The original article is in Spanish, but FilmDrunkard “argentino” helpfully translated for me (even though his non-Spanish-sounding name leads me to suspect he’s descended from escaped Nazis).  The gist is that Robert Zemeckis, a once-good director who’s been torturing his audience with pointless motion-capture animation for his last three movies, thinks motion-capture should have its own Oscar category.

“I’d say that the appropriate thing would be to create a new category, like when Walt Disney made the first animated movie. He got a special award since no one had ever done that.”

In 1939 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Disney received an honorary Oscar for innovation resulting for the film. [LaTercera]

Say what you will about Zemeckis, he did sort of pioneer the technique of motion capture, which is kind of like animation, but creepier and less creative, and kind of like live-action, but not quite lifelike and everything looks like it’s wearing a condom.  (I hate this, there’s no feeling!).  And for that he deserves to be recognized. I say they give him the Smellovision Memorial Do Not Want Award.

After three movies, Robert Zemeckis is still dead set on this motion-capture stuff even though no one besides him seems to like it.  I don’t hate it, I just don’t really get it.  If you want the characters to look sort of like the actors but stylized, use makeup.  It looks better.  If you want them to look nothing like reality, just animate them altogether.  Mo-cap is a weird, off-putting hybrid, like John Travolta in drag (as opposed to an awesome hybrid, like bearsharktopus). Anyway, the jury’s still out on whether A Christmas Carol will be a success or a bomb, but Zemeckis is already doubling down on the mo-crap with an adaptation of The Nutcracker.  From Pajiba:

To be sure, this is not an adaptation of the popular Tchaikovsky ballet (fathers everywhere can breath a sigh of relief) but an adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original novel, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Zemeckis’ The Nutcracker will be a faithful adaptation, as well. It’ll be a period piece, set in 19th century Russia, which will explore how the cursed Nutcracker character came to be and the battle between the dolls and the mice.

You catch that?  The Nutcracker, it’s about rich, 19th century kids’ toys that come to life, not what your mom used to eat at frat parties.  Though if you ask me, the idea still sounds a little, shall we say, jacked off on.

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.”

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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.