Lost and The Dark Knight are clear winners in terms of nominations - both get 11 each - but apparently the Academy has gotten Heroes and Battlestar Galactica mixed up, because there's no other explanation for NBC's superhero drama getting more nominations than Sci Fi's amazing space-opera. Well, that or they were really disappointed that Earth was a nuked-out wasteland. My real question about the nominations, though, is how the hell did Gran Torino and Changeling get in there? They're great films, sure, but they're not SF, horror or fantasy...

The awards will be presented June 25th, although the venue is still to be announced. The full list of nominations is:

Science Fiction Film
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (20th Century Fox)
"Eagle Eye" (Paramount / DreamWorks)
"The Incredible Hulk" (Universal / Marvel)
"Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (Paramount / Lucasfilm)
"Iron Man" (Paramount / Marvel)
"Jumper" (20th Century Fox)

Fantasy Film
"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" (Walt Disney Studios)
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Paramount)
"Hancock" (Sony)
"The Spiderwick Chronicles" (Paramount)
"Twilight" (Summit Entertainment)
"Wanted" (Universal)

Horror Film
"The Happening" (20th Century Fox)
"Hellboy II: The Golden Army" (Universal)
"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" (Universal)
"Quarantine" (Sony)
"Splinter" (Magnolia / Magnet)
"The Strangers" (Rogue / Universal)

Action / Adventure / Thriller Film
"Changeling" (Universal)
"The Dark Knight" (Warner Bros.)
"Gran Torino" (Warner Bros.)
"Quantum of Solace" (Sony)
"Traitor" (Overture)
"Valkyrie" (MGM / UA)

Actor
Christian Bale ("The Dark Knight") (Warner Bros.)
Tom Cruise ("Valkyrie") (MGM / UA)
Robert Downey, Jr. ("Iron Man") (Paramount / Marvel)
Harrison Ford ("Indiana Jones & Kingdom of the Crystal Skull") (Paramount / Lucasfilm)
Brad Pitt ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") (Paramount)
Will Smith ("Hancock") (Sony)

Actress
Cate Blanchett ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") (Paramount)
Maggie Gyllenhaal ("The Dark Knight") (Warner Bros.)
Angelina Jolie ("Changeling") (Universal)
Julianne Moore ("Blindness") (Miramax)
Emily Mortimer ("Transsiberian") (First Look Studios)
Gwyneth Paltrow ("Iron Man") (Paramount / Marvel)

Supporting Actor
Jeff Bridges ("Iron Man") (Paramount / Marvel)
Aaron Eckhart ("The Dark Knight") (Warner Bros.)
Woody Harrelson ("Transsiberian") (First Look Studios)
Shia LaBeouf ("Indiana Jones & Kingdom of the Crystal Skull") (Paramount / Lucasfilm)
Heath Ledger ("The Dark Knight") (Warner Bros.)
Bill Nighy ("Valkyrie") (MGM / UA)

Supporting Actress
Joan Allen ("Death Race") (Universal)
Judi Dench ("Quantum of Solace") (Sony)
Olga Kurylenko ("Quantum of Solace") (Sony)
Tilda Swinton ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") (Paramount)
Charlize Theron ("Hancock") (Sony)
Carice Van Houten ("Valkyrie") (MGM / UA)

Performance by a Younger Actor
Freddie Highmore ("The Spiderwick Chronicles") (Paramount)
Lina Leandersson ("Let the Right One In") (Magnolia / Magnet)
Dev Patel ("Slumdog Millionaire") (Fox Searchlight)
Jaden Christopher Smith ("The Day the Earth Stood Still") (20th Century Fox)
Catinca Untaru ("The Fall") (Roadside Attractions)
Brandon Walters ("Australia") (20th Century Fox)

Director
Clint Eastwood ("Changeling") (Universal)
Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") (Paramount / Marvel)
David Fincher ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") (Paramount)
Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight") (Warner Bros.)
Bryan Singer ("Valkyrie") (MGM / UA)
Steven Spielberg ("Indiana Jones & Kingdom of the Crystal Skull") (Paramount / Lucasfilm)
Andrew Stanton (Wall-E) (Walt Disney Studios)

Writing
Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway ("Iron Man") (Paramount / Marvel)
David Koepp, John Kamps ("Ghost Town") (Paramount / DreamWorks)
John Ajvide Lindqvist ("Let the Right One In") (Magnolia / Magnet)
Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan ("The Dark Knight") (Warner Bros.)
Eric Roth ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") (Paramount)
J. Michael Straczynski ("Changeling") (Universal)

Network Television Series
"Fringe" (Fox)
"Heroes" (NBC)
"Life On Mars" (ABC)
"Lost" (ABC)
"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (Fox)
"Supernatural" (CW)

Syndicated / Cable Television Series
"Battlestar Galactica" (Sci Fi)
"The Closer" (TNT)
"Dexter" (Showtime)
"Leverage" (TNT)
"Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (Cartoon Network)
"True Blood" (HBO)

Presentation on Television
"24: Redemption" (Fox)
"The Andromeda Strain" (A & E)
"Breaking Bad" (AMC)
"Jericho" (CBS)
"The Last Templar" (NBC)
"The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice" (TNT)

Actor in Television
Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad") (AMC)
Matthew Fox ("Lost") (ABC)
Michael C. Hall ("Dexter") (Showtime)
Timothy Hutton ("Leverage") (TNT)
Edward James Olmos ("Battlestar Galactica") (Sci Fi)
Noah Wiley ("The Librarian: The Curse of The Judas Chalice") (TNT)

Actress in Television
Lena Headey ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles")(Fox)
Jennifer Love Hewitt ("The Ghost Whisperer") (CBS)
Evangeline Lilly ("Lost") (ABC)
Mary McDonnell ("Battlestar Galactica") (Sci Fi)
Anna Paquin ("True Blood") (HBO)
Kyra Sedgwick ("The Closer") (TNT)
Anna Torv ("Fringe") (ABC)

Supporting Actor in Television
Henry Ian Cusick ("Lost") (ABC)
Thomas Dekker ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles")(Fox)
Michael Emerson ("Lost") (ABC)
Josh Holloway ("Lost") (ABC)
Adrian Pasdar ("Heroes") (NBC)
Milo Ventimiglia ("Heroes") (NBC)

Supporting Actress in Television
Jennifer Carpenter ("Dexter") (Showtime)
Summer Glau ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles")(Fox)
Yunjin Kim ("Lost") (ABC)
Elizabeth Mitchell ("Lost") (ABC)
Hayden Panettiere ("Heroes") (NBC)
Katee Sackhoff ("Battlestar Galactica") (Sci Fi)

Guest Starring Role in a Television Series
Kristen Bell ("Heroes") (NBC)
Alan Dale ("Lost") (ABC)
Kevin Durand ("Lost") (ABC)
Robert Forster ("Heroes") (NBC)
Jimmy Smits ("Dexter") (Showtime)
Sonya Walger ("Lost") (ABC)

'Dark Knight,' 'Lost' lead Saturns [Variety]

If you were watching last night's unusual ceremony (Hugh Jackman gave it his all, but still) - or, more entertainingly, following the Twitter commentary along at home - it won't come as news that not getting a Best Picture or Best Director nomination was only the beginning of The Dark Knight's woes; despite being nominated for 8 awards, the movie only took home two (Ledger's and Best Sound Editing). Also robbed, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which only won 3 of its 13 nominated categories - although, admittedly, I took Wall-E not winning Best Original Screenplay much worse, even though it had less of a hope. Overall, it wasn't a particularly interesting night - the winners weren't incredibly surprising, the hosts weren't incredibly entertaining, and there wasn't even that much to get annoyed about afterwards (Who can really begrudge Slumdog Millionaire's wins?). Still, at least we got to see host Hugh Wolverine Jackman standing up for Batman and other costumed characters in his opening performance (Skip to 1:30 for a strange complaint about The Dark Knight not being recognized properly):

How can a billion dollars be unsophisticated indeed, Mr. Jackman.

