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“Carol” Has A Dickens Of A Time

9 November 2009 12:16 PM, PST | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »

Moviegoers were about as tight-fisted at the box office over the weekend as Ebenezer Scrooge was at the grindstone in his day. The top film, Disney's A Christmas Carol, which stars Jim Carrey as Scrooge and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, opened with an estimated $31 million, far below analysts' expectations of about $40-45 million -- and less than half what Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa earned when it opened with $63.1 million during the comparable weekend a year ago. But while most critics called the performance of the movie disappointing, particularly for a movie that was said to have cost close to $200 million, others pointed out that it took in more than Robert Zemeckis's previous motion-capture animation films, including The Polar Express, which opened with $23 million, and Beowulf, with $28 million. Besides, Disney apparently intends to milk it for another seven weekends before Christmas. "You know you're in for a marathon rather than a dash," Chuck Viane, Disney's president of domestic theatrical distribution, told Reuters. Slipping to second place was the Michael Jackson concert documentary This Is It, which dropped a moderate 39.7 percent to $14 million. (It continued to perform strongly overseas, however.) The comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats opened in third place with a better-than-expected $13.3 million. Another new film, The Fourth Kind, followed with $12.5 million. Rounding out the top five was Paranormal Activity, which fell 48 percent to $8.6 million. Nevertheless, the $15,000 film's total gross has now risen to $97 million, putting it on track to pass the $100-million mark before next weekend. Meanwhile the critically praised Precious opened in just 18 theaters with $1.8 million -- or a staggering $100,000 per theater. »

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A Christmas Carol Review

9 November 2009 12:59 AM, PST | Filmofilia | See recent Filmofilia news »

Charles Dickens’ beloved holiday story “A Christmas Carol” gets the 3D treatment, and the result is a visually stunning big-screen experience I’m sure many cinema goers out there will enjoy to the fullest extent. As far as I’m concerned, my feelings about this one are mixed.

The story doesn’t really require a lengthy introduction. The holiday season is in full swing, and Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) despises Christmas and everyone celebrating it. Then he’s visited by three ghosts who take him on an emotional journey, and before you know it, his meanness is gone for good…read more [ScreeningLog]

It’s hard to believe that Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol 166 years ago, but here we are in 2009 and Robert Zemeckis has spent $180 million to produce a motion-capture animated film that retells the famous story. The movie opens this weekend on more than 2,000 digital 3D screens and »

- Allan Ford

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‘Christmas Carol’ Wraps Up Top Spot

8 November 2009 5:21 PM, PST | newsinfilm.com | See recent newsinfilm news »

Disney’s A Christmas Carol topped the domestic box office this weekend with $31 million, besting competition from one of George Clooney’s three movies this season, alien abductions, and the latest from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly.

The figure for the 3-D winner is on the low end of expectations, but still managed to open larger than Zemeckis’ previous films, including motion capture movies Beowulf and the similarly-themed Polar Express.  The latter opened on this same weekend in 2004 before earning $162M in the States.  With the Yuletide holiday over seven weeks away, the studio still has a chance at recouping its $200 million production budget.

Nothing personal against Disney, but I hope it doesn’t make it.  A less than profitable total means perhaps Robert Zemeckis will put aside this wasteful technique and focus on something better than the twentieth adaptation of a Dickens novel.  Most of the money went towards »

- Jeff Leins

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Weekend Box Office - Christmas Comes Early... Again

8 November 2009 4:57 PM, PST | cinemablend.com | See recent Cinema Blend news »

It was one thing when Wal-mart pushed up its Christmas-time product pimping from Thanksgiving to the end of Halloween. It was even more annoying when Hollywood joined the bandwagon. And yet, while Disney's release of A Christmas Carol a solid seven weeks ahead of Christmas seems like ridiculous timing, it may be the movie's only prayer of recovering a painfully high budget. The $200 million Buena Vista sunk into transforming Jim Carrey into creepy CGI Scrooge is the most Robert Zemeckis has spent yet on his motion-capture animation obsession. It's also more than his last movie, Beowulf, grossed world-wide. Following this weekend's limp $31 million first place opening it looks like the film will need a Christmas miracle to break even. So, what were the execs over at Bv thinking? They likely saw what happened with Zemeckis' The Polar Express and figured lightning would probably strike twice. Five years ago Express opened »

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Weekend Box Office - Disney’S A Christmas Carol Takes $31 Million; Precious Boasts Biggest Limited Release Opening of All Time

