David Finfer, the Academy Award-nominated film editor of “The Fugitive,” died on Monday following complications that resulted from a heart attack. He was 80.
Finfer was nominated for the Oscar as well as the American Cinema Editors and BAFTA awards for editing the 1993 film “The Fugitive,” which starred Harrison Ford.
He worked with Albert Brooks on several movies including “Real Life,” “”Lost in America,” “Modern Romance” and “Defending Your Life.”
Finfer’s career as a film editor took off with his first feature credit on “Ya Gotta Walk it like You Talk it or You’ll Lose that Beat.” He continued to work on a number of comedy and teen/family movies including “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion,” “Snow Day,” “Waiting…” and “The Tooth Fairy.”
His other editing credits include “Inside Out,” “Soul Man” and “Boxing Helena.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1942, Finfer...
Finfer was nominated for the Oscar as well as the American Cinema Editors and BAFTA awards for editing the 1993 film “The Fugitive,” which starred Harrison Ford.
He worked with Albert Brooks on several movies including “Real Life,” “”Lost in America,” “Modern Romance” and “Defending Your Life.”
Finfer’s career as a film editor took off with his first feature credit on “Ya Gotta Walk it like You Talk it or You’ll Lose that Beat.” He continued to work on a number of comedy and teen/family movies including “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion,” “Snow Day,” “Waiting…” and “The Tooth Fairy.”
His other editing credits include “Inside Out,” “Soul Man” and “Boxing Helena.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1942, Finfer...
- 4/7/2023
- by McKinley Franklin
- Variety Film + TV
Albert Brooks’ most entertaining picture is still about modern anxieties, but this time seen through a satirical ‘film blanc’ filter. Neurotic ad man Daniel has a bad encounter with a bus and finds himself in a bizarre Heavenly Waiting Room for the Afterlife … except that it’s an entirely different system than that of St. Peter — he’s judged not for his sins or lack of faith, but his character and courage. This stopping-off point to a new life is plenty disconcerting for Daniel, especially when he meets the woman of his dreams (Meryl Streep). The judges practically applaud her exemplary, near-perfect life. How can Daniel ever compete? Criterion’s extras give us a genuine theologian’s analysis of Brooks’ astute afterlife comedy.
Defending Your Life
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1071
1991 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 30, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Lee Grant,...
Defending Your Life
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1071
1991 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 30, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Lee Grant,...
- 4/20/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Lost In America
Blu-ray
Criterion
1985 / 1:85 / Street Date July 25, 2017
Starring: Albert Brooks, Julie Hagerty
Cinematography: Eric Saarinen
Film Editor: David Finfer
Written by Albert Brooks, Monica Johnson
Produced by Marty Katz and Herb Nanas
Music: Arthur B. Rubinstein
Directed by Albert Brooks
According to a Newsweek cover story published that same year, 1984 was “The Year of the Yuppie”, referring to those ferociously materialistic young professionals whose numbers blossomed during the Reagan administration. The following year director Albert Brooks and his co-writer Monica Johnson delivered Lost In America, an acerbic road movie detailing what happens when one of those upwardly mobile hot-shots decides to get back to nature and “touch Indians”.
The result is one of the great American comedies, a mile-a-minute talk fest worthy of writer-directors like Billy Wilder, Woody Allen and in particular Preston Sturges, whose The Palm Beach Story told a similar tale about two young-marrieds who find...
Blu-ray
Criterion
1985 / 1:85 / Street Date July 25, 2017
Starring: Albert Brooks, Julie Hagerty
Cinematography: Eric Saarinen
Film Editor: David Finfer
Written by Albert Brooks, Monica Johnson
Produced by Marty Katz and Herb Nanas
Music: Arthur B. Rubinstein
Directed by Albert Brooks
According to a Newsweek cover story published that same year, 1984 was “The Year of the Yuppie”, referring to those ferociously materialistic young professionals whose numbers blossomed during the Reagan administration. The following year director Albert Brooks and his co-writer Monica Johnson delivered Lost In America, an acerbic road movie detailing what happens when one of those upwardly mobile hot-shots decides to get back to nature and “touch Indians”.
