Sim is the only actor to bring Scrooge’s biting wit to the character. “There’s more of gravy than grave in you.”) Michael Hordern is the only actor to really seem like a soul in torment when he shrieks the line “Business! Mankind was my business!…” Most actors play Marley like he’s dead!

Remakes, good old John Carpenter must be wondering what is going on at the moment, Rob Zombie got it wrong once and is getting another go with Halloween II, they remade the Fog and Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York, They Live and a prequel to The Thing are optioned..I love John Carpenters films but Halloween aside they were not uber hits.

AS for the mocap stuff, I cannot see the point, in the examples given (Polar Express and Christmas Carol) whereas for Gollum there was justification.

I think the reason Pixar do so well is they make animated films that happen to be 3D, despite the origins of these guys as techies I do not think they are driven by technology.

For Christmas Carol, it must have been ‘if we use this technology we can film it all quickly and drop all the stuff in after and its all super modern and kids like computers…’

What people also like is people and their myriad ways.

I cannot imagine a CG character arriving on the scene like Clint does at the beginning of Dirty Harry and commanding the screen… maybe one day… but why bother!

(I use Dirty Harry as an example because Clint never did too much… so surely it must be EASY.)

[sighs, shakes head, gives up all hope for anything actually creative happening in cinema ever again]

As for remakes, there’s a wave of 80′s films remakes/sequels looming on the horizon. One of the more pointless ones is going to be Robocop, IMHO.

The problem so far with Zemeckis’ attempts at so-called life-like imagery is that he burns through vast amounts of money and efforts to reach (so far with no real success) the level most other films start from. And his films lack the human touch, smothered as it is by an obsession with the technical issues. A triumph of surface over art.

Polar Express was creepy, this looks obnoxious and faintly repellent. I suppose it counts as some sort of progress. Worse yet, he plans on making next a remake/sequel to Roger Rabbit with the same technique.

But what makes me despair most is that this ugly movie is probably going to perform well at the box office.

I hope you wouldn’t say that about Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation! I would have to disown you!

Yes, CGI can be a disaster — witness New Captain Scarlet too. Only Pixar seems to be able to get it right. And seemingly immortally so. The Incredibles still makes my jaw drop and eyes pop every time I see it.

I agree about giving this one a miss. The responsibility for Jim Carrey isn’t something we’re really vocal about in Canada, though. He’s a bit like Celine Dion that way. We keep try to offer them both away but no-one ever is willing to accept them…