Commentary 05 Nov 2009 08:56 am
Yankees / Scrooge
GO YANKEES!
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- Zemeckis’ Disney’s Christmas Carol was reviewed in the trades.
Uh, oh!
Here are some pieces of the Variety review by Todd McCarthy:
- Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor’s new clothes in “Disney’s A Christmas Carol.” Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella and screen perennial has been retrofitted here as a so-called thrill ride in which Scrooge zooms above the streets of London and rockets halfway to the moon and back, only because now he technologically can. . . .
But then, as with “Romeo and Juliet” and other imperishables, perhaps every generation gets the “Christmas Carol” it deserves: The postwar British feature, starring Alastair Sim, was no doubt the best; next came a bloated, musicalized post-”Oliver!” version; then, in the ’80s, Bill Murray starred in a hipster “SNL”-era modernization. In this context, it makes a certain sense that the early 21st-century edition is dominated or, more accurately, dictated by technology; there’s no other impulse running through it other than the desire to create shots and pull off effects that would have been impossible, or at least prohibitively expensive, prior to the invention of CGI, the performance-capture technique and the rebirth of 3D. . . .
To capitalize upon the latter, Zemeckis favors placing objects such as hands or chains in the extreme foreground so as to create a 3D deep-focus effect. He’s also developed many scenes with an eye to moving the camera constantly in relation to the characters and settings, keeping editing to a minimum. But given the overall animated patina, this doesn’t create anywhere near the beauty or excitement that similar moves would in live-action cinematography. Also, the diminishment in image brightness by at least 20% when the 3D glasses are put on is quite noticeable.
And here’s bits of Kirk Honeycutt’s review from The Hollywood Reporter:
- Bottom Line: Exuberant movie technology overwhelms, then buries Dickens’ emotional tale.
Didn’t Charles Dickens use to be the author of “A Christmas Carol?” Well, now it’s “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” that opens later this week. Even that’s a misnomer. It should be “Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol.”
. . . as the spirits escort Scrooge through his sorry life, Zemeckis gradually makes this “Christmas Carol” his own. But as he does, with his intense reliance and belief in movie technology, this auteur shuns the beating heart of Dickens’ story.
Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is about emotions. It’s about how emotions can get stunted and tramped down, how they can be revived and how empathy and affection can bring joy to the human soul. One will find none of that here.
. . . The worst offense to the spirit of Dickens comes with Tiny Tim. He, more than any other character in this tale, represents its true spirit. In the Zemeckis version, he’s a dress extra who tiresomely exclaims, “God bless us, everyone!”
So deck the halls with praise for the crew . . . But a rousing humbug to those who confuse the media for the message.
Looking forward to it.
on 05 Nov 2009 at 10:51 am 1.Richard O'Connor said …
How fitting, the Yankees -a team that represents the worst Donald Trump aspects of New York City -side by side with this monstrous bastardization of Dickens.
A perfect trifecta would be an excerpt from Billy Idol – “More, More, More!”
on 05 Nov 2009 at 12:15 pm 2.Scott said …
I’ve seen the film (or should say “suffered through” the film).
I am not a hater of stereoscopic films, nor am I hater of “performance capture.”
But I am a paying audience member (although I saw this for free at a preview!). And I like being respected. This film does not do that.
There are fun uses for stereoscopic films. Mostly in short form, or theme park attractions. Even educational uses. Sadly, what even the BEST stereoscopic films suffer from is a 30% dimness in image in order to achieve the desired effect. This means eye strain, which means headaches after extended viewing. I’ve not yet seen a stereoscopic film that utilized the effect for STORYTELLING purposes. And this film doesn’t attempt to do so either.
Used creativly, motion capture can be very useful. Gollum comes to mind. And while the Peter Jackson King Kong film wasn’t great, it’s use of this was terrific.
But film is all about character and emotion. Good visuals are icing on the cake. This film has none of these things, nor does it have visual clarity. And that’s BEFORE putting the dimming stereoscopic glasses on. From a story point of view, it’s strictly a pageant–a rote telling of the Dickens story filmed a thousand times, and a thousand times better. The actors might have supplied performances worth seeing, but the director, Robert Zemeckis, denies us, the audience, from seeing them. I miss seeing Bob Hoskins in films. He’s a terrific actor, even if you include the horrible Zemeckis atrocity, Roger Rabbit (he’s the most animated thing in the entire film!). But at least we got to SEE him.
