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The fear many of us had when it was announced Jim Carrey would play Ebenezer Scrooge and other parts in Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of A Christmas Carol was that Carrey's clowning would turn the story into a goofy farce. This fear turns out to have been unfounded. If anything, the opposite is true: The film has no personality at all, not Carrey's or anyone else's.

Charles Dickens' holiday classic has already been adapted for movies and TV dozens of times, but Zemeckis noticed something peculiar: Somehow, none of the previous incarnations had managed to be in 3-D! He sought to rectify this oversight with that newfangled motion-capture technology he's been so excited about the last several years, where actors' movements are translated into animation. The Polar Express and Beowulf demonstrated that for as neat-o as the technology is for action scenes, characters' faces -- especially their eyes -- look dead and soulless. Some improvement has been made in that respect, but most of the people in A Christmas Carol still look like creepy robots.

We are now in the age of the 20-year-old sequel. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall Street 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Beverly Hills Hop 4, The Untouchables: Capone Rising. It hasn't been "too long," it isn't awkward to go back. It'll make you feel young again! Now we've reached the pinnacle of past grabs, as WENN is reporting that Steve Guttenberg, Tom Selleck, and Ted Danson are reuniting for Three Men and a Bride.

"Disney's developing Three Men and a Bride. That's going to be a smash. A smash hit. They're bringing everybody back for that," says Guttenberg. "Nobody knows about it. I'm the first to talk about it."

Guttenberg might just become king of the It's Never To Late To Return! movement, as he dreams of reviving all of his past franchises. "It's definitely time for another Police Academy. And I think they could make another Cocoon. They're surefire hits and I think they're good for the world. They make the world a better place and that's what it's all about." Hopefully, he's not setting his hopes on reviving Short Circuit, as that has become someone else's dream to live. But I think there were a lot of unanswered questions about The Day After, and nothing's trendier than the apocalypse. It's only been twenty-five years ....

On November 10, 2009, Walt Disney Home Entertainment is releasing a 4-disc Blu-ray set for Monsters, Inc., Pete Docter's feature directorial debut. Much like Finding Nemo set the stage for what Andrew Stanton eventually did on Wall-E, the 2001 Pixar film offers a glimpse of what was yet to come from Docter – who went on to direct this summer's Up, also out next week – but it also reiterates some of the themes that run throughout all of the studio's best work, including the concept of an alternate perspective on a place or idea that seems obvious, and the idea of families that are both familiar and unconventional. But how effectively does it examine and explore those things, particularly in light of what the studio has done since?

Suffice it to say that the Blu-ray set offers not only the best presentation of the film imaginable, but a bounty of extra content that expands the film's universe in new and interesting ways. As for the movie itself?

We've all lamented the way that Christmas decorations, candies, and wrapping paper start appearing on store shelves between fake pumpkins and cheesecloth ghosts. In some stores, the Christmas stuff appears as early as July or August. But when it comes to our local multiplex, we're generally safe from holly and plum pudding until it's actually cold outside. Not this year.

Being entertainment fiends, I'm sure that the last week found most of you were tuning into AMC, IFC, and other assorted channels to check out their horror selections. You were also undoubtedly watching your favorite television shows, football teams, and following the World Series. I'll bet that you saw the tv spots for A Christmas Carol around ten times a day. Possibly more than that given all the games. Did you feel a cold chill run down your spine?

I did, and it wasn't caused by a pocky Jim Carrey or the possibility of Robert Zemeckis' mo-cap dead eyes. It was the fact that my jack o'lantern was flickering on my kitchen counter, bell jars of bones were decorating the top of my television, and Shadow of the Vampire was beckoning from my DVR. It was Halloween weekend. Even after October ticked down to its last gasp and we fell back, it was still autumn. It's harvest time. It's heartwrenching drama time, the real start of the Oscar race. It's time for The Road, The Men Who Stare At Goats and the Coens. It is not Christmastime. I don't care what the Three Spirits try to tell me, or whether Tiny Tim wants God to bless us, every one. I'm not going to listen until December 1. Perhaps I'll miss a great 3D thrill ride and the velvet voice of Colin Firth, but I'm not ready for snow and Dickensian morality just yet. Are you?

In spite of what some internet pundits and self-righteous types would have you believe, being a film critic and entertainment journalist does not mean you're handed the keys to Hollywood along with your W-9. Attending screenings and junkets, transcribing interviews, and spending the vast majority of every single day (all day) sitting in front of a computer is far more exhausting than one might expect. In which case, the rare and unique opportunity to have fun and see some truly exclusive stuff is always welcome.

