![]() Presented in the original 4:3 aspect ratio, Fantasia is quite a sight to behold, and the detail is so great that you can see the individual brush strokes. ![]() The films have been cleaned up and colors are vibrant, solid and bursting off the screen. Newly released on Blu-ray, Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 come together in a combo pack that also includes DVD versions, and a sizeable number of extras. Fortunately, you can skip right over them. The biggest problem I had with Fantasia 2000 was the campiness of the introductions they just don't hold up as well ten years later. As a way to expose people to classical music, both films are absolutely mandatory viewing for everyone. Some might enjoy the more abstract pieces, and others might prefer the narrative ones. This is one of the best segments of all, and is an absolutely stellar way to end the film.īoth Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 offer different experience to the viewer. Finally, the story of nature in a forest - with life and death- is told through Igor Stravinsky's powerful "Firebird Suite - 1919 Version". Not content to let Mickey steal the show, Donald Duck gets his own segment, a re-telling of Noah and the Ark, set to Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance". ![]() From there, we have the archival segment of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". 2" by Dmitri Shostakovich is shown as a narrative interpretation of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Steafast Tin Soldier".Ī bit of levity is found with Camille Saint-Saen's "The Carnival of the Animals, Finale" in which a group of dancing flamingos deal with a rebellious member of the flock who has a yo-yo. Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" shows us a slice of life in 1930's New York City, stylized after the great caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Respighi's "Pines of Rome" shows us a family of humpback whales given the ability to fly, and uses CGI to aid in animating the graceful creatures. With James Levine conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fantasia 2000 starts off with an abstract interpretation - much like the first film - of Beethoven's "Symphony No. Released in 1999, the film has no singular host instead, each segment is introduced by a different celebrity. A completely different film, Fantasia 2000 retained only one previous segment from the original film, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". As it stood, for sixty years, Walt's vision of the project was static. For the DVD release in 2000, the original roadshow version was compiled again but a loss of Deem Taylor's audio elements meant that a voice actor had to re-dub his part.ĭisney conceived of Fantasia as an ever-going work-in-progress, with the idea that new animated segments would constantly be added, and old ones swapped out. Released initially as a "roadshow" version running 124-minutes, Fantasia was ultimately trimmed down to a shockingly short 81-minutes release, and over the subsequent decades, for various re-issues, pieces were added back in. After daylight comes, Schubert's "Ave Maria" concludes the film with a spiritual uplifting finale. The climax of the film comes with the powerful depiction of the intensely powerful demon Chernabog in Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain". "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli is shown as different animals dancing for each of the different times of the day: ostriches for the morning, hippopotamus for the daytime, elephants for the evening, and alligators for the night. ![]() ![]() 6) is presented as a depiction of Greek mythology, with centaurs, fauns, cupids, and others gathering for a festival to celebrate Bacchus, the God of Wine. Beethoven's "The Pastoral Symphony" (Symphony No. "The Rite of Spring", by Igor Stravinsky, is conceived of as a condensed history of the beginnings of life on earth, through the extinction of the dinosaurs.Īfter an intermission, we get "Meet the Soundtrack" - an interpretive jazz piece involving artist's renditions of sound waveforms. The most narrative segment, Paul Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" features Mickey Mouse dealing with magical brooms gone amuck. Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" is depicted as a change of seasons, with dancing mushrooms, fish, fairies, leaves, and flowers. First up is the abstract interpretation of J.S. Hosted by Deems Taylor, with performances by Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, Fantasia contains eight well known segments. The segments in the film are well known by now. A cinematic blending of classical music with interpretive animation, Fantasia didn't immediately grab the audiences that Disney had hoped for, but over time it would become a beloved and cherished viewing experience. When it was released in 1940, Walt Disney's progressive and experimental animated feature Fantasia was unlike anything that audiences had ever seen. ![]()
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