictions in Craft Categories
editing, precursor awards
Reader Comments (5)
I hate to be a cynical bastard, but this is more than likely the culprit:
"Oh look, a TIm Burton film! We like him."
Your hatred of this film isn't irrational Nathaniel. You're absolutely right: it's poorly made, unentertaining AND ugly-looking. And it's ACE win is even more egregious because Scott Pilgrim is the best edited film of the year. What a travesty!
Let's remember editing is an invisible art we may never fully understand and every case with every movie is different... so probably Alice in Wonderland sucked even more before Chris Lebenzon was done with it.
Just clicked over and read your original rant about Alice. It so captured my feelings about the film that I thought you might have been listening in somehow on the conversations I had around March last year. Not only was Alice kind of nasty and the whole film an eyesore but it was so boring. I am so angry that it managed to get anywhere near any awards at all, much less Oscar. And that it might win? For the most garish, unflattering and unecessary costumes/art direction of all time? God help us all.
And that dance. My eyes are threatening to bleed from the memory.
Other than the "editing probably made it as good as it was" factor, I'm thinking the voters probably considered how much of the film involved computer generated or manipulated characters that constantly interacted with the live actors. Don't forget that...special dance sequence at the end, too. That was technically editing to convince the audience Johnny Depp's character danced like that.