The performance capture is still zombie like. And since the film reportedly cost almost $300 million, one wonders why it wasn’t done with live action and makeup. It would have looked better, been cheaper, and not robbed the audience of the performances of the actors. What was Disney and Zemeckis THINKING?
The actors are smothered in some of the ugliest “designs (and I use this term loosely)” ever put on film. It’s like a maudlin Thomas Kinkaide painting by a monkey on a bad acid trip. It is UGLY, and often gets in the way of visual clarity. The characters are so over rendered, with no discrimination or taste. The environments fare a little better–if only because they’re more simply displayed. But I was never once convinced these characters inhabited this environment–it’s 2 different films.
Frankly, the film is s repulsive to look at, it’s almost impossible to get into the thinnest of paper thin versions of the story attempted on film.
The whiz-bang of the stereoscopic effects also hinder any emotional involvement with the story or characters, and never add anything to it.
I’m not one for shielding children from scary elements in films, if it’s appropriate to the story. But the frights in this film are unwarrented, and will no doubt, seriously affect box office. Parents be warned–this is not a family film. I don’t have a problem with that–but it’s not what it’s being marketed as.
I am of the mind, however, that what will scare children and adults alike most is how appallingly bad and ugly this film really is. THAT’S what should scare them. It sure scared me.
on 05 Nov 2009 at 12:50 pm 3.Michael said …
Thanks for the review, Scott. It sounds like the same film Variety reviewed. In the TV trailer alone a wreath, icicles, Scrooge’s face, ghosts, a door and other things are thrown at the screen. I get it; it’s in 3D. That means there’s not much else.
By the way, the actual reported budget for this film is in the $175 million range.
on 05 Nov 2009 at 2:58 pm 4.Floyd Norman said …
A totally wretched motion picture.
I only hope the ghosts of Charles Dickens, Walt Disney and Jim Henson pay a night time visit to Bob Zemeckis on Christmas eve.
on 05 Nov 2009 at 3:12 pm 5.Doug said …
This is a great review! Not that you can trust a trailer to give you a feeling for the movie but this confirms everything I thought when watching the trailer … yuck! Nothing could tempt me to see this film. I wonder how history will look at this period of filmmaking and Zemeckis specifically?
on 05 Nov 2009 at 4:41 pm 6.Ricardo Cantoral said …
Bob Zemeckis loses my respect every year. Ten years ago I could call Zemeckis a compitent fun filmaker who had enough substance to satisfy. Now he is just a tech geek with too much money being thrown at him.
on 05 Nov 2009 at 4:43 pm 7.Ricardo Cantoral said …
Hell even in Cast Away, his last good film, he couldn’t resist throwing in a stupid CGI moment with that whale.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 12:49 am 8.Mac said …
I actually enjoyed Roger Rabbit, am I in the minority?
on 06 Nov 2009 at 1:06 am 9.Ricardo Cantoral said …
Mac you certaintly aren’t. However I hate Roger Rabbit.
I am glad Chuck Jones ripped that film a new one in his CONVERSATIONS book.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 3:08 pm 10.Bruce said …
Wow — what a bunch of haters (Mike included). It’s funny to me how angry people get over mocap. I think you should be supporting and cheering on this new way of film-making just because it gives animators more job opportunities. After all mocap is just an expensive pencil.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 4:50 pm 11.Michael said …
Bruce, sorry if you don’t like my dislike of MoCap, but I don’t consider it animation AT ALL. It’s electronic puppetry.
However, when it’s done as ugly as this film is (for $175 million), I can’t help but air my thoughts. Mind you, though, I’m still not angry. Bad films are everywhere. As a matter of fact, I have a hard time thinking of five I’ve loved this year – live or animated.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 5:09 pm 12.Ricardo Cantoral said …
Okay the “it’s giving animators jobs” is a strawman’s argument.
