Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart kick off the "Twilight Saga: New Moon" cast tour in Hollywood on Friday
Photo: Jordan Strauss/ WireImage

HOLLYWOOD — "New Moon" mania took over the Hollywood & Highland Center on Friday night, as one of the first stops on the movie's nationwide Hot Topic promotional tour kicked off with an event featuring concerts by bands from the film's soundtrack, laughs with the cast, and a special appearance by the film's three biggest stars.

"Thank you to you guys," gushed Robert Pattinson, taking the stage alongside Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner in front of hundreds of shrieking, black-T-shirt-clad fans. "Without you, 'Twilight' wouldn't be anywhere."

Well, on Friday night, it was everywhere. In two different storefronts, autographs were being signed by the likes of Kellan Lutz, Ashley Greene and members of the Wolf pack and the Volturi. In the main courtyard, Death Cab for Cutie, Band of Skulls, Sea Wolf and Anya Marina each rocked the stage for a few songs, promoting the "New Moon" soundtrack. Fans wrapped around the enormous outdoor mall like some sort of shrieking Team Edward anaconda.

"It's a massive phenomenon, not because people are into vampires, but because it's this love story that touches everybody," Marina explained. "I just saw the final cut [of 'New Moon'] last night. It's really great!"

Judging from the ear-shattering response of the fans, the cast Q&A was just as great. Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Jamie Campbell Bower, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Cameron Bright, Nikki Reed, Chaske Spencer, Kiowa Gordon, Alex Meraz and Bronson Pelletier all jockeyed for space on the crowded stage, waving to fans and smiling as they answered questions that usually started with "What's your favorite...?"

	The 'New Moon' Cast Invade Hot Topic In Hollywood

Band? Burke loves AC/DC, Reaser chose the unlikely pairing of Jay-Z and Ryan Adams, Greene likes Jimmy Buffett, and Campbell Bower is a Queens of the Stone Age man.

Movie? Burke chose the original "Willy Wonka," Bright picked "Saving Private Ryan," Greene enjoys "Breakfast at Tiffany's," while Kellan Lutz (clad in a "Team Emmett" shirt) selected the never-before-compared duo of "Casablanca" and Tarsem Singh's trippy 2006 flick "The Fall."

"We'll talk about 'Eclipse,' because I'm actually in 'Eclipse,' " laughed Nikki Reed at one point, referencing Rosalie's minimal "New Moon" screen time. "We got to shoot my whole flashback sequence, which was cool."

Wrapping up the night, each star was asked what they would want to do in Los Angeles if their fame didn't prevent them from walking the streets unbothered. "I'd like to take a walk on the beach with Nikki Reed," teased Reaser. "I'd prowl the streets in the nude," added the always-outrageous Jamie Campbell Bower.

"I have a pretty good feeling that we'd be having game night at my house," smiled Greene, looking over at Lutz and saying they'd be enjoying a rousing round of Taboo.

Playing along, Lutz — who can work a crowd of Twilighters better than a politician at a rally — said he'd still want his several hundred closest friends to come along. "I'd invite over all you guys too," he said to approving applause.

Check out everything we've got on "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."

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• Behind-The-Scenes 'New Moon' Footage And Interviews

• 'New Moon' Stars Invade Hot Topic In Hollywood

• Death Cab For Cutie

Robert Pattinson
Photo: MTV News

BEVERLY HILLS, California — Rob and Kristen are engaged. They're going to name their first child a combination of their mothers' names, just like in the "Twilight" books. A big wedding is on the way, quite likely with Bigfoot officiating.

As their fame has grown, so has the insanity level of the rumors about their personal lives. On Friday (November 6), "New Moon" star Robert Pattinson sat down with MTV News, and was eager to address one of the more notable bits of news he saw the last time he Googled himself.

"I like the story about me being pregnant," laughed the 23-year-old British heartthrob. "It was in some Australian magazine, on the front page!"

As they've filmed "New Moon" and "Eclipse," Rob and Kristen Stewart have spent the last 12 months going from "the kid in the Harry Potter movies" and "the girl from 'Panic Room' " to the type of people whose every move is meticulously discussed, whether real or not. Luckily, Pattinson has the sort of self-deprecating British wit that allows him to laugh it all off.

"I was like, 'Wow, that's just [insane],' " he said of the pregnancy rumors. "And it's not even ironic.