The result is one of the great American comedies, a mile-a-minute talk fest worthy of writer-directors like Billy Wilder, Woody Allen and in particular Preston Sturges, whose The Palm Beach Story told a similar tale about two young-marrieds who find...
- 7/26/2017
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Now this is a list that could result in a lot of fascinating dissection and thanks to HitFix it comes to our attention almost three years after it was originally released back in 2012, celebrating the Motion Picture Editors Guild's 75th anniversary. Over at HitFix, Kris Tapley asks, "Is this news to anyone elsec" Um, yes, I find it immensely interesting and a perfect starting point for anyone looking to further explore the art of film editing. In an accompanying article we get the particulars concerning what films were eligible and how films were to be considered: In our Jan-feb 12 issue, we asked Guild members to vote on what they consider to be the Best Edited Films of all time. Any feature-length film from any country in the world was eligible. And by "Best Edited," we explained, we didn't just mean picture; sound, music and mixing were to be considered as well.
- 2/4/2015
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
A random bit of researching on a Tuesday night led me to something I didn't know existed: The Motion Picture Editors Guild's list of the 75 best-edited films of all time. It was a feature in part celebrating the Guild's 75th anniversary in 2012. Is this news to anyone else? I confess to having missed it entirely. Naturally, I had to dig in. What was immediately striking to me about the list — which was decided upon by the Guild membership and, per instruction, was considered in terms of picture and sound editorial as opposed to just the former — was the most popular decade ranking. Naturally, the 1970s led with 17 mentions, but right on its heels was the 1990s. I wouldn't have expected that but I happen to agree with the assessment. Thelma Schoonmaker's work on "Raging Bull" came out on top, an objectively difficult choice to dispute, really. It was so transformative,...
- 2/4/2015
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Hitfix
Consider the ellipsis in the title a warning. Between a couple of funny scenes and a bunch of unfunny gags, there's not much going on in "Waiting ... ". The comedy uses gross-out "humor" with little inventiveness to ply the familiar territory of twentysomething limbo and workplace hell. Despite a solid ensemble, this would-be "Kitchen Confidential" for the chain-steakhouse set, which boasts as many producers as cast members, doesn't serve up enough laughs to build a theatrical following but could find life on video as a takeout item.
There comes a moment for many thinking people when job security takes on life-threatening proportions: a clear-eyed look at unhappy co-workers and the inept boss signals something's gotta give. For 22-year-old Dean (Justin Long), that moment of truth occurs four years into his job waiting tables at ShenaniganZ. Obsessed with the apparent success of a former classmate -- helpfully brought to his attention by his mother -- Dean feels himself languishing at work and at the community college where he and best friend Monty (Ryan Reynolds) are on-again, off-again students.
Dangling benies and "power" before him, clueless manager Dan (David Koechner), who conducts dispiriting staff meetings by the Dumpster, offers the hard-working but directionless Dean a promotion to assistant manager. He is shocked when Dean asks for time to think it over. Where this is headed is as predictable as the dinner-hour rush.
The ShenaniganZ staff spend most nights partying together after long days slinging baked potatoes, and co-worker couplings are inevitable. Dean avoids commitment to earnest waitress Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), while Dan and Monty eye the underage hostess (Vanessa Lengies). Monty, whose snarkiness is his identity (a cameo by Wendie Malick as his mother makes clear where he gets it), also spends time being humiliated by his feisty ex, waitress Serena (Anna Faris), and showing the ropes to wide-eyed new guy Mitch (John Francis Daley).
Mainly the ropes consist of learning how to play a behind-the-scenes time-waster that Serena rightly calls "an exercise in retarded homophobia." Sleazeball cook Raddimus (Luis Guzman), the mastermind of the Penis-Showing Game, provides demos for Mitch using raw chicken parts. Besides workplace dystopia, this exhibitionist stupidity is the script's central thread.