Last night's winners in full:
Best picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Best director: Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire

Best actor: Sean Penn - Milk

Best actress: Kate Winslet - The Reader

Best supporting actor: Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight

Best supporting actress: Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best original screenplay: Milk

Best adapted screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire

Best animated feature film: Wall-E

Best animated short film: La Maison en Petits Cubes

Best foreign language film: Departures - Japan

Best documentary feature: Man on Wire

Best documentary short subject: Smile Pinki

Art direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Costume design: The Duchess

Make-up: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire

Best live action short film: Spielzeugland (Toyland)

Visual effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Sound editing: The Dark Knight

Sound mixing: Slumdog Millionaire

Film editing:Slumdog Millionaire

Best original score: Slumdog Millionaire

Best original song: "Jai Ho" - Slumdog Millionaire

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Italian postal worker Adriana Pichini has filed papers that David Fincher's successful Brad Pitt vehicle - "inspired by" but not based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1921 short story of the same name, and written by Eric Roth - is actually based upon "Il ritorno di Arthur all'innocenza," an unpublished short story she wrote in 1994 that was sent to US publishers. Pichini's lawyer, Gianni Massaro, said that he's unsure at this point if the author will seek financial damages from Fincher, Roth, and the movie's producers:

At this point it's still a matter of principle... What happens next will depend on what the judge rules.

Currently, the case rests with a judge who will watch the movie and read the short story before deciding whether there are enough similarities to allow a court case to move forward. The movie has not been released in Italy yet - it's due out on February 13th - but there is no set date for the judge's ruling.

Curious case against 'Button' in Italy [Hollywood Reporter]

Benjamin Button was a collaboration of Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Digital Domain, Asylum FX, Matte World and Lola FX. When everybody put their heads together, what we got was the aged face of Brad Pitt on a tiny body that looked too good to be your standard digital manipulation.

Over at BenjaminButtonFX.com, there's an extensive collection of videos that show just how they made Brad look so good. It's pretty amazing how similar the end result is to Brad's brow.

[via Rope Of Silicon]

The big winner this morning was The Curious Case Of Benjamin Buttons. The backwards aging baby was nominated for 13 awards including Best Performance (Brad Pitt), Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay (which I'm a little dubious of) and Best Visual Effects. WALL-E received 5 tips of the hat including Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song and Original Screenplay. The visual effects and sound effects nominations are stuffed with scifi and it's great to see Hellboy II get the recognition it so rightly deserves for makeup. So on that note I'm quite pleased with many of the nominations.

But I'm very disheartened by the passing over of Christopher Nolan for Best Director in The Dark Knight, as well as the snub in the Best Picture category and Best Original Score. The Dark Knight deserves every single technical award it was nominated for, but the movie as a whole deserved attention as well (not saying it deserved to win but a nom for sure). But let's take solace in the fact that Heath Ledger was rightfully nominated for his supporting role, and I will say he should win this category hands down. Plus it is a pleasure to see TDK getting props for Achievement In Cinematography.

Here are the rest of the nominees please feel free to share your surprise and delight.

Performance By An Actor In A Leading Role:
Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Richard Jenkins in The Visitor
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn in Milk
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler

Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Josh Brolin in Milk
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt
Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road

Performance By An Actress n A Supporting Role
Taraji P. Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Amy Adams in Doubt
Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis in Doubt
Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler

Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role
Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie in Changeling
Melissa Leo in Frozen River
Kate Winslet in The Reader

Best Animated Feature Film Of The Year
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E

Achievement In Art Direction
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Changeling
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road

Achievement In Cinematography
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement In Costume Design
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Revolutionary Road
Milk
The Duchess
Austrailia

Achievement In Directing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button David Fincher
Frost/Nixon Ron Howard
Milk Gus Van Sant
The Reader Stephen Daldry
Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle

Achievement In Film Editing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement In Makeup
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Achievement In Music Written For Motion Pictures (Original Song)
"Down to Earth" from WALL-E Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Alexandre Desplat
Defiance James Newton Howard
Milk Danny Elfman
Slumdog Millionaire A.R. Rahman

Best Motion Picture Of The Year
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Achievement In Sound Editing
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

Achievement In Sound Mixing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
WALL-E
Wanted>
Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement In Visual Effects
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man

Original Screenplay
WALL-E
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk

Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

The award show will be held on February 22.

[The Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences]

Benjamin Button (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald): A backwards life is no fairytale for Benjamin Button, who is born into a septuagenarian body and works back from there. Early in life, his father is ashamed of him and Yale turns him away due to his older looks. And, as he grows more youthful, he loses interest in his aging wife and his son refuses to acknowledge him in public. But at least his belated childhood brings with it a blissful amnesia.

Rachel Weintraub (Hyperion by Dan Simmons): While exploring the Time Tombs of Hyperion, archeology student Rachel Weintraub contracts “Merlin sickness” (from TH White’s The Once and Future King, in which the wizard Merlin experiences life in reverse). Rachel grows younger each day, and loses her memories as she falls backwards in time. Her professor father grows concerned as she nears the point of birth and takes the both of them on a pilgrimage to implore the god-like Shrike to cure her.

Everyone (“The Man Who Grew Young” by Daniel Quinn and Tim Eldred): In Quinn’s universe, people begin their lives being exhumed from the earth and rising from their coffins. They grow younger until they eventually return to their mother’s womb. But Adam Taylor lives for millennia without growing younger or finding his mother, forcing him to witness the devolution of man.

Everyone (“The Man Who Never Grew Young” by Fritz Leiber): Quinn’s story borrows heavily from Leiber’s, in which humans grow younger as their time on Earth grows longer, sloughing off responsibility and wisdom as they head toward the carefree years of youth and childhood. But one man seems arrested in the mid-thirties; he cannot remember being older and has lost hope of ever growing young. Instead he wanders backwards through ages.

Drom the Backwards Man (Spider-Man): Through a quirk of space and time, Drom’s infant self was switched at birth with his elderly self. Ever since then, he has lived his life in reverse. Not only does he age backwards; he speaks and metabolizes food in reverse. He’s dependent on special machines to survive, which require a great deal of (often ill-gained) energy to power.

Harmon Gordon (The Twilight Zone “A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain”): Harmon Gordon finds himself unable to keep up with his wife, who is forty years his junior. Fortunately, he has a scientist brother who has invented an experimental youth serum. Unfortunately, there’s no stop switch on the serum. Harmon grows progressively younger until he returns to infancy, leaving his now much older wife to raise him.

Amelia Hazelwood and Anny Beth (Turnabout by Margaret Peterson Haddix): A group of nursing home residents unwittingly consent to special drug treatment that causes them to age in reverse. But as they grow younger, they find they gradually lose their memories from their forward life. Amelia and Anny Beth escape in hopes of finding a cure, as well as people they can trust as they grow younger and forget their former lives.

Edward Goodman (80 Days by Nicolas Vadot and Olivier Gueret): Eighty year old Edward Goodman prepares to die when the aging process is thrown suddenly in reverse. Each day for 80 days he grows one year younger, and relieves the unique joys of each age. His companion through this temporal journey is his nurse Juliet, a young woman with whom he grows closer as he grows younger.



