Want to know more about the whys and wherefores of The Nightmare Before Christmas' new 3D incarnation? There's a handy downloadable featurette that will fill you in.
The film is on release now in many places - including the US and the UK - and I strongly advise you to make the effort to see it.
Here's a load of direct download links for trailers new... and slightly not so new.
The trailer for Jumper looks intriguing, despite having a director I know isn't really up to the job and somewhat uneven cast. I'm hopeful for something modestly successful, though. Perhaps it's just a personal thing I've had about teleportation since Alan Cumming visited the White House. Download this first promo in 1500k WMV; 330k, 850k or 1500k Quicktime; or 1500k RealMedia.
The Mama's Boy trailer might need an introduction but it isn't getting one. 480p, 720p, 1080p. Right click to save and rename the file as notexactlyjuddapatow.mov to ensure it works.
Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour wasn't on my radar at all until I was sent a link to the trailer. Then it passed right into the centre of my radar for a second or two, dimmed quickly and then passed right back into the outer reaches. I hope it's great, of course I do, but this trailer really isn't convincing.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is getting another 3D rerelease this October - hurrah! - and while early reports suggested a 3D version of Vincent would be playing with it I haven't heard a peep on that front in months. There's no mention of Vincent in the trailer, either. The fat lo-def, 480p, 720p and 1080p versions all looks suitably gorgeous.
I've been remiss in not posting the trailer for Jimmy Carter - Man From Plains before now. i'm sorry. Pick from 480p, 720p, 1080p - right-click on your choice and rename the file neverforgetbedtimeforbonzo.mov to ensure it works.
There's a second US trailer for No Country For Old Men. Hi-res lo-def, 480p, 720p and 1080p options exist for your choosing.
And, if you have Net Transport you can nab the trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera (otherwise just left click on it to stream it in - bah! - Windows Media Player).
Disney and More, one of the fifty-four million Disney fan blogs, have today scooped the other fifty-three million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine in fine style.
From somewhere, they've managed to acquire some sketches by Disney Imagineer Christopher Merrit of a Nightmare Before Christmas ride that looks suitably terrifying. There's a couple of samples below.
I went on a Peter Pan ride out in Disney Anaheim (Land? World?) and it scared me almost to death. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride actually killed me. Just for a second, but I swear: my heart stopped.
I kept my eyes closed throught much of the Nightmare-themed Haunted Mansion, but I did see the spindly, lip-synching anamatronic Jack Skellington and it was beautiful.
The Nightmare ride in these sketches was never going to be, the images come from Merritt's student portfolio. But he is now an Imagineer, toiling under Supreme Animation World Leader John Lassetter and doing good work that is going to get seen.
Not by, me, mind. My heart can't take it.
When The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D is re-released this October, a newly steresocopic remix of Vincent, Burton's early stop-motion short that simply begs to be read as autobiography, will be added to the start of the show.
Where this leaves Knick Knack, the Pixar toon that preceeded Nightmare last year, I don't honestly know, but it may still be in there, censored bosoms and all. Here's Chuck Viane (again), speaking to The Hollywood Reporter:
When you have an evergreen title like Nightmare, it is very important to give the fan a chance to sample something new. Each year on bring backs, we are going to try to add some value.
Bring-backs plural. I guess we'll be getting another chance to see Chicken Little before too long, then - and a good thing too, it was only on 84 screens first time around. Real-D has given Disney a fresh reason to repeat cinema engagements.
Estimates have the 3D cinema count approaching 1000 in the US by the time Nightmare returns in October, possibly hitting 1200 in time for Beowulf in November.
Regarding the 3D projects Robert Zemeckis is setting up at Disney, Viane hints that an announcement is drawing near. Expect to see John Carter of Mars in the title list somewhere.
According to the MouseGuest Disney podcast, They Might Be Giants have recorded a cover of Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow for Meet the Robinsons. Sounds great to me.
The trailer for Meet the Robinsons is playing in Real-D 3D before the current Nightmare Before Christmas 3D rerelease (if you haven't seen it yet, hurry) - and, frankly, looks like it has the most convincing stereo vision effects I have ever seen in a film, animated or otherwise.
Roll on March... and march on the progress of 3D cinema.
It was 111 years ago today that the first ever paying audience assembled to watch a film together. The screening, held at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris, was of La Sortie des usines Lumière or, in English, The Exit from the Lumière Factory. Of course, films had been seen before then, and in groups, but the practice of shelling out to sit down and check out a movie was born that day.
