Jim Carey is haunting...himself.

(Disney) Starring the voices of Jim Carey, Gary Oldman, Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth, Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, Ryan Ochoa, Jacquie Barnbrook, Lesley Manville, Molly C. Quinn, Fay Masterson, Fionnula Flanagan, Leslie Zemeckis. Directed by Robert Zemeckis

No matter how badly we behave, no matter how heinous the acts we have done in our lives, there is always a possibility of a second chance. It is one of the most wonderful things about being human.

Ebeneezer Scrooge (Carey) is a miserly fellow, bitter and curmudgeonly. He is feared and despised by the citizens of London circa 1842. After his partner Jacob Marley (Oldman) dies on a Christmas Eve in 1835, Scrooge continues to operate his counting house, bullying his clerk Bob Cratchit (Oldman again). Scrooge saves particular vitriol for Christmas, which he proclaims as “humbug.”

Scrooge is visited that Christmas Eve first by his nephew Fred (Firth) who patiently invites his uncle to Christmas dinner, which is refused. Fred is puzzled as to why his uncle despises him so, but it seems to be tied to his marriage. Later, a pair of businessmen collecting for charitable donations receives Scrooge’s distinctive philosophy on life (the famous quote “Are there no jails? Are there no workhouses?”) but no cash.

Upon returning home, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley who warns Scrooge he is to be visited by three ghosts; the Ghost of Christmas Past (Carey), the Ghost of Christmas Present (ditto) and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (you got it). At stake his Scrooge’s soul, and the life of Cratchit’s son Tim (Ochoa).

This is one of the most beloved and best-known stories on the planet and director Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, The Polar Express) has the tall order of making a story so known to many seem fresh and new. Most of us can quote Charles Dickens’ original story word for word and know the story backwards and forwards. With so many already-filmed versions to choose from, the public can afford to be choosy and set high standards for any new films. Making one that stands out from the crowd is no easy task.

Most versions of A Christmas Carol depend heavily on the performance of the actor playing Scrooge. Actors have generally been classically trained English thespians, but from time to time comedians (Bill Murray comes to mind) have also tackled the role. Carey is perhaps the most unusual choice for the iconic miser. I’m not particularly fond of Carey – he tends to mug around a bit in my opinion – but one can’t deny the talent. He tackles the roles of Scrooge in all his iterations, as well as all three of the ghosts. For the most part, he restrains himself but from time to time Ace Ventura shines through.

The supporting cast is pretty good. Hoskins displays bonhomie as Fezziwig, while Penn is solid in the dual roles of Belle, Scrooge’s love interest and Fanny, his sister. Better still is Oldman, whose portrayal of Bob Cratchit (complete with Cockney accent) is superb. His scene during the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sequence mourning his son is incredibly moving.

After a great start with The Polar Express, motion capture hasn’t really lived up to its promise. The visuals are spectacular, eye-popping really. Zemeckis has a terrific visual sense and crafts a movie that captures the imagination. Unfortunately, it doesn’t capture the heart (except for the Cratchit scene mentioned above). There’s far more emphasis on spectacle than there is on the story, and some fairly important vignettes are glossed over or cut out entirely and yet Zemeckis conducts an extended hearse chase scene that is striking to look at but ultimately feels more like a placeholder for a future theme park attraction. That gives the movie a rushed feeling that I found unsettling.

The animation isn’t perfect. Cratchit’s head is disproportionate, and his daughter Martha towers over him by what appears to be about a foot and a half or more. It looks unsettling. Also, while the faces and movements are lifelike, there is a curious lifelessness to the eyes that makes the characters look a little bit like zombies. In many ways, the more clear-cut animation of Pixar and DreamWorks is preferable because it’s more consistent; you know it’s an animation so there’s a standard for realism or its lack thereof. Here, you’re expecting a more life-like quality and frankly the technology isn’t quite there yet.

People who love Jim Carey are going to enjoy this movie because you get a whole lot of him here. People who love the original Dickens tale are going to be a bit more critical and may find this a difficult pill to swallow. The 3D effects are terrific (the snow falling is particularly nice) and definitely enhance the movie nicely. However, I can’t recommend this unreservedly. All in all, the package comes in gaudy wrapping paper with an elaborate bow, but all the pretty paper in the world can’t conceal that what’s inside is a bit empty and light.

REASONS TO GO: There are some amazing visuals here, particularly the ghosts. Zemeckis puts the story on its biggest and boldest canvas ever. Oldman gives a moving performance, particularly in the Christmas Yet to Come sequence.

REASONS TO STAY: Zemeckis sacrifices story for spectacle in several instances. Some of the figures, particularly Cratchit and his daughter Martha seem to be disproportionate. The hearse chase scene is completely unnecessary and seems to be there only to provide the inspiration for an eventual theme park ride. A little Carey goes a long way.

FAMILY VALUES: Some of the ghost sequences, particularly Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come might be a bit too much for impressionable sorts.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The earliest known filmed version of Dickens tale was made in 1901 by British film pioneer Robert Paul and was under three and a half minutes long. It can be seen in its entirety on the British Film Institute YouTube channel.