First-time writer-director Rob McKittrick demonstrates a feel for the systematic hysteria of restaurant dynamics, but his observations lack the absurdist edge of "Clerks" and the truly idiosyncratic detail that would make his characters three-dimensional. Within limited roles, the cast does what it can. Chi McBride, an actor capable of sublime understatement, plays the sage philosopher-king dishwasher, dispensing wisdom to a crew that includes two gangsta-wannabe pothead busboys (Andy Milonakis and Max Kasch), the angriest waitress in the world (Alanna Ubach) and a spineless virgin Robert Patrick Benedict). Is it any wonder that -- in the film's funniest gag -- their birthday serenade to a young boy makes him cry?
Filmed in New Orleans but with no sense of the place, "Waiting ..". unfolds mainly within appropriately generic restaurant interiors. Refreshingly, McKittrick doesn't lean on canned pop tracks as mortar, but neither does he craft enough of a story to hold together the shtick.
WAITING ...
Lions Gate Films
An Element Films and Eden Rock Media production in association with Wisenheimer Films
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Rob McKittrick
Producers: Adam Rosenfelt, Stavros Merjos, Jay Rifkin, Jeff Balis, Rob Green
Executive producers: Chris Moore, Jon Shestack, Sam Nazarian, Malcolm Petal, Marc Schaberg, Thomas Augsberger, Paul Fiore
Director of photography: Matthew Irving
Production designer: Devorah Herbert
Music: Adam Gorgoni
Co-producers: Chris Fenton, Dean Shull, Randy Winograd
Costume designer: Jillian Kreiner
Editors: David Finfer, Andy Blumenthal
Cast:
Monty: Ryan Reynolds
Serena: Anna Faris
Dean: Justin Long
Dan: David Koechner
Mitch: John Francis Daley
Tyla: Emmanuelle Chriqui
Amy: Kaitlin Doubleday
Nick: Andy Milonakis
T-Dog: Max Kasch
Naomi: Alanna Ubach
Calvin: Robert Patrick Benedict
Natasha: Vanessa Lengies
Bishop: Chi McBride
Raddimus: Luis Guzman
Monty's Mom: Wendie Malick
MPAA rating: R
Running time -- 93 minutes...
There comes a moment for many thinking people when job security takes on life-threatening proportions: a clear-eyed look at unhappy co-workers and the inept boss signals something's gotta give. For 22-year-old Dean (Justin Long), that moment of truth occurs four years into his job waiting tables at ShenaniganZ. Obsessed with the apparent success of a former classmate -- helpfully brought to his attention by his mother -- Dean feels himself languishing at work and at the community college where he and best friend Monty (Ryan Reynolds) are on-again, off-again students.
Dangling benies and "power" before him, clueless manager Dan (David Koechner), who conducts dispiriting staff meetings by the Dumpster, offers the hard-working but directionless Dean a promotion to assistant manager. He is shocked when Dean asks for time to think it over. Where this is headed is as predictable as the dinner-hour rush.
The ShenaniganZ staff spend most nights partying together after long days slinging baked potatoes, and co-worker couplings are inevitable. Dean avoids commitment to earnest waitress Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), while Dan and Monty eye the underage hostess (Vanessa Lengies). Monty, whose snarkiness is his identity (a cameo by Wendie Malick as his mother makes clear where he gets it), also spends time being humiliated by his feisty ex, waitress Serena (Anna Faris), and showing the ropes to wide-eyed new guy Mitch (John Francis Daley).
Mainly the ropes consist of learning how to play a behind-the-scenes time-waster that Serena rightly calls "an exercise in retarded homophobia." Sleazeball cook Raddimus (Luis Guzman), the mastermind of the Penis-Showing Game, provides demos for Mitch using raw chicken parts. Besides workplace dystopia, this exhibitionist stupidity is the script's central thread.
