Commentary 11 Nov 2009 08:33 am
Veteran’s Day / What I like about The Christmas Carol
Happy Armistice Day
This is the day originally set aside to celebrate the signing of the Armistice ending World War I. In honor of this day, the Rauch brothers, Tim and Mike have placed their short film, Germans in the Woods, on Youtube. Take a look, if you haven’t seen it. It’s a good film.
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- I haven’t seen Zemeckis‘ The Christmas Carol, but I eventually will. There’s an Academy screening next Tuesday, but I’ll have to miss it. A more interesting event has surfaced which I’ll attend. (Henry Selick is having a meet-and-greet as part of his Coraline promotion.)
I’ll probably see it on DVD since I don’t like the 3D experience. (I don’t much like seeing grayed-down movies, and those glasses certainly do that.) The film looks to me like one of those 1950′s 3D movies. Everything and its brother looks to be hurled at the audience so your headache can come even sooner than it would with the 3D process, alone.
Then there’s the Mo-Cap issue. I honestly don’t think of this “process” as animation. I do liken it to puppetry – electronic puppetry. Jim Carrey is one of the puppeteers of his character and too much of him comes through for an animator to claim “character animation.”
Regardless, I’ll eventually see it for the film, itself. Zemeckis has made a few competent films in the past, and there’s a possibility he might make another one. Castaway was my favorite film of the year 2000. I still find myself absorbed whenever it plays on cable. It’s unlikely, but maybe this will be Zemeckis’ Mo-Cap Castaway.
Aside from all of these obvious reasons why I’ll probably dislike The Christmas Carol, there’s one reason why I already like it – sight unseen.
This is a digital film. It’s only a hop skip and a jump away from all those films Pixar and Dreamworks make. The computer also rules those films. However, I’ve never quite understood why those big studios are intent in designing films that imitate puppet animation. Why, with the tools at their hand, do the films have to inhabit the child’s world of those Viewmaster puppets when they have the whole of the art world at their hand in 2D animation?
Zemeckis has found that he can make films look like Impressionist paintings (even when they aren’t well rendered) rather than puppet films. Monster House and Happy Feet used the same technique Zemeckis employs to create their mundane puppet worlds, but Polar Express used a 2D style in a 3D environment to get its look. The same was true for Beowulf and The Christmas Carol.
True, the images in those three films are frighteningly ugly, but one wonders what they might look like if some hugely talented artist were designing them. Perhaps that’s what he plans for his next film. Robert Zemeckis presents Walt Disney’s The Yellow Submarine. (Don’t forget that Zemeckis did I Wanna Hold Your Hand as his first major film.) Will anything of Heinz Edelman be left? Will the Beatles be hurled into the audience, or how about the Submarine, itself? We can only wait and hope.
Like those monkeys sitting at typewriters, we’re still waiting to see them write Hamlet. Maybe now that they have computer keyboards, it might be easier for them.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 10:57 am 1.Grant said …
I disagree that CC is a “hop skip and a jump” from the films of Pixar. There is no comparison. Whatever you may think of the final results (which, in all honesty, the only thing that counts), the artistic choices leading up to the end result are ARTISTIC CHOICES based o decisions by artists, not technicians. I happen to think that “Up” is the best designed film of this entire year–live action or animated. And I happen to think it’s far better as a film, and far better designed and animated than any animated film in at least 5 years, if not more. More confident, restrained, and supportive of the story than a simple film like Kung foo panda, which looked nice, but didn’t offer much beyond that. The “simple” look of “Up” must have been an incredible challenge for production designer Ricky Nierva to get to the screen as beautifully as he did. It’s elegant simplicity hides the fact, if you look at it carefully, that it is a beautifully, intricately designed film, which never gets in the way, and is always in support of the story.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 11:03 am 2.Michael said …
I agree that UP was technically fine, but I prefer Kung Fu Panda – even though I’m also not a fan of that film. KFP started out as the same film it ended up being. UP was, to me, a very different film at the end than it started as.
Christmas Carol, as a film, undoubtedly (I haven’t seen it) won’t be as good as either of those two films, but I prefer the fact that it doesn’t attempt to look like little animated dolls but tries to look like animated painting. That’s my sole point in writing this piece.
Different strokes for different folks.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 2:35 pm 3.Tommy said …
Then you may enjoy the upcoming Disney film “Rapunzel”. It will be CG in a painting style.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 2:42 pm 4.Michael said …
I look forward to it, hopefully the story will be good.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 3:21 pm 5.richard o'connor said …
From what I understand of “Rapunzel” there’s a lady with long hair in a tower. Some kid climbs up it and they live happily ever after.
On a less snide note, I wholeheartedly concur that “motion capture” bears only a passing resemblance to the process of animation. Anyone who has given serious thought to what constitutes “animation” couldn’t convincingly argue otherwise.
That’s not a statement of quality but of ontology. Just as Bill Baird could do great work with marionettes, great work can be made with this process.
As monstrous as these Zemekis appear, they do attempt to evoke a painterly aesthetic. Hopefully “motion capture” is just waiting on its own Winsor McCay to breathe some artistry into it.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 9:49 am 6.Mike Rauch said …
Thanks for the mention Michael!
on 12 Nov 2009 at 11:29 am 7.George Griffin said …
I don’t know about ontology, but Zemeckis, despite rubbish like “Gump,” has often attempted to fracture, stretch and marry those artificial categories to which we frantically cling. I’m thinking of “Roger Rabbit” (with Williams’ brilliant characters) and “Beowolf,” that most satisfying descent into comic depravity.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 4:47 pm 8.Grant said …
Roger Rabbit has no brilliant characters, or much good animation. I could live with that if the film had a story or characters worth caring about. I do wish, however, that the whole thing just weren’t so UGLY.
on 17 Nov 2009 at 12:29 pm 9.Dan said …
It’s almost too easy to rip into Zemeckis’ mo-crap…so I admire the restraint. Why do studios keep giving him money? Sigh….
As a huge fan of Yellow Submarine, I have only the lowest expectations of Z’s re-work. I think he should also re-do Citizen Kane and 7 Samurai while he’s at it, just to spread his “love” to other classics.
What gets me is that the medium is SO distracting to the story, and the bigger crime is that I believe it’s intentional. In other films/shorts you could acknowledge the medium (like in Gremlins where the film stops and burns because the Gremilins are supposedly in the theater, or the way Tex Avery used to acknowledge the cartoon medium for laughs). But in Z’s films, he puts more emphasis on showing a hair on someone’s mole than staging a scene or developing any emotional flow. I honestly think it’s more important to him. Did anyone else see the scene in Beowulf where it’s raining in the foreground but the characters are bone-dry? I’m serious.
I love the monkeys/Hamlet analogy. It’s true. Nice article, Michael!
on 18 Nov 2009 at 2:03 pm 10.Floyd Norman said …
Walt Disney seemed able to live with success and remain creative. This new generation of film makers seem obsessed with their “toys.”
They need to remind themselves why they became filmmakers in the first place.
Quick! Somebody give them a Super 8 Camera and a hundred bucks to make a movie.