Like Forrest Gump Butt Better (Mostly)

It’s not surprising that the critics love The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  The vast majority of critics are writers, part-time writers, failed writers, or wannabe writers. And Ben Button is a shameless glorification of the act of writing, a sort of a parable about the power of storytelling.  At their heart, stories are a tradition of contrived bullshit that we spew to make ourselves feel better.  The strength of Button is that it lays its most obvious contrivances (a man who lives his life backwards, love at first sight, etc.) on the table from the start, so that the focus becomes not the bullshit itself, but what it is about said bullshit that makes it so universally compelling, and why it is that we can know it’s bullshit and still be compelled by it.

Button begins roughly in the present, like its closest analog, Forrest Gump, with Cate Blanchett’s character on her deathbed prompting her daughter (Julia Ormond) to read her/us the story of Benjamin Button from his diary as her final wish. The action that occurs in the present is actually my biggest caveat in recommending this movie, but I’ll get to that later.
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Having directed Fight Club, Zodiac, The Game, and Seven, I’ve long considered David Fincher one of the better directors around.  But to be honest, before today, I didn’t even know what he looked like. Now, according to Page 6, he’s kind of a dick.

DIRECTOR David Fincher is not helping his movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with his imperious ways. “We are working our asses off trying to get Oscar nominations, and he is so abusive that it’s crushing,” said an insider at Paramount. “Whatever we do, it’s not enough.” After an LA screening, Fincher was rude to John Goldwyn, who was running Paramount in the early ’90s when the movie…was first in development. After Goldwyn congratulated Fincher, “he hit Goldwyn in the chest with his hand and hurt him and said, ‘That’s for you, for not greenlighting the movie when you had a chance.’ ”
Our insider said, “If we never hear the name David Fincher again, it will be too soon.” [NYPost]

Hmm, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Post, but your source seems to speak only in unnecessary hyperbole and semi-nonsensical cliché.  Have you considered the possibility that your source might be, well, and I hate to say this, but… kind of a fruit bag?  Big tough guys like me and Finch’, we get a little physical when we’re excited, that’s all.  No reason to start throwing around accusations, or claims of domestic violence.  If we’re guilty of anything, it’s loving too much.

After the jump I’ve got the international trailer for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film which takes the whole “two ships passing in the night” concept to its logical conclusion.  If you’ll notice, the writing on the Brad Pitt side of the poster is backwards, you know, because his character ages in reverse.  It’s sort of subtle and clever.  But answer me this, would it not have been even more subtle and clever if it had showed them 69ing?  Provocative yet tasteful, I think.
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (trailer here), starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Fincher, based on a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man born old who ages in reverse, opens Christmas Day, and looks pretty badass.  Therefore I don’t want to read the full NY Times feature on it, lest it give anything away.  Meanwhile, the LA Times had this picture and an explanation from Fincher:

“You’re looking at Brad’s CG face on another person’s body. To my way of thinking, it all has to be a knock out,” Fincher said of the shifts from age to age and from computer effects to practical make up. “You have to make it all work. The whole thing that we called the hand offs — you’ve got to make it all seem like the same guy, and one of the things that was key was Brad is in every frame. The CG stuff is motion-capture, and it has to be his performance.”

If I was friends with this makeup artist guy, I’d hire him to make my wife up like an 80-year-old man or a miniature Brad Pitt before we f-cked.  Hey, it never hurts to spice shit up.

^{They’re f-cking adorable when they’re confused}

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a David Fincher film starring Brad Pitt as a guy who is born an old man and gets younger as he ages. It’s set to open on Christmas Day and the visuals look pretty amazing. Anyone want to bet this doesn’t make 10 jillion dollars? Of course, it’s easy to make a sweet movie about a guy who starts looking more and more like a young Brad Pitt. Story wouldn’t be nearly as heartwarming with, say, Paul Giamatti. Hello, my name is Benjamin Button. My case is curious in that I’ve been a stoop-shouldered, weaselly-looking bald guy for the last 60 years.

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