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]

Read the rest of this entry »

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.”
Read the rest of this entry »

All it takes is one look at an ugly annoying hipster wearing neon Ray Bans to know that the 80s are, like, totally hip again.  Which makes it not all that surprising that Robert Zemeckis is talking about another Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

When MTV News caught up with director Robert Zemeckis recently, he dropped a news bomb that had our eyes popping cartoon-style out of our sockets. “I’ll tell you what is buzzing around in my head now that we have the ability—the digital tools, performance capture—I’m starting to think about ‘Roger Rabbit,’” he told us.

Hmm, the original combined super-stylized cartoons with live action, and performance-capture turns live action into creepy mannequins.  So basically, his idea is to make this one nothing like the original at all?  Hard to say.  But between Roger Rabbit 2 and the inevitable Running Man remake, I finally feel confident unleashing my sweet dance moves again.  Good thing I saved all these jean shorts with lace coming out the bottom.

Robert Zemeckis is currently shooting A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, and Colin Firth.  Like Zemeckis’ last two movies, Beowulf and Polar Express, Christmas Carol will be shot using motion-capture animation.  I don’t really get mo-cap, which has neither the style of regular animation nor the realness of, uh, real stuff.  Everyone comes out looking like glassy-eyed mannequins, or Scientologists.  Still, I have to admit that this first image is pretty GD scary.  But that could just be because it looks a lot like a Nazi propaganda cartoon. Quick, hide the Christian babies!

[via the totally-not-anti-Semitic Filmz.ru]

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.