A Century of Film: Editing

A Century of Film

Editing

The very first films didn’t have editing.  But it didn’t take long for a filmmaker such as George Milies to discover how important editing was – his entire concept of special effects was built around what could be done with editing.  When films started to come out at feature length, it was the D.W. Griffith films that showed how editing could craft a great picture, followed just a few years later by the masterful work in the Sergei Eisenstein films.

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the films

A Century of Film

1994

The Films

Each film will have the following information:

• Line 1:  the title, as it appeared on oscars.org for the first three parts of the list
• Line 2:  alternate titles, including original language title if applicable; if a title on the alternate list is in bold, it means it’s the title I generally use, including on the full ranking at the bottom
• Line 3:  U.S. release date (BoxOfficeMojo as primary source, IMDb as secondary, any other source if available – my list is based on the Oscar list which was based on L.A. release date, so some BOM release dates may be from 1993), length (as listed on the IMDb), MPAA rating, genre (my decision unless I wasn’t able to see it, in which case I go with the IMDb), U.S. distributor (if available / applicable), original country (if not the U.S. with original language in parenthesis if not English)
• Line 4:  director, as listed on the IMDB – for the list and the next two lines, I use just the first initial and last name for space and time considerations and I list it as listed on the IMDb which is why certain Asian names might not fit listings for how they appear elsewhere
• Line 5:  writers, as listed on the IMDB with source in parenthesis following if applicable
• Line 6:  primary actors as listed on the IMDB; because I can’t remember who all the people are in a film, I generally go with the first three names as listed on the IMDb, but because the IMDb goes by credit order (which is sometimes in appearance or alphabetical order), sometimes that might not be the main people
• Line 7:  my review of the film – these reviews were written over the course of a year and many reference specific events that often ironically happened around the time I wrote that specific review
• Line 8:  my rating (four star scale), metacritic rating (with link), Rotten Tomatoes rating (with link), Ebert rating (with link), IMDb voter rating with total number of voters in parenthesis following (IMDb rating and votes pulled on 9 October 2019); if any of those parts aren’t there it means that film isn’t listed with that particular group
• Line 9:  the U.S. box office gross followed by the world box office gross, all from Box Office Mojo unless noted; if the box office is in bold that means that some of that money was mine
• there will also be a poster for some films; because I didn’t want to overwhelm with over 300 posters or have to track them all down (the ones I use I got from IMPAwards) or have the page, which is already quite long (over 30,000 words) take a long time to load, the posters are selective, based mostly on them actually being visually interesting as opposed to just a picture of one or two main actors – there is no connection between quality of the film and the choice of whether or not there is a poster

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the awards

A Century of Film

1994

The Awards

A quick note about the BAFTAs.  Their eligibility is based on the release of films in Britain so some Oscar eligible films are eligible in 1995 instead.  If they earn nominations or win awards in 1995, it will be a note after the BAFTA list in that category.

A second quick note about the Consensus awards because there are awards listed down below that are not taken into consideration for the Consensus awards.  Except for Director (see note below), I don’t consider festivals, critics runner-up, the Indie Spirits or my own Nighthawk Awards when I calculate the Consensus awards.

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the Nighthawk Notables

My Clerks poster, bought at Kevin Smith’s store (Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash) and now signed by Kevin Smith, Walt Flanagan, Brian O’Halloran and Marilyn Ghigliotti.

A Century of Film

1994

The Nighthawk Notables

The Nighthawk Notables are a fun list I do for each year that cover categories that don’t really fit into awards lists.  I’ve tried to account for every category that I use (some of them don’t actually have a list below) and a few other ones as well.

In most years, this is just one film per category and sometimes two (a full list of all the Notables as part of my Century of Film series is in the works with a 2nd Place Award whenever it’s merited) but for this year, since I’m going in-depth, I decided to up it to a full Top 10 list whenever I could come up with 10 (there are fewer if I couldn’t come up with 10).

Best Film to Watch Over and Over

1. Clerks
2. Four Weddings and a Funeral
3. The Crow
4. Ed Wood
5. Pulp Fiction
6. Bullets over Broadway
7. The Lion King
8. Nobody’s Fool
9. The Bride with White Hair
10. Interview with the Vampire

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the box office

A Century of Film

1994

The Box Office

I use Box Office Mojo for all my information here.  Here is a link to the full list for the year.  The first several tables are formatted the way they are because I copied and pasted them directly from BOM.  The rest of the lists are ones I created myself.

A quick ironic note.  On Wednesday, BOM suddenly finally merged with the IMDb (it’s been owned by the IMDb for a long time) and put a lot of aspects behind a paywall, greatly limiting what you can do there.  My only explanation for this is that they are both owned by Jeff Bezos and he’s a greedy, narcissistic, objectivist, world-class piece of human garbage.