About two weeks ago Disney invited Cinematical to join a small group of print and online journalists for a press day in conjunction with their upcoming return to hand-drawn animation, The Princess and the Frog. In addition to conducting interviews with Ron Clements and John Musker, the guys not only responsible for Princess, but The Little Mermaid as well, our group took a tour of Disney's storied Animation Research Library, and even spent a little time at Disneyland itself on an exclusive behind the scenes tour.

To misquote Jessica Rabbit: "Sequels to beloved animated / live-action classics aren't all bad. They're just motion-captured that way." As our own Elisabeth Rabbit Rappe reported earlier this year, Robert Zemeckis has been thinking about a sequel to 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And now the sequel is moving forward toward reality. Zemeckis told MTV News that "a script is in development" for a sequel, and original writers Peter S. Seaman and Jeffrey Price are involved.

Way back when, Seaman and Price adapted Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, a novel by Gary K. Wolff. The hard-boiled mystery drew upon the history of the Los Angeles transit system and provided a strong framework for a dazzling mixture of traditional cell animation and live-action period footage. Wolff wrote a sequel, Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?, and other follow-up ideas have been discussed over the years, but Zemeckis says he wasn't involved in any of them.

Of course, any sequel script would need to be very, very good on its own merits to have any hope of living up to the original. In view of Zemeckis' fascination, nay, obsession with performance capture digital tools, I share Elisbeth's fear that a new Roger Rabbit will be "a dead-eyed motion capture and not a lovable toon." The original was a mystery, a comedy, and a thriller, but it was the idea of brightly-colored cartoons living side by side with humans in a mundane real world that gave the film its distinctive flavor. Whose performances will be computer-animated in the sequel -- humans, 'toons, or both?

Tuesday afternoon at no less than the offices of Jerry Bruckheimer himself, Cinematical joined a small group of reporters from other online entertainment and gaming sites to screen the forthcoming theatrical trailer for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Mike Newell's adaptation of the popular video game series of the same name. Following two screenings of the trailer, which runs approximately two and a half minutes, Bruckheimer and game creator Jordan Mechner answered questions from the group and discussed the development of the film.

While I'm no video game aficionado, the trailer seemed to have the right kind of quasi-interactive action that most modern games do – the "Prince," played by Jake Gyllenhaal, breezily navigates several death-defying scenarios in the short clip, including dodging an avalanche, diving off of a precipice into a swordfight, and fighting off the attention of the comely Gemma Arterton. According to dialogue and voiceover narration, the film essentially follows the Prince as he discovers and protects a sword that can literally turn back time; after several bullet-time sequences where Gyllenhaal transforms into a golden statue (well, more golden than normal), villain Ben Kingsley confesses that he wants to take control of the weapon in order to destroy the world, or control it, or something.

Now how's this for a cool premise? "U.S. states secede from the U.S. and form their own governments that wage a civil war against each other after Washington, D.C., is wiped out in a nuclear blast and chaos ravages the nation." Sounds like it could make for a fairly novel action flick, eh? Well, as Variety informs us, that's the exact plot of a 2005 video game called Shattered Union. (Just because I've never heard of it doesn't mean it's not good. If you've played this one, leave us a mini-review in the comments section.)

The tale of a dystopian American Civil War Part II will come from producer Jerry Bruckheimer (don't act surprised), who in turn will entrust the adaptation to one J. Michael Straczynski. Serious genre fans know this gentleman as the co-creator of Babylon 5. He's written tons of TV, in addition to Eastwood's Changeling, plus he's got a metric ton of massive projects on the way, World War Z and Silver Surfer among them. The studio will be Disney, so don't expect a hardcore carnage-fest. I'm generally a fan of the Bruckheimer / Disney action conflagrations, and this one sure sounds like something I'd dig. Now hire Peter Berg to direct it.

Two decades after their work on The Little Mermaid ushered in a renaissance for hand-drawn animation, directors Ron Clements and John Musker are at the forefront of a new movement to resuscitate the art form yet again. The Princess and the Frog is Disney's first non-computer animated feature film since 2003's Home on the Range, and in addition to competing artistically with Pixar's stellar roster of releases through their shared parent company, the film may ultimately serve as a test among studio executives all over Hollywood who want to see if audiences really want to watch movies where pencils and ink reclaim the place now occupied by ones and zeroes.

Given this enormous pressure, Musker and Clements seem remarkably calm, and most importantly, pragmatic about the film's potential success. Cinematical recently sat down with a small group of journalists to discuss the future of Disney's hand-drawn animation department, vis-à-vis the directors' latest film. Following a day at Disneyland and a tour of the studio's Animation Research Library, Cinematical posed questions to the filmmakers as they enter the final days before the film's release. (While the interview was conducted as a group, questions asked specifically by Cinematical questions are indicated in the transcript below.)

This is the second opportunity for you two to bring traditional animation in at Disney. Can you talk about what's different for you on this one, particularly in terms of technology allowing you to raise the bar?