First-time writer-director Rob McKittrick demonstrates a feel for the systematic hysteria of restaurant dynamics, but his observations lack the absurdist edge of "Clerks" and the truly idiosyncratic detail that would make his characters three-dimensional. Within limited roles, the cast does what it can. Chi McBride, an actor capable of sublime understatement, plays the sage philosopher-king dishwasher, dispensing wisdom to a crew that includes two gangsta-wannabe pothead busboys (Andy Milonakis and Max Kasch), the angriest waitress in the world (Alanna Ubach) and a spineless virgin Robert Patrick Benedict). Is it any wonder that -- in the film's funniest gag -- their birthday serenade to a young boy makes him cry?
Filmed in New Orleans but with no sense of the place, "Waiting ..". unfolds mainly within appropriately generic restaurant interiors. Refreshingly, McKittrick doesn't lean on canned pop tracks as mortar, but neither does he craft enough of a story to hold together the shtick.
WAITING ...
Lions Gate Films
An Element Films and Eden Rock Media production in association with Wisenheimer Films
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Rob McKittrick
Producers: Adam Rosenfelt, Stavros Merjos, Jay Rifkin, Jeff Balis, Rob Green
Executive producers: Chris Moore, Jon Shestack, Sam Nazarian, Malcolm Petal, Marc Schaberg, Thomas Augsberger, Paul Fiore
Director of photography: Matthew Irving
Production designer: Devorah Herbert
Music: Adam Gorgoni
Co-producers: Chris Fenton, Dean Shull, Randy Winograd
Costume designer: Jillian Kreiner
Editors: David Finfer, Andy Blumenthal
Cast:
Monty: Ryan Reynolds
Serena: Anna Faris
Dean: Justin Long
Dan: David Koechner
Mitch: John Francis Daley
Tyla: Emmanuelle Chriqui
Amy: Kaitlin Doubleday
Nick: Andy Milonakis
T-Dog: Max Kasch
Naomi: Alanna Ubach
Calvin: Robert Patrick Benedict
Natasha: Vanessa Lengies
Bishop: Chi McBride
Raddimus: Luis Guzman
Monty's Mom: Wendie Malick
MPAA rating: R
Running time -- 93 minutes...
- 10/13/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Lest we forget though, Bill and Ted's previous adventure -- while on the dark side of excellent -- enjoyed bodacious boxoffice returns. No doubt a large audience is waiting for this sequel to Orion's 1989 surprise hit.
Yet if excellence in stupid humor can be measured at all, this journey seems the weaker of the two. Even the plotline lacks coherence.
''The Terminator'' meets ''Back to the Future'' here as bogus Bill and Ted robots from the 27th century journey back to present-day San Dimas, Calif., in an attempt to kill the duo and alter their positive influence on the future.
(This is special pleading, but is it possible to make this the last time-travel movie for awhile? The idea is starting to get real old.)
The bogus Bill and Ted do, in fact, kill the real pair, who wind up in hell, which resembles a labyrinth of childhood horrors, such as having to kiss your grandmother who has bad teeth on the mouth.
To escape hell, Bill and Ted must beat the Grim Reaper in a series of kids' games. This spoof of Ingmar Bergman's ''The Seventh Seal'' is easily the movie's brightest comic idea.
When the Grim Reaper loses badly, he is obliged to accompany Bill and Ted for the rest of their journey back to life. And thank goodness he does.
William Sadler's Grim Reaper is the life of this otherwise grim party. His dead-pan comments and dead-earnest efforts to serve his new masters provide the film's only inspired clowning.
The rest of the movie is a messy melange of Halloween costumes, special effects and unspecial jokes.
The basic problem lies in Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon's screenplay. It strains for every joke, which brings a peculiar tension, if not desperation, to the humor.
In anxiously shuffling between various levels of reality, they never firmly plant their comedy in any one. ''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'' is more a free association of tired comic ideas than a comedy that unravels from a central spring.
Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves again play Bill and Ted, respectively, not to mention the Bill and Ted robots and the Bill and Ted ghosts. The two still manage to play these airhead, would-be rock 'n' rollers with conviction.
George Carlin also returns from the original film. But he disappears for most of the journey. only to reveal he has been present all along in Pam Grier's body. We don't even want to think about what that implies.
Director Pete Hewitt and editor David Finfer keep the scenes flowing as fast as possible. But when a film's basic rhythm is overdrive, it exhausts rather than amuses an audience.