"I don't even think the article [tried to justify it]; it was just a headline," Spunk Ransom marveled. "The article was just like, nothing."

On Friday afternoon, one day after the first public screenings of the eagerly anticipated "Twilight" sequel, the stars of the series invaded a hotel in Beverly Hills, accompanied by a small army of security guards. And, right away, RPattz had some big news he wanted to break while addressing those rumors that he is pregnant.

"I am, yes," he laughed, joking that he is now with child. "Yeah, it's in my armpit because I'm hiding it from everyone."

Stay tuned for tons of interviews with Rob, Taylor, Kristen and the rest of the gang in the days ahead. But as for the fun-loving Rob, he told us that he was just happy to extinguish what might be the craziest "Twilight" rumor of all time.

"Yeah," he grinned. "I guess that is the craziest."

Check out everything we've got on "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."

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• Behind-The-Scenes 'New Moon' Footage And Interviews

• "New Moon"
• Robert Pattinson And Kristen Stewart In The December 2009 Issue Of Harper's Bazaar

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in "New Moon"
Photo: Summit Entertainment

With the end of principal photography on "Eclipse" in Vancouver late last month, Kristen Stewart completed her third "Twilight" series film as Bella Swan, the high school girl who falls hard for a vampire. Even before starting "Eclipse," though— at the very beginning of "New Moon," in fact, the second film in the franchise — the 19-year-old actress felt so comfortable playing the character that she had a hard time separating herself from Bella.

"I feel very much like I can't really tell a huge difference between myself and Bella anymore, as odd as that sounds," she admitted in an interview released by Summit Entertainment. "I'm used to playing really distinct characters that are so far away from my normal reality and in this case, the only thing that I was really worried about was just making sure it was absolutely honest and open and vulnerable and very present."

Following the 2008 original film — and the worldwide vampire craze that exploded as a result — Stewart had no problem falling back into step with her co-star Robert Pattinson on set. Much like Stewart, Pattinson had gone from a relatively low-key public profile to one of the biggest stars on the planet after his turn as vampire Edward Cullen. But once on set for "New Moon" — which hits theaters on November 20 — they easily found the same rhythm the duo maintained during "Twilight."

"We're both pretty instinctual, impulsive actors," Stewart explained. "We don't really hash things over and over because we both know our characters fairly well. It was easy to step back into the project because it was something we [already] did. Once you play someone — it's a strange thing — you don't forget who they are. And we work together well, so it was easy."

Check out everything we've got on "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."

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• Behind-The-Scenes 'New Moon' Footage And Interviews

• "New Moon"

50 Cent
Photo: Scott Gries/ Getty Images

NEW YORK — Thursday night was just a regular evening at the movies ... well, if you're used to seeing 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo at the theater! Fif held a screening of his film "Before I Self Destruct"; the movie shares a title with 50's new LP and they will be released together on November 16.

"I'm trying to be ahead of the curve because things are changing in music," 50 told the audience at the AMC Loews Kips Bay 15 theater in Manhattan on Thursday. Members of the audience included Red Café, Uncle Murda, radio personality Miss Info, DJ Jazzy Joyce and actor/MC AlBe Back.

For Fif, the "Before I Self Destruct" film "was an opportunity to show the cause and effect" of a good guy gone bad. Fif also said making a 90-minute film presented an opportunity to get more in-depth than a three-minute song.

50 stars as Clarence, a street-basketball superstar with enough promise to possibly make it to the NBA. When he injures his knee during a game, his hoop dreams are smashed and he's left to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. When Clarence and his genius pre-teen brother Chaka suffer the ultimate family tragedy, Clarence turns to the streets for salvation and money. He becomes a ruthless hitman for a local kingpin played by Clifton Powell. Lloyd Banks also has a role as Chaka's school teacher — yes, Banks appears in a dress shirt and tie, surprising the crowd with a character no one expected.

One hilarious moment during the screening came when 50 had to cry onscreen, and an audience member started to laugh. 50 himself yelled from his seat, "Shut up, n---a!" causing the entire crowd to laugh.

Also released with the album and film will be the documentary "2 Turntables and a Microphone," which explores the murder of Run-DMC DJ and 50 mentor Jam Master Jay. The trailer was shown at the screening on Thursday night as well.

"[Jam Master Jay's nephew] Phonz was working on that project for five years," 50 explained to MTV News a little over a year ago. "He came to me, and I shot my [interview] portion that's on the documentary. We met in Atlanta the first time and ended up shooting in Amsterdam.