Lamron Namron (2000 AD “The Reversible Man” by Alan Moore): Namron starts his life facedown in an ice cream cone and his life continues backwards from there. Life seems to progress for everyone else as it does for him as he grows younger, is progressively demoted at his job, loses his children, and is unmarried from and eventually unmeets his wife. It’s a poignant illustration that life in reverse is no happier or more sorrowful than life moving forward (supposedly their wasn’t a dry eye in the 2000 AD offices when the story went to press), though Namron finds himself growing apprehensive as he approaches his birth. Moore would later play with the idea of moving from adulthood through childhood and back into the womb in his autobiographical poem “The Birth Caul.”

Deceased Residents of Resurrection (Vampire Knight Requiem by Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit): The hell world of Resurrection is a horrific inversion of our own. Those who were evil in life reap the greatest rewards, and the oceans are replaced by land and the land by fires. Instead of growing older, the residents grow younger and eventually fetal. They also lose their memories as they rejuvenate, and take an opiate to stave off the madness of the experience.

Deceased Residents of Elsewhere (Elsewhere by Zevin Gabrielle): A happier version of the afterlife is Elsewhere, where people who have died go to live out their afterlives. They remember their lives back on Earth, but age in reverse until, as infants, are reincarnated on Earth to begin new forward lives.

Max Tivoli (The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer): Born with the body of a 70 year-old man and plagued by a strange disease, Tivoli is constantly haunted by two things: he has known his whole life that he will die in 1941 and he has been tasked to keep his reversed aging a secret. But, as we noted earlier, the novel is, like the Benjamin Button film, a love story at heart.

Odilo Unverdorben (Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis): Amis was inspired by a scene in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (whose protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, has his own experiences in backwards living), to explore the Holocaust and the nature of war when experienced in the reverse. When bombs and gas chambers seem to bring people to life, morality appears inverted, suggested that the horrors of genocide can only be understood in a world turned on its head.

Everyone (Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick): In 1986, time begins to move in reverse, marking the start of the Hobart Phase. The dead rise from their graves, people age backwards, and eating and defecation occur in reverse. As the resurrection of Anarch Peak, a religious leader who died in 1971, approaches, various religious institutions war over who will claim rights to the man once he is revived.

Charles Freeman (“Mr F. is Mr F.” by JG Ballard): Like Gregor Samsa, Charles Freeman awakes one morning to find his body suddenly transformed. But instead of turning into a beetle, he finds himself growing progressively younger. The solution to his spontaneous rejuvenation seems to lie inside his pregnant wife. No longer his own man, Freeman has become the fetus growing within her.

Martin Wells (The X-Files “Redrum”): Martin Wells awakes on the day he will be assassinated, then finds himself on the previous day, when he learns that he has been arrested for killing his wife. Wells travels backwards day by day for three days until he can solve the mystery and avert his wife’s murder.

Kes (Star Trek: Voyager “Before and After”): Ocampa Kes already has a mayfly’s lifespan and she lives a version of it backwards after her dead body was placed in a biotemporal chamber. Although Kes ends up living out a different timeline’s future, her experiences do foreshadow the ship’s future.

The Drayan (Star Trek: Voyager “Innocence”): Another episode of Voyager features the Drayan, who been to look like humanoid children as they age until their physical form disappears entirely. As the Drayan are quite secretive and xenophobic, this causes confusion when other species encounter Drayan “children.”

The Planet Express Crew (Futurama “Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles”): After a trip to the anti-aging pits, most members of the Planet Express team become children. But the Professor’s attempt to reverse the process backfires, causing them to keep aging backwards and threatening them with the horrors of pre-birth.

Residents of the Antimatter Universe (Star Trek: The Animated Series “The Counter-Clock Incident): In the antimatter universe, beings age in reverse. The crew of the Enterprise find themselves reverting gradually to children after a trip in the other universe, but naturally it can all be repaired with a trip through the transporter.

Lion-O (Thundercats “Time Switch”): Thanks to an accident with his suspended animation capsule, Lion-O is actually a child with the body of a man. So, when a strange gas causes him to become progressively younger, it may seem no great loss. But it quickly becomes clear that if the process continues, he will regress into non-existence.

Residents of the Backwards Universe (Red Dwarf “Backwards”): Everything happens in reverse in the backwards universe. People age in reverse, expel food back onto their plates, and experience broken bones and black eyes before getting in fights. Kryten and Rimmer decide to exploit their position as forward-thinking people by developing an act “The Sensational Reverse Brothers.” But the worst thing about living backwards is what happens when you relieve yourself (as the Cat discovers in this picture).

The Orkans (Mork and Mindy): The people of Ork age in reverse, starting as adults and eventually taking on a child-like appearance. The males of the species lay eggs, which grow larger and hatch the Orkan children, sparing Pam Dawber the considerable pain of giving birth to Jonathan Winters.

Okay, not literally. Literally, Benjamin Button is about a guy who's born old and ages backwards, until he reaches childhood and then dies. But in a larger sense, David Fincher's movie is about deja vu. It feels very much like a dozen other movies you've seen before. And it seems to be saying that familiarity is underrated and nostalgia is renewal, by looking at the life of someone whose past is always in front of him.

In particular, Benjamin Button will remind you a lot of Forrest Gump, another literary adaptation by the same screenwriter, Eric Roth. It's got the same sort of heartwarming, quirky feeling, and the protagonist lives through a nice selection of big historical moments. (Although he doesn't meet any famous personages.) Pretty much every situation that Benjamin Button gets himself into will feel cozily familiar, and most of the characters he meets are ones you've seen before. But because he's living backwards, he outlives people who seem to be his age or younger. And the movie seems to be saying, "Take another look at these familiar situations and archetypes, because they won't last forever, and you'll miss them when they're gone."

Here's the story, in a nutshell: Benjamin Button is born old, and his father abandons him. He's rescued by Queenie, a good-hearted African American woman, who devotes herself to him. Luckily, she works in an old-people's home, where he fits right in with the cast of quirky characters. (One of these characters has a running gag that's jaw-snappingly funny.) He meets a little girl, Daisy, and they become playmates. Later, he goes off to sea on a tugboat, and then fights in World War II. And sleeps with Tilda Swinton. Then he comes home and courts Daisy, who's too busy being a fancy dancer. They finally get together, and are rapturously happy, but Benjamin worries his impending youth will ruin everything. (It does.)

There's also a frame story, where Daisy is on her death bed (as Hurricane Katrina looms) and she gets her daughter to read Benjamin's memoir to her. That stuff is like what I imagine The Notebook would be like.

There's nothing wrong with any of it, and it's all quite skillfully executed. Except that Cate Blanchett, as Daisy, and Brad Pitt, as Benjamin, have very little chemistry, and Pitt's performance in general is somewhere between understated and vacant. (I really only like Pitt when he's doing manic nutjob, to be honest.) But apart from that problem, the performances are all great, and some of them are terrific. Tilda Swinton is never anything but amazing, for example.

The movie is three hours long, and there are a few sequences that feel beyond padded. (In one sequence, in particular, the narrator drones that if A, B, C, or D had happened differently, then E wouldn't have happened. But A, B, C, and D did actually happen the way they did, so E happened as well. I felt like I was being spoon-fed by an arthritic.) To some extent, the movie's slowness is a function of its mission: to show us that time is passing, that as Benjamin Button sheds his years, he's still racing towards a grave like the rest of us.

