roger rabbit Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Here's the thing about Bob Zemeckis and all his newfangled motion-capture outings. When put to more mythic use in Beowulf, I was more drawn in by the adventure and less distracted by the characters. However, between The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol, I couldn't help but be re-struck time and time again but that unfortunate uncanny valley, especially when the characters look so much like the real thing (see: Gary Oldman as Cratchit) that I'd just as soon watch them give live-action performances that would then go surrounded by countless effects (you know, the way they used to make movies).

That disappointing truth, combined with last weekend's good-not-great opening for Carol, isn't getting Zemeckis down, though. According to Pajiba, he's pursuing The Nutcracker as his next holiday adaptation to be 'enhanced' by mo-cap technology. (I think it's fairly safe to assume after Carol and Express that this will likely end up in 3-D as well.) The site says that he'll be working from E.T.A. Hoffman's original novel over the Tchaikovsky ballet, "a period piece, set in 19th century Russia, which will explore how the cursed Nutcracker character came to be and the battle between the dolls and the mice."

Well, that shows how much I remember of the original tale (a war between dolls and mice?). Personally, I just want this one to go on the busy man's back burner if it means getting that Roger Rabbit sequel done sooner. At least the bunny doesn't creep me out with his lifeless eyes...

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?

It seems a safe bet that any sort of sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit would be a pretty big hit, but back when the filmmakers were originally thinking about the idea, the concepts just seemed too expensive (and difficult) to tackle. But now with today's CGI magic, it wouldn't be all that tough to get a Roger Rabbit sequel off the ground ... provided you have a solid screenplay, of course.

Don't get too excited just yet, toon-fans, because the sequel certainly isn't about to get rolling anytime soon. But the MTV Movies Blog did just talk to producer Frank Marshall about the possibility of Roger's return, and the guy certainly didn't seem averse to it: "For the first time ever, Marshall also revealed details of the plot of "Roger Rabbit 2," and if you thought Toontown was a trip, you should have seen where they were sending Roger next. "New York!" Marshall enthused of the setting for the second film." (Click here for the full piece.)

The conversation closed with Marshall playfully promising to get in touch with the Pixar boys regarding Roger Rabbit 2, but hey, stranger things have happened.

I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit again the other night (loved every minute of it for the hundredth time), and now that I'm older I'm able to appreciate the greatness of Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant. Essentially playing with himself in every scene, he completely commits, never winks at the audience, and totally convinces the viewer that man and cartoon walk side by side. In a sense, he's the movie's finest special effect. In addition to being a terrific actor, a new piece on Hoskins over at The Guardian reveals him to be a humble, hilarious and brutally honest interview. He talks about growing up in north London ("You don't end up with a face like this if you're hard, do ya? This comes from having too much mouth and nothing to back it up with. The nose has been broken so many times."), about getting his start in the business ("When I told my relations I'm gonna be an actor, they said: 'Don't be f**king daft. Forget it! You've got to be kidding, aintcha?') and scoffs at "Method Acting" ("Nah! Nah, that's Lee Strasberg, that's bollocks! Like how to look busy. It's just looking busy, impressing the boss. That's bollocks, going through all this cobblers. Living it out and all that. Bollocks. Total cobblers!")

It's Hoskins' frank discussion of his work that amused me the most, particularly his not-so-fond remembrance of the film that single-handedly destroyed my youthful innocence: "The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a f**kin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! F**kin' nightmare. F**kin' idiots." Seems like ol' Bob might be right, that married couple -- Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton -- haven't directed a feature film since. Hoskins is 64 years old, but blows off the idea of retirement. He's got loads of projects lined up, and he mentions in the interview that he is into smaller roles now. I told you he was asked to play Fezziwig in Robert Zemeckis' planned re-re-re-re-make of A Christmas Carol, and he's got a supporting role in this month's Sparkle. Says Hoskins, "You reach a point where the cameo is the governor. You go in there for a couple of weeks, you're paid a lot of money, everybody treats you like the crown jewels, you're in and out, and if the film's a load of shit, nobody blames you, y'knowwhadimean. It's wonderful." Great actor, entertaining dude, and I'm definitely going to start working "Total cobblers!" into my everyday conversation.

I love hearing stories about The Films That Almost Were, although they make me sad because I then want to see the films and can't. Sometimes I hope that when I die, I'll get access to a celestial movie theater that will play all the movies that almost got made but fell through, along with alternate versions of released films but with the originally planned cast or script. I'm looking forward to finally seeing Peter Sellers in Kiss Me, Stupid and Paulette Goddard in Gone with the Wind, but as much as I like Steve McQueen, I'm not sure I'll enjoy him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And I can't wait to see Orson Welles' cut of The Magnificent Ambersons. An entire book has been devoted to movies that we'll never see, Chris Gore's The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, although I've never had a chance to read it. Here's a list of seven notorious almost-made films that I know about. If I missed anything good, let me know.