"It's not a random act of violence," 50 also said about Jay's murder. "People just don't walk in your studio, shoot and kill you with several other people around, and no one knows anything. I believe the documentary sheds light on it — a little bit. It creates a clearer picture of what actually happened at that point. People just heard, 'Jam Master Jay got shot.' They don't understand the circumstances. [The film] creates some clarity."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• 50 Cent And Ne-Yo Release 'Baby By Me'
• MTV News RAW: 50 Cent

• 50 Cent
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George Clooney in "The Men Who Stare At Goats"
Photo: Overture Films

What went wrong with this movie? The subject — the U.S. military's apparently actual flirtation with paranormal warfare — has rich comic promise. And the cast — George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges — couldn't be much stronger. But while the trailer for "The Men Who Stare at Goats" suggests a quirky, Coen-esque romp, the picture itself lacks the Coen brothers' sardonic intelligence and deft pacing. It wanders and wilts and very quickly falls apart.

The story begins in 2003, with aspiring combat reporter Bob Wilton (McGregor) waiting in Kuwait for clearance to cross over into Iraq. Biding his time, he encounters Lyn Cassady (Clooney), a man with a strange tale to tell. Cassady says he's a "Jedi warrior" (wink, wink) in the New Earth Army, a sub-rosa military unit dedicated to psychic battle strategies — mind-reading, "remote viewing," the whole new-age imaginarium. He says he's been reactivated to locate Bill Django (Bridges), the ponytailed Vietnam vet who founded the NEA back in the early '70s and has now gone missing. Wilton senses a story here, and decides to tag along.

Given the level of talent involved, you'd expect the movie to have some funny moments, and it does. Clooney, once again getting in touch with his inner halfwit, is enjoyably droll in demonstrating a "sparkly eye" fighting technique and explaining his failed quest to achieve invisibility. ("That was the goal," he says. "I eventually settled for not being seen.") And of course there's the NEA training interlude — now familiar from the trailer — in which Cassady drops a "de-bleated" goat with a clench-browed mind-zap.

The film also benefits from Spacey's distinctive sour presence as a rogue psychic named Larry Hooper. Hooper has his own sinister paranormal agenda, and he's not to be taken lightly: He's a master of the "death touch" — a lethal move so mysterious that its effect can take years, even decades, to kick in.

The movie's amusements are thinly distributed, though. And as soon as Cassady and Wilton cross the Iraqi border and drive off into the desert, the story starts losing its way. The luckless duo is captured by local terrorists (or bandits or something), and then gets caught up in a shootout at a roadside gas station that devolves into pure, pointless confusion. Then Django — who's previously been seen only in flashbacks — finally reappears, and the picture gets a momentary lift from Bridges' roistering exuberance. But his character further muddles the story. Psychic warfare is one thing, but Django is a dated hippy-dippy goof, which is something else. Soon we have soldiers cavorting with flowers and dancing around like summer-of-love loons. There's even an ill-advised group acid trip that might have given Robert Altman pause. In the end, we're left wondering how on earth we got here — and when's the next jeep back.

Don't miss Kurt Loder's reviews of "The Box", "The Fourth Kind" and "Precious", also new in theaters this week.

Check out everything we've got on "The Men Who Stare at Goats."

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James Marsden and Cameron Diaz in "The Box"
Photo: Warner Bros.

"The Box" is an overlong mess of a movie that's nevertheless eerie and unsettling. You walk away from it feeling befuddled but definitely weirded-out. The picture is based on a 1970 short story by Richard Matheson that was later turned into a "Twilight Zone" episode — which would be just about the right length for a filmic adaptation. In transforming this crisply-told tale into a nearly two-hour movie, though, director Richard Kelly has crammed it with so much additional narrative that the film feels on the verge of exploding at any moment.

The story is set in Richmond, Virginia, in — for some reason — 1976. Arthur and Norma Lewis (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) are feeling a financial pinch even though both have good jobs. He works for NASA; she's employed as a lit teacher in a private school. Arthur had hoped to become an astronaut, but he's just received word that he failed the psychological test. (This setback, never explored, has no bearing on the story; and another bolted-on plot element — a disability that causes Norma to walk with a limp — has only the wispiest relevance.)