That's in a sense what Benjamin Button is about — paradoxically, by dealing with a character who miraculously won't get old, it aims to make us think about the fact that we will. And by separating aging from death, it reinforces once again that death is universal. All of those heartwarming characters we meet in the course of the movie end up dying, and we linger over their deaths. There's even a gratuitous black preacher who drops dead right after meeting Benjamin.

I always think, when reviewing a non-genre film like Button for io9, it's important to focus on its genre elements and how they're functioning in the story. In Button, the main character's mutant superpower functions as a metaphor for the way the past gets more and more important as you get older. Especially with the framing story, where we see the old Daisy reliving her life with Benjamin on her death bed, the point is driven home that love, and death, make time travelers of all of us as our future shrinks away.

The movie is a triumph of makeup and special effects, by the way. The whole business of making Brad up as an old man, and superimposing his features onto various other people's bodies, is weirdly convincing.

Major spoiler alert: The thing that really turned me off this movie, once and for all, is when Benjamin decides to ditch Daisy after knocking her up. At this point, they're both about 40, and he's courted her for two decades. Now that he finally has her, he suddenly freaks out about the fact that they're "meeting in the middle" and he's doomed to keep getting younger. "I don't want you to have to raise us both," he tells Daisy, referring to her baby and him. But it literally makes no sense to me — why can't he stick around until the baby and he are both roughly 20 years old biologically? Or if I'm doing my math wrong, at the very worst, he would appear 16 or 17 when Daisy was 18 or 19. Again, still not seeing why Benjamin can't help raise his kid.

It feels like the movie has some kind of weird pro-deadbeat dad agenda. Benjamin's own father abandons him, and then later they meet up and gradually become friends. They bond, and we're meant to forgive the dad for being completely absent. And in the case of Benjamin, after he abandons Daisy and goes off to India to "find himself," he selfishly comes back when his daughter is grown and he appears to be a young adult. Then he hangs around New Orleans (Daisy's hometown) and eventually she's stuck nursing him after he's turned into a senile infant. So even though he ran away, she still takes care of him in his old/young age.

It didn't feel like much of a love story to me, but maybe I'm too cynical.

I'm afraid I didn't like Button very much, but you may like it just fine. It has a 76 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, and I'm sure it'll do great at the box office. It's very Oscar-ish, too. I'd say, if you liked Forrest Gump, you might like this, although it's not quite as good.

Spoilers ahead!

The movie in question, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, comes out in a couple of days, and it's nominally based on the Fitzgerald story of the same title. (Besides the title and the main character who ages backwards, they have almost nothing else in common.)

In fact, the Button movie has one crucial similarity to Andrew Sean Greer's 2004 novel, The Confessions Of Max Tivoli: they're both structured as a love story. In both works, a man who's born old and ages backwards falls in love as a child. And he loves the same woman for his entire lifetime. And in both the Greer novel and the new movie, the man and the woman connect at three different stages of their lives, as he grows younger and she grows older.

The makers of the Benjamin Button movie deny that their film is based on Greer's novel, of course. The movie was in development before 2004, when Tivoli came out. (But the movie didn't start production in earnest until after that, and I know there were numerous script rewrites at various points.) But even if screenwriter Eric Roth has never read Greer's novel, he was clearly groping towards the same idea.

After I saw Button a few weeks ago, I was struck by the similarity, and asked Greer about it. Here's what he said:

Haven't seen the film or read the story, if you can believe it! I was so freaked out, when Max Tivoli came out, to hear about both that I stayed away from the Fitzgerald. People tell me it is very different from my book in plot, tone, theme, etc. I don't know anything about the movie except that it looks gorgeous in the way I wish my book would have looked, if it had ever been a movie.... But the truth really is that I'd never heard of Benjamin Button when I wrote my book, and they'd never heard of me when they started making their movie. We've both heard of each other now. The downside is simply that I'll never see a movie made from my book — but there are worse things in the world! Mostly I'm intrigued how they handled such a similar idea.

The sad thing is, even with the similarities between them, Tivoli would have made a much better movie than what Benjamin Button ended up with. (As Bookslut put it back in 2004, "Greer's written words would need little translation were they to be put on screen.")

To be fair, Roth didn't have much to work with in the Fitzgerald story. It's a very slight piece of comic fiction. Fitzgerald's main character is born old (and speaking complete sentences) and then grows younger until he's a baby. His father is embarrassed by him, and he can't go to college because he looks too old. He takes a wife, who thinks he's a mature older man, and then he gets bored with her as she gets older and he gets younger. Finally, his grown son starts treating him like a young whippersnapper, and he finally goes off to college. Then he regresses to childhood. The end. None of the characters are more than one-dimensional, and the wife, in particular, is a bit of a joke:

There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him. At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-coloured hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery — moreover, and, most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it been she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners — now conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end. Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger.

Suffice to say, the Fitzgerald story is not a love story, exactly. (And, as John Updike notes, it's not one of Fitzgerald's best.)

In Greer's novel, meanwhile, the main character learns early on to hide his condition from everyone except his best friend Hughie. (His mother advises him, "Be what you seem.") When he's seventeen, he falls for the 14-year-old girl who lives downstairs, Alice, who's the same age and thinks he's a dirty old man. He vows to find her again, and does so at roughly twenty year intervals for the rest of the novel. He's able to woo her and even marry her, but he can never reveal his true identity to her. Instead, he marries her under a false name, Asgar Van Daler. But they're separated by a flu epidemic, and the next time they meet, she doesn't recognize her ex-husband once again. They conceive a child, but wind up parting again when she's creeped out to find some of her ex-husband's things among her new lover's possessions. The final time they meet, he's a child, and she's an elderly woman.

As I said, the new Button movie is closer in structure to Max Tivoli than to the Fitzgerald story. The main difference is, the woman (Daisy) somehow figures out early on that Benjamin Button is aging backwards, and she always knows it's him whenever she meets him. They meet as children and play together, and then hook up again in their early twenties, but don't end up together. They finally do connect in their thirties, and eventually have a child together before separating. And, as in Greer's novel, they meet one last time, when Benjamin is a toddler and Daisy is an old lady.

The fact that Daisy knows all along that Benjamin is aging backwards puts a very different spin on the story, however. It means that instead of being a story of the split between mind and body, and the impossibility of ever really knowing our loved ones, it's just a story of a couple facing logistical problems. In the movie, Daisy never thinks Benjamin's a dirty old man, and she always recognizes him. What's more, she somehow manages to see through his appearance to his true age at every point in the story. Later, Benjamin and Daisy have endless conversations about how to handle the fact that he's growing younger instead of older. It saps all of the drama out of the situation, and what you're left with, instead, is curiously inert. In a weird way, it feels like vestigial shreds of Fitzgerald's offhand treatment of poor Hildegaarde survive into the movie.

The idea of making the story of a backwards-aging man into a lifelong love story is a good one, and it's entirely possible that Roth and Greer both hit on it separately. But if you're going to do a love story between a normal woman and a man who is hurtling from senescence to childhood, you have a choice between the tragedy of deception and the banality of bodies that don't quite fit with each other. Greer's novel opts for the former; Roth's film for the latter.

Star Trek:

Here's a new banner that shows all of the Enterprise crew looking gritty and grayscale. Woo! Grayscale! It's bigger at the link. [MTV]

Land Of The Lost:

We've read a bunch of script pages, and the biggest surprise is that Ferrell is the straight man.

We start out with a scene where a future astronaut on a world with two moons gets chomped by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Then we meet Rick Marshall (Ferrell), a scientist who's developed a theory of "quantum paleology." He claims that because time travel is possible, we'll never run out of fossil fuels. We first meet him on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, on a panel with Stephen Hawking and other science bigwigs. Marshall claims to have found a Hello Kitty keychain in an ancient fossil, and he's plugging his book, My Other Car Is A Time Machine. The other scientists, including Hawking, laugh at him, and he wigs out.

