Despite pretty dreadful reviews,I saw a reliable prediction suggesting Disney’s A Christmas Carol., which opens today, might pull in $41 million this weekend. Robert Zemeckis would surely take this as a sign that he should continue with his plans to create a mocap Roger Rabbit sequel. I’ll go take a nap now. Wake me when Zemeckis is retired.

In this new featurette for Disney’s upcoming A Christmas Carol feature, we meet each of the fabled ghosts that haunt Ebenezer Scrooge throughout the story. The CG (mocap) film is in theaters on November 6th.

As per my summertime agreement, I’m doing my best to keep an open mind about Zemeckis’ latest mo-cap feature, A Christmas Carol. This trailer looks rather nice, but the animation is floaty, non-commital and kinda wonky looking. And does Scrooge spend this entire movie screaming, or what? A Christmas Carol opens on November 6th.

By Keith Staskiewicz

The season of animation is upon us. The hotly-anticipated new feature 9, not to be confused with the upcoming musical Nine nor the German negative “Nein!” arrived yesterday in theaters on 9/9/09, making it the most numerologically apt release date since the June 6, 2006 unleashing of the Omen remake.

And after 9, the deluge. From now until the end of the year we’ll be seeing an unprecedented avalanche of animation hitting mainstream American cinemas, and one that demonstrates just how many formats can huddle in under the medium’s single umbrella. We’ll see a not-so-classic adaptation of a much-adapted classic, an eagerly awaited return to form, the ambitious realization of a long-gestated original vision, and a live-action auteur’s first foray into animation, among many others, brought to us via CGI, stop-motion, traditional hand-drawn cel, and the latest performance-capture technology. It’s a good time for animation fans.

9

Focus Features and Starz Animation
September 9

In between putting finishing touches on orcs and trolls for the Lord of the Rings at Peter Jackson’s famed Weta Workshop, Shane Acker worked for over four years on a short film that would eventually be nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. Now, another four years later, his meticulously imagined world of ragdoll protagonists, apocalyptic malaise and an entire mechanical ecosystem of things that go bump in the night, is coming to the big screen. 9 is produced by Tim Burton, a man who also likes his fairy tales on the darker side, and Timur Bekmambetov of Wanted fame, and features the voices of Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer and John C. Reilly. Expanding on the mythology established in the 11-minute short and giving vocal cords to the once silent characters, Acker follows nine sentient dolls as they try to unravel their own existence as well as the terrible fate that has befallen humanity, both of which might be tied together in what Acker has dubbed “a Geppetto/Oppenheimer figure.”

Expect the film to be dark and genuinely scary. I had the opportunity to speak with Acker a number of months ago and he emphasized his desire to lend the film a genuine aura of fear and peril: “What I’m trying to evoke here is fairy tales, the real ones. They were moral tales and there needed to be severe consequences to teach those lessons. (In) some of these animated films nowadays, you don’t feel like there are any stakes. It’s set up so much as a series of gags. You don’t really feel the nature of the threat. But I tried to make that threat present in 9.” The TV ads have warned that 9 is “definitely not your little brother’s animated movie,” which sucks for my little brother, because he, like myself, thinks it looks totally badass.

I am on my best behavior today, and am keeping an open mind about the latest mo-cap feature film from Robert Zemeckis – Disney’s A Christmas Carol. I really don’t like mo-cap, except for video games or live-action fx, but I made a bargain with Zemeckis back in May so I’ll continue to force a smile. Here’s the Italian trailer for the film, which hits US theaters on November 6th, 2009.

I’m not a big fan of motion capture (or performance capture). Actually, I’ll take that further. I hate motion capture. Not entirely tho – for games, or special effects for live-action films – knock yourself out. But let animators animate, and save your green body suits for the next John Travolta alien movie.

Without consulting me, Robert Zemeckis, the man behind mo-cap features like The Polar Express and Beowulf, is prepping his next mo-cap film for the holiday season. A Christmas Carol hits theaters on November 6, 2009, and the first clip from the film has emerged on the web. It still looks a bit odd to me, but I suppose I’m coming around to it a bit. I’ll make a deal with you, Robert, okay? You keep your hands off the Roger Rabbit sequel, and I’ll keep an open mind about A Christmas Carol.