HOME OR THEATER: The dazzling visuals should be experienced on the big screen, preferably in the 3D presentation (and IMAX if you can get to an IMAX theater).

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: The Tale of Despereaux

I’m bored. Don’t wanna do stupid Am. Hist. work. ugh. We’re listening to some stupid civil war era music, and i’m about to gouge my eardrums out. No joke. Now it’s some cover of The Ants Go Marching. Icky. I know it’s really not, but it totally sounds like it.

“And they all go marching down… to the ground… to get out… of the rain…”

Ahem… Anyways. I ‘Twas watching Love Actually, to celebrate the new christmasy candles I purchased, and when the credits rolled, i saw the last name i ever thought I’d see. See, for a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out why Josh Groban’s ex-girlfriend’s name sounded so familiar. January Jones. She’s Jeannie, in the bar! I saw the name, and I just kind of coughed/choked/sneezed. Cause I’d been finally settling down after my surge of Josh-Love, when i watched it, and I truly had no idea who she was until i saw her name in the credits, blinked twice, and used the great and mighty powers of IMDB to see if it was true. She’s really pretty, which makes me wonder who ended it, or if it was a mutual thing, or if they were never going out to begin with. Cause i’ve seen some crazy couples that turned out to be false. Hmm… Shall do research, and do a follow up post. unless i forget. Which I might. Cause i do that often.

There have been a few good versions of A Christmas Carol over the years. Robert Zemeckis’ take on the Charles Dickens classic  is one of the best adaptations. Visually, the movie is an artistic masterpiece. Zemeckis’ seemed to be flaunting this in the opening  moments of the film, with everything from a one-shot swooping camera moving over and around the city and through the crowded streets to intense close-ups of the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge.

This style of computer animation (the image-capture method), has come an extremely long way since Zemeckis’ first attempt at this in The Polar Express. The characters’ expressions in that one seemed lifeless and just weird.

Zemeckis, the man responsible...

Here you can really see the actors’ performances show through their animated avatars. You could also see the visages of the actors  on the characters that they played in some cases. Jim Carrey’s likeness is imbued onto Ebeneezer Scrooge and a lot of his mannerisms were also noticeable.

I recognized some other actors immediately, who I did not know were in the film. Bob Hoskins and Colin Firth were easy to spot and Oldman’s Crachit, although having a different body type , was a spot on caricature of him. Like several other actors in the film, Carrey and Oldman both played several other characters in the movie that they were a bit more disguised as.

There were some comments by critics that have said the film ‘lacked in spirit’, but I would completely disagree. I think a lot of the performances such as Carrey’s were deliberately  understated. I went into the movie thinking Carrey’s voice work was a little shakey, but just a few lines into it, I no longer had any reservations. He’s really a good actor, and fit right into a really great cast that included the aforementioned Oldman, Firth and Hoskins, along with Robin Penn-Wright and Cary Elwes who played 5 characters.

This form of animation is still a work in progress, but I don’t think the old arguments against it, resound so loudly, anymore. Sure there are some problems that haven’t quite been ‘fixed’ yet, such as when characters simply hop off of the floor. There were a couple of parts that reminded me of the same problem in another recent movie ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ when they had a Wild Thing leap. It just didn’t look natural. That seems to be more of a lack of understanding of physics and gravity on the animators’ parts, though. When they simply can show characters and objects flying around at high speeds; they excel.

I don’t think that this style of animation will ever take the place of real actors.  You still need  someone to bring a character from script to ‘life’, but I wonder (somewhere far down the line) in the future,  if the top actors are not animators, also. Sounds a little silly now, but it seems to make logical sense to me as CGI becomes more and more convincing.

I don’t think that I need to go too far in detail about the story. Scrooge is a descriptive term in most everyone’s lexicon. The story of the antisocial miser being visited by three Spirits on Christmas Eve to force him to reflect upon his life is a well known morality play and a good one. It’s timeless and it would be difficult for anyone to go wrong with the material that Dickens’ provided. The cast and crew don’t ‘drop the ball’. I though there was a  weight to the acting and emotional resonance even if I have seen many versions of the same story.

There were enough things added without altering the story that made the movie not completely unsurprising even to those who know the story. There were many little details and moments such as the Spirit of Christmas Past’s ‘head bobs’ that kept it entertaining even in the most sombre, serious scenes. One moment that I enjoyed in particular was when Oldman’s Bob Crachit and Scrooge pause on a staircase. Scrooge himself takes more punishment than in any other version of this story and there are surprises also in the relationships between he and the 3 Spirits.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie for a myriad of reasons. Being an artist I appreciate the work that was done here. The story is one of my favorites and it’s one of those that I can watch year after year without tiring of it. I also like the fact that they DIDN’T update /dumb this down with ‘modern’ dialogue and pop culture references. Updates of old material can sometimes succeed  or fail in  grand fashion. ‘Cutting edge’ remakes usually means characters that talk like rappers or surfers and me personally, I can’t stand that when the setting is in another era like the 1840s.

