If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view clips of the vfx in the movies by simply clicking the image.

Boyd Shermis brought a refreshing irreverence to his presentation of Poseidon. He was asked by director Wolfgang Petersen to "out-Titanic Titanic, and out-storm his own Perfect Storm,” but all this would have to be done without credible story or character.” © Warner Bros.

We have come to expect brilliance from the annual love fest known as the Visual Effects Oscar Bakeoff, and the one held Wednesday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences delivered an effortless array of delights.

This year, all kinds of films were represented: from those whose only virtue was their brilliant effects, to the film whose producers insisted it looked free of effects. There were the requisite number of explosions, flying men, women and dragons, a pirate ship, stormy seas, CG animals and, in a case of history repeating itself, a doomed luxury ocean liner. Even the film with the smallest slate of vfx contained around 600 shots.

Somehow, appropriately, each year both the work and the process of deciding the evening's seven films become increasingly complex. This year's challenge featured 306 eligible films, a dramatically and frustratingly shortened awards schedule and huge visual effects-heavy films that were released perilously close to the end of the year. Talking with the incomparable Jonathan Erland, the new chairman of the visual effects branch of the academy, is both illuminating and inspiring. (Erland, who began 30 years ago as a model maker on Star Wars, is responsible for establishing visual effects as a branch of the academy.) In describing this complex process, he notes: "Each time we do this, it's really agonizing. Somehow we winnow 300+ films to seven… Each year, the committee revisits the whole process and tries to ensure it's as level a playing field as it's possible to get… And the basic premises still apply. You're looking for the way in which all those disciplines advance the core of the storytelling. You're looking for not only dazzling effects -- though they're all dazzling these days -- you're looking for the way the tools are used, how they enhance the story, how essential they are to the story. Then you can start looking at all the effects."

John Bruno showed a feast of impossibilities from X-Men: The Last Stand which included an unmoored Golden Gate Bridge landing on the shores of Alcatraz. ™ and © 2006 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. X-Men character likenesses ™ and © 2006 Marvel Characters Inc.

Erland kicked off the evening with some notable announcements, among them were that past chair Richard Edlund (who served for a remarkable decade) received the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation, and that Ray Feeney is the recipient of the Gordon E. Sawyer Award. The program began after Erland shared a couple of jokes -- one about screening all the photochemical composites first (there were none, of course), and the second about the red timing-light, epoxied into its base after James Cameron unscrewed it when presenting for Titanic almost a decade ago.

This year's presentations began with another ill-fated ship, Poseidon, introduced by visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis, who brought a refreshing irreverence not usually seen within the academy's hallowed walls. Shermis noted that director Wolfgang Petersen asked him to "out-Titanic Titanic, and out-storm his own Perfect Storm.” But little did Shermis know that “we'd have to do all that without credible story or character” on Poseidon. His 4,330-frame opening shot took us from the depths of the ocean to its surface where a huge Poseidon sailed on an open sea, a live-action protagonist (Josh Lucas) and his motion captured co-actors on the ship's fully digital deck. What followed were 15 minutes of astonishing and disturbing shots of fire and lots and lots of water: John Frazier's special effects team flooded the model with 100,000 gallons of water, but amazingly, Industrial Light & Magic led the way in providing a tremendous leap forward in full volumetric 3D water simulation (in association with Stanford's computer science department) and complemented by innovative work in their own right by Moving Picture Co. and Scanline.