I know this is nothing new, but I am increasingly frustrated by our consumer society forcing the holiday season down our throats as early as they do. I really think there should be some kind of law that says stores need to keep Halloween decorations up at least until 6:00 AM on November 1. I think I went to Target looking for candy to give out on Beggar’s Night two days before Halloween and they were already selling Christmas trees. Slow down, Target!
Robert Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol is symptomatic of this kind of “FIRE, READY, AIM!” pre-holiday mentality. I think they’ve pretty much acknowledged it in the commercials I’ve been seeing for the movie. I swear I heard the voiceover guy say something along the lines of “Celebrate the holidays early!” Yeah, dude? They’re a month and half away.
I don’t know about you, but I enjoy watching holiday movies AROUND the holidays. Watching a Dickensian classic 6 weeks out isn’t going to put me in the holiday mood any eariler. More than likely, I’m just gonna Scrooge it and forget about it completely.
I mean, I know that Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol is getting good reviews, but do they really expect it to have the momentum to carry it to December 25. I don’t care how many digital bells and whistles you strap onto the thing, everyone has heard the story a million times. It’s played out!
Frankly, my interest in the film is purely technical. I want to see what kind of improvements Zemeckis has made in the motion-capture animation technology that brought us the dead-eyed automotons from The Polar Express and Beowulf. It doesn’t hurt that it’s in 3D. That’s the cherry on top.
I know it sounds like I’m down on this film. I’m not. Frankly, I hope it does quite well. Because the IMAX theater we have downtown trotts out The Polar Express every year for the kids and every time I see an ad for that movie, I wanna scream. Hopefully Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol will replace it. Find another cash cow to float you over the holiday season, local IMAX theater!
Humbug?
What about you? Are you excited for A Christmas Carol? Does it look like an improvement over what we’ve seen from Zemeckis so far? Does anyone else find it weird that he is the ONLY proponent for this technology?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Robert Zemeckis's A Christmas Carol comes out today!
The holiday season is official in full swing!
I have to eat all of the Halloween candy before it's too late!
This 3-D trend is really starting to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong i don’t mind feeding into the hype but it’s getting agravating that EVERYTHING… (from animation to horror to action) is in 3-D… i thought i was going nearly blind after the Toy Story in 3-D double feature. not to forget to mention the fact that those glasses are not comfortable at all. the whole reason behind 3-D is to make it more realistic…. however i was under the impression that’s what HD was for…. High Def… it’s like you’re practically THERE! i’m quite sure soon there’ll be an HD movie in 3-D in Imax theaters while introducing 4D technologies such as scent and feeling but only if you wear the face masks that drop from the back of the seats in front of you so you can smell what seems to be popping out at you… bleh… since when did watching a movie become so difficult? i miss being able to sit back and let the magic behind the movies impress me… not practically putting on scuba gear just to watch it. idk… maybe it’s just me.
In regards to A Chrismas Carol… eh… it’s been done before. i think Jim Carey needs to stop Character acting (the grinch, lemony snicket, etc.) and go back to being a loveable goofy nut. (ie Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, In Living Color) Hopefully the 3 stooges thing will work for him. i think that may be a diamond in the rough right there.
3D is totally a gimmick. I mean, there is a limit to the quality of the image. That’s why I didn’t see Up in 3D.
But for A Christmas Carol – where I don’t particuarly care about the “authenticity” of the experience? Meh. I’ll kick in a couple of bucks for 3D. Could be a fun distraction.
I won’t see it. Why? Three reasons.
1) 3-D.
2) Jim Carey playing multiple characters – Very, VERY few movies with one actor playing multiple large parts are good movies. In fact, I can think of none.
3) I do NOTHING with Christmas before Thanksgiving. Nothing. I know it’s totally economic in nature as they want to be the first to offer Christmas stuff, but I saw stuff BEFORE Halloween!
I won’t see this movie, even when it goes to video.
What about Adaptation? Nic Cage played two roles and was very good. Or Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers?
Also, you know that watching the movie in 3D is not manditory, right? It can be viewed in 2D.
I’m with you on the Christmas embargo, though. 🙂
I feel your pain about Christmas. I work at Target, and we’ve been getting Christmas stuff for weeks. It’s terrible. The day before Halloween I watched as they took down the (admittedly adorable) Halloween signs and put up the Christmas snowflakes and weird ball things.
As for the movie? I give up on the holidays. I’ll see it if it gets on TV, and while the technological aspects do sound interesting, that’s as far as I’ll go.
They play the movie now so that by the Christmas season, they can sell the DVD and make even more money.
Sales for this film next year after a Christmas release would be very slow. Show it now, the sell at Christmas and people would be willing to buy it and watch it as a holiday film.
It’s about marketing, even if it’s a month early. They don’t plan on letting it play till the 25th.
