FILM 2355: THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)

TRIVIA: The movie is based on the book "The Polar Express." Author Chris Van Alsburg also wrote "Jumanji" and "Zathura".

The film is listed in the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records as the "first all-digital capture" film, where all acted parts were done in digital capture.

The address spoken by the conductor early in the film "11344 Edbrooke" is the real address of Robert Zemeckis' childhood house. The house is in a south side Chicago neighborhood called Roseland.

This is the third Tom Hanks film directed by Robert Zemeckis. The previous films were Forrest Gump (1994) and Cast Away (2000).

In the scene where the engineer and fireman are trying to grab the pin necessary for the trains throttle, in the background you can see a working flux capacitor. This is a reference to Back to The Future and can possibly mean the the Polar Express is a functioning time machine.

When the Hero Boy pulls the train whistle, he says "I've wanted to do that my whole life". In Back to the Future Part III (1990), another Robert Zemeckis film, Doc Brown does and says the same.

Several reviews called the motion-capture animation "creepy." In the 1978 book "Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction", Masahiro Mori coined the term "uncanny valley" to describe the revulsion that people can feel when they encounter a robot that looks human enough, but is clearly not alive.

When Hero Boy falls asleep, the clock in his bedroom reads 10:20, the same time as the clock in Scrooge's bedroom when Marley's ghost appears in the Alastair Sim version of Scrooge (1951).

A musical theme heard throughout the movie is identical to that heard in "Elf" when Santa's sleigh finally gets airborne heading south over Fifth Avenue.

CAMEO: Steven Tyler: the Elf Lieutenant / Elf Singer.

DIRECTOR TRADEMARK: Robert Zemeckis: [keyhole] The Hero Boy looks through a keyhole early in the movie.

This is featured on the podcast Blank Check episode The Polar Express With Joey Sims