The Rescuers Down Under
Directed by Hendel Butoy and Mike Gabriel
Written by Jim Cox, Karey Kirkpatrick, Byron Simpson, Joe Ranft
Starring Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, George C. Scott
The level of faith the Walt Disney Company places in its own products never ceases to be amazing if inexplicable. Each era at this massive corporation is so categorically different from what came before, well back into when Disney was still a struggling film studio desperately trying to pay the bills with its shorts or, at the time, a handful of massively ambitious feature-length animated films. Thus, the faith placed in the product has always shifted. However, the Mouse House’s modern era, beginning in 1984, when Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the late Frank Wells began their tenure in various high-level positions, has been concurrently maddening and glorious to behold. Whether we like it or not, Disney fans are something of...
Directed by Hendel Butoy and Mike Gabriel
Written by Jim Cox, Karey Kirkpatrick, Byron Simpson, Joe Ranft
Starring Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, George C. Scott
The level of faith the Walt Disney Company places in its own products never ceases to be amazing if inexplicable. Each era at this massive corporation is so categorically different from what came before, well back into when Disney was still a struggling film studio desperately trying to pay the bills with its shorts or, at the time, a handful of massively ambitious feature-length animated films. Thus, the faith placed in the product has always shifted. However, the Mouse House’s modern era, beginning in 1984, when Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the late Frank Wells began their tenure in various high-level positions, has been concurrently maddening and glorious to behold. Whether we like it or not, Disney fans are something of...
- 1/26/2013
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
Fantasia 2000
Directed by Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, and Paul and Gaetan Brazzi
Starring Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Penn and Teller, Angela Lansbury
Achieving balance is one of the great high-wire acts of family films. Some filmmakers attempt to make universal pieces of entertainment, to appeal to adults as well as to children. Many don’t, but the best of the films from Walt Disney Pictures succeed at that balance, or at least try very hard and come close to succeeding. The most obvious example of a group of people trying to make something as accessible for kids as it is for adults, something that everyone can enjoy on some level, are the two (as of now) Fantasia films. Both movies work within the medium of animation to transcend commonly considered tropes of storytelling. But the people behind both films went about...
Directed by Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, and Paul and Gaetan Brazzi
Starring Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Penn and Teller, Angela Lansbury
Achieving balance is one of the great high-wire acts of family films. Some filmmakers attempt to make universal pieces of entertainment, to appeal to adults as well as to children. Many don’t, but the best of the films from Walt Disney Pictures succeed at that balance, or at least try very hard and come close to succeeding. The most obvious example of a group of people trying to make something as accessible for kids as it is for adults, something that everyone can enjoy on some level, are the two (as of now) Fantasia films. Both movies work within the medium of animation to transcend commonly considered tropes of storytelling. But the people behind both films went about...
- 5/19/2012
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
Every movie buff appreciates a cinematic list. The arrival of vast information on a subject we love so dearly will always be welcomed with open arms. And what better than the esteemed list of all-time greatest films? Whether it’s a monumental effort like Empire’s The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, or the country-specific AFI list of 100 Greatest American Films, there’s no denying the lasting appeal and insight a list can offer to reminiscence about old favourites and to put us on our way for new discoveries. After all, they’re usually spot on, having polled critics, filmmakers, and a devoted public who know exactly what makes a motion picture entertaining, important and timeless.
The problem is, of course, that after so many years, we’re used to reading the same old lists over and over again – how many times have we been told that The Godfather or...
The problem is, of course, that after so many years, we’re used to reading the same old lists over and over again – how many times have we been told that The Godfather or...
- 5/26/2011
- by Tom Barnard
- Obsessed with Film
Blu-ray Review
Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 (Four-Disc Blu-ray/DVD combo)
Fantasia
Directed by: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe, Norm Ferguson, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen
Cast: Leopold Stokowski
Running Time: 2 hr 5 min
Rating: G
Due Out: November 30, 2010
Plot: Seven classical pieces of music are animated in a film that’s meant to be the visual representation of what you hear when listening to these pieces.
Who’S It For? Unlike most animated films, this requires a more mature audience. Though there’s nothing objectionable in the material, it might be dull for kids.
Movie:
The most experimental of any of Disney’s animated feature films, Fantasia tells seven stories, all set to music. The most famous is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starring Mickey Mouse wearing a red robe and blue hat covered in stars. Even people who haven’t seen the...
Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 (Four-Disc Blu-ray/DVD combo)
Fantasia
Directed by: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe, Norm Ferguson, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen
Cast: Leopold Stokowski
Running Time: 2 hr 5 min
Rating: G
Due Out: November 30, 2010
Plot: Seven classical pieces of music are animated in a film that’s meant to be the visual representation of what you hear when listening to these pieces.
