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Ishtar
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The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (OOP)
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The Devils
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The Pirates of Penzance
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The Fortune
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-30-
(Webb, 1959)
Betrayal
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Play It As It Lays
(Perry, 1972)
The Outfit
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Alex in Wonderland
(Mazursky, 1969)
The Legend of Lylah Clare
(Aldrich, 1968)
In The Cool of the Day
(Stevens, 1963)
That Cold Day in the Park
(Altman, 1969)
Thumb Trippin'
(Masters, 1972)
Midas Run
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At Long Last Love
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Brewster McCloud
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Outcast of the Islands
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The Moon's Our Home
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Run of the Arrow
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House of Secrets
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Saint Joan
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Macabre
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The Fiend Who Walked the West
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Five Gates to Hell
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1960's
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Summer and Smoke
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Bachelor Flat
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A Thousand Clowns
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You're a Big Boy Now
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Dark of the Sun
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Skidoo
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Last Summer
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Diary of a Mad Housewife
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Tropic of Cancer
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I Never Sang for My Father
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Sometimes a Great Notion
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Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
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The Music Lovers
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Drive, He Said
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W.C. Fields and Me
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Citizens Band
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Twilight's Last Gleaming
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Looking for Mr. Goodbar
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Girlfriends
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Movie Movie
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American Hot Wax
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Players
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Rich Kids
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Screams of a Winter's Night
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When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?
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The Awakening
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Simon
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God's Angry Man
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Fast-Walking
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Twice Upon a Time
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Trouble in Mind
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When the Wind Blows
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Housekeeping
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The Glass Menagerie
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Patty Hearst
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Drowning by Numbers
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Haunted Summer
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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
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1990's
Old Times
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Prospero's Books
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City of Hope
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The Baby of Macon
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King of the Hill
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Dadetown
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SubUrbia
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Upcoming

January 8

Bitch Slap

Waiting for Armageddon

Wonderful World

Youth in Revolt

January 15

January 22

Drool

Extraordinary Measures

The Girl on the Train

$3.5 Million in Mistakes

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Digital Domain's wondrous digital effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- particularly the "aging and youthing" of Brad Pitt -- "are so perfect as to be virtually invisible, free of the usual trappings of CGI -- that too-fluid, too-fake, superimposed look that makes the cattle stampede in Australia, for instance, feel so unthreatening.

"Paradoxically," writes Vanity Fair.com's Julian Sancton , "this may mean that the most impressive visual effects feat of the year may go unrecognized.

"'The thing about Benjamin Button,' says Judy Duncan, editor of the visual effects trade mag Cinefex, 'is that, obviously all the [Academy] voters in the visual effects category know what they're looking at, but the vote for the final winner goes to the entire Academy -- including actors and writers and producers -- and I don't know if most of those people are going to know what they're looking at. They're going to assume it was all makeup.

"It's stunning work -- I actually think it should win -- but I don't know if the average moviegoer is going to recognize that.'"

That would be absurd, of course. The standard of good visual effects is not to be able to identify them. And yet to think that some people out there would be oblivious of this aesthetic...God!

Dark Opera<< previous | next >>Drop 'Em or Die

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on January 6, 2009 at 3:24 PM

comment #1

shepherd123456 says ...

like the monkeys in planet of the apes beating the monkeys in 2001 for the best costume design oscar because people thought kubrick used REAL FUCKING MONKEYS.

Posted by shepherd123456 at January 6, 2009 3:47 PM

comment #2

NotImpressed1Yet says ...

I think if anything, the effects in Zodiac are even more seamless because they're used to show stuff that isn't fantastic or supernatural.

But yeah, Fincher is probably the best director in the world when it comes to incorporating CGI in believable but dramatic fashion, and TCCOBB is a lot of fun to watch for that reason alone.

Posted by NotImpressed1Yet at January 6, 2009 3:54 PM

comment #3

crsryan says ...

The deaging of Cate Blanchett is enough to win the effects Oscar, for sure. The way they made her look like a teenager was astounding. Expect that to become a hugely in-demand thing for actresses over the next decade -- taking off ten years, convincingly.

The Brad Pitt effects are also extremely impressive, but you can feel the weight of the process the more he is deaged. Especially that final scene, in the dance studio, where it's darkly lit and he's not moving his head in the slightest...that's a noticeable drag, but it hardly takes away from the achievement.

Posted by crsryan at January 6, 2009 4:17 PM

comment #4

Josh Massey says ...

The effects in Zodiac were much more seamless. In Button they were very good, but they definitely weren't perfect - especially when it came to Pitt's face.

Another quibble: was anybody thrown off by the voice of the youngest Cate Blanchett incarnation? It was a distracting, obvious loop that both my fiancee and I noticed separately.

Posted by Josh Massey at January 6, 2009 4:19 PM

comment #5

Jesse Perry says ...

People might not realize the visual fx of this movie? This film wears the fx on its sleeve! I spent most of the film going "Wow, look at that," in large part because the script wasn't holding my attention.

Posted by Jesse Perry at January 6, 2009 4:53 PM

comment #6

LYT says ...

Also, the entire train station with the backwards-clock was apparently CG. That was impressive.

The fact that the CG Coca-Cola polar bears and airships of the Golden Compass won the Oscar last year over the most believable giant robots I've ever seen would seem to bolster the notion that more obvious CG plays better for the win.

Posted by LYT at January 6, 2009 6:18 PM

comment #7

swordandpen says ...

I felt the same way as Jesse. If only they spent as much time on the script as the special effects.

Posted by swordandpen at January 6, 2009 6:23 PM

comment #8

DavidF says ...

The special effects were kinda noticeable and seamless at the same time. I think you can totally lose yourself in the film and not think about how they did X or Y since, hey, that really does look like Brad Pitt as an old man!

At the same time I kept waiting to see how Pitt would look @ 20 and it looked insanely perfect. I was a bit distracted trying to figure out how the heck they did it. Fincher really does know how to do this stuff better than anyone.

And I'm with you on the little girl, Josh. It sounded like they had Blanchett loop the dialogue, much as they had Chris Reeve do for the kid who played young Clark Kent in the first Superman. You might not have noticed it on TV but the audio mastering etc on DVD makes it a bit distracting.

Posted by DavidF at January 7, 2009 7:47 AM

comment #9