This will probably one I see again, especially when it gets closer to the actual Holiday. It’s also one that I will probably buy for the DVD library. It’s the proverbial ‘visual feast’ and a masterful effort of retelling a classic tale.  I give this one 4.5 out of 5 whatevers.

Not a whole lotta' humbug... It's a good movie.

Kate Winslet is one of my favorite actors. Aside from the fact that she’s English, she’s good. Jude Law should take pride in his very, very good looks and even better acting. Cameron Diaz fits her role in the movie perfectly. Jack Black is my comedian of choice, although in The Holiday he shows off another side of his acting powers and does really well in doing so.

 The Holiday is a feel good movie that starts you off with feeling sad and sorry. In modern day England, in a small town called Surrey, an already broken-hearted writer named Iris (played by Kate Winslet) is even more devastated upon learning about her ex-boyfriend’s engagement. Meanwhile  in Los Angeles, a successful workaholic trailer maker Maggie (played by Cameron Diaz) also suffers from a break-up with a cheating live-in partner. The two meet online. Iris and Maggie swap homes, cars, and half their lives for the Holidays in an effort to escape the dramas of their lives. As they “somewhat literally” put themselves in the  shoes of the other, both experience, learn things and meet people that soon changes their lives even when they return to their own.

The story takes place in the course of a 2-week Holiday. In the end, one feels how it’s like to cry, one learns to open his eyes to what’s already in front of him, one learns to love again and the other learns to move on with her life.

This is a stunning film. I watch it once a month in all 12 months in a year. A pick-me upper.

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So there I was, laid low with my awful cold, watching dvds on the tube last night. I decided to watch a movie called “Four Christmases”.

Bluntly put, SIMPLY CRAPTACULAR. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I hated everything about the movie. There wasn’t a single character anyone could care about; as a matter of fact, I was sorta hoping that one of the main characters, say, Reese Witherspoon’s, had a highly infectious, totally lethal disease and that everyone she came in contact with (starting with her boyfriend, played by Vince Vaughn) would die, instantly.

I love Ray Charles’ song,  “That Spirit of Christmas”.  It brings happy memories of past Christmases.

One of the best Christmas movies and also the funniest movies of all time ( in my opinion) is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  The song, “That Spirit of Christmas” by Ray Charles, begins at 4:15 in this video.

That Spirit Of Christmas by Ray Charles

I hope everybody has a great Christmas day!  Let’s make many beautiful memories!

What is your favorite Christmas movie and song?  Please comment.

three nuts for cinderella…this is the christmas movie of my past , present and future…i love it.

(i did not find this version in english)

you can see the full movie here if you use my you tube playlist

the music for this movie was written by

KAREL SVOBODA

wiki says:

Karel Svoboda was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Prague, Czech Republic) and began his career as a pop composer after abandoning medicine in his third year of university. He became a member of the rock band “Mefisto” in 1963 where he played piano. Later, he composed music for the Laterna Magica theatre in Prague and for many Czech singers. In 1969 he wrote Lady Carneval for Karel Gott, a major Czech pop star. Svoboda wrote a total of 80 songs for Gott.

Svoboda composed TV scores for the German channel ZDF for over 30 years. He wrote the scores to many TV series in the 1970s that a whole generation of Europeans grew up with. Some examples of these TV series are Vicky the Viking, Maya the Bee and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. He also composed the score for the movie Three Nuts for Cinderella.

Svoboda wrote scores for almost 90 films and TV series.

He also wrote scores for several musicals:

• “Noc na Karlštejně”
• “Dracula“, world premiere in Prague on 13th October, 1995
• “Monte Christo”, 2000
• “Golem”, 2006, book by Zdeněk Zelenka

Svoboda was found dead from gunshot wounds in the garden of his villa at Jevany on January 28, 2007. It is believed that he committed suicide.

Read Review about this korean movie at the following links!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Ero_Christmas

http://www.hancinema.net/korean_movie_Happy_Ero_Christmas.php

Review about this movie? Links are at the followings!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_in_August

http://www.namb.net/christmas

The following links are Review for this movie!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Grand_Chef

http://www.mysoju.com/le-grand-chef/

                                                  Happy Christmas with Korean Movies!

                                                              Daisy Elsa

Danielle and Jenn!
We ran around in the snow.

The snow is one foot thick…!!! Oh my!!

We fell over in the snow, and left people-prints.

See? : ) I’m on the left.

I’m trying to persuade Danielle to create a blog (she’s also an RPG member, if you didn’t know.), but she won’t. I don’t know why. But whenever I bring it up, she tells me to make one. I have one. See? I’m writing on it right now… : )

I’m sorry to anyone who was excited for our Christmas movie…! I’m sorry! We had to cancel it!
The original plan was to film it on December 12, but Danielle, Marina, and Austin were unable to make it. We rescheduled for the 19th, but a sudden blizzard hit.

Maybe we can make it in January? That wouldn’t make sense though…

We’re starting Beri! in January though! : )
Be sure to watch it…!