Disney's A Christmas Carol Review

[cybereality]

So I just got back from seeing 'A Christmas Carol' and I have to say it was a quality film. I was a bit skeptical seeing as it was a Disney film starring Jim Carrey, but it was surprisingly well done. The CG animation was very nice, although at times almost too realistic and was walking the line bordering on the uncanny valley. The acting was top notch throughout. What really amazed me is that they kept the dialog true to the book, it was barely modernized. The story was classic as I am sure everyone has at least seen the older films if not read the book. The film still took its own creative license at times, but overall it felt authentic. There were are few funny parts but for the most part it was a pretty serious film. Overall I thought it was well done and exceeded my expectations just based on the content alone.

In terms of the stereo 3d I thought it was at the head of the class. There were some really nice 3D scenes in this film without being too gimmicky. In fact, one scene at the beginning was really breath-taking. It was a scene in the town and it was snowing. However they pushed the snow very far out of the screen. It literally appeared like it was snowing in the entire theater. I have only seen something like this once before at the IMAX3D years ago and I was glad they went all out for that scene. The rest of the film was more subdued and only a few specific parts had any meaningful out-of-screen effects. However the stereo visuals on a whole were well interwoven into the film. I would go as far to say it was part of the story. The film would not be the same in 2D. It was that essential. Other Disney films, like Bolt, did not really benefit from the 3D as a narrative tool. This film did. I would credit that to Zemekis' pedigree as a stereoscopic filmmaker. He was, arguably, the one to usher in this modern era with 'The Polar Express' so it is no wonder he was able to craft the fine-tuned stereo experience in this work. He really pushed the medium further without going too far and giving the audience a headache. I might have to say it was the most well done animation I have seen recently in terms of stereo 3D. That is not to say it had the "coolest" 3D effects, by any means. But the overall package was very solid and not cheesy in the least. I would recommend it.

[rupert]

Thanks for the review, I think I am going to have to see this soon! It seems like it'll be a great Christmas movie. I am particularly interested in the quality of the 3d. When I saw a trailer in 3d before Cloudy with a chance of meatballs it looked very impressive, especially the snow. I don't know how it would look in Imax, but I know the most immersive 3D experience I've seen was an Imax underwater documentary, so I expect it would be great.

Just wondering, did you see it in RealD or Imax?

[Welder]

I saw this also! Was indeed great! The movie itself, is amazing. There were scenes where I was double-guessing whether it was LIVE actors, or animation. That's how good the CG was.


The 3D was also very impressive! Especially coming from a company I have personally never heard of before.

There were a couple issues I noticed though. There were several parts where I noticed ghosting, and also (maybe was my theater?) anything that overlapped the left edge of the screen seemed to cause issues as well. So there were some occasional artifacts I noticed, but really, it was VERY well done!! Go see it!

(And I only cried a few times!)

Was RealD for me BTW

[cybereality]

Yeah I saw this in RealD as well. If I get a chance I might check it out again in IMAX3D to compare. Even without going though I can tell you for certain the IMAX3D is better. For example, I have seen the Avatar trailer in both IMAX3D and RealD and the IMAX blew it out of the water. Interesting I saw the trailer for A Christmas Carol about 3 or 4 times all at different RealD theaters and at one theater it looked significantly better. By better I mean the 3D was greater, more out of screen, deeper depth. So even within different RealD theaters (or probably IMAX) the experience is not always the same.

I did notice ghosting on one scene but it was pretty minor. It was the scene where he was dancing with that girl at a party. The background was very dark and you could see some cross-talk on the girls face (between 5-10% ghosting). Maybe I just noticed because I was looking so intently at her face, I don't know. But the rest of the film I did not notice much ghosting. Welder: can you explain more about these artifacts on the left-side of the screen? I am interested to understand what the differences between theaters are (or what potential problems are). I assume you are in the California area, which should have top-notch theaters being that LA is like the mecca of the industry. Maybe its possible these issues are not technical in nature but due to mis-configuration of the hardware/software. MTBS3D could possibly produce a guide to help theater owners get up to speed.

[Welder]

Well, it looks like a weird... overlap issues. Sort of like if you take two videos and overlap them, but one has the left edge missing a bit, so you only see the image with one eye.

IDK it's a bit hard to describe really.

And the owners of the theater aren't the problem, it's the employees. Theaters notoriously hire very young people, most of which work minimum wage and dislike their job. In-fact, I think the manager of the theater is younger than I am!

[Kamus]

Just saw this one myself today, sadly, in Spanish. (I'm in Mexico, and usually kids movies get dubbed...)
They did have an English subbed version, but only in 2d...

The 3d stereo was amazing IMO, i'd say the best of all the 3d movies I've seen lately, very good with a few complains i will now elaborate on:

This is the first, truly dark 3d movie I've seen on a Real D theater, and it really shows the limitations of the DLP projector used, the contrast is too low for the dark scenes (looks very gray instead of black at low light levels), kinda reminded me of my not so great DLP projector right here at home.

The other one, was this is the first movie i felt the projector was kind of light starved, seemed just a tad dim for my taste, but no biggie.

Ghosting was evident in very, very few scenes (you would really have to be looking for it too to notice it). Other than that the 3d was very well done and easy on the eyes, no eyestrain in my experience on this one.

I think my biggest complaint was the trailers shown, i was expecting new trailers (i'm sure the US version had new trailers.)

Instead i got the old Alice in wonderland trailer, the first toy story 3 trailer, well, basically all very old trailers.

I really thought the 3d was pretty damn good. So good in fact, that i don't think any live action movie can reproduce them with out CG. Some of the angles look impossible to shoot, some shots were so good that i wished they were longer than they were.

The movie itself was the same old story of course, so first timers will probably like it even more than people that have seen other adaptations or read the book.

I think this movie will really make 3d stereo at the movies have new fans, pretty good entertainment.

[cybereality]

In the US they had the same Alice in Wonderland trailer and also some Disney documentary, Oceans, that was surprisingly not 3D.