I’m a paint monkey over at Lowe’s, and this is my first year there. I was surprised to see Christmas trees (artificial) coming in the first week of October. I understand the reasoning. They want to get their trees out before Home Depot, Target, Wal-mart, etc. does. But the thing is, you’re right. Every year, they put the stuff out a little earlier and a little earlier to try to beat each other to the punch. Unfortunately, this means that eventually, people will be buying Christmas stuff in September, or possibly even August. I know that people do that “Christmas in July” thing, but that is actually close to becoming a reality.
I understand why it happens, but I do agree that it is ridiculous. I also couldn’t believe that Halloween decorations were put on the clearance rack at 50% off a WEEK before Halloween. Two days before, almost all the stuff was gone. I guess you really can’t be a last minute shopper anymore.
Stupid…
The tyranny of the Infinite Christmas Season is coming. Soon Stores will be putting up displays for Christmas before The New Year even starts.
Retail culture’s response to the hoilday is why I never bought the “War on Christmas” argument from the far right a few years ago. Granted, it was over the use of “Happy Holidays” and not “Merry Christmas” in store advertisments, but c’mon. America practically grinds to a halt to “celebrate” Jesus’s birthday.
I think the economy has something to do with it. I know I know this is happening every year and to be honest I have been jonesing for christmas since july. But these stores want to sell lots of christmas stuff now. I am not going to buy a single thing of it but still.
I wish Halloween could get some respect in major stores. Christmas has a whole 7 isles dedicated to it OCTOBER 1ST in many Walmarts and Targets but Halloween gets one tiny section and even then it’s full of crap nobody would buy. Horrible costumes that no child should be made to wear and decorations that don’t focus on the variety of different selections but rather color. “Why no Walmart, I won’t buy your silly looking skull, in white, green purple, orange or black!”
I’m a home haunter and the trend of Christmas with Halloween is disturbing. Next year I’m going to pull out my christmas decorations for Halloween, pour fake blood on them and terrorize children as a chainsaw wielding Santa Claus hell bent on destroying Halloween.
Jimmy, you’re twisted and I like the way you think!
I work for the Kroger Co. and we’re pushing Christmas (aka “The Holidays” — don’t get me started on that!) before Halloween is over. The moral of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is that every holiday should have its own flavour, its own time period, and its own procedures; mixing them together results only in chaos and depression. That said, it is obvious the lesson Jack Skellington learned has yet to sink into the hearts of Consumer America.
Hey Tom, just wanted to say that today’s comic was one of the funniest I’ve seen in a while, keep up the good work!
I went into West Edmonton Mall a week before Halloween this year only to discover that construction had begun on Santa’s Winter Palace. =rolls eyes= I learned a while back it’s not safe to go to WEM the day after Halloween ’cause *everyone has the Xmas music blaring at a level that would put a Rolling Stones concert to shame (they turn it down about a week later).
I hate when they start doing Christmas stuff early. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays and it’s always getting the shaft by Christmas.
The Consumerist regularly posts inappropriately early Christmas sales. They call it Christmas Creep.
Edrondol,
Do you consider “Coming to America” a bad movie? I thought it was enjoyable. Better than perhaps any other of the Eddie Murphy multiple role flicks.
Blue: Actually the movie theaters won’t show avmovie that comes out on DVD less than three months after hitting the big screen. The original plan with Michael Jackson This Is It was that it would be on screen for only two weeks, then Sony would have the DVDs ready for the Christmas season. Sony got a big surprise from the theater owners when they were told that it wasn’t going to happen that way.
Just like Polar Express, I expect Christmas Carol will come out on DVD and blu-Ray the year after it hits the big screen.
For everyone else: Sure, 3D is a gimmic, but it’s a lucerative one. The theaters/studios get to charge a higher ticket price, the theaters have to convert to digital projection equipment, meaning the studio doesn’t have the expense of having to strike 3000+ prints, and Christie, Barco, DoRaMi, RealD, and Dolby get to sell the theaters new and expensive equipment. I think this business model will stick around for awhile.
-Edly
After watching a few movies in 3D, there are some I have been OK with and some I haven’t. I think less active movies do OK with it. I really enjoyed Coraline in 3D. The use of 3D was relatively subtle. In Monsters vs Aliens (a movie I enjoyed a lot) a few of the action scenes were hard to process for me.
Christmas coming earlier and earlier is a complaint I’ve heard for 3 decades now. When you think about it from a retailers perspective it makes sense. I mean would you want to be the last retailer to start selling Christmas stuff during the season? Throw Christmas stuff on the shelves after everyone has maxxed out their credit cards making your competitors rich? That being said I’ll be ignoring this movie because it’s a month too early…:)
This is funny, because I had to set up Christmas trees at the K-mart that I work at in mid September and start unrolling all the decorations for sale as well. Heard a lot of “CHRISTMAS ALREADY?”‘s that day.