Hacker Cinema
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2008 · Film · 166 min
Directed by David Fincher
Born under unusual circumstances, Benjamin Button springs into being as an elderly man in a New Orleans nursing home and ages in reverse. Twelve years after his birth, he meets Daisy, a child who flits in and out of his life as she grows up to be a dancer. Though he has all sorts of unusual adventures over the course of his life, it is his relationship with Daisy, and the hope that they will come together at the right time, that drives Benjamin forward.
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2 comments on Hacker News
Most years the big films which are up for Best Picture and Best Director, are often nominated for other more niche awards.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was nominated for Best Sound Mixing. And you have to wonder if it really had far and away better sound editing than hundreds of other films that year.
Thousands overall maybe, but the number of mass market films is in the hundreds.
I, personally, have a familiar definition of "mass market film". I grew up in a small town with about nine total screens, usually one movie per screen and one screen per movie. Figure they turn over 4 screens per week for new releases. That's 208 movies per year. You'd need 3-4 more doublings to get it over 1000, so it's pretty clear that "hundreds" is the better order of magnitude.
I picked a year at random: 2008. The following movies were all released in 2008: The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Iron Man, Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, In Bruges, Kung Fu Panda, Gran Torino, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, and Quantum of Solace. Your average moviegoer will easily remember more than "one or two" of those (though not necessarily the same ones).
So the proportion goes from two in a thousand to maybe five in 250, or from 1 in 500 to 1 in 50.