One day the Lewises discover that a package has been left on their doorstep. Inside is a strange box with a large button on its top. Attached is a note announcing that a Mr. Steward will soon pay them a visit. Steward (Frank Langella) duly arrives and proves to be an alarming character — a large part of his face has been burned away, the result of a terrible fire. He explains that pushing the button on the box will result in the death of someone, somewhere, whom Arthur and Norma don't know. Steward says that if they elect to do this, he — or his "employers" — will give them one-million dollars. Arthur is against it — what if the person they kill is an innocent child? Norma counters that they might instead terminate a murderer. Soon she pushes the button, and Steward returns with their money.

What we want to know now is: Who died? Who is Mr. Steward? And who on earth (or elsewhere) are his "employers"? We eventually learn the answers to these questions (more or less), but the director piles on so much bizarre detail — strange nosebleeds, a weird waiter, menacing crowds and three mysterious gates (one of which leads to guess where?) — that our heads are spinning before the big wrap-up arrives (more or less).

Marsden brings his trademark charm to the role of Arthur, but Diaz is uncharacteristically mousey and recessive, and she drains energy from many of her scenes. The picture's real motor is Langella, whose heavy gravitas forcefully suggests Steward's malign depths even though they're never fully revealed.

Director Kelly is still esteemed for his 2001 "Donnie Darko," despite the dismal "Southland Tales" that followed it in 2006. His oblique storytelling seems almost designed to leave a lot of viewers stewing in baffled irritation (which is why "Darko" is still considered a cult hit). No doubt this movie will have the same effect — there are several moments in it that are laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Kelly admirers may find it hypnotic, but they'll surely be a minority. Despite the film's sprawling narrative clutter, though, the feeling of dark unease with which it leaves you is hard to deny.

Don't miss Kurt Loder's reviews of "The Men Who Stare At Goats", "The Fourth Kind" and "Precious", also new in theaters this week.

Check out everything we've got on "The Box."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Ashley Greene
Photo: Kristian Dowling/ Getty Images

With three "Twilight" flicks under her belt, Ashley Greene has found time to make another movie. The "New Moon" star will star in the thriller "The Apparition," Variety reports.

There is no news yet on who will star with Greene in the film about a young couple haunted by a supernatural being that was let loose during a college experiment. "The Apparition," which was inspired by true events, will be produced by Joel Silver's Dark Castle company and is set to start production on February 1.

	The Evolution Of: Ashley Greene

In the meantime, fans can see Greene in the highly anticipated second flick in the "Twilight Saga," out on November 20. Although she'll be the one on edge in the face of the ghostly figure in "The Apparition," Greene recently revealed that fans of "Twilight" will certainly be surprised by the twists and turns that "New Moon" takes.

"Edward kind of breaks Bella's heart, so you definitely see Jacob kind of swoop in to rescue her," she said. "You get to see their chemistry and dynamic. It kind of keeps you on the edge of your seat a little bit more than the first one.

"The first one is very much a love story, and this one is kind of more about heartbreak and healing, and ... the wolves come in and there's that threat, that danger," Greene added. "I actually saw the movie about two months ago, and it's really good."

Check out everything we've got on "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

Gabourey Sidibe in "Precious"
Photo: Lions Gate

Claireece Jones is one of life's write-offs: an illiterate, junk-food-fat Harlem teenager living on welfare with her viciously abusive mother and, from time to time, her father, who drops by to rape her. She already has one child as a result of his assaults — a little girl with Down's Syndrome — and is currently pregnant with another. Claireece's future seems anything but uncertain. Somehow, though, she's managed not to write herself off.

"Precious" is one of those rare movies that come winging in from nowhere and knock you out. Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the title character (Claireece goes by the name Precious), is an untrained actress — a Bronx college student whose only performing background is in school stage plays. But she has great instincts, and watching her draw out flickers of hope through the mask of sullen indifference that Precious presents to the world is thrilling to watch.

The movie is based on the 1996 novel "Push," by Ramona "Sapphire" Lofton. (Thus the picture's full, clunky title: "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.") The story is set in 1987. Sixteen-year-old Precious — who's been shuffled along into the ninth grade in public school despite her inability to read or write — feels defeated by the educational system, which treats her as "just ugly black grease to be wiped away." She has a talent for math, though, and maybe other things, too. So a sympathetic principal directs her to a special GED program for troubled kids called Each One Teach One (a phrase that dates back to black slavery days). In this makeshift school, she comes under the warm tutelage of a teacher called Ms. Rain (a ravishing performance by Paula Patton), the first grownup who's ever shown an interest in her. She's also thrown in with a small group of fellow students who've been as beaten down by life as she has, but who share with her a pugnacious determination to rise above.

