OTOH, my current double feature is Costume Dramas -- Forever Amber and Barry Lyndon.

Fred, in the imortal words of Joel Hodgson, you are one freaky mammajamma.

Re The Third Man: What. Vonnie. Said. Asscaps and all.

Polar Express? Uncanny Valley, all the way. I've been gritting my teeth through previews of it at every movie Hec and I have taken Emmett to since approximately April, terrified to make a sound lest Emmett suddenly be overcome with a desire to, like, see it or something (it's one of his favorite books). It looks like 96 minutes in the Uncanny Valley, with bonus Leni Riefenstahl as a gift with purchase. I'm madly in love with the last paragraph of Stephanie Zacharek's review in Salon:

I could probably have tolerated the incessant jitteriness of "The Polar Express" if the look of it didn't give me the creeps. The movie is more meticulously detailed than real life is -- even the characters' eyeballs have texture. Their skin moves with the pliability of warm latex, and it glows with an alien sheen. If nothing else, "The Polar Express" wears its dollar signs all over the screen: Appliqu&eacutr;ing all that wonder on, with such tight little stitches, sure is labor intensive. And if you think I'm being too tough on "The Polar Express," you're probably right. So I ask you to look at this rapturous holiday idyll with the eyes of a child. Just please give them back when you're done.

I may need to use the last two sentences as a tagline.

I was watching Ebert and Roeper the other night, and I swear, Ebert went into some kind of Seizure of Rapture, talking about how The Polar Express is one of those instant-classic children's movies that will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with The Wizard of Oz in time.

I may go see it, for I'm one of those weirdos who like being creeped out.

Re The Third Man: What. Vonnie. Said. Asscaps and all.

Oh, man. The cat and the shadow (one of the best entrances of a character ever.) The cukoo clock speech. The killer atmosphere. The marvellous Trevor Howard. And that long, wordless last scene, which just... GUH. Can't even articulate it properly. It kills me.

There was a hilarious bit with Brian Wilson semi melting down.

Sue, that's funny. I was just talking about that the other night -- one of the guys who went to see Brian Wilson with me was talking about crazy Wilson appears to be, and I mentioned seeing Theramin and that Disney biopic I Just Wasn't Made For These Times on the same night. The Disney one only played 10-second clips of Brian speaking (rather lucidly, too), but Theramin was kind enough to let the man rant.

A friend sent me a DVD of Beautiful Dreamer, the documentary about the making of SMiLE. If you get the chance to see this, do. It has some absolutely amazing scenes and it brought me and my wife to tears when Brian & the Wondermints launched into "Our Prayer" at the first performance of SMiLE in London.

And yeah, P-C, The Third Man is extraordinary. The Thin Man is entertaining, but it's not up to the uncanny blend of art & entertainment of The Third Man.

I've heard lots of reviewers say good things about "Polar Express" but it just looks really creepy to me.

No kidding. Don't think I'll be catching that one.

I read an article on The Incredibles in EW where they said that ultra-realistic computer animation is creepy, which is why the cartoonyness of TI is better. Polar Express could be the poster child of too-realistic computer animation. Somewhere I saw it explained that when an artificial human (be it computer animation or robot or whatever) looks almost real, the fact that it looks almost real but is not causes people to be creeped out. There's even a term for this, but I forget....

Uncanny Valley, which someone mentioned above.

I wasn't creeped out by the very real animation in Final Fantasy. But that wasn't a kids movie, either. That could make a difference.

Uncanny Valley, which someone mentioned above.

Oh. Now I remember - it didn't ring a bell when I read JZ's post....