Oscar Volleys: Best Editing is a Category that Doesn't Know What it Wants to Be

Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precurosrs. Here's Nick Taylor and Ben Miller with the first volley...

the 4 most recent movies to be nominated for editing that WEREN'T nominated for Best Picture.

BEN: Alright Nick, since I'm starting this conversation, I'll get on a soapbox. I hate what this category has turned into. It used to be a really cool category that highlighted the most underrated aspect of the filmmaking process. Instead, it's turned into Best Picture Redux.  In the last ten years, there have been 50 nominees for Best Editing. Only four were not nominated for Best Picture. When did this category get so lazy? Why, of all categories, is this one so linked to Best Picture... 

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Mahler's 5th - the secret destroyer in "Decision to Leave" and "Tár"

by Lynn Lee

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is enjoying a bit of a renaissance these days, thanks to its prominent placement in not just one but two of the most fascinating films of the year, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave and Todd Field’s Tár.  Not that it’s ever really been out of the public eye.  It’s been a staple of classical orchestras for decades, and its fourth movement – the dreamily romantic Adagietto, which cinephiles may recognize from Visconti’s Death in Venice – long ago reached a degree of mainstream popularity rarely accorded classical works.

Just because it’s a war horse, though, doesn’t mean it can’t be used in constantly different and surprising ways.  The Fifth – like all of Mahler’s symphonies, but perhaps even more so – contains multitudes...

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Tweetweek Cosplay

curated for you

this shot from #decisiontoleave just broke my brain. seo-rae in the foreground is out of focus while her reflection in the two-way mirror is in focus. but hae-jun in the foreground is in focus while his reflection in the mirror is out of focus.
i'm guessing there's no mirror here pic.twitter.com/98cPQEGERs

— Pramit (@pramitheus) October 30, 2022

Okay, so definitely need to see that movie again. Wow. Other showbiz (mostly movies) related tweets so you dont have to spend time on twitter after the jump including Halloween costumes spotted and enjoyed this week... 

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'Till' and 'Decision to Leave' open well while 'Halloween' wins again

By Ben Miller

For the third straight week, the October box office was dominated by scares.  The final (?) installment of David Gordon Green's trilogy Halloween Ends managed a healthy $40 million haul despite incredibly mixed reactions (40% Rotten Tomatoes, C+ CinemaScore) and a day-and-date release on Peacock.  Expect a large second-week drop.  Elsewhere, well-received films continue to have legs.  Smile earned another $12+ million weekend, totaling over $70 million.  It might end up being one of the most profitable films of the year given its budget.  The Woman King is also holding steady with a total just under $60 million now.

Weekend Box Office (actuals) October 14th-16th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
HALLOWEEN ENDS	TILL
1 🔺 HALLOWEEN ENDS $40 *NEW*	1 TERRIFIER 2 $1 (cum. $2.4) 700 screens
2 SMILE $12.5 (cum. $71.3)	2 🔺 ★ TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (sweden/uk) $333k (cum. $653k) 31 screens

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Review: South Korea's Oscar Hopeful "Decision to Leave"

by Cláudio Alves

© MUBI

A woman stands in a room, alone. Wallpapered motifs encircle her in a swirl of blue-green something. Are they waves or mountaintops, those shapes repeated into infinity? Maybe they're both, maybe neither. Maybe they're everything. 

According to a Confucian proverb, the wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains. Or maybe it's benevolence and virtue, some other translation across languages. Two complementing sides of the same person, perhaps a binary of human natures, these words reveal more than their scholarly meaning – at least, they do in Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. Ideas of duality percolate throughout the work, as does the attempt to understand the unfathomable reality of another person. We try to find order in chaos, logic in that which has none, pursuing an understanding that will always be out of grasp. Every single one of us is a mystery to others, and to try to transcend the impossibility of knowing someone else is a fool's errand, the most beautiful thing in the world, ecstasy holding hands with despair. It's love…

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