Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/462877
7 WINTER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE by Tomm Carroll A belated Happy New Year, and welcome to the first CineMontage of 2015. Did you miss us? You may have noticed that we did not have an issue out right before the holidays, as we usually do. That's because starting this year, our magazine will now be published quarterly. The change in publication schedule affords us the ability to present longer, more in-depth feature stories and interviews, as well as thought pieces and articles not always pegged to a release or premiere date. These refinements will be more evident as the year progresses. One benefit of this frequency change is a new set of deadlines for each edition, and I'm happy to report that with this issue, for the first time in my 10-year-plus tenure editing this publication, we have a magazine out after the Academy Award nominations — but before the awards ceremony itself — allowing us to speak to our members who were nominated for Oscars in the three post-production categories that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors: Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Our writers Michael Goldman, Bill Desowitz and Mel Lambert, respectively, spoke to the nominees in the three areas about their recognized films, as well as their thoughts on why their work on them was singled out as the best in 2014. And best of luck to all of them on Oscar night, February 22! The most talked about film in 2014, at least through the holiday season, was not one of the Academy Award nominees, however, but Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's now infamous The Interview. The contentious comedy caused (if all news reports are to be believed) a massive hack attack of Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer system, unveilings of embarrassing e-mails and employees' personal information, the cancellation of a huge theatrical release, terror threats, a scolding from the White House, cries of censorship, and finally a Christmas Day release via video-on-demand and some independent theatres. And that was all before anyone saw the movie! But with all that talk, no one ever spoke to the editors on The Interview, Zene Baker and Evan Henke. Writer and Guild Board member A.J. Catoline rectified that situation when he conducted his own interview with the film's editors to hear their take on the whole brouhaha and what changes, if any, they had to make in post- production. One hundred years ago this February, another controversial film was released: Birth of a Nation. In our newly renamed "This Quarter in Film History" column, film historian Edward Landler revisits the landmark film on its centenary and considers the dichotomy of its groundbreaking cinematic innovations alongside its deplorable depiction of racial inequality. Coincidentally, social injustice and bigotry rear their ugly heads in Lawrence Kasdan's Oscar- winning Places in the Heart, the 1984 film about a young widow running a cotton farm in the South during the Great Depression. Carol Littleton, ACE, looks back on the film she edited with fond memories and recollections, which she shares with writer Peter Tonguette in this edition's regular column, "My Most Memorable Film." After her first taste of working in the film industry as a location production assistant, Plummy Tucker, ACE, was hooked. She decided to pursue post-production and now the New York-based, Emmy Award-nominated editor works regularly, switching effortlessly among gigs in television, features and documentaries. In fact, the debut of the new NBC miniseries The Slap, which she edited, airs February 12, while Karen Kusama's latest feature, The Invitation — also cut by Tucker — premieres at SXSW in Austin, Texas this March. In our cover story, Tucker is interviewed by writer Rob Feld about those two projects, her career and the differences she finds between TV and feature editing. f POST SCRIPT Oscar Nominees Get Their Say