The 82nd Academy Awards will be held next March and the 15 movies nominated for the Visual Effects Oscar have been revealed. Here they are:

Angels & Demons
Avatar
Coraline
Disney’s A Christmas Caro
District 9
G-Force
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Sherlock Holmes
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2012
Watchmen
Where the Wild Things Are

In early January the list will be narrowed down to 7, then later in the month members of the visual effects branch will watch excerpts from the movies, and the list will be narrowed down to 3. Earlier this year it was a showdown between Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with Button’s ageing effects coming out on top.

Since Avatar Day when we got a glimpse at 15 minutes of footage I’ve had my money on Avatar winning, and from the early reviews it seems it will be a serious contender. I’m glad District 9 got a nod. Out of all the films nominated it had the lowest budget ($30 million) and the guys at WETA did a great job with those financial constraints.

Which visual effects wowed you in 2009? Who do you want to win the Visual Effects Oscar?

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In the past we’ve had short pieces of footage but now we finally have a trailer for Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge begins Christmas being a bit of a bastard to his faithful clerk and his cheery nephew. But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it’s too late.

The computer wizardry looks great, especially at the end when we get a close up shot of Scrooge. It’s a big improvement from The Polar Express.

Watch below!

As well as Jim Carrey the cast includes Colin Firth, Robin Wright Penn and Bob Hoskins, and will be released on November 6th.

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It was a dismal weekend for nation-wide releases this week in the US. Walt Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer ended up winning the weekend with their talking-guinea pig action film G-Force, which I sadly took time out of my weekend to see.

The future of 3D for blockbuster entertainment hangs in the balance, with theater owners being pressured into Digital 3D theater conversion in these economically trying times. Right now, Real D and the Regal Cinemas chain have the biggest commitment to furthering 3D projection with Regal pledging an additional 1,500 screens in May bringing the total Real D screens to 3,500 by the beginning of the fall.

Monsters and Aliens this year was the first film to add a 3D surcharge across the board, something that has acted as the carrot to Avatar’s ever-present whip. James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis have been the two filmmakers leading the charge on the 3D motion capture front, both pushing harder for 3D ready screens as their fourth-quarter blockbuster releases A Christmas Carol and Avatar loom on the horizon. If Avatar ends up being the must-see film of December, theaters don’t want to be left out in the cold when they could use that movie to recoup the costs of digital 3D theater conversion.

As for A Christmas Carol, it’s 3D family fare, and G-Force took this weekend to prove that if you have enough kid-friendly jokes and lots of stuff popping out of the screen at kids, the film can make money.

While watching G-Force and actually finding myself bored by the movie mid-way through, I started having very vivid Bolt flashbacks. Bolt, also released by Disney in Digital 3D, starred John Travolta and Miley Cyrus in a film about a television-star dog who was unaware he didn’t posses the super powers his on-screen character did. The movie was cute, I guess, but I can’t imagine I would have seen it if it hadn’t been one of the few 3D releases at the tail end of last year. 3D as a gimmick for kiddie films seems to get my butt in the seats despite negative buzz and an uninteresting plot.

As G-Force became less about action sequences and more about being “special” and part of a family, I started to turn my attention to the use of 3D in this particular film, since I could see little other reason why it was made. What I noticed was a 3D convention that I hadn’t seen before and I think it made me mad.

When the theater I was in started it’s pre-recorded “put on your glasses now for the amazing 3D experience” announcement, the screen widened to something damn close to a 4:3 aspect ratio. I thought I was just going to see a Disney movie that was all-ready to get pan-and-scanned for home video release, but when the film started, it was presented in a more-cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio. But here’s the tricky thing: The black letterbox bars that altered the aspect ratio were part of the film’s print. When something was supposed to be a especially spectacular 3D effect, the object would bleed over into the letterboxing bars as well as go more 3D for the glasses-wearing audience.

As soon as I noticed that the black bars actually had the slightest degree of negative depth (making the entire 16:9 part of the film look slightly more dimensional), I couldn’t stop noticing that a cog, spark or atmospheric effect would bleed over into the letterbox (I’ve attempted to demonstrate using the banner image on this post).

It was really annoying, but a convention I hadn’t seen in the 3D films of the past few years. I’m not even sure what to call it, as it was meant to simulate the characters and elements actually entering the audience.

One of my gripes with trailers for 3D movies is that shot where they show a CGI’d character from the film (or flames, or an axe) actually flying over the heads of an audience. I know it’s supposed to FEEL like things are actually flying out over the first few rows, but showing us this effect as if holograms were going to spring up in the crappy seats is a little disingenuous. However, when the 3D effects look to bleed off the screen into the actual theater, as is the desired effect with black, recessed letterbox cropping on the actual print, the illusion is maintained until you notice what’s going on.

And once I focused on that, G-Force’s plot was even more obviously bland to me.

But the surprising lasting-power shown by Ice Age 3D ($673.5 million worldwide after 26 days) and the surprise drop in Harry Potter numbers letting G-Force take the #1 spot for the weekend (with $32,185,000 in 3 days) goes to show that opening family-friendly 3D fare in the middle of an adult-male oriented summer release schedule is a winning strategy.

So, no matter how mediocre G-Force was (and I was forgetting it as the credits rolled), we’re going to see more of its gimmicky 3D ilk.

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Comingsoon.net received a new image from Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol which you can see above. Below we also have our first look at moving footage from the film. It lasts 19 seconds and I find the last 2 seconds hilarious. Watch below!

Jim Carrey plays a number of characters, including Ebenezer Scrooge, alongside Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, and Bob Hoskins.

Read similar posts to First bit of footage from A Christmas Carol at Filmonic

Yahoo! were given the first poster for Robert Zemeckis’ 3D take on A Christmas Carol. Jim Carrey plays not only Ebenezer Scrooge, but also the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.  Colin Firth plays Fred and Gary Oldman plays Bob Cratchit.

Despite being a Christmas film, Disney have decided to release it at the beginning of November.

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…nose in Robert Zemeckis‘ A Christmas Carol, as the image below shows. This is our first look at Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge and it comes from Filmz.ru.

Robert Zemeckis directed Beowulf and The Polar Express so it’s no surprise that the film was shot entirely in performance capture. As well as Scrooge, Carrey will be playing the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.

A Christmas Carol will be released in November 2009.

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