Widescreen Awards: Film Editing

Editing is quite possibly the most difficult aspect of film to judge, particularly from the perspective of a viewer. A good editor can pick up the slack from a bad director, who came into a project with a shaky vision. A bad editor can hack a good director's work unscrupulously. And, it would seem, editors are always at the mercy of the material they're given. If the production crew didn't shoot enough material, the editor will have a difficult time creating a rhythm or even choosing the best shots.

But here are the films that are, in my mind, the most smoothly "edited." Whether that's because of or despite the best or worst efforts of their editors, I will never know.

Angelina Jolie does a whole lot of running, jumping, leaping and tumbling in Salt, but the editing team of Stuart Baird and John Gilroy manage to keep the action sequences coherent. You always have a good idea where Jolie's super spy is going and how she's getting there.

The Social Network sustains a meticulously-crafted rhythm across a continent and its two-hour length. I have to imagine Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall had something to do with that, although with the reportedly OCD David Fincher in the director's chair, you can never be sure.

There are no wasted sequences in Enter the Void, which was edited by Marc Boucrot, with director Gaspar Noé doing double duty. Even the lulls in the plot, including one doozy of a trip, contribute to the whole. The editors knows when to look away, when to hold on a shot and how integrate the various special effects into the frame.

Christopher Nolan's new favorite editor Lee Smith (pictured) — they've been working together since 2005's "Batman Begins" — helps the master illusionist keep a lot of balls in the air in Inception. The final "kicks" sequence is as tightly constructed as any film this year.

Juliette Welfling, in her third collaboration with A Prophet director Jacques Audiard, achieves a measured pace across a number of years in the life of an burgeoning mafia kingpin. It's a testament to her skill at pacing and structure that so many great moments stay in your memory long after the 155 minutes are over.

Widescreen Awards: Art Direction

Film is an artificial medium. When I first started watching movies

— for the record, the first theater experience I can remember is Jurassic Park when I was five or six years old

— that never crossed my mind. It's not that I believed everything on screen was really happening, but it's just not something you think about for a long time.

But decisions go into everything, from the color of the protagonist's car to which pen he uses and how he signs his name. There are seemingly infinite possibilities when it comes to these things, but the best films use these choices to say something about the character or the scene. These films, in my opinion, have done that the best.

Briefly, some useful film vocab: A production designer is responsible for the overall visual appearance of a film.

A set designer or decorator is in charge of translating the production designer's vision, choosing furnishings and other items seen on a given set.

An art director oversees the workers who actually build the sets. Lower budget films, such as Life During Wartime, sometimes forgo either the set designer or art director.

Agora realistically recreates Roman Alexandria, in the process resurrecting the style of the 1950s sword-and-sandal epic. The attention to detail in the film is awe-inspiring. And, what's most impressive, is how (almost) seamlessly practical effects and sets integrate with CGI backdrops.

Production design — Guy Dyas

Art direction — Frank Walsh

Set design — Larry Dias

Black Swan is a textbook example of a film where every decision was consciously made to contribute to the overall atmosphere. The Sayers' apartment, the ballet company and even Nina's casting party are all precisely designed to contribute to that mounting sense of dread.

Production design — Thérèse DePrez

Art direction — David Stein

Set design — Tora Peterson

The Ghost Writer's production design makes up for what's lacking in the script. So much of the tension in the film is drawn from the foreboding sets. Highlights include a post-modern Martha's Vineyard retreat, an empty ferry terminal and a claustrophobic London book release party.

Production design — Albrecht Konrad

Art direction — David Scheunemann

Set design — Bernhard Henrich and Ulli Isfort

Life During Wartime uses its sun-kissed Florida setting for a surreal backdrop to the often desperate and sometimes despicable acts its characters perpetrate. As a counterpoint to the very sobering themes on display, the garish condominiums and McMansions and strip mall restaurants work their magic.

Production design — Roshelle Berliner

Art direction — Matteo De Cosmo

True Grit captures the grit of the old west without the usual embellishments. Mattie Ross doesn't frequent any saloons, but the places she does visit in her efforts to bring closure to her father's death — particularly Rooster Cogburn's back room abode — all exude an authenticity that's hard to fake.

Production design — Jess Gonchor

Art direction — Christina Ann Wilson

Set design — Nancy Haigh

Widescreen Awards: Musical Score

Cobbled together from the back catalog of American minimalist composer John Adams, the score for I Am Love feels tailored to fit this story of reignited passion. The music lends a giddy anticipation to the film's early scenes that rises to soaring heights of ecstasy and dizzying lows of uncertainty over the course of the film.

Lee Byung-woo's score for Mother is an eclectic mix of different styles. But it's the main theme, which is most effective during Bong Joon-ho's emotional punch of an ending, that stays with you. Its ingratiating guitar seems right at home on a Thank-You-Parents bus tour, but when the twang of regret kicks in, you too will be reaching for the acupuncture needles.

