Wednesday, January 24, 2007

mainlymovies' Best of '06: Editing

Borat: well-edited, but doesn't cut the crap

Craig Albert, Peter Teschner, James Thomas (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan)

Many hands made light work of the visual and verbal punchlines in this carefully-spliced-together guerrilla comedy. Remember Bob Barr’s expression when he’s just been told he’s munching human breast cheese? Split-second comic timing, and all their work.

William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell (Miami Vice)

One of many factors in Miami Vice’s paradoxical status as the most technically brilliant dud of the year, the film’s ambient montage was, as they say, trippin’, even when the dialogue, plot and performances were just tripping over each other.

Dan Zimmerman (The Omen)

This amusing and snazzy remake got all of its best jolts from Zimmerman’s whiplash-quick, adrenalised action — Satan’s pooches are on top of you in the graveyard before you know it. His first credit as editor and I’ll be looking out for more.

Roberto Silvi (Three Burials)

Silvi cut smartly between characters and timeframes in ways which enriched the story rather than obscuring it (21 Grams) or revealing its mechanical essence (Babel). In a film which takes its sweet time, there was barely a sequence here which seemed to drag.

Clare Douglas, Richard Pearson, Christopher Rouse (United 93)

Editing is all in a Paul Greengrass picture. It took two of his Bourne collaborators and one from Bloody Sunday to build force and momentum from all that air-to-ground cross-cutting, and to shred our nerves to pieces in the hideous, arrythmic climax.

1 comment:

NicksFlickPicks said...

HOORAY! I'm so excited about these lists, and this one is a great example of why. United 93 came close on my list—I only wish the film hadn't abandoned the on-the-ground plot for quite so much of the end, though maybe it wouldn't have worked to keep up the cross-cutting. I loved Miami Vice's best sequences, and you've certainly got me jazzed to give The Omen a whirl.