Okay, now I’ve never heard of these dudes before, but I guess there is this band called The Beatles and apparently they’ve had a couple of hits over years…I guess. It’s hard to tell if they’re popular or not, because I recently bought Now That’s What I Call Music 30 and none of their songs were on it. Pussycat Dolls were on there for sure, but not these dudes called The Beatles.

Anyway, news today is that Robert Zemeckis and Disney are in talks to remake Yellow Submarine into a 3-D bigscreen feature. Don’t choke on the bong water, Spicoli, you read that correctly: a 3-D version of Yellow Submarine; an experience that sounds both amazingly awesome and yet horribly terrifying, all at the same time.

Disney and Robert Zemeckis are looking to catch the wave of Beatlemania, floating a new 3-D “Yellow Submarine” for the bigscreen, with merchandising in tow and prospects for spinning off both a Broadway musical and a Cirque du Soleil stage production. [Variety]

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Fresh off this morning’s promotional shot of Jim Carrey, we now have a short video clip (below) from Robert Zemeckis’ 3D IMAX motion-capture extravaganza, A Christmas Carol.  As I said of the first picture, it still looks weird.  I understand the downside of motion capture – characters with creepy dead eyes, a movie that looks transition scenes from a video game…  But what’s the upside?  Is there really someone out there going, “Well… I like animation, but… I think it at times, it can be a little, you know… stylish.”
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LatinoReview (they also have the poster) just debuted this first still from Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey, or at least, the digitized version of Jim Carrey.  For all the talk of how motion-capture has come a long way since the zombie-eye days of Polar Express, it still looks creepy, and not in a good way.  I just don’t understand paying Jim Carrey $10 million dollars to act and then having a team of Indians in a basement somewhere recreate his facial expressions.  But then what do I know, I’m just a guy who lights up the room with his smile.

Anyone clamoring for the next Beowulf-esque epic?  Anyone? …  Well, word around the unsubstantiated rumor campfire is that Robert Zemeckis’ next project will be a motion-capture CGI version of A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey playing Ebenezer Scrooge.

Robert Zemeckis revealed in a podcast on the official Beowulf site that Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth and Gary Oldman have joined Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol. In her own podcast, Robin Wright Penn announced she was also in A Christmas Carol. There was no mention of [the rumored] Tom Hanks, Christopher Lloyd or Michael J. Fox, although that does not mean they will not be in the film. Disney is targeting a November 6, 2009 release date for the pic. [ComingSoon.Net] 

Great, so we’re gonna take a kickass cast (Gary Oldman is a God) and yet again film their digital dopplegangers rather than them?  Retarded.  I’ll concede that this makes more sense in mo-cap than Beowulf does, but I still think I’d rather catch Scrooged on DVD. 

*sigh* Oh Bill Murray, I don’t know why my mom couldn’t have banged you instead of that globehopping treasure hunter I’m always getting cryptic postcards from.