Taking its cues from Tchaikovsky's ballet, Clint Mansell's score for Black Swan is perfect accompaniment for the unraveling of Nina Sayer. The themes are all familiar, even if you've never seen "Swan Lake," but Mansell finds and accentuates the melodrama and terror behind the sheet music.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for The Social Network does what every good score should. It complements the emotional undercurrents of the film, sets the tempo for the plot and, most importantly, stays out the way. The first time I saw the film, I paid almost no attention to the score. It was almost as if it didn't exist. You only recognize Reznor's work if you're looking for it, but it contributes immeasurably to what Fincher was trying to accomplish.

It almost feels like cheating, calling attention to Hans Zimmer's already universally-recognizable Inception score. But there's so much more there beyond foghorn blasts that have rattled subwoofers all over the world. Despite a plot that always felt too structured (very much like a video game, right down to the "dream levels"), the film has a lot of complex emotion wrapped up in its subplot of a man coping with his own subconscious. Zimmer's score helps flesh that out, as well.

Hip-Hop Saturday Morning Cartoon

It's chock full of hip-hop music video stereotypes — the slow-mo door opening, the random close-ups, ADD cutting with dissolves, the decked-out mansion — but the looong, cartoon-ish intro to this new Nicki Minaj video is something to behold. Saturday morning awesome.

Widescreen Awards: Sound Design

Sound design tends to be a difficult thing to wrap your head around. The Oscars split it into two categories — sound editing and sound mixing — but even the experts don't seem to really understand what they're rewarding. Sound editing, as I understand it, refers to the creation of sounds from scratch. Sound mixing refers to the assembling of many different sounds into a cohesive whole. Basically, the sound editors collect the sounds and the mixers put it all together. But so often it seems to come down to which films are either the loudest or which ones are Best Picture hopefuls looking to up their nomination tally.

With the caveat that I'm not an expert in what makes good sound editing or mixing, these are — to my ears — the best "designed" soundscapes of the year, with no attention paid to the differences between editing and mixing.

Spoilers, especially for Enter the Void, follow.

For a long stretch of Enter the Void, the viewer is trapped inside the skull of its expatriate protagonist. When his blood pressure spikes, we hear the thump of his pulse. When it plummets, we hear the ringing in his ears. But even after the camera leaves Oscar's body, the impressive soundscapes aren't over. As the camera glides over clouds and through buildings, the ambient sounds of the city and the silence are ever-present, with the low rattle and hum of Thomas Bangalter's (of Daft Punk) score just beneath the surface.

There's nothing altogether unique about the sound design in Inception, but it gets points for juggling so many different types of aural input without sacrificing clarity. The dream sounds are all heightened versions of real life — hear that exploding Paris street — that immerse your ears in the action. And the score, one of the most distinct features of the film, never completely overwhelms the soundtrack. Given the power of Hans Zimmer's bass, that's a feat in itself.

From the violinist on the Harvard commons to the thundering techno music of a San Francisco nightclub, The Social Network recreates a realistically stereophonic world. But what's most impressive is how crisp screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's dialogue is amid the chaos. Characters speak to, at and over each other in this film, and yet there's never any confusion about what's going on. There's an honesty to the staged conversations that would've been edited down to mush in anyone else's hands.

Widescreen Awards: Visual Effects

Now that Oscar has had his way with the wide world of cinema, it's my turn. For the next week or so, I'll be offering up what I viewed as the best performances in front, behind and inside the camera. Starting out, here are the best achievements in visual effects.

The striking visuals of Enter the Void play a very cunning game. When you're immersed within the film, all of it feels real. It's only after you think back — to the ghostly, wall-breaching camera and the soaring shots of the city — that you realize just how much trickery is involved. The real Tokyo beneath those glowing phosphorescent skies bears only passing resemblance to the one depicted here, but the film's purpose is not to present Tokyo as it really is. Nowhere seems normal when you're as detached — mentally, physically and metaphorically — as the drug-dealing protagonist Oscar is. BUF, the company behind the visual effects, has posted an impressive making-of gallery.

Inception, on the other hand, is playing a different game entirely. Dreams are fantastical shades of real life, complete with surreal, wondrous spectacles that can only be make-believe. The visual spectacles here — mirrored walls, an exploding fortress and a cascading city by the sea — are awe-inspiring. But, what separates them from other effects excesses (such as the Laws-of-Physics-defying ones in "Iron Man 2"), is that they all operate under their own strict rules of logic. It may all be a dream, but the effects here never feel like a put-on.

If anyone knows how to use CGI, it's David Fincher. All of his films have made extensive use of it, but he never goes too far. What's so impressive about a film like The Social Network (and "Zodiac," which came before it) is how transparent the effects are. Unless you've seen the FX reels or read about Fincher's exploits elsewhere, you would never know that one of the Winklevii is actually an otherworldly doppleganger, the face of one actor transposed onto the body of another. Sure, it's not as boldly impressive as the reverse aging of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," but then again this flick has 10 times the heart of that syrupy confection.

