'Benjamin Button' on DVD May 5th

On Tuesday May 5th, the Oscar-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will be released on DVD. The Hollywood Reporter says that in addition to standard format DVD and Blu-ray, the film will be unveiled on a two-disc Criterion Edition set, which will include more than three hours of bonus material. On the second disc of the Criterion Edition - the preferred choice of any cinema lover whenever it's available - you'll find a documentary about the amazing visual effects in David Fincher's film, which will revolutionize that part of the industry and were rewarded with the Oscar in that category. To find out more about the effects, check out our Oscar week interview with Effects Designer Eric Barba. The Button release means four of the five Best Picture nominees will be out on DVD by Cinco de Mayo. Milk came out...uh...was released on March 10th, Slumdog Millionaire will arrive on March 31st, and Frost/Nixon is due out on April 21st. There is no word yet on a DVD street date for The Reader. Price points for Benjamin Button: $29.99 for the single disc, $39.99 for the two-disc and Blu-ray releases.

The Best Picture Profanity Reel

This is our last Oscar update before tonight's show. (Just a reminder, we've got loads of Oscar coverage for you, including interviews, predictions, and features about the best of the awards).

Someone spent a lot of time putting together the 2009 Best Picture Profanity Reel, which is exactly what it sounds like: Showcasing the bad words in Frost/Nixon, Benjamin Button, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, and Milk. We take the language of movies for granted - Scorsese's f-bombs, the c-word in Atonement, of all things - but as we wrote in our Best Best Actresses column, it was only about 40 years ago that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? couldn't get away with saying "screw." You've come a long way, baby. Check it out if you've got five minutes. Oh - there are some spoilers in these clips, so if you haven't seen all the movies, this might not be for you.

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Oscar Week: Interview with 'Button' Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba

Honored with 13 Academy Award nominations, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button combines an 80-year-old short story with 21st century visual effects mastery. The story revolves around a man who is born old and ages backward. So how do you accomplish that visually?

If you're David Fincher, you hire Digital Domain. In just the past few years, Digital Domain has worked on Fincher's Zodiac, as well as last year's visual effects Oscar winner, The Golden Compass, plus The Mummy Returns, Speed Racer, Transformers, and more. And for nearly the first hour of Benjamin Button, whenever you see Brad Pitt growing from a baby born old to a distinguished young man ready to head out into the world, you're seeing the work of Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba and his Digital Domain team. Because of the film's landmark achievement in effects design, The Big Picture tracked down Barba to talk shop and try to get a perspective on everything you see in David Fincher's Best Picture nominee. Big Picture: Before we talk about Benjamin Button, I know you guys did the effects work on Zodiac, too, and I had that as my top film of 2007. Fantastic! So did I. (laughs) And I didn't know until I saw the director's cut DVD how much of that movie is your work. You wouldn't think a cop drama set in the 60s and 70s would need a lot of effects, but it's probably, what, 20, 25% effects? And it's just fantastic stuff. Well, thank you. We pride ourselves on the seamless nature for the work we do for David. He was one of the many people who said this project could never be filmed, prior to now, because you just couldn't make the effects work. So was there one advancement that made it possible a couple of years ago when you guys started working on it, or was it the preponderance of evidence, that so many things just hadn't come together in this field? I guess it would be the preponderance of evidence. You have to look at what has come before it, and we hadn't seen a CG character that we felt was believable - a human character. I think Gollum was a really great example of a CG character that really gave a compelling performance, but it wasn't truly human and it wasn't a known actor that was trying to come across through that performance. But I remember when I first saw it, I was blown away. And do you look at that character and borrow some of those tricks they used to fill in the gaps that haven't been put on the map yet? Yeah, I mean, some of things they did on Gollum that they did well and you go, "OK, we can take that to the next level." But the key part is, how do you get Brad Pitt's performance to come across in CG? Where we've seen previous facial performance capture fail is that it tends to look a little rubbery, a little stretchy. It doesn't quite feel alive. We've seen eyes that maybe felt a little dead, and that kind of frightens everybody, because the eyes don't work it doesn't matter if anything else is working.

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'Slumdog Millionaire' Dominates BAFTAs

I think that, by an large, the Academy Awards will resemble the list of winners from tonight's BAFTA awards across the pond. Certainly in the major categories, I don't expect anything radically different. Three of the four acting honors might go another direction - they've been spread out all season - but otherwise, two films not represented in the acting categories should come away with the most hardware.

Slumdog Millionaire picked up seven more awards tonight, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button asserted itself as the film to beat in most of the technical categories. For the Oscars, I actually wouldn't be too surprised if Button wins the most trophies, though none in the last hour of the show. Best Picture:
Slumdog Millionaire Best Director:
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire Best Actor:
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler Best Actress:
Kate Winslet - The Reader Best Supporting Actor:
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight Best Supporting Actress:
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona

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David Fincher Could Have Directed 'Spider-Man'?

Even though Slumdog Millionaire was my top film of 2008, my choice for Best Director is David Fincher. We covered that ground at the end of the year, but I really don't think people acknowledge all the work that went into making that film. It's an oversimplification to say that Benjamin Button is one continuous effects shot, but it relies upon its visuals more than any other Best Picture nominee (and even the big omission).

So I'm glad Fincher is finding some mainstream appreciation for his work. He has a reputation for being difficult, but perfectionists are usually that way. There's a fantastic new article published in The Guardian, which might be the best daily publication in the world. It was a Q & A session at the British Film Institute for Button in England, and Fincher talks candidly about his past ("nobody hates Alien 3 more than me"), his process, this project, and even Spider-Man. Yep.

"I was asked if I might be interested in the first Spider-Man, and I went in and told them what I might be interested in doing, and they hated it. No, I'm not interested in doing "A Superhero". The thing I liked about Spider-Man was I liked the idea of a teenager, the notion of this moment in time when you're so vulnerable yet completely invulnerable. But I wasn't interested in the genesis, I just couldn't shoot somebody being bitten by a radioactive spider – just couldn't sleep knowing I'd done that."

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