Media Room: DVD & Blu-ray reviews

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount Home Entertainment, $29.98 for standard DVD; The Criterion Collection, $34.98 for two-disc edition; $39.99 for two-disc Blu-ray edition) — Taraji P. Henson credits tough love from Howard University’s theater arts program for setting her on the path to this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

If a Howard acting student gave a bad performance, Miss Henson recalls, he or she heard about it in no uncertain terms.

“Sit down. Next,” Miss Henson says of the hard-nosed atmosphere during her student days. “It helped me develop a very tough skin for this industry.”

That industry honored Miss Henson, a D.C. native, last year with her first Oscar nomination. Miss Henson’s performance as Queenie, the maternal presence at the heart of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” gave the film a blast of unconditional love.

The 2008 movie, to come out Tuesday on DVD, follows the odd tale of one Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), a man who ages in reverse.

Miss Henson drew upon her own experiences as a mother to help shape Queenie — and identify with a child who didn’t fit in with society.

“I felt like it was my son’s story — being black and growing up in America can be tough,” she says. “The conversations she’d have with Benjamin were like the ones I had with my son: ‘Some people will judge you.”

Miss Henson studied her own grandmother to flesh out the physical dimensions of the role.

“I spent time with her, watching where her body was breaking down and why,” says Miss Henson, who invited her grandmother as her guest on Oscar night. “I had to decide where Queenie’s body would be giving her the most pain.”

Miss Henson didn’t win an Oscar on Feb. 22 — Penelope Cruz walked away with the best-supporting-actress honors for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” — but the nomination has given her career a boost.

One of Miss Henson’s next projects, “I Can Do Bad All by Myself,” re-teams her with writer-director Tyler Perry. They first worked together on last year’s film “The Family That Preys.”

Mr. Perry’s approach echoes her Howard University days.

“If [Mr. Perry] isn’t getting what he wants, he’ll come onto the set and get right in the scene with you,” she says. “He’ll say, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He’ll push me as an artist to find another, deeper level.”

— Christian Toto

Enchanted April (Miramax, $29.99) — Can there be such a thing as a cult costume drama? If it’s been one nearly impossible to see, there can.

Story Continues →