A Tale of Two Housemaids

I'm not sure how long it's been available for free on MUBI, but since it is, there's no reason not to check out the original 1960 version of "The Housemaid." It's not as sleek or as capital-L lurid as the trailer (embedded below) for Im Sang-soo's remake, but for my money there's no femme fatale quite as unhinged Myong-ja (apart, perhaps, from Ann Savage's Vera in Detour).

What makes her even creepier than your garden variety Glenn Close or Alicia Silverstone obsessive female is how unknowable the character is. She creeps around outside in the rain. She hammers away at her master's piano. She does all these unnerving things, but it's not simply a case of love gone awry. There's a fire burning in Myong-ja that goes much deeper than that of a jilted lover or fed-up outcast. Her character earns that fourth-wall shattering disclaimer that follows the proper ending of the film. Philanderers, be warned: Mess around with the housemaid at your own peril.

Here's hoping Im Sang-soo (not Lee Chang-dong, as I mistakenly wrote in a previous post) captured some measure of that mysterious quality in Jeon Do-yeon, who plays the modern-day temptress.

Top 20 Films of 2010

With the year well and truly put to rest and Oscar nominations a scant day away, now is as good a time as any to count down what I saw as the best the cinema had to offer in 2010.

First, a note on inclusiveness. As ravenously as I devour films — by my count I watched 61 last year — it's simply impossible to see them all.

I tend to avoid films I know will be horrendously bad. A high school English teacher once told me life is too short to read bad books, and I believe the same applies to the movies. My "bottom 10" list would probably include innocuously mediocre fare such as "Shutter Island" and "Ondine," as well as absurdly entertaining stuff like the South Korean disaster epic "Tidal Wave." I have no qualms about recommending any of those films to the right person in the right mood to enjoy them. (FYI: "Tidal Wave" is available on Instant Netflix. Check it out.)

Because I don't live in an urban area, there are a lot of films each year that are impossible to find. If I would have had to hop a flight out to L.A. to see the movie, it's not going to show up here. I am, after all, a broke print journalist of the ol' Chevrolet Set.

But that also means films that were seen by the tastemakers last year — and one from as far back as 2007 — are fair game. Similarly, I don't exclude direct-to-video releases or documentaries. If the film fired the right synapses, it doesn't matter how it was created or where I saw it.

In brief, 2010 presented an embarrassment of riches, ranging from surprising summer blockbusters ("Inception," "Salt") to homegrown indies ("Night Catches Us", "That Evening Sun") and what very well may be the crest of the Korean New Wave. I'm not sure if any such movement actually exists in real life, but that country has presented a plethora of talented directors in the past decade, from almost-household-names Bong Joon-ho ("Memories of Murder," "The Host" and lastyear's "Mother") and Park Chan-wook ("Oldboy") to rising workmen Lee Chang-dong (last year's "Secret Sunshine" and the forthcoming "Poetry") and Kim Ji-woon ("A Tale of Two Sisters").

Before launching into the cream of the crop, here are some honorable mentions that just missed the cut: "The American" (USA, dir. Anton Corbijn); "Carlos" (France/Germany, dir. Olivier Assayas); "Fish Tank" (UK, dir. Andrea Arnold); "Life During Wartime" (USA, dir. Todd Solondz); and "The Town" (USA, dir. Ben Affleck).

For those keeping tally, the top 20 are as follows:

20. "Triangle" (UK/Australia, dir. Christopher Smith)

19. "Cairo Time" (Canada, dir. Ruba Nadda)

18. "Black Swan" (USA, dir. Darren Aronofsky)

17. "Toy Story 3" (USA, dir. Lee Unkrich)

16. "Salt" (USA, dir. Phillip Noyce)

15. "Inception" (USA, dir. Christopher Nolan)

14. "The Chaser" (South Korea, dir. Na Hong-jin)

13. "Night Catches Us" (USA, dir. Tanya Hamilton)

12. "True Grit" (USA, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

11. "I Am Love" (Italy, dir. Luca Guadagnino)

10. "Restrepo" (USA, dir. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)

9. "Splice" (Canada, dir. Vincenzo Natali)

8. "Animal Kingdom" (Australia, dir. David Michôd)

7. "A Prophet" (France, dir. Jacques Audiard)

6. "That Evening Sun" (USA, dir. Scott Teems)

5. "Secret Sunshine" (South Korea, dir. Lee Chang-dong)

4. "Enter the Void" (France/Germany/Italy, dir. Gaspar Noé)

3. "Tokyo Sonata" (Japan, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

2. "Mother" (South Korea, dir. Bong Joon-ho)

1. "The Social Network" (USA, dir. David Fincher)