I’ve also been going through a lot of old Variety magazines and I think a lot of BOM’s pre-1980 information is simply wrong.  But that shouldn’t affect anything listed in this post.

By the way, I have most of the info from BOM in a spreadsheet that can be sorted in a variety of ways, so if you’re going nuts missing what you used to be able to get, let me know.  As should be obvious from the insane amount of information I put in posts where I don’t even get any revenue (you might occasionally see ads on the site but I don’t get any money from them – that’s a WordPress thing and I can’t complain since WordPress is free), I won’t charge you money for that info.

Top 10 Domestic Grosses

1	Forrest Gump	Par.	$329,694,499	2,365	$24,450,602	1,595	7/6
2	The Lion King	BV	$312,855,561	2,624	$1,586,753	2	6/15
3	True Lies	Fox	$146,282,411	2,561	$25,869,770	2,368	7/15
4	The Santa Clause	BV	$144,833,357	2,388	$19,321,992	2,183	11/11
5	The Flintstones	Uni.	$130,531,208	2,594	$29,688,730	2,498	5/27
6	Dumb and Dumber	NL	$127,175,374	2,565	$16,363,442	2,447	12/16
7	Clear and Present Danger	Par.	$122,187,717	2,433	$20,348,017	2,378	8/5
8	Speed	Fox	$121,248,145	2,169	$14,456,194	2,138	6/10
9	The Mask	NL	$119,938,730	2,516	$23,117,068	2,360	7/29
10	Pulp Fiction	Mira.	$107,928,762	1,494	$9,311,882	1,338	10/14

some notes on the Top 10

• By the end of their theatrical runs, Forrest Gump was #3 all-time and The Lion King was #5 with Jurassic Park, E.T. and Star Wars at #1, 2 and 4.  Today Gump is #64 while The Lion King having been re-released twice (in IMAX in 2002 and in 3-D in 2011) is now at $422.78 million and is #26.
• The Lion King was the first film to earn $300 million to not be #1 for the year.  It would take until 2001 for another film to be #2 while earning more money than The Lion King (Fellowship of the Ring).  Ironically, the remake of Lion King with $542 million is at #2 for the current year but that will almost certainly be knocked down to #3 after Rise of Skywalker gets released.
• Not only is this the first year with two $300 million films but is just the second (after 1992) with 10 $100 million films.
• The difference between Gump and Lion King is just 5.11%, the closest finish since 1986.
• In contrast to the top two, True Lies is the lowest grossing #3 since 1991 and no #3 since has been even close to this low.
• However, while #3-5 are comparatively low, #6-10 are much better.  Dumb and Dumber is the second highest #6 to this date (though, since this, only once has the #6 been lower) and The Mask and Pulp Fiction are the highest #9 and 10 to this point.
• Thanks to the top two films and solid 6-10, the Top 10 sets a new record ($1.66 billion), one that will only last until 1997.  For comparison, Disney made far more than that this year with just three films (and it’s possible that once Rise of Skywalker gets released it will make more than that with just two films).
• The Top 10 films average a 65.2 from me which is fairly average (the top is 2002 with 79.7 and the low is 1998 with 54.9).  It’s lower than 1993 by over a point but higher than 1995 by six points.  The metacritic average is 65.5 which is a little better than average.

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – the lists

Three future Oscar winners make their screen debut.

A Century of Film

1994

The Lists

Film Debuts

• Jessica Alba  –  Camp Nowhere
• Claire Danes  –  Little Women
• Cameron Diaz  –  The Mask
• Salma Hayek  –  Mi Vida Loca
• Scarlett Johansson  –  North
• Greg Kinnear  –  Blankman
• Jason Lee  –  Mi Vida Loca
• Ewan McGregor  –  Being Human
• Jonathan Rhys Meyers  –  A Man of No Importance
• Natalie Portman  –  Leon
• Mark Ruffalo  –  There Goes My Baby
• Liev Schreiber  –  Mixed Nuts
• Andy Serkis  –  Prince of Jutland
• J. K. Simmons  –  The Ref
• Liv Tyler  –  Silent Fall
• Mark Wahlberg  –  Renaissance Man
• Michelle Williams  –  Lassie
• Kate Winslet  –  Heavenly Creatures

 

A Century of Film: 1994 – an in-depth look – introduction

A Century of Film

1994

Introduction

A long time ago, I had an idea.  The idea was that I would try to see every single film in a year.  This is, actually, quite an insane concept that you don’t know how insane it is unless you actually try it.