January Review: Fantasia 2000

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Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

August Review: Moana (2016)

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(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material.)

Greetings and wel(ow)come to this month’s (ow) review of (ow) Disney’s latest animated (ow) feature Mo(ow)ana. I hope you’re (ow) as excited as I am (ow).

Um, not that I’m actually concerned about your well being, but, you ok, Shelf?

Have you ever had carpal tunnel, Cynicism?

Well seeing as I’m part of you, yes. Disney College Program, 2012. Both hands. Remember?

How could I forget?

So it’s back again? Just take some Advil and get a stenographer to help with the review.

Don’t worry, I got this. Frankly it’s my own fault anyway. Remember how in school the teacher would make you copy lines starting with “I will not” for hours so you’d never do what you did to earn that punishment again? I set out to do that before writing this review of Moana so that way my fair judgement wouldn’t be clouded by…certain musical preferences.

There’s no point in repeating how much 2016 sucked donkey balls, but I can rest easy knowing what a red letter year it was for the world’s foremost musical laureate, Lin-Manuel Miranda. He was already established on the Broadway circuit for his Tony-winning show In The Heights and providing an authentic Spanish translation for the Puerto Rican Sharks in the 2009 revival of West Side Story, but the runaway success of Hamilton quickly established him as the poetic voice of our time. It’s no surprise that Disney scooped him up as quickly as possible. When I found out he was going to be writing the songs for Moana, my excitement for this movie tripled. In addition to that, Lin is scheduled to voice Gizmoduck in the Ducktales reboot, play Bert 2.0 Jack in the upcoming Mary Poppins sequel, and work with Alan Menken on new songs for the live-action Little Mermaid remake. Lin is already a major Disney fan and proud of it (he even named his son Sebastian), so on top of winning all the Tonys and Emmys and Grammys and Pulitzers, working with Disney is a dream come true for him. And once you hear the songs from Moana, you know he put his damndest into making them worthy of being sung along with the classic tunes he grew up with. The best part? He succeeded. Had it not been for La La Land he most likely would have become a PEGOT winner five months ago. To come so far in such a short amount of time with his talent and work ethic, the man freaking deserves it.

But I can’t attribute all of Moana’s success to Lin. Not only is there a crack team of animators, effects artists, and storyboard artists that would take too long to name individually, but after a nearly ten-year absence from Disney animation, John Musker and Ron Clements have returned to the director’s chair. These two guys are pretty much responsible for the Disney Renaissance AND the current Revival period we’re in, having provided their trademark knack for story and humor to The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet, and The Princess and the Frog. Despite their efforts to make Moana Disney’s first feature fully animated in Meander, which near-seamlessly combines hand-drawn and computer animation (and was used to create the Oscar-winning short Paperman), they were forced to compromise and make it all CGI – with one welcome exception. This marks their first foray into the medium, but does that mean visual quality is put before story and character? Can it be considered worthy of being a Musker/Clements movie, let alone a Disney movie? Let’s find out.