Oscars 2019 Category Breakdown: Best Editing

Here’s how this works: every day leading up to the Oscars, I break down each of the 24 categories. The goal is to both familiarize everyone with the category itself (how it works, what its history is and how you go about figuring out what’s gonna win) while also making it easier to reference when I write my giant article with picks and everything. A lot of the leg work is already here. But really, the goal is to see if there’s anything to look for leading into Oscar night that could be a shortcut to me picking the category.

What we do is — I give you all the winners of the category throughout history, go over all the recent trends if there are any, discuss the precursors and whether or not they matter, and then we talk about this year’s category and how we got to it, and then just look at where we are and rank the nominees in terms of their likelihood of winning (at the current moment in time. Of course, things can and will change going into the ceremony). It’s all pretty simple. I’ve done this every year. Everyone should know the drill.

Today is Best Editing. Snip, snip, motherfuckers.

Best Editing is always a strange category to talk about because it’s usually more about the Best Picture favorites than it is about pure editing. This year, there’s more of an overlap than usual, but still.

The main precursors here are ACE, the Editors guild, BAFTA and BFCA. Though BFCA gave their Editing award to a non-nominated film that was cut to look like it wasn’t edited, so they’re fucking useless this year.

Anyway, ACE is 40/58 all-time in this category, 23/30 the past 30 years and 6/10 the past decade. BAFTA is 7/10 the past decade, and BFCA, as I’ve hinted at, is only 4/9 and not generally useful.

But typically there’s either gonna be a consensus, or you can figure it out just by looking at the category.

Best Editing

Ford v Ferrari

The Irishman

Jojo Rabbit

Joker

Parasite

Not an overly surprising category in terms of what got on. However, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood not being nominated is the biggest deal of anything else. But otherwise, no real surprises here.

Precursors:

• ACE Dramatic: Parasite
• ACE Comedy: Jojo Rabbit
• BAFTA: Ford v Ferrari

I should note that only 10 films ever to this point won Best Picture without being nominated for Best Editing: It Happened One Night, The Life of Emile Zola, Hamlet, Marty, Tom Jones, A Man for All Seasons, The Godfather Part II, Annie Hall, Ordinary People, and Birdman. 1917 would be #11, but, like Birdman, the conceit is that it looks like it’s not Edited, so it’s not that big a deal. But Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, if that won, would be a bigger deal. Just noting that before we get to Best Picture tomorrow.

This is probably the one major category where it’s very much open. Owing to the Best Picture favorite not being nominated because it’s designed to seem like it isn’t edited. So we’re left with a nice array of choices, which, relatively, is scaring the shit out of me. Even though it’s probably just a 50/50 choice.

Rankings:

5. Joker — No momentum whatsoever for a win here. Aside from the number of nominations, I see no reason to make this anything other than fifth here. Where are the votes coming from?

4. The Irishman — It’s Thelma. And I hesitate even putting her fourth. But no precursor. So while I don’t think it’s happening, I’m scared shitless having her fourth, just because some people might instinctively vote for her. She won for Aviator and Departed and was assumed to have won for Hugo in that crazy 2011 category. I don’t see it happening, but I might have to bump her up to third in the end just because I’m terrified by the notion of not having Thelma in contention.

3. Jojo Rabbit — It’s won the ACE for Comedy, so that’s something. Though… ACE Comedy winners don’t really ever win the Oscar. It’s only happened once. Which is why, absent anything else, I’m not sure what’s keeping this here as a solid third choice. This and Irishman are basically 3-4, in almost any order. Still, it does make our lives easier at the top. The ultimate question still is: what’s gonna win?

2. Parasite — It won ACE, which is big. It’s a potential Best Picture upset choice. If it wins here, then seriously watch out for Best Picture later in the night. I only have it second just because… Ford v Ferrari is the more overtly ‘edited’ movie. That’s it. It’s a pure 50/50. They both have precursors. You can make a case for both given what we’ve seen. Which is why I’m feeling a real 2011 vibe from this. The tiebreaker could have been BFCA… but fucking 1917 won there. So now we’re just guessing.

1. Ford v Ferrari — It’s got BAFTA, that’s big. It’s a race car movie. It makes total sense here. Will it win? Dunno. It feels like it’s this or Parasite. You can take either, and this becomes the favorite purely on the fact that it more openly screams ‘editing’ than Parasite does. And hey, since I keep saying how it reminds me of 2011… what won in 2011? Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The more ‘editing’ kinda movie. So we’ll call this the favorite in what is otherwise a complete 50/50 toss up.

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