Apart from Sidibe, who seems a natural candidate for a Jennifer Hudson Memorial Oscar nomination, the picture is filled with other vivid performances, especially by Xosha Roquemore as the ghetto-fabulous classmate Jo Ann ("My favorite color is fluorescent beige!"); by Mariah Carey as a social worker (a small part, but Carey, a droopy brunette here, nails it); and by Lenny Kravitz, who's almost unrecognizable at first as a sweet-natured male nurse in the hospital where Precious gives birth to her second child. (He's found a way out of the urban jungle — a gentle demonstration that she can, too.)

The movie's most startling revelation, though, is the comedian Mo'Nique, whose ferocious performance as Precious' mother, Mary, is dark and frightening. Mary is a vile woman, endlessly battering her daughter and deriding her dream of bettering herself. (She keeps pushing Precious to go down to the welfare office and sign up for her own life of helpless dependence.) Toward the end of the picture, Mo'Nique delivers a long, spellbinding soliloquy — Mary's attempted justification of her hateful behavior — that is as breathtaking a scene as any in recent films.

The movie might have sunk into sentimental uplift at several points. But director Lee Daniels observes the story with a fairly cool eye, and even the fantasy sequences sprinkled throughout (in which Precious envisions herself as a glamorous star in a music video, or preening on a red carpet) generally sidestep cheap manipulation and lend the picture a striking, dreamlike quality. And the ending, in which Precious finally awakes from the nightmare of her life, isn't a predictable syrupy triumph. It's only a new beginning. Which is all that this remarkable character ever really wanted.

Don't miss Kurt Loder's reviews of "The Men Who Stare At Goats", "The Box" and "The Fourth Kind", also new in theaters this week.

Check out everything we've got on "Precious."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Milla Jovovich in "The Fourth Kind"
Photo: Universal Pictures

With the fumbled release of "The Fourth Kind," sneaky-hip viral movie marketing shoots itself in the foot. It's been 10 years since the makers of "The Blair Witch Project" used the Internet to plant eerie suggestions that the events in their film were real. Today the Internet is patrolled by a legion of bull-sniffing bloggers, so any attempt to do the same thing again is doomed to fail. And the picture expends so much of its energy trying to pound home its preposterous assertions that there's very little left over to animate the story, which is in any case a hopeless jumble.

The movie is an attempted alien-abduction thriller. It begins with what is probably the most laughable opening scene of the year. Walking through some misty woods and straight up to the camera, the film's star, Milla Jovovich, informs us that everything we're about to see is true — that it's "supported by archived footage" and is "extremely disturbing." But then we're also told that the names and professions of the characters have been changed. Why would that be, if they're all real people? The silly premise instantly begins to crumble.

Nothing in this movie is real, starting with the aerial shots of Nome, Alaska, where the story is set. What we see is a city surrounded by mountains and forests (the picture was mostly shot in Bulgaria). But the real Nome, as actual residents have noted online, is situated in a vast, strap-flat snowy landscape. From this point, the film's bogosity only builds.

The picture has an awkward duplex narrative. In one part of it, Jovovich plays a "real" Nome psychologist named Dr. Abigail Tyler, whose husband was recently murdered (an unwise red herring that eventually sandbags the whole story), leaving her to tend to her young son and daughter. Back in 2000, Tyler's patients, under hypnotic regression, all began telling her the same strange tale — that they were being awakened in the middle of the night by a strange dream. Something was lurking outside their bedroom window. Something was opening their bedroom door. Something [insert shrieks of horror]. Tyler videotapes these sessions with the help of a fellow psychologist (played by Elias Koteas), and of course we see the tapes, at wearying length. They're certainly intense — much shouting and crying, even a brief bit of irrelevant levitation. This long section of the movie is maddeningly repetitive, with most of the tension being conjured up on the soundtrack, an onslaught of nerve-pinch strings, doomsday percussion and stray tiny tinklings. The movie itself seems more terrified than any viewer is likely to be.

