If you want to know about the specific achievements in visual effects made by this year's Oscar nominees, the CG Society website has a great spotlight on the VFX supervisors of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Poseidon and Superman Returns. Obviously we can see on screen the end results of each effect team's work, but there is a lot of interesting information that isn't so apparent, like how ILM had to invent new software for Pirates and how Poseidon actually created some innovative effects in addition to the simulated tidal wave. Through the interviews with the four men (two are from Pirates), and some great visual aids, you can get a better understanding of how and why these three films were chosen, what sequences were shown to voters during the shortlist "bakeoff" event and what each supervisor thinks of his competition. In case it wasn't already a given, Pirates seems the best bet to win, evident in the detailing of what was achieved and in the compliments given by the other two films' supervisors (plus it won the BAFTA Award and top honors at the VFX Society Awards). One thing that everyone also agrees on is that Charlotte's Web should have at least been shortlisted for the award.