And Mike, you are so right. In general you CAN’T equate computer tools used as animation such as pencils and brushes. Computer tools subtract the human element out of art and that’s why it always looks artifical.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 6:28 pm 13.Pierre Fontaine said …
It seems to me that one shouldn’t look at MoCap as an animation tool but as a film-making tool. Zemeckis has done some very interesting things with the technology, but he also makes some damn frustrating film-making decisions that sadly draws the viewer out of the filmic “experience” he tries so hard to establish.
For instance, I liked The Polar Express quite a lot, especially once I sat back and accepted the use of the MoCap technology. I found the film quite lovely, at least until that elf-band/Aerosmith cameo happened towards the end. That one element totally threw me right out of the nice two hour Santa fantasy I was having in the movie theater. That’s a poor film-making choice, not a MoCap fault.
Another example is that I wish the characters in Beowolf didn’t look exactly like the vocal actors. Once again, I was thrown out of the film when I realized that I was watching a creepy virtual Anthony Hopkins. That’s another unfortunate film-making decision of Zemeckis’ part.
At least Tom Hanks got to assume multiple roles in Polar Express and his Conductor character was removed just enough from the real actor that I grew to accept him after a few minutes. I have high hopes when I see that Scrooge doesn’t look like Jim Carrey. I don’t know about the rest of the cast but hopefully they are also treated as interpretations rather than creepy virtual versions of the actors providing the voices.
I’m sorry that Disney has decided to market the film as a 3D experience rather than a human experience. All that zooming around just looks foolish and I fear that Zemeckis has chosen to punch the film with such sequences at the expense of the story itself. Also, this is “Disney’s A Christmas Carol”? How incredibly moronic to remove Dicken’s name from the title. That alone provides me with quite a lot of ill will towards this film.
I confess that I haven’t seen the film yet but I’m hoping that the core of the story still resonates, regardless of the medium, and Zemeckis’ odd filmic decisions and Disney’s crass marketing.
For the record, I’m awfully fond of the TNT version done a few years back with Patrick Stewart. I thought that version managed to minimize the spectacle and treat the story with respect.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 7:06 pm 14.Bruce said …
I respect your opinion Michael but how can you say mocap isn’t animation when dozens of animators work on it (with backgrounds from Disney Feature to Deamworks)? I agree the performances are bland and lack appeal but that’s where talented animators and animation directors need to be allowed to step in and perform. I just don’t think Zemeckis has the right vision for how TRUE animation can help his fledgling ‘performance capture’.
on 06 Nov 2009 at 11:04 pm 15.Jenny said …
An animator can be hired for a lot of jobs in film and not be “animating” or doing what one can describe as an artistic task, so simply saying an ex-Disney/Sony/Dreamworks/Yournamehere studios person is doing some mocap means nothing particularly definitive.
Mocap by its nature just about the most constricting, dead-end, pointless motion picture approach it’s possible to imagine. It’s a bunch of tedious, overpriced, unbending, cold bells and whistles that delight only the people watching its end results–fully-lit, rendered and rigged dailies. At the same time it reduces anyone with an artistic talent in this very special and shrinking field to a drone among drones, each individual now an animation Sisyphus trying their damndest to get life from a crudely constructed mass of virrtual dead tissue.
They fail because failure is preordained by the intense wrongness and ugliness of their characters(not their fault) and the clunky software(ditto), but they’re doomed to try, try again the next day or next scene and always meet the deadlines.
It’s a living, yes. Art it’s not. The ink & paint girls at any studio used more of themselves and their talents in the controlled sweep of a crowquill or brush than a mocap person is able to do with these “tools”. But those girls-the cogs of their day, and they knew it-worked on things of charm, wit and often beauty. They knew that too.
I know professionals such as the people who were employed on this film take pride in doing their best. I also can’t believe that any animator, any artist would truly choose to do mocap work over any other type of animation known to man.
“A Christmas Carol” is one of the most famous stories in english a hundred and fifty years after publication for a reason. It’s so solid and so well crafted that it can withstand just about anything, including this. But my love for the story and what someone can do with the material when reinterpreting it (see Dick William’s version)makes me angry to look at this…thing and I believe that anger is justified.