Mixed into all of this are scenes of the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, conducting a solemn interview with the actual (make that "actual") Dr. Abigail Tyler — a mercifully uncredited actress in puzzling land-of-the-dead makeup. We also see her tapes — the "real" ones, of course. Then there's a visit by a professor (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) who's conversant with the language of ancient Sumer. He's called in by Jovovich's Tyler after she hears a strange tongue being spoken through the static on one of her tapes. The professor arrives, listens to the tape, and unsurprisingly confirms that this is, indeed, the language of ancient Sumer. Why this should matter is left to our incomprehension.

There's little more to be said. The patients have all become nightly rentals for alien abductors (the Fourth Kind being the category of extraterrestrial encounter that follows the less-alarming Third Kind). We never see these creatures, although at one point we do briefly glimpse some big blurry figures. These aren't especially scary, either.

At the end of the film we're informed that the "real" Abigail Tyler now lives somewhere "on the East Coast," under medical supervision. The implication here may be that some sort of government conspiracy has contrived to silence her. On the other hand, both incarnations of the good doctor have acted so dotty throughout, we can more easily conclude that she's simply nuts. (For a hearty take-down of this whole movie, see Kyle Hopkins' report on the Web site of The Anchorage Daily News.)

With its many confusions and general silliness, "The Fourth Kind" feels much too long. At 98 minutes, it could easily have been at least 10 or 15 minutes shorter without losing much, if anything at all. More usefully, it could have been 98 minutes shorter.

Don't miss Kurt Loder's reviews of "The Men Who Stare At Goats", "The Box" and "Precious", also new in theaters this week.

Check out everything we've got on "The Fourth Kind."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• Milla Jovovich Experiences 'The Fourth Kind'

Ebenezer Scrooge (voiced by Jim Carrey) in "A Christmas Carol"
Photo: Disney

Look at ol' Ebenezer Scrooge — now that's a mug not even a mother could love.

Jim Carrey is no doubt a fan, though, because behind all that computer-generated animation is the comedian himself, done up in a performance-capture leotard. An admirer as well, clearly, is Robert Zemeckis, who masterminded the moviemaking magic that not only turned Carrey into Scrooge, but the three ghosts who visit him in this adaptation of Dickens' classic, "A Christmas Carol."

Their 3-D movie arrives just a bit before the Christmas season — on Friday (November 6), before even Thanksgiving — but that's no reason you should feel like it has snuck up on you. The story, about three apparitions who visit penny-pinching Scrooge during the course of one night and show him his past, present and future, is more than 150 years old, and MTV News has been covering this cinematic version from its very beginning. Prepare to be visited by our "Christmas Carol" cheat sheet.

Something You've Never Seen Before
Before a single image from the film had gone public, special-effects supervisor Michael Lantieri gave us the inside scoop about how motion-capture technology has evolved since Zemeckis' "The Polar Express" in 2005, when those dreaded "dead eyes" left Tom Hanks looking less than human. "I think you should be prepared to be blown away," he said. "I've seen some things that I haven't seen before."

Early this summer, we got to see exactly what Lantieri was talking about when Disney debuted the first footage for press in New York, showing off a montage of clips and a teaser trailer. We saw Carrey as a wrinkly Scrooge and Gary Oldman as his abused employee Bob Cratchit and the ghost of Jacob Marley.

The Visions Arrive
At Comic-Con, Zemeckis handed out 3-D glasses to a couple thousand people and played some footage to convention-goers. "I think that we've gotten very close to perfecting this," he said. "And it comes from artistry. We've learned how to paint the eyes ... to move the retina realistically. So I think we're there."

Photos began to show just how artistic mo-cap could be, with close-up looks at a sneering, sweaty Scrooge in a sleeping cap and a top-hatted, hairy-nosed Scrooge out for a stroll in London. The first trailer then showed all this CGI madness in motion.

Striking footage continued to arrive over the next months: Scrooge facing off against Marley; Scrooge going for a wild run to escape the Ghost of Christmas Past; and Scrooge discovering his holiday spirit and joining a chorus of carolers for a little ditty.

"There used to be limits because of the amount of data that you could retain when you're capturing," Lantieri explained about the mo-cap process. "You couldn't do crowd scenes. Now we can capture more information, which will make the eye blinks and the eye movements beyond anything you've ever seen. It's at the point where people are going to say, 'Oh, I get it now.' "

Check out everything we've got on "A Christmas Carol."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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• "A Christmas Carol"