Four years later, Ferrell is stuck working as a park ranger at the La Brea Tar Pits, doing a crappy routine to amuse fifth graders. (Like he says, "Science can be hair raising" and touches a Van De Graaf generator, which gives him a giant shock that he feels in his groin.) The kids are mean to him, and accuse his mom of being a slutty cocksucker, and when he tries to get his own back, they burn him. Later, he gets into a fight with his boss, Abe, who says if he screws up this job, he'll be lucky to get a job in a dry-cleaning lab. He's stuck dickering with some woman over her parking validation.

Meanwhile, we also meet Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel) a sassy British scientist. Two of those fifth-graders spit in the tar pits which she's excavating, and she grabs them and almost tosses them in. And then it sounds like we get a slow-mo shot of her walking sexily out of the tar. She tries to get Marshall's attention, but he's busy being an oaf.

I mentioned Ferrell's character is sort of the straight man. That's because he's paired with uber-dick Will Stanton (Danny R. McBride from Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express). It's a typical Ferrell pairing, like in the skating movie and that other movie. In this case, Stanton is clearly dumber than Marshall, and more of a broad comic figure. We first meet Stanton when he's confronted by some of those fifth graders, whom he sold bad fireworks to. He threatens to go all Special Forces on them, but his moves are not that impressive, and then he says he's got a trained sniper with a lewd tattoo aiming at them. They throw rocks at his double-wide trailer.

Jumping forward, Rick, Holly and Will all end up in the Land of the Lost. Holly ties her shirt at her midriff, and Will follows suit. Will keeps claiming that all of this is his property. And then they see three Pakuni, or ape people, carrying a tied-up ape-boy, who turns out to be Chaka. Holly starts analyzing their saggital crests and talking about Austrolopithecus, but Will says he won't allow her to ruin his big moment, because he's wanted to see Bigfoot forever. That leads to this great exchange:

WILL: I have waited my whole life to see the mighty Bigfoot.
RICK: Are you touching yourself?
HOLLY: (Gasps) Marshall!
(The Pakuni throw Chaka down on a ceremonial stone and prepare to sacrifice him with a stone knife.)
RICK: Oh my God! — (Excited) Tool construction! Tool construction!
WILL: (Gesturing at his crotch.) Let's just be adults and call it an erection.Yes, I got excited.

They decide to save Chaka from the other Pakuni, but then the bumbling Will ruins everything by trying to scare them with the "power of fire." (A pocket lighter with an obscene sillhouette on it.) The Pakuni manage to get hold of Will's lighter and run off. The attempts to befriend Chaka don't go that well at first. Holly puts Chaka's hand on her chest and says her name, and Chaka takes the opportunity to grope her breast. Then Will takes the opportunity to grope Holly's breast as well. Then Rick tries to be more serious and treat Chaka's injury, and Chaka runs off.

And then at some point, they meet the Sleestak, plus Enik, the Altrusian guy. They make friends with Enik, and then Holly is taken prisoner. Rick and Will disguise themselves in Sleestak skins to go rescue Holly. Holly's in a cage, and Will says usually when women dance in cages, it's sexy, but this isn't all that sexy. But it's still sort of sexy, he adds.

Holly is put before a council of skulls, which accuse her of being an ally of the cursed Enik. Marshall steps forward and says they're all friends of Enik, totally on the same wavelength, Enik and them are like this. But then the lead skull tells them that Enik wiped out an entire civilization, and he was imprisoned here, in the far future, and sentenced to wear a dorky tunic for his crimes. Marshall is stunned. Then the Sleestak attack, and Will and Marshall manage to defeat them, using Holly's cage to knock them over. Will tries hitting one of the Sleestak in the nuts, but it's "like sand paper."

Holly and Marshall say that they have to stop Enik, because with the "Pylons" at his command, he'll be invincible. At least they have the element of surprise — but no, because Will and Marshall sent Chaka to fetch Enik. And he shows up and acts evil. Enik taunts the skulls: "You're even whinier now than you were 300 million years ago, you know that? I'm glad I killed you." The skulls are all like, "Dude, that's harsh."

And then in the last scene, Rick and Holly are back at the Tar Pits, and a woman comes up to Rick asking about validation. (For her parking.) Ferrell says, "No thanks, I've found mine already." Rick leaves three real dinosaur eggs in the pits' dinosaur diorama, and says the best part is nobody will ever know what they have. He and Holly walk off, talking about investigating off-the-chart tachyon readings in Atlantic City. As they leave, a small boy notices one of the eggs is hatching. OMG! But it's not a dinosaur egg after all... it's a Sleestak egg. The end. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Thor:

The Thor movie is a huge, motherhonking massive epic saga, with a human story at its center, says director Kenneth Branagh. And he says the movie is about "one of the immortals, Gods, extraordinary beings, inter-dimensional creatures. There’s science fiction and science fact and fantasy all woven into one. It’s based on Norse legends which Marvel sort of raided in a brilliant way." [MTV]

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button:

Here's a new TV spot.

Dollhouse:

Eliza Dushku dropped a few more hints about what to expect from her character, Echo. She sings a capella in one episode, where she auditions to be a back-up singer for a big pop star. (She sings a gospel number.) And in another episode, she's a fancy business woman with an up-do. Meanwhile, Jane Espenson mentions she's writing the 11th episode of the season, out of 13 total. (Somehow I thought there were only nine? In any case, yay for Espenson script!) [Sci Fi Wire and Sci Fi Wire]

And apparently Espenson's episode is called "Briar Rose," and it features a deeply troubled 11 year old named Susan. [SpoilerTV]

Doctor Who:

Woot. New trailer! A few new clips, mostly of Cybermen being Cyber. [Adventures Through Time And Space]

Lost:

Some more filming news. Someone visited the buildings that stand in for Othersville, and then came back a couple days later. Those same buildings were looking a lot dirtier and had apparent fire damage, as if a lot of time was supposed to have passed. Meanwhile, on the right is a picture of that wooden prop that the Dharma people were supposedly building. Someone a missile-like contraption being lowered into the manhole at the structure's center. Meanwhile, there was a shoot at the Omega Station, and observers believe both Horace Goodspeed and Radzinsky will be back in episode 5x08. [Hawaii Weblog and The ODI]

And here are some upcoming episode titles:

Episode 5.08 - LeFleur (Airs: 11th March 2009)
Episode 5.09 - Namaste (Airs: 18th March 2009)
Episode 5.10 - He's Our You (Airs: 25th March 2009)

[SpoilersLost]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Later this season, we'll finally learn what happened to Derek in that basement he got dragged into in the future, back in season one. And it sounds like it has something to do with the way Derek and Cameron know each other. And a big piece of the mystery will be revealed in the next couple of episodes (in February.) [TV Guide]

Heroes:

Episode 3x21, which is deep into the "Fugitives" storyline, features a brilliant technician, who's responsible for monitoring classified information. [SpoilerTV]

Kyle XY:

Here's a clip from season three, episode one. OMG do you think Latnok took Amanda? Or maybe she just went to the afterparty on her own. [Teaser-Trailer]


Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra:

Well, I lasted three days without posting any toy spoilers. Here are some MARS figures that are tie-ins with the new film. More pics at the link. [ToyArk via IESB]

Watchmen:

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way says his band's Bob Dylan cover is integral to the ending of the movie. And he weighs in on the controversial changes to the graphic novel's ending:

I personally loved the giant squid – and I’ve always loved giant squids – but from what I’m hearing, the changes he’s made reels it into the actual characters, and actually, in some ways, makes more sense.

