Trailer Tuesday: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

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OK, let's take a break from superheroes, explosions, animated characters and big Summer blockbusters in general. Here's something that we have to look forward to over the Christmas period: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

All I can say is "Wow." How gloriously unusual and beautiful does this film look - a 20th Century fairy tale centred on love, life and the effect of ageing on them both? Plus, I was a complete sucker for Legends of the Fall and Meet Joe Black so Brad Pitt returning to the tragic romance sub-genre always works for me.

Benjamin Button reteams Brad Pitt for the third time with visionary director David Fincher (Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac). And if that wasn't enough, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, two of the finest actresses working today, also boost the star package.


Here's the film's plot synopsis:

"I was born under unusual circumstances." And so begins "Benjamin Button," adapted from the classic 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards. A man, like any of us, unable to stop time.

We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the twenty-first century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man's life can be.

Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond, "Benjamin Button," is a time traveler's tale of the people and places he bumps into along the way, the loves he loses and finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.


The film sounds fantastic, features some groundbreaking age-related visual effects , and most important of all, it may just be the project that finally brings Brad Pitt some much deserved, long overdue, awards attention (Pitt's only Oscar nominated performance so far has been for 12 Monkeys).

Playing ugly and slapping on the latex could very likely work as well for male heartthrobs as it does for young Hollywood beauties.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opens in the United States on 19 December. I'm sure we can expect it in South Africa sometime between then and March 2009.

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