Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

Related Post Roulette

21 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    The list of films nominated for an Academy Award for best film editing and one for best screen play (either adapted or original) in each year of the 21st century.Report

  2. Kazzy says:

    With “Crash” on the list, I have to assume this is a list of @russell-saunders ‘s favorite movies.Report

  3. Mike Schilling says:

    Movies I have never watched in my kitchen.Report

  4. Burt Likko says:

    Tuesday hint: Do you want me to provide the list for the 1990’s too? If I took the time, I could go back much longer than that. It’ll be more of the same. And probably not very helpful to anyone.

    So instead, piggybacking off of @Kolohe’s guess, obviously, not every movie here turned out to be a winner. But there is a way in which one might argue that these should have been the winners.Report

    • Must… fight… urge… to rant… about “Crash.”

      Effective use of flashbacks with regard to editing?

      I changed my mind. Something about editing that involves effectively incorporating other footage or material into the action of the movie. A play in “Finding Neverland,” for example, or video footage for “127 Hours.”Report

  5. Burt Likko says:

    Wednesday hint: One of each nominee wins the Oscar based upon the subjective, and some would say, arbitrary, vote of the members of the Academy. But my selection from among those same nominees is much, much more objective.Report

  6. Burt Likko says:

    Thursday hint: Film editing exists for a lot of reasons. One of them is artistic, but the other one is practical. I’m interested in the practical reason: not only one’s bladder, but one’s attention span, can be taxed when film editing is not good.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Movies with the shortest running time of all the movies nominated for best film editing that year.Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to Kolohe says:

        Boom goes the dynamite.

        Seems to me that with the great aids to storytelling that visual and audio cues can bring, moviemakers have the ability to pack a whole lot more information into a few seconds of time than an author of written material. So at least one school of thought leads to the place that a well-edited movie ought to be a shorter movie. (Plus shorter movies mean more screenings per day, which means more revenue!)Report

      • Glyph in reply to Kolohe says:

        moviemakers have the ability to pack a whole lot more information into a few seconds of time than an author of written material. So at least one school of thought leads to the place that a well-edited movie ought to be a shorter movie.

        Not inherently wrong, and I definitely feel that most movies now are much longer than they need be, but by no means a hard and fast rule. More, and longer, shot lengths may be necessary to generate the desired impact (that is, increased shot length *itself* may be used to impart information regarding the “velocity” of the story and/or provoke specific emotional viewer responses). See below for a pretty interesting bit on average shot length’s impact (article and comments specifically call out longer, and well-edited, films like The Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia):

        http://www.avclub.com/articles/its-not-just-the-direction-that-makes-donnie-darko,104624/Report

      • Glyph in reply to Kolohe says:

        Also, I should clarify: It is obviously possible to have a shorter movie with longer ASL’s. Or a longer movie with shorter ASL’s. One doesn’t imply the other.

        My point was just that many examples of longer ASL’s are ALSO long movies that are also considered “well-edited”movies.Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to Kolohe says:

        I realize the truth of what you say, @glyph , and I readily admit that simply looking at the bottom line of runtime is a very clumsy index of proficient editing.

        Inspiration for the question came from scrolling through movies to watch about a week ago, when Natasha announced that a two-hour movie was longer than she cared to sit through. So we spent nearly half an hour looking for a 90-minute movie that we both wanted to watch.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Kolohe says:

        Dude, I am with you. 90 minutes is about as long as I ever want to (or can) go at a stretch, and I have definitely made viewing decisions based on length; plus, I’ve long liked the (probably specious, but appealing nonetheless) idea that 90-minute film durations map nicely to human dream cycles (a theory recently espoused again by Nicolas Winding Refn). Most movies are WAY too long now.

        That said, Lawrence is incredible.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Kolohe says:

        and I just noticed this: two-hour movie was longer than she cared to sit through. So we spent nearly half an hour looking for a 90-minute movie that we both wanted to watch.

        Yep. Good thing you guys didn’t waste that extra half hour on the movie. 🙂Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Kolohe says:

        I’ve wondered if, at least within the genre of summer action blockbusters, running time is some sort of insider one-upmanship: my CGI special-effects budget was bigger than yours.Report

    • Chris in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Something about the original, pre-editing run time, I’m guessing, though I haven’t a clue what. The number of minutes edited from the director’s cut, or the extended cut, to get to the theatrical release run time?Report