8 November 2009 11:21 AM, PST | Collider.com | See recent Collider.com news »

You know it’s the end of the year when there are more new releases per week than any one person could reasonably care about. Or maybe I should just speak for myself.  The first full weekend of November featured four new wide releases all boasting some major star power: “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” with Jim Carrey (times four), “The Box” with Cameron Diaz, “The Fourth Kind” with Milla Jovovich and “The Men Who Stare at Goats” with George Clooney.  And though no one film can be said to be a total washout this weekend, the A-listers fell short compared to the stunningly successful debut of Lee Daniels’ “Precious”. The indie sensation opened in just 18 theatres, taking in an estimated $100,000 per screen to make it the most-lucrative limited release of all-time.

Title Weekend Total 1 Disney’s A Christmas Carol $31,000,000 $31 2 This Is It $14,000,000 $57.8 3 The Men Who Stare at Goats $13,309,000 $13.3 4 The Fourth Kind »

- Nicole Pedersen

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'A Christmas Carol' leads the box office with $9 mil on Friday

7 November 2009 12:31 PM, PST | EW - Hollywood Insider.com | See recent EW.com - Hollywood Insider news »

Jim Carrey, or rather a performance-capture CGI version of the actor, delivered enough holiday spirit to snatch the top spot at the box office on Friday, according to early estimates. Disney's A Christmas Carol, director Robert Zemeckis' animated adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novella, grossed $9 million on its first day. By comparison, the last major family film, Where the Wild Things Are, ate up $12.1 million its opening day, but Carol should have much sturdier legs in the upcoming weeks. Carol's total is also slightly less than the opening gross of Zemeckis' prior performance-capture flick, Beowulf, which slew $10 million »

- John Young

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A Christmas Carol Rings in $9 Million Friday Box Office Opening

7 November 2009 11:01 AM, PST | TheHDRoom | See recent TheHDRoom news »

Disney's A Christmas Carol easily won the battle of four new films at the box office on Friday by pulling in an estimated $9 million.

The Robert Zemeckis motion-capture holiday spectacle starring Jim Carrey in numerous roles bested mo-cap The Polar Express' $6.2 opening Friday but fell a little short of mo-capped Beowulf's $10 million. At its current clip, A Christmas Carol should wrap the weekend with a few million of $25 million.

Second place went to The Fourth Kind with Milla Jovovich at $5 million while The Men Who Stare at Goats earned $4.6 million behind George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.

Richard Kelly's The Box was the odd man out, coming in at $2.85 million or fifth place. Complete estimated weekend box office results will be available midday Sunday. »

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Box Office - 'Christmas Carol' Takes Friday

7 November 2009 11:00 AM, PST | GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news »

A Christmas Carol is the widest-ever 3-D release and it again reinforces that studios are looking to capitalize on the new technology. A $9 million Friday won't hurt, although that shouldn't push the film above or even near most box office estimates for the weekend, anywhere between $37 - $42 million. More than likely, this will be a low-$30s, which isn't bad, given the powerful months ahead for the film nationwide and around the world. But it's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

It was a first-place start, though, and it will win the weekend without a lot of trouble, but it's lower start than director Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf, which you could certainly argue is less mainstream. There were a couple positive surprises, too. The Fourth Kind jumped out to a $5 million Friday, good enough for second place in a competitive weekend. I wrote on Thursday that if any of the new »

- Colin Boyd

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Kevin Carr’s Weekly Report Card for 11.06.09

6 November 2009 2:34 PM, PST | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

A Christmas Carol Studio: Disney Rated: PG for scary sequences and images. Starring: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins and Robin Wright Penn Directed by: Robert Zemeckis What it’s about: If you don’t know this by now, you should be barred from the holiday season worldwide. What I liked: By this time, you should know exactly what to expect when you get a Robert Zemeckis motion-capture film. Like The Polar Express and Beowulf, A Christmas Carol is heavy on the effects and virtual camerawork and relatively weak on the character and plot. We’ve seen this story adapted so many times in so many forms – from feature films to re-tellings on our favorite 80s sit com – that there is almost no unique way to approach it. The uniqueness of this version is that the full-blown CGI extravaganza hasn’t been done yet. In this sense, it does work. The »

- Kevin Carr

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Review: Disney’s A Christmas Carol