Who’S It For? Unlike most animated films, this requires a more mature audience. Though there’s nothing objectionable in the material, it might be dull for kids.
Movie:
The most experimental of any of Disney’s animated feature films, Fantasia tells seven stories, all set to music. The most famous is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starring Mickey Mouse wearing a red robe and blue hat covered in stars. Even people who haven’t seen the...
- 12/1/2010
- by Megan Lehar
- The Scorecard Review
In 1940, Walt Disney's "Fantasia" caught the public's imagination in an extraordinary way. The movie was a breathtaking achievement for movie cartoonists, who, despite occasional silliness, displayed a free-form approach to animation in their marriage of music to imagery.
In "Fantasia 2000", Disney animators have done it again. Employing technical tools those pioneering animators could only dream about, today's cartoonists have splashed across the screen bold and beautiful images that pulsate to several musical styles.
Freed from the confinements of traditional storytelling to pursue pure imagery, the animators experiment wildly with styles and color palettes. You can almost feel the artistic exhilaration that went into this 75-minute movie: Whales fly with birds, Donald Duck meets Noah and Al Hirschfeld sketches turn into a teeming cityscape.
Disney can anticipate a huge worldwide audience for this film that should become, as the first movie did, a perennial family entertainment, good for revival or video rentals for decades to come. In some quarters though, anxious viewers will have to wait awhile as Buena Vista launches "Fantasia 2000" in exclusive four-mouth engagements at IMAX theaters around the world beginning Jan. 1. The film will go out in regular 35mm next summer.
The IMAX release is a stroke of genius as the large-screen format brings the viewer into the surreal worlds dreamed up by the animators. The movie encounters a minor problem in the blow-up of the one sequence from the original film, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" starring Mickey Mouse. Despite a meticulous restoration process, this episode does not maintain its color resolution when blown up to IMAX's super screen size.
"Fantasia 2000" contains seven new episodes starting with the staccato first movement from Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony". This three-minute selection is the most abstract of the film's sequences, as triangular fragments drift, swirl, form and re-form pastel-colored designs against a world of clouds and waterfalls much like the pieces in a kaleidoscope.
Each of the remaining sequences is introduced by hosts including Steve Martin, Itzhak Perlman, Quincy Jones, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones, Penn & Teller, Angela Lansbury and the film's music conductor James Levine.
Respighi's "Pines of Rome" evokes not Italian forests but, weirdly yet movingly, humpback whales in a sparkling, blue-tinged Nordic wonderland, performing ballets under water and in boreal skies as a lightning storm and squadrons of birds accompany their migration.
George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" borrows from caricaturist Hirschfeld to create a 1930s Manhattan with variations of blue that takes in a hard-hat construction worker, an overworked doorman, the out-of-work Joe, a little girl dragged to ballet and a Harlem jazz club.
Shostakovich's "Piano Concerto No. 2" provides the music for a telling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", an action-filled fairy tale about a one-legged toy soldier's determination to protect a lovely ballerina from an evil jack-in-the-box. Animators use CGI to create a three-dimensional plasticity for the three main characters, who move through a world where shifts in color express the story's emotions.
Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals", arguably the weakest of the new episodes, has the nimble water ballet by a flock of flamingos destroyed by one trouble-maker who sneaks a yo-yo into the "chorus line." Pleasing watercolors convey the battle between the conformity of the flock and the routine-breaking by this rebel.
Excerpts from four of the marches in Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" provide the backdrop for the story of Noah and the Ark with Donald Duck acting as his wildlife wrangler. But this is a new, poignant Donald who believes he has lost his beloved Daisy in the tumult of the creatures' boarding. His sorrow is only relieved when the Ark finally "docks" on Mount Ararat and the two love ducks are reunited.
"Fantasia 2000" saves the best for last. Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite -- 1919 Version" prompts a mythical story of life, death and rebirth in which a life-giving water Sprite, summoned by an elk, inadvertently rouses a flame-belching Firebird lurking within a volcano. The monster lays waste to a wilderness with fire and Molten Lava only for the Sprite's magical touch to reawaken the foliage. The intensity of the powerful images and fiery colors in this sequence is stunning.
Created during nine years in a project championed by Disney vice chairman Roy E. Disney, "Fantasia 2000" firmly re-establishes that studio's leadership in animation at the dawn of the new century.
