1. Gravity2. 12 Years a Slave3. Captain Philips 4. American Hustle5. Rush(Alt: The Wolf of Wall Street) The Best Film Editing category usually closely mirrors that of Best Picture, with a slight recent inclination to rewarding more action oriented films. There is no reason to expect that to change this year, so the category should be fairly straight forward. Using the rules just established, the three leading contenders to take the big prize Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, and American Hustle, should receive companion Best Editing nods. Given that Captain Philips is the most action oriented of the likely Best Picture nominees, and its mile-a-minute editing that has become director Paul Greengrass trademark features prominently in the film, it's a lock for a nomination as well. The last spot gets a bit tricky. There's a lot of viable candidates, including a few likely Best Picture nominees, but I'm going to go with the action-oriented kick that the branch has been in lately and say Ron Howard's F1 racing drama, Rush, makes the cut. The film features a slew of slickly edited racing scenes that feel like the type of up-tempo beats the Editing branch has gone for lately. On the other hand, Scorsese's long-time editing partner, Thelma Schoonmaker, also seems a very real possibility, but the film's nearly three-hour run time may hurt The Wolf of Wall Street's chances in the editing category.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