And I have to add–I love Todd McCarthy(even when I disagree with him, which I don’t here).
on 07 Nov 2009 at 8:49 am 16.Michael said …
I don’t think I’ve seen that written better, Jenny. Thanks for your thoughts.
on 07 Nov 2009 at 11:31 pm 17.Jonah Sidhom said …
I really haven’t seen too many good uses of mocap. I find I only like it when it’s not trying to be photorealistic and accepts the fact that it’s digital puppetry. Sid the Science Kid might be the best use of mocap I’ve seen so far, because the characters feel like puppets. I guess it’s only appropriate that is comes from Jim Henson Productions.
on 08 Nov 2009 at 10:09 pm 18.Vincent Alexander said …
I actually don’t have a problem with motion capture as a tool. I think it was used effectively when creating characters like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings and Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. In those instances, they used it to show characters that couldn’t be filmed in live-action, and yet wouldn’t have looked right if they were animated traditionally.
And yet, making movies where all of the characters are animated in mocap – even the human ones – seems misguided at best. Mocap may technically qualify as animation, but it is, for all practical purposes, a special effect. Special effects sometimes looks spectacular within a movie, but they shouldn’t be asked to carry an entire film, which is what Robert Zemeckis is doing now. He has directed some of the best movies ever made (Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit especially), but he’s become blinded by this new technology, and he keeps sticking it in all of his films, whether it fits or not. So far, the results have been unsettling and fake.
I haven’t seen “A Christmas Carol” yet, but I’m particularly annoyed that they would spend all kinds of money hiring a rubberfaced actor like Jim Carrey and then cover him up with CGI. Talk about a waste.
on 11 Dec 2009 at 10:35 pm 19.eugene schiller said …
Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” sticks close to the letter of the Dickens’ original, while adding a few elements from the Alistair Sims version. Some of the more “fantastic” effects – Marley’s ghastly, drooping jaw, or the ghost of christmas past (visualized here, as a flame-like apparition) are clearly described in the book. Actually, apart from a few “cinerama” type thrill rides, the film is quite sober and slowly paced. Not terribly commercial.
Mo-cap is not a substitute for live action – it’s animation…and this Christmas Carol, to my eyes at least, is more ‘convincing’ than anything I’ve seen in cgi, as well as a huge advance over “Polar Express.”
And though I despair of ever seeing true technicolor on the big screen, ever again, the film looks incredible. The opening scene, which takes us from the rooftops and down through the streets of London, and especially, the entire sequence with the ghost of Christmas present, are handled with true brilliance.
on 12 Dec 2009 at 8:49 am 20.Michael said …
Eugene, I’m glad you liked the film. It’s not my cup of tea, but I know that quite a few people seem to be enjoying it.
on 13 Dec 2009 at 4:40 pm 21.eugene schiller said …
Michael – love your blog…the best by far on animation. I spoke my piece, simply because I couldn’t understand why everyone was bringing out the heavy artillery to shoot this thing down.
I’ve bemoaned for years that cgi has ruined the animation business, mainly by rendering the old methods obsolete (“The Princess and the Frog” nothwithstanding). For me, the most exciting animation news of the year was the Bretislav Pojar 4-disc box set from Sony/Japan, and le best of “so British” (Halas & Batchelor) from Heeza.com. And, I look forward with anticipation to the newly restored “Jeannot l’Intrepide” to be released early next year. I’m basically reactionary by nature, which doesn’t prevent me from admiring the best things in Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” (in 2-D, I might add.) Regardless of what this means for animation in general, this film, more than any other I’ve seen, shows the enormous potential of the new technology.
on 19 Jan 2010 at 1:35 pm 22.Amy L. said …
Eugene – I am looking for Le Best of “So British” specifically for Snip and Snap. I tried the link you mentioned and Heeza.com is a non-working website. Could the site name be spelled differently?
on 04 Feb 2010 at 2:09 pm 23.gene schiller said …
Hi Amy! Go to google and type in heeza – it’ll pop up! Best regards, Gene
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