[MTV]

The Day The Earth Stood Still:

Keanu Reeves says the film is about "the human character, human nature, the fact that it is only when our backs are up against the wall that we do anything to change our behavior." Sounds as though the film ends with humans promising to stop trashing the environment, in exchange for Keanu not smiting us. He also says:

In our film, Klaatu is making a judgment about whether the human species will live or die, although it is much more than an eco message. Klaatu says: “Your backs are against the wall, you have to change the way you are or cease to exist.”

And he adds that Klaatu starts out totally alien and then slowly learns to relate to humans. [Business Mirror]

And here's a new behind-the-scenes featurette on the film, featuring a bit more footage and the stars talking about it. Keanu gives away more of the film's ending, when he says nobody can withstand Jennifer Connelly's puppy-dog eyes, not even an alien. A similar featurette, with slightly different footage, aired on Entertainment Tonight, and you can view that version here. Plus there's a new international trailer. [IGN]

Dragonball:

It's rumored this film's title has changed to Dragonball Evolution. [DBTheMovie]

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button:

Cinemablend has already seen this movie and their review includes a few spoilers. There's a framing device, involving Cate Blanchett's character Daisy on her death bed, reminiscing about her love affair with Benjamin Button. It's the eve of Hurricane Katrina. Daisy's daughter reads from Button's diary, learning about her real father, who was born old and aged backwards. Everyone predicts the elderly baby will die from age-related ailments, but instead he thrives. His father abandons him, so he gets adopted by a woman who works at an old folks home, where he fits right in. Eventually, he de-ages enough to hobble out of his wheelchair and get on a tugboat. and the film skips over the question of what happens to Button when he looks like a teenager but is really old. (Something the Fitzgerald story, incidentally, dwells on.) [Cinemablend]

Doctor Who:

Penelope Wilton, who played the former Prime Minister Harriet Jones, says that "when you are exterminated on Doctor Who, chances are that you are not dead at all. I could simply have gone to another galaxy. You never know – I might make a return." I so want her to team up with Sarah Jane and fight aliens together. [Planet Gallifrey]

Lost:

More Dharma-centric filming? Someone came across a scene involving Kate, Hurley and a VW camper. [SpoilersLost]

And here are some promo pics showing that the cast is, indeed, still pretty. [Lyly Ford]

Torchwood:

Not much of a spoiler, but I listened to a whole podcast to get to it. Gareth David-Lloyd says it's conceivable the fourth (missing) Torchwood office is in Toronto, and he'd be up for doing a storyline set there. [Hardcore Nerdity]

Heroes:

As we mentioned, episode 3x17, "Cold War," is all about HRG, along the lines of "Company Man." And there's an intense sequence where HRG and Matt are locked in a "mental intense interrogation," and they're both out of breath and trying not to faint. They almost pass out. And HRG has some scenes with Nathan as well. [Heroes Television]

Does Peter get his powers back? Hmmm. Well, Greg Grunberg just Twittered this pic of Milo Ventimiglia preparing to do some kind of flying stunt. Click to enlarge. [Heroes Spoilers]

Fringe:

Episode 11 will be called "Bound" and will air on Jan. 20. [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

The new Sci Fi Magazine includes some spoilers. Chloe and Jimmy will try to manage life after their wedding but it won't be easy. Doomsday's story doesn't end well, as you can imagine. And Tess will unleash her army of supervillains at some point. Also, Clark has a harder time making a new hero identity for himself, because his identity as Clark Kent is already a lie in a sense. Depending on whether there's a ninth season, the eighth season will either end with a heroic sendoff, or a heartbreaking decision for Clark. [SVGurl]

In the Jan. 15 episode, maybe you see Clark flying. Or maybe he's just leaping a tall building in a single bound. [TV Guide]

A new Doomsday-centric mid-year trailer includes a tantalizing shot of a Davis-cicle inside the compromised Fortress of Solitude. [OSCK]

Pushing Daisies:

No clue when the last episodes will air, but when the show's run ends prematurely, you'll have learned the answer to one long-term mystery, which should be a big relief for Mr. Emerson Cod. Also, Olive Snook sings a Bangles song. [TV Guide]

And here's the summary for episode 2x10, "The Norwegians":

Chuck's Aunt Vivian tries to hire Emerson to find her missing boyfriend Dwight and when he declines, she hires a group of three Norwegian private detectives. The Norwegians and Emerson and Ned have a long history of rivalry. Emerson later spies on the group of three and sees Olive seeming to be in cahoots with them. Olive and the Norwegians find a note written in Chuck's Aunt Lily's handwriting implicating her in the disappearance as well.

[SpoilerTV]

Eleventh Hour:

This mad-science investigation show chugs along. There's a casting call for episode 13, "Minimata." Local people in Flint Michigan get sick and go blind, possibly due to mercury poisoning. One helicopter newscaster gets poisoned and crashes his chopper during a broadcast. And then the newscaster's wife also goes blind and then finds out she's pregnant. Meanwhile, there's a dairy farmer who's covering up the deaths of several cows. (Does every episode of this show feature an evil farmer?) And there's an antique junk dealer. [SpoilerTV]

Warner Bros. has posted Alexander Desplat's entire score for Benjamin Button up on the movie's "For Your Consideration" page. If you thought the music from the trailer was beautiful wait until you listen to all 23 tracks composed by the magnificent Desplat The film hits theaters on December 25th. [BadTaste via Slashfilm]

And yes, before anyone else jumps in and says it, I'm aware that we do stretch the definition of "spoilers" a bit here at MS as well on occasion. But we have never stooped to wig spoilers.

Watchmen:

Director Zack Snyder won't exactly give away what replaces the infamous squid in the end of the movie, but he says:

No-one knows yet what we've done but we hope it's similar in philosophy to the ending of the graphic novel. I mean the end is all about taking a superhero all the way - you know it's the bad guy who is the one who wants world peace. It's a moral dilemma for all the characters involved.

And original artist Dave Gibbons says the moral dilemma remains intact. (As far as I know, the new ending is the one where Ozymandias' alternative energy project turns out to be a scheme to create nuclear explosions with the same "energy signature" as Dr. Manhattan, thus framing the blue guy.)

Meanwhile, Snyder says the DVD will include the full Behind The Mask documentary, apparently shot in 1985 but including a show from 1972 where the heroes appear and a comedian tells them to fuck off. [IGN]

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Here's a slightly less blurry image of the Soundwave toy, showing how the Decepticon will look in the new movie. Also, it's looking more likely that this is genuine. Bigger version at the link. [TFW2005]

The Day The Earth Stood Still:

The MTV special did include some good stuff, though, such as this new trailer for the Keanu Reeves remake. A bit more Gort action and crazy destruction, and a teeny bit more insight into the reasons why Klaatu has been sent to wipe us out.

The Spirit:

Here's a new TV spot for Frank Miller's movie of Will Eisner's classic comics series. Will The Spirit be Christmassy? Judge for yourself. Also, apparently, someone thinks the Spirit is a menace. [ScreenRant]

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button:

A new TV spot shows more of Brad Pitt's backwards-aging character as a cranky kid who looks like an old guy.