FANTASIA 2000
Buena Vista Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Executive producer Roy E. Disney
Producer Donald W. Ernst
Directors Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy,
Eric Goldberg, James Algar,
Francis Glebas, Gaetan Brizzi, Paul Brizzi
Music conducted by James Levine
Performed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Supervising animation director Hendel Butoy
Associate producer Lisa C. Cook
Editors Jessica Ambinder Rojas,
Lois Freeman-Fox
Color/stereo
Running time -- 75 minutes
MPAA rating: G...
In "Fantasia 2000", Disney animators have done it again. Employing technical tools those pioneering animators could only dream about, today's cartoonists have splashed across the screen bold and beautiful images that pulsate to several musical styles.
Freed from the confinements of traditional storytelling to pursue pure imagery, the animators experiment wildly with styles and color palettes. You can almost feel the artistic exhilaration that went into this 75-minute movie: Whales fly with birds, Donald Duck meets Noah and Al Hirschfeld sketches turn into a teeming cityscape.
Disney can anticipate a huge worldwide audience for this film that should become, as the first movie did, a perennial family entertainment, good for revival or video rentals for decades to come. In some quarters though, anxious viewers will have to wait awhile as Buena Vista launches "Fantasia 2000" in exclusive four-mouth engagements at IMAX theaters around the world beginning Jan. 1. The film will go out in regular 35mm next summer.
The IMAX release is a stroke of genius as the large-screen format brings the viewer into the surreal worlds dreamed up by the animators. The movie encounters a minor problem in the blow-up of the one sequence from the original film, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" starring Mickey Mouse. Despite a meticulous restoration process, this episode does not maintain its color resolution when blown up to IMAX's super screen size.
"Fantasia 2000" contains seven new episodes starting with the staccato first movement from Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony". This three-minute selection is the most abstract of the film's sequences, as triangular fragments drift, swirl, form and re-form pastel-colored designs against a world of clouds and waterfalls much like the pieces in a kaleidoscope.
Each of the remaining sequences is introduced by hosts including Steve Martin, Itzhak Perlman, Quincy Jones, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones, Penn & Teller, Angela Lansbury and the film's music conductor James Levine.
Respighi's "Pines of Rome" evokes not Italian forests but, weirdly yet movingly, humpback whales in a sparkling, blue-tinged Nordic wonderland, performing ballets under water and in boreal skies as a lightning storm and squadrons of birds accompany their migration.
George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" borrows from caricaturist Hirschfeld to create a 1930s Manhattan with variations of blue that takes in a hard-hat construction worker, an overworked doorman, the out-of-work Joe, a little girl dragged to ballet and a Harlem jazz club.
Shostakovich's "Piano Concerto No. 2" provides the music for a telling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", an action-filled fairy tale about a one-legged toy soldier's determination to protect a lovely ballerina from an evil jack-in-the-box. Animators use CGI to create a three-dimensional plasticity for the three main characters, who move through a world where shifts in color express the story's emotions.
Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals", arguably the weakest of the new episodes, has the nimble water ballet by a flock of flamingos destroyed by one trouble-maker who sneaks a yo-yo into the "chorus line." Pleasing watercolors convey the battle between the conformity of the flock and the routine-breaking by this rebel.
Excerpts from four of the marches in Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" provide the backdrop for the story of Noah and the Ark with Donald Duck acting as his wildlife wrangler. But this is a new, poignant Donald who believes he has lost his beloved Daisy in the tumult of the creatures' boarding. His sorrow is only relieved when the Ark finally "docks" on Mount Ararat and the two love ducks are reunited.
"Fantasia 2000" saves the best for last. Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite -- 1919 Version" prompts a mythical story of life, death and rebirth in which a life-giving water Sprite, summoned by an elk, inadvertently rouses a flame-belching Firebird lurking within a volcano. The monster lays waste to a wilderness with fire and Molten Lava only for the Sprite's magical touch to reawaken the foliage. The intensity of the powerful images and fiery colors in this sequence is stunning.
Created during nine years in a project championed by Disney vice chairman Roy E. Disney, "Fantasia 2000" firmly re-establishes that studio's leadership in animation at the dawn of the new century.
FANTASIA 2000
Buena Vista Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Executive producer Roy E. Disney
Producer Donald W. Ernst
Directors Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy,
Eric Goldberg, James Algar,
Francis Glebas, Gaetan Brizzi, Paul Brizzi
Music conducted by James Levine
Performed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Supervising animation director Hendel Butoy
Associate producer Lisa C. Cook
Editors Jessica Ambinder Rojas,
Lois Freeman-Fox
Color/stereo
Running time -- 75 minutes
MPAA rating: G...
- 12/23/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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