The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that seven films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 81st Academy Awards®.

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

“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”

On Thursday, January 15, all members of the Academy’s Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 15-minute excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films. Following the screenings, the members will vote to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.

The 81st Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 22, 2009.

No — it’s not a new iPhone Nano. Or a Mac Mini with media software. Or a 17″ MacBook Pro with a non-removable battery (who thought that would be a great idea?).

But rumors have come our way via the prep for MacWorld in San Francisco that Autodesk will be showing off new OSX versions of Toxik and Mudbox at their booth. Normally, we don’t post rumors without confirmation, but this comes from some pretty good sources outside of Autodesk. No official word from Autodesk at this point in time….guess we’ll have to wait for the show floor to open to find out for sure. If true, it’s nice to see Autodesk sharing a bit of OSX love and this could make a lot of artists with OSX systems quite happy.

If you have any details, feel free to post in the comments section.

 This week we start by interviewing Industry legend Harrison Ellenshaw. Harrision is a Oscar Nominated matte painter who went on to run Buena Vista Visual Effects (BVVE). He has worked on films from Star Wars to Tron. BBVE credits include Dave, Honey I Blew Up the Kid, The Santa Clause, James and the Giant Peach, The Phantom,  Escape from LA and The Pelican Brief.  His father, Peter Ellenshaw, worked with Walk Disney and won an Oscar for Mary Poppins. It was a great honor to interview Harrison and discuss his work.  

In the second half of this weeks episode, our fxphd tip of the week focuses on how to shoot Green screen correctly on RED, and compares Tungsten and Daylight for sensor response in keying.

Visit the fxguidetv page for direct downloads and RSS feed links. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link. We highly recommend you also check out Harrison Ellenshaw’s Web site http://www.ellenshaw.com