Dollhouse:

Creator Joss Whedon explains his new show's premise and why, in spite of all that mind-wiping, it will never be a "reset button" show. [TheWriteEnvironment]

Lost:

Season five will be "more science fiction-y" and season six will be "fucking crazy," say producers Lindelof and Cuse. The show's ending will answer all of the major questions about the island, but if you've fixated on some minor mystery, it may or may not get resolved in the end. There will be an upcoming episode focusing on "the oft-confused Steve and Scott," and they're involved in a very tragic event. We'll never "meet" the DeGroots, but we are going to "see" them. And the producers' favorite moment from the show's final episode supposedly involves a volcano — but they may have been kidding about that. [Spoilers Lost]

Someone in Hawaii witnessed the filming of an upcoming Lost episode with a submarine in it. [The Hart Family Hawaii Chronicles]

Also, the show is looking for actors who are fluent in Tagalog (the main language of the Philippines) to dub some dialogue for an already-recorded episode. English accents a plus. And meanwhile, a new promo showing before Quantum Of Solace in some theaters includes a few new clips: Desmond and Penny are in bed, and Desmond gets up to Penny's dismay. Jack is in a tuxedo and says "Let's get them back." And Locke falls from a tree or some other high object. [Spoilers Lost]

Heroes:

Here are some set pics from the "Fugitives" arc, probably the same one that has commando Sylar. Looks like Mohinder is back to "normal," and he and his co-dad Matt have patched things up. Are they helping to hunt down the fugitives, or are they on the run? Either way, I welcome the return of the Matthinder bromance. [Heroes Spoilers]

Also, those pics from last week, showing Sylar in swat gear carrying a young guy with a Darth Vader thing on his chest? Seems like the young guy is David, the angsty new teen character, who is rumored to be Sylar's new apprentice. [SuperHiro]

Plus here's Masi Oka talking about the new season on the Today Show, including a 30 second clip from tonight or next week, when the amnesiac Hiro tries to remember how to teleport.

The reason the villain of that Haitian storyline is named Samedi is because he's very powerful, in the context of the story. Samedi does have some "abilities" to manipulate and control, but they're not exactly "superpowers." Meanwhile, Nathan and Peter have a bit of "dischord" in the Haitian jungle, until it comes to a head just as they find what they need to find. They run through the jungle being chased by soldier guys. [E! Online]

Chuck:

Someone is going to try and kill Sarah — and you'll never believe who's holding the gun. Or maybe you will, I dunno. [E! Online]

Here's the official description of the Dec. 8 episode, "Chuck vs. the Delorean":

Chuck (Zachary Levi) spies on Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) and sees her on a date with an older man (guest star Gary Cole). Chuck frantically tries to warn Sarah after he has an Intersect flash, but she assures Chuck that she is not in danger and reveals the identity of the mystery man. Meanwhile, Anna (Julia Ling) wants to move into an apartment with Morgan (Joshua Gomez) forcing him to finally act like an adult. Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) offers to help Morgan pay for the apartment, but a relic from the past causes Morgan to lose focus on his new grown-up responsibilities.

[SpoilerTV]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

It sounds as though Riley doesn't find out about the whole robots-from-the-future thing any time soon, judging from this interview with Leven Rambin. Also, says Leven, "She's just a regular person. Not a Terminator." (Side note: Apparently Leven is recording music with George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic. I cannot picture this.) [Crave]

And here are some pics from the Nov. 24 episode, "Strange Things Happen At The One-Two Point." Sarah and Cameron try to impress members of a start-up company, where they're pretending to be investors. (I think most start-up companies would be falling all over themselves to impress potential investors at this point.) [Fox]

Fringe:

In upcoming episodes, the show will have more of a "rogue" feel to it, as the crew goes "off the books" to work their cases. The storyline about Olivia and Agent Scott will play out by mid-season, and Olivia's issues will revolve more around her stepfather. With her stepdad in mind, she'll be leaping before she looks more often. "Her drive and her intensity is going to increase," says J.J. Abrams. The characters we met last week, including the parasite-ridden agent and the German guy, will figure into future episodes. Also, we'll learn why Nina took Scott's body, and what weird connection Broyles has to Nina. [USA Today]

And here's what happens in the Dec. 2 episode, "Safe":

While investigating a series of bank robberies, Olivia, Walter and Peter are shocked to find one of the suspects inexplicably trapped inside a vault wall as if it solidified around him. Walter realizes that the high-tech thieves have figured out a way to defy the law of physics and that, much to his dismay, the crooks are after something of his. As the ongoing investigation unfolds and the mystery deepens, the perilous situation climaxes when a member of the trio is ambushed.

[SpoilerTV]

That Dec. 2 episode features some great moments of Walter being inappropriate, says actor John Noble. And in this week's episode, when he goes back inside the institution, it's a very fearful Walter who comes back out. The ensemble will start to gel, and in the first episode of 2009, we'll see the cast bond a bit more and act more like people who've known each other for a while. At some point in the future, we'll see Walter and Olivia coming together, in a father-daughter way. (I think.) [FringeFanatic]

Eleventh Hour:

Does Jacob Hood discover illicit experiments in this show's Dec. 4 episode, "The Titans"? Yes. Yes he does.

Hood travels to Oklahoma to investigate why some college students are dying of the bends, a condition normally associated with scuba divers, and discovers an enormous medical cover-up on campus.

[SpoilerTV]

The Survivors:

In the remake of the classic plague show, Abby is a wife and mother whose kid has just recovered from leukemia, and she fusses over him. She and her husband go off on vacation leaving their kid at a camp, and when they come back, the plague breaks out. She panics, because people are dropping like flies and there are long lines for petrol and other supplies. Once most people are dead, Abby goes looking for her son, who she thinks may be alive. Along the way, Abby becomes a bit of a leader. Also, don't assume the plot is just like the original series. [DigitalSpy via SurvivorsBBC]

Meanwhile, Max Beesley plays Tom:

A lifer given a chance of freedom when his prison guards all die from the virus, we first meet Tom looking in distaste as his plague-victim cell-mate gasps his last. In the scene I'm watching being filmed, Beesley's character is being hit in the small of the back with a rifle by a member of a rival gang. This is the version of the future as violent and feral, competed over by warring tribes.

And Nikki Amuka-Bird plays the last government official left alive, a junior health minister in charge of responding to the crisis. In a shocking twist, one of the major characters from the original series, who survives all the way through, dies in the first 20 minutes of the remake. [The Independent]

And here's what happens in the series' fourth episode:

Abby learns of a group of young boys living at a nearby mansion called Waterhouse.... She is determined to see if Peter is there, and leaves her new friends in order to find her son.

When she arrives at Waterhouse, she walks into the middle of a land dispute between Jimmy Garland, an ex-Army officer who has an ancestral claim to the mansion, and an aggressive group of teenage boys who have taken up residence there.

When Jimmy is injured in a skirmish, Abby nurses him and the two quickly become close. Despite her growing loyalty to Jimmy, Abby must find out if Peter is at the house. She must earn the boys' trust and convince them that a truce with Jimmy would be beneficial for both sides.

In Abby's absence, her surrogate family is in danger of falling apart. Tom, Sarah, Al and Najid are drawn to the comfort and security that Samantha's community provides. Tom settles into his new surroundings quickly and starts to see himself in a position of power in the new society that Samantha hopes to build. Things quickly go wrong for Al, however, as he is ejected from the community when Samantha decides he will not fit in. Tom sees the chance to prove himself to Samantha, but will his criminal past catch up with him?

Greg and Anya, meanwhile, are left to protect the survivors' house alone, and an encounter with some unwelcome visitors provides a vivid reminder of how vulnerable they are without the group.

And then in the fifth episode:

When a so-called spiritual leader called John turns up at the survivors' home with his group of followers, some in the house are suspicious of his motives...

