Does anyone actually like motion-capture besides Robert Zemeckis?
After the jump you can watch the first full trailer for his A Christmas Carol starring digital Jim Carrey. The 3-D, motion-capture-animated adaptation of the Dickens’ tale beautifully combines two technological innovations that I hate. I’ve said it before, but look, if you want to animate something, just draw the damned thing. (and if you want to put a fleshlight in someone’s hand, use Photoshop). Motion-capture still doesn’t look as good as photography, and none of the “nifty” effects are as cool as real-world special effects like costumes and pyrotechnics. And you know how in real life you can see people’s pupils expand and contract as they focus on stuff and adjust to light? They don’t seem to do that in motion-capture, and it makes people look… well, sorta weird. Which we might be able to accept if there were… you know, any actual benefit to motion capture. I don’t want to sit through this technology’s growing pains any more than I would’ve wanted to be the first guy to get a heart transplant. “Did it work?” “Nah, he’s dead. Maybe next time we should try filling him with baboon blood first, I just have a hunch.”
The Boston Globe is reporting that the role of Larry in the Farrelly Brothers’ Three Stooges movie, originally set to star Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Jim Carrey, until Sean Penn pulled the kind of selfish dick move that is his trademark, will be filled by Paul Giamatti.
In town this week to see Paul McCartney play at Fenway, Peter Farrelly told us that Paul Giamatti has signed on to replace Sean Penn as Larry. Playing Moe will be Benicio Del Toro, one Hollywood’s biggest “Three Stooges” fans. Still to be cast is Curly. There had been reports that Jim Carrey would utter Curly’s signature “n’yuk, n’yuk, n’yuk,” but it’s not so.
Jim Carrey dropping out makes sense, but it’s strange that Paul Giamatti would jump in as Larry. What basically happened was Penn dropped out, then a bunch of people said “Hey, what about Paul Giamatti? He’s weird looking and bald.” Then someone asked Giamatti about it and he said [via /Film]:
“They were always so dark and grim. And Moe was this ancient man with a little boy’s haircut. But Larry? I don’t get Larry. He’s strange. He’s sort of the blank guy in the middle.”
So maybe he had a change of heart. Or maybe Peter Farrelly was just drunk. Or maybe we’re all just figments of Tom Cruise’s coma fantasy, what am I, a wizard? Anyway, I don’t see this movie happening. I love the stooges, but the Farrellys haven’t made a good movie in a long time, and comedy doesn’t really age well (in fact, the latter may explain the former). If they want to get this made, they’re gonna have to change the source to a graphic novel and Larry and Curly to two warring factions of vampires.
(I’m not homophobic, the French subtitles are.)
After the jump, I’ve got the new trailer for I Love You Phillip Morris, in which Jim Carrey plays Steven Russell, a Texas family man who gets in a car accident, realizes he’s gay, becomes a con man to support his new habit of buying fancy clothes, goes to prison where he falls in love with Ewan McGregor, and keeps escaping and getting thrown back again. It’s almost as if gayness was his gateway vice. Here’s the description of the original book from Amazon:
Steven Russell, the subject of this true crime story, is a rare individual, a genius who has run afoul of the law, a prodigious intellect endowed with boundless energy, audacity and guile. Russell pulled off his first jailbreak while waving a stolen walkie-talkie at a guard as he sauntered out the front gate, and his last escape — a feat of staggering self-discipline — by faking a terminal case of AIDS over several months and forging his own death certificate. Russell also walked out of prison and into a six-figure job as a CFO of a major company-twice.
I’m intrigued by the story, but I don’t I like the direction they went with it. Call me crazy, but it’s a little hard for me to take a movie seriously when a guy jumps face first onto concrete from three stories, then shows up in the next scene with a bandage on his nose like Wile E. Coyote. But it’s about a gay love story, so you know the academy will be paying attention. The new coolest thing is watching two dudes make out for uncomfortably long periods of time to prove how open-minded you are. Or as I like to call it, Thursday.
Sean Penn, after filing for divorce then changing his mind twice in the last two years, says he’s taking a break from acting. In the process, he’s sort of screwing over the two projects he’s attached to, the Farrelly Brothers Three Stooges movie and Cartel.
It is understood that the two-time Oscar-winning actor-writer-director is taking a leave from his Hollywood career for personal reasons. It’s unclear how long the absence could last, though sources have said up to a year.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly have spent the better part of a decade trying to get “Stooges” off the ground, and in March they pulled off a major casting coup: Penn as Larry, with Jim Carrey as Curly and Benicio del Toro as Moe. Now MGM and the Farrellys, who wrote the script and are slated to direct, need to decide whether they will wait for Penn or seek to find a new actor. Time and availability are the issues: “Stooges” was eyeing a late August start date, and MGM has slotted it for a 2010 release. If the studio waits, it could risk losing Carrey and del Toro. On the other hand, half of Hollywood would poke their eyes out for the part. [THR]
That’s a shame. I know a lot of people were looking forward to the new, hellishly intense method-acting Larry who keeps slipping on banana peels on the way to identify the body of his murdered daughter.
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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