6 November 2009 10:07 AM, PST | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

My feelings towards Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol have always been of two minds. I love the tale from the wit and greed-filled banter to the ghostly apparitions to the grand redemption at the end. The same goes for the multiple film and TV versions of the story. I'm partial to the George C. Scott version from the eighties, but Scrooged and The Muppet Christmas Carol tie for a close second. The problem I have with the story though is that very same magnificent redemption I mentioned as loving not three sentences ago. I've just never been convinced that Scrooge honestly changes for any reason other than selfish self-preservation. Sure he seems concerned about Tiny Tim's imminent demise, but it's his own untended gravestone that really pushes him towards turning over a new leaf isn't it? Now thanks to Robert Zemeckis' continuing desire to avoid telling original stories in favor of digitally manipulated versions of »

- Rob Hunter

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Movie Review - 'A Christmas Carol'

6 November 2009 1:20 AM, PST | GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news »

A Christmas Carol

Starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Rated PG

There are two ways to perceive A Christmas Carol. You can either look at this film and see a brave new use of technology to bring a classic piece of literature into the future about as far as it can go or you can see a classic story kidnapped and outfitted with bells and whistles that just get in the way.

I'm voting for the second option. And it's to the point now, three movies in, that I begin to question why Robert Zemeckis isn't picking stories that could more realistically benefit from his decade-long obsession with performance capture technology.

When it was The Polar Express, it didn't matter as much because it was the director's first foray into this new form of computer animation. More on that later. The second movie was 2007's Beowulf, »

- Colin Boyd

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A Christmas Carol Review

5 November 2009 7:28 PM, PST | Collider.com | See recent Collider.com news »

When it was announced that Robert Zemeckis was directing an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” starring Jim Carrey and made with 3D motion-capture, my response was viciously negative.  Zemeckis had left behind movies like “Back to the Future” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, movies with characters and charming stories, in favor of 3D motion-captured films featuring CG characters who resembled the voice actor except they were trapped deep within the uncanny valley (the place where CG facsimiles of people look like very expensive animatronics).  Throwing Jim Carrey into the mix to have him constantly mug for the camera made the idea of a 3D motion-captured film even more unappealing.  And “A Christmas Carol”?  How many times do we need to see this story?  Seeing it in 3D with Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge was an argument not to make the movie.  (Hit the jump to find out why »

- Matt Goldberg

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Review: A Christmas Carol

5 November 2009 6:45 PM, PST | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

The fear many of us had when it was announced Jim Carrey would play Ebenezer Scrooge and other parts in Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of A Christmas Carol was that Carrey's clowning would turn the story into a goofy farce. This fear turns out to have been unfounded. If anything, the opposite is true: The film has no personality at all, not Carrey's or anyone else's.

Charles Dickens' holiday classic has already been adapted for movies and TV dozens of times, but Zemeckis noticed something peculiar: Somehow, none of the previous incarnations had managed to be in 3-D! He sought to rectify this oversight with that newfangled motion-capture technology he's been so excited about the last several years, where actors' movements are translated into animation. The Polar Express and Beowulf demonstrated that for as neat-o as the technology is for action scenes, characters' faces -- especially their eyes -- look dead and soulless. »

- Eric D. Snider

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Box office preview: 'A Christmas Carol' set to bring some cheer to the box office

5 November 2009 4:02 PM, PST | EW - Hollywood Insider.com | See recent EW.com - Hollywood Insider news »

Feeling merry? Disney and Robert Zemeckis sure hope so as they prepare to unload the technologically obsessed filmmaker's vision of Dickens' classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, in over 3,500 theaters (2,000 of which will be 3-D). Carol starring Jim Carrey may be Zemeckis' most successful debut using his beloved motion-capture technology -- which seems to have finally overcome the "hollowed eyes" criticism that befell his earlier attempts like Polar Express and Beowulf. Now it's really just going to come down to how many people are ready for some Christmas spirit this early in the fall season. (Some of us still haven't disposed of our jack-o'-lantern remains. »

- Nicole Sperling

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Review: Did you ever see… Who Framed Roger Rabbit

5 November 2009 4:01 PM, PST | HeyUGuys.co.uk | See recent HeyUGuys news »

This week sees the release of the year’s first Christmas movie, Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol. The latest in a long line of adaptations of this classic story, Zemeckis has made it using his motion capture animation. This is the third movie Zemeckis has made using the technique, having perfected it after Polar Express and Beowulf. Zemeckis has been interested in combining human actors and animation for a long time. With news breaking last week of a sequel in development, it’s the perfect time to look back at 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Following huge success with Back to the Future in 1985, Robert Zemeckis was in big demand. This allowed him the clout to take hold of  what would be a hugely ambitious project. Live action had been combined with animation previously, most notably in Mary Poppins. No-one yet, however, had attempted a feature length movie.