Charming and eloquent, John is a preacher with a unique perspective on the new world, but the family's opinion of him is split. Some find comfort in his message, while others are deeply distrusting of his motives.

Linda, a woman in John's group, is pregnant, and Abby allows her to stay until the baby is born. Anya fears that she will be forced to reveal the fact that she is a doctor if there are any problems with the birth. Worse than that, she picks up on some unusual remarks made by John, which make her concerned for the group's safety.

Al is much more positive about John's group. He spots a pretty woman called Louise and uses his charm to seduce her. He is feeling much more like his old self – until he realises that Louise isn't as innocent as she seems.

Meanwhile, Anya's fears are realised when Linda experiences complications and John's serene façade starts to crumble.

As the situation reaches crisis point, Anya is forced to confront some harrowing truths about her own past, putting her relationship with Tom on a new footing. Abby and the others also realise that, through a misguided act of kindness, they have put themselves in terrible jeopardy.

[BBC and BBC via SurvivorsBBC]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

I can't remember the last time I heard someone call a movie "magic" and "life-affirming" but according to Variety's write-up, that's what Fincher is delivering. Then again I don't really trust anyone who would use the word "magic" and isn't talking about Wizards. Here's a little part of the review:

It's magic realism propelled by extraordinary filmmaking technology but it's not remotely what I'd call cold. It creates a world of oddities and wonderful, off-kilter characters but the whole piece is anchored by a decades long relationship that gets strained, frayed, breaks and rebuilds into something profound and moving.

The achievement is big and bold and ambitious and life-affirming, but the sentimentality is always toughened by the continual sense of loss and deep sadness at the transitory nature of the human condition. If it sounds like an art movie, it absolutely is, but it's a four quadrant art film!...

Whole bunch of Oscar noms across the board in all the major and tech categories, would seem almost certain noms for Pitt and Blanchett, Fincher, Roth, Dp, editor, etc etc. There are so many supporting roles that it will be hard to sort out noms in those categories, but if I had to call out one, it would be Jason Flemyng as Benjamin's father, as he really adds great gravity and humanity to this key role.

Hey maybe Fincher can make a believer out of me, but as of right now I can't see this film as anything more than a good looking holiday flick to see with the family. But I hope I'm wrong and I leave the theater affirmed about my life (gag).

Taking on the story of a reverse aging man is no easy task. In an interview with The New York Times director David Fincher discusses the process and, "was it possible to make somebody age, to make a character you could follow from the time he’s four feet tall and 85 years old until the time he’s 25 inches long and 6 months old and dying?"

With patience and some incredible high-tech sculpting and CG work, the special effects team managed to transplant Brad Pitt's aged face right on top of the tiny old man bodies they used through out the film. According to Fincher:

We put our faith in a higher power that we would be able to figure out the performance-capture methodology. [Benjamin] lives on a boat and is a seaman for most of his life. We had these photographs of Andrew Wyeth. We loved the wrinkles in his face and the great compassion and wisdom that his face betrayed. We started with that and did sculptures based on life casts of Brad. We would hollow away material, take mass away from his cheeks, get more skulling around the eyes, do very fine wrinkling, do all this and scan it into a computer.

According the New York Times:

When it came time for Mr. Pitt to record his dialogue, a scanner was used to capture his facial movements. The results of the scan were used to manipulate the 3-D database of his digitally aged face, generating an almost literal “talking head.” “We would take that and put it back in the scene on the shoulders of actors who were cast to play Benjamin at the different ages,” Mr. Fincher said. “All of this would go into a pipeline, and 15 months after that we would be able to look at little Benjamin and know what he would look like when he was 5 years old.

Fincher also went into great detail about how different his movie is from the F. Scott Fitzgerald's original short story. Fincher's movie is a love story, but not just love for one person (although that appears to be a large part of the film) but for those around him as well. I can't wait to see a David Fincher love story told by a backwards aging baby.

Benjamin Button will be released on December 25, 2008.

[NYT]

The movie, based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, is about an orphaned man/boy who ages backwards. Fincher gives us a traveling slideshow of his Pitted marvels: Button as a brittle old man (shout-out to the makeup artist!); Button weirding-out a woman of ill repute; Button fighting on the frontlines; Button, topless, checking himself out in the mirror; and of course Button looking all strapping as he courts the graceful Blanchett. (Pitt doesn’t exude much here, but then if you saw his exaggerated performance in Burn After Reading, consider this sweet mercy.) It ends gently with a melancholic feeling of certain doom, a nuance hereto unknown to Fincher—which we welcome since he hasn't gone all Notebook on us.

In case you didn’t realize it, Button also has a leg-up in its mini-competition with long-delayed The Time Traveler’s Wife movie about a dude (Eric Bana) who jumps around randomly in time, courting his wife (Rachel McAdams) at different ages. Of course, Pitt comes out a winner either way, since he stars in Button and his Plan B Entertainment is producing the latter. Meanwhile it's looking more and more like we won't be needing a movie based on the lovely, lady-friendly, aging-backwards best-seller The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Or at least anytime soon.

Who doesn't want to grow old backwards with Brad Pitt? It's kind of creepy how much he looks like Robert Redford, but even stranger is the old man baby, yikes. The short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald has Button being born as an old man with a long white beard, but only about 3 feet tall. I wonder is the old man baby the beginning or the end of his life? I tend to think the beginning, because his surrogate family still appears to be very young when they are handed the bundle.

Also in the short story, Button's mind gets changed by his age: when he was older and in a child-like form he regressed into the mind of a baby. From the sound of the trailers it doesn't sound like his mind changes. So he looks like a baby but has the mind of an old man. Which brings it much closer to Andrew Sean Greer's classic novel The Confessions Of Max Tivoli.

David Fincher screened Benjamin Button footage at the Telluride Film Festival. First Showing said although the footage looked amazing, "Button was confusing and very long. " Calling editing on the clips "disjointed," the critic explained, "The result was quite unimpressive, but I'm left wondering whether it was the editor to blame for this 20 minute cut or whether the film really has problems."

Slashfilm also echoed concern, writing:

The footage I screened tonight was met with disappointment and concern. There are moments of magic and wonder, but interrupted and surrounded by moments which had me questioning, Is this really the best footage he has?

Maybe the mess is to do with Paramount lighting up the infamous Fincher defiance streak by refusing to greenlight his next project, a remake of animated feature Heavy Metal, unless he trimmed that fat on Button.

An interview with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's co-creator Kevin Eastman at Playlist confirms the big f-off from Fincher to Paramount. Eastman says:

They were at odds with Fincher over another project, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ they wanted him to reduce the running time… and so they said, ‘Until you step up to do what we want you to do with Benjamin, we’re not going to greenlight any other of [your] movies.’ And David said, ‘Fine, fuck you, I’m going to set up [Heavy Metal] somewhere else,’ so we jumped over to Sony and set it up there.

Therein lies the dilemma with Fincher: Tell him how to do his job and he'll tell you where to stick it, and I'm willing to bet he's right most of the time. But the complaints of "dragging" in the new film may mean he should have heeded studio concerns. The critics are being careful not to judge the movie outright, and I say wait until the final cut — because it's Fincher.

We're talking about the man who brought us Fight Club and Seven. Even his worst films are still popcorn-worthy. I think Fincher films are the kind of things you have to see all at once. You can't have a little taste like a clip reel or you're missing out on the full effect. I'm still excited to see the really old baby man that Fincher and Pitt are creating. This film might turn out to surprise us in the end.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is in theaters December 19.