It's been a few days since I paid to see a film myself - Night at the Museum on Boxing Day. Tomorrow, I think I'll be doing it again - Miss Potter, most likely, possibly as well as or just instead of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, which I've been putting off for a few weeks, for one reason or another. I know I'm part of a dying breed - and in fact, in the last couple of years, my cinemagoing has cooled off considerably (not because I don't want to see, or pay for, the films being released, but for other, personal, ancillary reasons). I wish I could go much more regularly.
All the same, I think that ticket prices are criminally high and that this is, pretty much alone, the reason that cinema admissions are tumbling. Sure, home cinema screens are getting bigger, new iterations of digital disc media offer better and better picture quality and your own armchair is likely to be more comfortable to you than anything at the multiplex but the group atmosphere in a decent sized audience and the build-up of heading to a specific location for a specific showtime can really give the experience a boost.
And it is an experience. Imagine trying to read a good book in the middle of a nightclub, or eat a good meal from your lap on the back seat of a bumpy double decker bus - I can find trying to watch a film at home a little too like this, at times.
Some cinemas are getting it more right than others. Take, for example, the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Place, central London. The seats are comfortable enough, the projection is always of a decent standard, the selection of films is varied - and I mean that in the best possible sense - and the staff are more than proficient in their ticket retailing and tearing and customer greeting duties. What makes the Prince Charles really work, though, is the pricing.
Say I want to go next Wednesday. The films they are showing are Zidane, Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Little Miss Sunshine and Red Road. More than likely something for you in that little lot. If I want to sit and see all four back-to-back, how much will it cost me?
At most, £14. At the nearest cinema, I'd be spending over £10 to see just one film (and out here, in Oxford, that's two normally-priced, £7 tickets) and the Prince Charles total could be as low as £9 for members of the cinema's loyalty scheme (I became a lifetime member for £15).
If I lived in London, I'd surely be one of the Prince Charles' most regular customers. As it is, I still scan ahead on their listings, on the lookout for a double, triple or quadruple bill that will make the trip to London worth it. Thankfully, they're fairly common.
So, paying for it is 111 years old... but what happens now? I'll speculate a little. Why not?
Cinema going will either become (relatively speaking) much more expensive, or much less so. I don't know which, wouldn't like to hazard a guess. Ticket prices could soar to around the £20 mark quite easily, making the 'theatrical experience' more akin to an... er... theatrical experience. With the great unwashed settling for DVDs at home and the big screen experience pushed towards (at least) the middle classes, what will that do for the blockbuster industry?
Or perhaps ticket prices will drop and the box office will swing upwards again. This one is what I'm hoping for.
Either way, it isn't hard to imagine that so-called independent or specialist interest films will be pulling in as much cinema business as the bigger budget fare before long. Furthermore, it is isn't inconceivable that the next generation of blockbusters will be made for and marketed to a more affluent audience so that, say, Miss Potter may become the model of big studio films, instead of Ghost Rider.
Hollywood Reporter are, er, Hollywood reporting that 200 more Real D equipped screens will be in place across the US by March, in time for Meet The Robinsons. Real D is an extremely impressive 3D system, employed in the last twelve months to bring both Chicken Little and Nightmare Before Christmas to extra-dimensional life. Disney have been solidly behind Real D, even calling it Disney 3D for the releases of their films - but the qurstion remains, when will Pixar movies start hitting the big screen with their third dimension intact?
Not as soon as I hoped, apparently. Ratatouille is set only for a 2D release, as is the 2008 Pixar film, W.A.L.L - E, Andrew Stanton's sci-fi follow up to Finding Nemo. Apparently, the first film that might be given a 3D theatrical run is the 2009 movie, which I hear is to be directed by Monsters Inc.'s Pete Docter and is, so far, being kept very secret indeed. And even that one might remain 2D if Lasseter and Docter aren't impressed by the 3D tests that they haven't even started yet.
So, to cut a long answer short: not yet. And not for some time.
[EDIT: And now I'm being told (by those anonymous guttersnipes that tell me things) that Toy Story 3 is a serious candidate for the Real D process. Toy Story 3D, anyone? No matter how many dimensions, they also suggest that there will be two Pixar films in 2009 - Pete Doctor's one, mentioned above, and John Lasseter's Toy Story 3, with the sequel first out of the gate, and making it Pixar's tenth feature length release. We'll see]
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