Cinematographer Oliver Wood expertly blends the various dimensions created by designer David L. Snyder. Rock songs layered over the action exist more to promote Inter-
Cinematographer Oliver Wood expertly blends the various dimensions created by designer David L. Snyder. Rock songs layered over the action exist more to promote Inter-scope Records' soundtrack album than to help the movie's journey along.
BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY
Orion Pictures
Director Pete Hewitt
Producer Scott Kroopf
Executive producers Ted Field, Robert W. Cort
Writers Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon
Director of photography Oliver Wood
Production designer David L. Synder
Music David Newman
Editor David Finfer
Costume designer Marie France
Color/Stereo
Cast:
Bill Alex Winter
Ted Keanu Reeves
Grim Reaper William Sadler
De Nomolos Joss Ackland
Rufus George Carlin
Miss Wardroe Pam Grier
Missy Amy Stock-Poyton
Elizabeth Annette Azcuy
Joanna Sarah Trigger
Running time -- 98 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
Yet if excellence in stupid humor can be measured at all, this journey seems the weaker of the two. Even the plotline lacks coherence.
''The Terminator'' meets ''Back to the Future'' here as bogus Bill and Ted robots from the 27th century journey back to present-day San Dimas, Calif., in an attempt to kill the duo and alter their positive influence on the future.
(This is special pleading, but is it possible to make this the last time-travel movie for awhile? The idea is starting to get real old.)
The bogus Bill and Ted do, in fact, kill the real pair, who wind up in hell, which resembles a labyrinth of childhood horrors, such as having to kiss your grandmother who has bad teeth on the mouth.
To escape hell, Bill and Ted must beat the Grim Reaper in a series of kids' games. This spoof of Ingmar Bergman's ''The Seventh Seal'' is easily the movie's brightest comic idea.
When the Grim Reaper loses badly, he is obliged to accompany Bill and Ted for the rest of their journey back to life. And thank goodness he does.
William Sadler's Grim Reaper is the life of this otherwise grim party. His dead-pan comments and dead-earnest efforts to serve his new masters provide the film's only inspired clowning.
The rest of the movie is a messy melange of Halloween costumes, special effects and unspecial jokes.
The basic problem lies in Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon's screenplay. It strains for every joke, which brings a peculiar tension, if not desperation, to the humor.
In anxiously shuffling between various levels of reality, they never firmly plant their comedy in any one. ''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'' is more a free association of tired comic ideas than a comedy that unravels from a central spring.
Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves again play Bill and Ted, respectively, not to mention the Bill and Ted robots and the Bill and Ted ghosts. The two still manage to play these airhead, would-be rock 'n' rollers with conviction.
George Carlin also returns from the original film. But he disappears for most of the journey. only to reveal he has been present all along in Pam Grier's body. We don't even want to think about what that implies.
Director Pete Hewitt and editor David Finfer keep the scenes flowing as fast as possible. But when a film's basic rhythm is overdrive, it exhausts rather than amuses an audience.
Cinematographer Oliver Wood expertly blends the various dimensions created by designer David L. Snyder. Rock songs layered over the action exist more to promote Inter-
Cinematographer Oliver Wood expertly blends the various dimensions created by designer David L. Snyder. Rock songs layered over the action exist more to promote Inter-scope Records' soundtrack album than to help the movie's journey along.
BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY
Orion Pictures
Director Pete Hewitt
Producer Scott Kroopf
Executive producers Ted Field, Robert W. Cort
Writers Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon
Director of photography Oliver Wood
Production designer David L. Synder
Music David Newman
Editor David Finfer
Costume designer Marie France
Color/Stereo
Cast:
Bill Alex Winter
Ted Keanu Reeves
Grim Reaper William Sadler
De Nomolos Joss Ackland
Rufus George Carlin
Miss Wardroe Pam Grier
Missy Amy Stock-Poyton
Elizabeth Annette Azcuy
Joanna Sarah Trigger
Running time -- 98 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
- 6/19/1991
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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