There are two elements to this bit of news. One, they’re making a live-action/animation hybrid of Hong Kong Phooey. What does that mean? It means that instead of using traditional animation to make a feature length film, Alcon Entertainment will be making something that resembles the original cartoon instead of actually looking like it. Imagine the difference between the cartoon Smurfs and the ones that ended up walking around New York City. Therein lies a major problem with updating animated characters. There is a mile-wide gap between the character as people know and love them, and the character as restylized through a computer. But not to fear, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Eddie Murphy will be stepping behind the gi to voice the kung fu fighting dog of 70s fame. In the original cartoon, Penry was a janitor that cast off his mild-mannered alter ego and became Hong Kong Phooey whenever there was trouble.

Why Watch? Because a hybrid of manga, live-action and WTF is exactly what you need to get you through the day. This outstanding short delivers a visual experience where people live inside the pages of a Japanese comic book that seems inspired by Noh Theater and little orange pills. A young girl named Junko lives with her shamisen-playing grandfather who is killed while she’s playing in the woods. Accompanied by her stop-motion fox friend, and inhabiting a stage world lorded over by a narrator and his band, Junko must find a new path at the edge of a knife. What Will It Cost? Just 10 minutes of your time. Does it get better any better than that? Check out Junko’s Shamisen for yourself:

I’ve always found Robert Zemeckis’s films to be hit or miss. Lately he’s been pretty solidly in the miss category though. Sometimes it’s hard to remember he directed films like Back to the Future or Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Movies that were full of genre weirdness, but were undeniably mainstream because they had that certain Robert Zemeckis touch. It’s even kind of hard to remember that he made the movie with perhaps the most universal appeal of all time in Forrest Gump. It’s hard to remember because of the last ten years of weird looking, off putting, motion capture animation movies that he’s insisted on making. His next film was set to be another of those creepy exercises in something nobody ever asked for, this time a motion capture take on the Beatles classic Yellow Submarine, but then Mars Needs Moms tanked at the box office. Suddenly the hammer was put down on weird, experimental forms of animation, and that left Zemeckis scrambling to find a script for a live action film to direct.

Normally I’d be selling you on how an ancient movie is still enjoyable today or that a modern audience can still be moved by pictures made over half a century ago, but I’m not so sure Song of the South really deserves all that much praise for its own artistic merit.

With high-quality pictures already released this year such as “Bridge to Terabithia,” and “Ratatouille,” along with the mildly recommendable “Meet the Robinsons” and “The Game Plan,” and now “Enchanted,” it has been a good year for Disney indeed.