PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END

Continuing the Sneaky Cheetah's neverending quest to see every Oscar nominated film before Sunday!

Nominated for Best Visual Effects and Makeup

The finale of the Pirates trilogy sailed into theaters this summer, breaking box office records. It's pretty entertaining too. At times it's weighed down by a dense plot that is no easier to decipher if you've see all three films. But in the end, it's about sword fights, cannon fire, double crosses, glass eyes, a parrot, a monkey, and a bottle of rum. What more could you ask from your summer blockbuster? Better than Dead Man's Chest yet not nearly as good as Curse of the Black Pearl. Look for a shutout on Oscar night.

The Sneaky Cheetah's Grade: B

The top notch visual effects team is led by John Knoll, winner for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and nominated for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Hal T. Hickel also won for Dead Man's Chest and was nominated for Curse of the Black Pearl. This is the first nomination for Charlie Gibson. And our ol' friend John Frazier, also nominated this year for Transformers, won in 2004 for Spider-Man 2 and was nominated for Twister (1996), Armageddon (1998), The Perfect Storm (2000), Pearl Harbor (2001), Spider-Man (2002), and Poseidon (2006).

Ve Neil is Tim Burton's favored makeup artist and has 3 wins, for Beetlejuice (1988), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Ed Wood (1994). Also nominations for Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1994), Hoffa (1994), and with Martin Samuel, Curse of the Black Pearl, and Dead Man's Chest.