Bob Hoskins is a 1940’s private dick, »

- Barry Steele

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[Movie Review] A Christmas Carol

5 November 2009 3:52 PM, PST | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »

If you don’t already know the story of A Christmas Carol by now, well… It might not be your fault, but it is an impressive feat. As one of the most well-known stories in the world, Charles Dickens’ 166-year-old story of redemption is one that has been adapted into countless plays, movies and television specials; including a Disney cartoon I fondly remember (with Scrooge McDuck playing the part of Ebenezer Scrooge, of course).

Even if you don’t know the story, surely you recognize elements of it. The grumpy Scrooge, the three Christmas ghosts, the poor family with a dying kid, the scary confrontation at a graveyard, the sickeningly sweet ending. It is the very definition of a classic. Scrooge, played by Jim Carrey, is a rich grinch desperately in need of learning the spirit of charity and giving embedded in Christmas. He does one Christmas Eve after a »

- Arya Ponto

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Roger Rabbit 2: Two-Dimensional Toons & CGI Humans?

5 November 2009 12:57 PM, PST | ScreenRant.com | See recent Screen Rant news »

Don’t act like you’re surprised. You knew this announcement was coming from the moment we first heard that director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) was making a sequel to his 1988 smash hit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It was just a matter of time, really. With three Mocap (that’s the new slang for “motion-capture”, Fyi) films already under his belt – Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol – it was a natural leap of thought to assume Zemeckis would use his favorite new toy in a Roger Rabbit sequel.

However, it appears that the Toon characters (Roger, Jessica, Benny the Cab) will not be the ones making the leap into the 21st century. According to his interview with MTV, Zemeckis doesn’t plan on using Mocap for those characters, just the human ones (as if that makes it any better). Read what he had to say below:

 

“I »

- Paul Young

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Movie Review: A Christmas Carol

5 November 2009 11:41 AM, PST | MovieRetriever | See recent MovieRetriever news »

Nov 05, 2009

Robert Zemeckis' soulless take on the Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol never once justifies its existence, displaying so many awful behind-the-scenes decisions that it's almost hard to believe that so many talented people were involved in its production. Nearly every design element of Zemeckis' third motion capture film (after The Polar Express and Beowulf, both of which had their flaws but look like absolute masterpieces next to this disaster) is just plain wrong and the overall aesthetic of the film is remarkably annoying. As the film progressed, I found ...Read more at MovieRetriever.com »

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A Christmas Carol Reviews

5 November 2009 4:29 AM, PST | Reelzchannel.com | See recent ReelzChannel news »

We think this is officially the 25th movie version of the classic Dickens tale, this time done with the performance capture technique director Robert Zemeckis used for The Polar Express and Beowulf. Reviews are split, basically along the line of how one feels about performance capture.

"...a marvelous and touching yuletide toy of a movie, and the miracle is that it goes right back to the gilded Victorian spirit of those black-and-white films of yore."

— Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"...an exhilarating visual experience..."

— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Disney's A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost."

— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

"...a whiz-bang 3-D thrill-ride with all the emotional satisfaction squeezed out of it."

— Ella Taylor, La Weekly »

- reelz reelz

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Disney’s A Christmas Carol Review

4 November 2009 10:55 PM, PST | newsinfilm.com | See recent newsinfilm news »

Merrrrrry Christmas!  What?  Too soon?  Well, someone didn’t tell Disney because they are releasing A Christmas Carol on the first weekend in November…

No less than the twentieth film adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic about Christmas spirits, the typically family-friendly studio is presenting yet another version and this time a true humbug.  It’s deceptively gift-wrapped as a whimsical update with cartoonish effects, but it is instead a dark slosh through contradictory tones and technological gimmicks.

Parents should not to be fooled by the Disney name and the PG rating.  This film is even less for kids than Where the Wild Things Are.  The ghastly figures who visit Scrooge are beyond spooky and downright haunting, especially for the Tiny Tim’s of the world.  Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner, is shown lying dead in a coffin, which isn’t as unsettling as later when his supernatural jaw breaks and falls askew. »

- Jeff Leins

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2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006

1-20 of 186 articles from 2009   « Prev | Next »

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