‘Nightcrawler’ Among ACE Eddie Nominees

Nominations for the 65th American Cinema Editors “ACE Eddie” Awards were announced Friday morning with their mentions for the best edited films of 2014.  This marks the second guild announcement of the season following the Screen Actors Guild, who announced their 2014 nominations in early December.  Film editing, while sometimes considered an invisible or hard to evaluate art form in cinema, is one of the technical categories at the Academy Awards that is typically synonymous with frontrunners in the Best Picture race– for instance, it’s incredibly difficult to win Oscar’s top prize with a Film Editing nomination (the last movie to do so was Ordinary People in 1981).  With that, a mention for the Editors Guild is typically a good sign, even though the ACE Eddies split the film categories by drama, musical or comedy, animated feature and documentary, broadening the field.  As expected, Oscar frontrunners Boyhood, Birdman and The Imitation Game all landed nominations this morning.  Perhaps not as expected, other top films like Selma and The Theory of Everything were overlooked.

The ACE Eddies threw mentions out there to somewhat out-of-left-field contenders American Sniper, Whiplash, Inherent Vice and Nightcrawler.  If any of these films get lots of nominations throughout the various guilds, perhaps these on-the-cusp Best Pictures contenders may prove more valuable than once thought.  Nightcrawler particularly seems to be gaining momentum after leading actor Jake Gyllenhaal’s somewhat surprise SAG, Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice nominations and the movie’s strong showing with recent critics groups– perhaps the dark thriller is more of an awards contender than initially thought.  Gone Girl also received a mention in the race for Drama, giving David Fincher’s satiric crime thriller a bit of a boost– curiously, Fincher’s last film– The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo— won the Best Film Editing Academy Award despite not being on the Best Picture line-up.  The Full list of ACE Eddie film nominations is below:

BEST FILM EDITING (Drama)

• American Sniper– Joel Cox, Gary Roach
• Boyhood– Sandra Adair
• Gone Girl– Kirk Baxter
• The Imitation Game– William Goldenberg
• Nightcrawler– John Gilroy
• Whiplash– Tom Cross

BEST FILM EDITING (Musical or Comedy)

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)– Douglas Crise, Stephen Mirrione
• The Grand Budapest Hotel– Barney Pilling
• Guardians of the Galaxy– Fred Rasking, Hughes Winborn, Craig Wood
• Into the Woods– Wyatt Smith
• Inherent Vice– Leslie Jones

BEST FILM EDITING (Animated Feature)

• Big Hero 6– Tim Mertens
• The Boxtrolls– Edie Ichioka
• The LEGO Movie– David Burrow, Chris McKay

BEST FILM EDITING (Documentary)

• Citizenfour– Mathilde Bonnefoy
• Finding Vivian Maier– Aaron Wickenden
• Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me– Elia Bonora