L.A. Noire might make for a great video game, but I'd be furious if I paid to see a film featuring animated actors that moved so stiffly, looked so doll-like and inexpressive. Gollum worked, in part, because (a) he was juxtaposed against real people and real places and (b) because he was stylized. Imagine a LoTR where Sam, Frodo, Gandalf and the rest of the human characters were ALL Mocapped. Why would a sane person bother doing that when they have brilliant, living, breathing actors capable of bringing those characters to full life?
Not saying that Gollum's a 1:1 guarantee of nailing mo-cap, but I do think that technology can get to the point where maybe the uncanny valley is not totally crossable, but instead we can launch things over to the other side. With a catapult. I get your point about LOTR being filled with real actors though. In that sense, I'd look to animation or whatever the heck they did with Avatar (which looks like animation/hyper-realistic but actually done with mo-cap.) I mean, this is supposed to be a cartoon, right?
My only point with LA Noire is that it's obviously not up to the standards of live-action even necessarily exceptional CGI animation but that it can nonetheless be involving on a real level, which is a kind of success. We're at the point where we can begin to fine-tune what kind of artificiality mass audiences can accept, and that's sorta interesting (to me anyways.)
