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Got your Christmas shopping done? Only 217 days left, you know.
On a hot day in May, Christmas carols and swirling snow may seem a tad bit
incongruous, the last thing you'd even think of, right? Well, get your Scrooge
on, A Christmas Carol Train is a comin' …
Yesterday morning those carols and snow flurries were a perfect fit at the
kick-off a 40-city train tour of this year's Disney holiday film, A Christmas
Carol.
And starting today through Monday you too can get the spirit of Christmas
present if you head on down to LA's historic Union Station and hop aboard the
Christmas Carol Train Tour. The best part? It's all free.
Signs everywhere at Union Station help you
easily find your way.
Don't live in the LA area? Not to worry, when the Christmas Carol Train tour
departs LA it will slowly make its way across the country visiting 40 cities in
total, and ending up in November at New York's Grand Central Station … just in
time for the film's opening date of November 6th.
Should you make a point to see the train? You bet. It's tons of fun and there
are loads of things to see and do.
The whole shebang consists of four train cars filled with goodies for you to
explore.
In the first car, items on loan from the Charles Dickens Museum of London
include a small, but nice, selection of period artifacts (original books,
letters, an oil painting of Dickens, the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick
Club), which are on display in glass cases. Along with the Dickens memorabilia,
there also is a nice selection of reference costumes and portraits of the
characters from the film.
The second car is filled with technical displays and they are fascinating …
maquettes and models, Scrooge's office, his nephew Fred's house, Big Ben. My
personal fave from this room was the maquette of Jacob Marley (played by Gary
Oldman in the film), who's completely ensnared in those chains he wove in life,
and pretty darned scary.
Moving on through the second car you get a glimpse into what it takes to
shoot a motion capture film. You see what the cameras look like, a mannequin
dressed in a motion capture suit, and lots screens continually playing footage
of the actors looking all spotty-faced, which enables the cameras to perfectly
capture the actor's expressions.
During Thursday's event, Jim Carrey spoke about what it's like to work in the
motion capture process and why it makes this film special, "I found advantages,
there are parts of the process that are, production-wise, much easier. A lot of
people look at this work and think, ‘Oh, you did a voice-over', but absolutely
in every way, and even in more ways than a regular film, there are complete
performances by actors. You have no reference point around you, you're on a
mo-cap stage and there are grids and there are outlines of furniture and things
like that. You pretty much have to create the mood in your head."
Disney's Dick Cook, star Jim Carrey and
director Robert Zemeckis
The third car in the Christmas Carol Tour puts you in smack dab into a little
interactive fun with loads of computers to play with (courtesy of HP TouchSmart
PCs). You can explore the buildings of Dickens' London and then morph yourself
into one of the film's characters. You can even get an email sent to you with
your morphed image. I generally don't care about this kind of stuff, but it was
a lot of fun and I was very impressed that there were tons of screens and that
they were very thoughtfully installed at varying heights so even the kiddies can
play along with ease.
The last car isn't as thrilling as the first three, but it does set a
Christmas mood nicely as it contains a crackling fireplace and a sumptuous
holiday table laden with yummy goodness. Alas, despite the delicious smell of
gingerbread wafting throughout the car, the food is all fake, it's Hollywood
after all … so don't plan on grabbing a turkey leg on your way out.
You might
find that you'll be left with an uncontrollable urge for a Christmas cookie
though. If Disney had set up a Christmas cookie concession outside the train,
you can bet your bottom dollar that I would have been a customer, to be sure.
Did someone say it was May? Nope, it was December when I walked out of that
train. Upon exiting you receive a little reward, a page of Christmas
Carol cutout paper ornaments. A nice touch!
At this point, forget about that table of food, that Christmas cookie
craving, and head straight for a real treat … walk on over to that "building"
across the way that looks like a giant bouncy-house, grab a pair of 3-D glasses, and settle in for a sneak peek at the film itself.
You know how 3-D can be kind of cheesy and motion capture films can be kinda
creepy? Not this time. I was mighty impressed with the little taste of the film
we sampled in that bouncy house. It looks pretty spectacular. And despite wondering why Robert Zemeckis chose to remake A Christmas Carol
again (How many times has that story been told?), I can't wait to see the film
come this November.
Just why did Zemeckis make the umpty-ninth version of A
Christmas Carol? I'll let him tell you, "If you read the actual novel, you read
the story, there's two things that pop out immediately; one, Mr. Dickens was an
amazing cinematic writer and he wrote this a hundred years before the invention
of movies. He writes very filmically, it's amazing. The other thing that I
realized when I was thinking of doing this project is, we never had the tools to
actually present the story the way Mr. Dickens wrote it. The way he describes
the ghosts, the way he describes the environments that these characters move in,
has always been unbelievably visual and very descriptive. We've actually been
saddled with technology that never allowed us to present the ghosts, if you
will, in a way that it's put on the page by Mr. Dickens. So, that was the main
inspiration as to why we wanted to reenvision the movie in a way that is true to
the novel."
Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey
And … it looks good Dear Readers, it looks good.
Jim Carrey, I think, had the best reasoning as to why you should come out for
this train tour, "It's kinda Hollywood on wheels, going out to the world. I like
the idea … a floating museum. It's cool. And you know, bottom line, you gotta
have something to do."
So if you live in the LA area, and "you gotta have something to do" this
holiday weekend, why not celebrate another holiday … get on board the Christmas
Carol Train Tour. After the tour, make a Disney day of it and take the Metro Red
Line subway up to the Hollywood and Highland stop where you can visit the El
Capitan adjacent Disney
Soda Fountain, have some yummy ice cream (maybe fill that craving for a
Christmas cookie), and check out the Up merchandise before that film opens next
week.
If you choose to really get into the train theme and take the train to
Union Station as I did (it was so fun & no freeway stress!), be advised that
Metrolink trains will not be running on Memorial Day, Monday the 25th,
but the Metro subway trains run seven days a week, even during holidays.
For a complete list of the stops the Christmas Carol Train Tour is making,
visit www.christmascaroltraintour.com.
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