A ‘New’ Christmas Carol.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your new Uncle Scrooge is almost here. And also the Ghost of Christmases Past, Present and Future. And all look like Jim Carrey. Hell, all of them really are. Walt Disney productions is releasing its 3rd version of  Charles Dickens’ Victorian Christmas Classic about redemption, A Christmas Carol, on November 6, 2009 worldwide. The movie is written for the screen and directed  by Robert Zemeckis and is released in Disney Digital 3-D and IMAX 3-D. Jim Carrey plays 6 roles on screen, including the young, middle – aged and present Ebenezer Scrooge – the epitome of Victorian miserliness, and the three apparitions – the three Ghosts of Christmas who come to demonstrate and insist on a change of ways for his life to be more meaningful and humane.
Walt Disney has a lot riding on this Christmas Carol, that would be released at the fag end of Summer ( talk about  the urgency of cash flow). Produced at a cost of US $ 175 million, there is nothing that Disney has banked on in the immediate past to turn around the fortunes of this once  – towering leviathan, and now what seems to look like a floundering whale. The marketing blitzkrieg that includes the custom 5 – car Christmas Carol Train that has been making the rounds the the US countryside, terminating at the Grand terminal in New York today, fake snow to blanket the London Premiere, an iphone application, and a website where you can make your own ornaments to deck up the common online tree from any part of the world.
The movie is shot in stop – motion, which Robert Zemeckis had made it to good effect with Polar Express, released in 2004, for Warner Bros.The movie still turns out a fortune in terms of DVD sales and merchandise during the Festival Season EVERY YEAR, along with the re-release EVERY YEAR. And you know what, it has made a cool additional US $ 300 million in box –office since 2004.Talk about marketing strategies for Christmas!
Disney is eyeing the same line of trade for this brand new version of A Christmas Carol, hoping to do a Polar Express with this one in future.
Coupled with modern technology and the incisive yet tender approach to human relationships in all his movies ( Remember Forrest Gump?), Robert Zemeckis seems to have pulled out all stops to make this another seasonal masterpiece from Disney.
There is a whole lot of expectations riding on the leading man, Jim Carrey who seems to have taken great pains in the diction, intonation and delivery of his Victorian invectives right, for it’s a long road from Canada to United Kingdom, and Jim should know.
Other than his holiday blockbuster in 2000, “How the Grinch stole Christmas”, it has  been a lack – luster decade for him, even with his sensitive and dark portrayals of Mr.Lemony Snicket and The Number 23.
But I still haven’t got over Zemeckis’ Bewoulf, released in 2007, employing the same stop – motion technology, which looked like a bunch of caped zombies fighting a doped dragon.They looked so dead.
Here is hoping this Holiday Season, primarily redeems Walt Disney and Jim Carrey’s good fortune.
And to think, it would take the greatest miser in World Literature to effect that in 3 –D.
How ironic can life get?

Watch the Trailer of Disney’s A Christmas Carol here.