Visual Effects finalists

So, the Oscars just announced the seven finalists for the "Best Visual Effects" award. Yeah it's a little odd the way they do it, but it's good to see their way of thinking.

“Australia”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Hellboy II: The Golden Army”
“Iron Man”
“Journey to the Center of the Earth”
“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”

This list will be narrowed down to the final three official nominations when the entire list is announced on Jan. 22.

A few thoughts:

I have seen four films on that list; “The Dark Knight,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” “Iron Man” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

“The Dark Knight” should be on there, I bet it will make it to the final three.

“Hellboy II: The Golden Army” has really great costume and creature designs, but when it comes to the CGI-fight scenes they look CGI. That is a bad thing in my book.

“Iron Man” is a strong candidate. I watched some behind the scenes footage from the film and there were parts of the movie, like Robert Downey Jr. just standing around in parts of the armor which I thought were not CGI, but a really good costume design person, but turned out to be total CGI. I was really impressed. The only downside is the scene where he really uses the armor for the first time against the terrorists. That scene didn't have the greatest CGI, the filmmakers probably didn't send in that scene to be judged. Smart move.

“Journey to the Center of the Earth” is the weakest of the four, in my opinion. There were some clever moments, but mostly everything was overly colorful and bright. My eight-year-old niece loved the movie, I was just somewhat impressed.

One major omission is "Cloverfield" which I thought had the best CGI this year. My whole arguement is that normally is has to be hard to make good special effects on normal movie cameras. How harder is it to make great effects on handheld cameras?

Other films taken off the original 15 movie shortlist; “Quantum of Solace” (Which had good CGI),
“The Spiderwick Chronicles,” “The Incredible Hulk,”
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (The CG gophers killed it I bet), “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Hancock” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.”