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?

MovieBabble: The Magical Underrated Adventures of Baron Munchausen

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Happy 30th anniversary to the incredible fantasy that I’ve praised multiple times before, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen! I was shocked to see it not come up on the movie anniversary sign-up list for MovieBabble and immediately set out to rectify that.

If you haven’t seen it before or need a reminder as to why it’s a film that deserves more recognition, click HERE to read my article on it. Also, please enjoy this fan-made trailer I made a while back. For glory, adventure, and the defiance of reality!

January Review: Pinocchio (1940)

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“When You Wish Upon A Star
Makes No Difference Who You Are
Anything Your Heart Desires
Will Come To You…”

In my last review, I compared Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Star Wars; a blockbuster that captivated audiences, revolutionized filmmaking, and was an all-around fun adventure with a likable cast. Well if Snow White is Disney’s Star Wars – before Disney owned Lucasfilm, I mean – then Pinocchio is undoubtedly Disney’s Empire Strikes Back: refined visuals, more complex storytelling and characters, and much, MUCH darker.

The success of Snow White marked the beginning of big things for Disney animation. The sizable influx of cash meant Walt could build a bigger studio, hire more staff, and give his projects a noticeably larger budget. The question is, where to go from here? What movie could possibly follow the fairest one of all? Investors were clamoring for a sequel and the idea was toyed with for a time, but Walt was not a one-trick pony. Then animator Norm Ferguson brought a copy of Carlo Collodi’s Le avventuri di Pinocchio to Walt’s attention. Walt and a few of his key guys had attended a performance of Yasha Frank’s successful staging of Pinocchio prior to Snow White’s release and noted the story had possibilities for adaptation – plenty of spectacle, cute comic relief critters, etc. Seeing that book sparked Walt’s memory; after reading it, he intended to make Pinocchio his third animated venture behind the upcoming Bambi. But when that movie ran into production troubles, Pinocchio was bumped up to its place. Does it measure up to Snow White, though? Let’s find out.

August Review: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

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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.) “Most of you won’t remember me or my adventures, but I assure you, they are true.”

     – Baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen

I’m sure the few of you who know of this movie’s existence are jumping in your seats right now since someone on the internet is finally looking at it. I’m also sure that those of you who haven’t are scratching your heads in confusion. Allow me to elucidate –

“The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” is a fantasy film released in 1988 that is the final chapter in Terry Gilliam’s Imagination Trilogy, the previous two being “Time Bandits” and “Brazil”. These are films that deal with escaping the humdrum, conformity, and injustice of society through imagination, with each film representing the struggle to do so at different ages. Time Bandits does this through the eyes of a child; with Brazil we see it happen with a middle-aged man. Today’s film does this with an old man, or rather, several old men breaking free of the constraints of modern-day progress and performing fantastical feats to fight back against those who would force it upon them.

In other words, if you ever wanted to see a 2-hour long version of “The Crimson Permanent Assurance”, today’s your lucky day.

But first a bit of background about the man behind this movie.

Terry Gilliam – three things usually come to mind when you hear his name: that one guy from Monty Python, weird-ass director/animator, or, as Hollywood tends to peg him, the Director With the Worst Luck In the Universe. Why is that, you may ask? Things started off well-enough for him, directing some of the Python’s most beloved films (though most of the credit went to the other Terry in the group) and the financially and critically successful Time Bandits (which is a film I’ve noticed people either love or hate; My boyfriend is in the latter category so I choose not to discuss it any further).

It all started during the filming of Brazil. The studio executives started meddling with his vision, insisting that they change the ending and cut stuff out, and in the end released a version that’s considered on par with the Mona Lisa after an unfortunate meeting with a chainsaw. This resulted in the film bombing at the box office, and from there, it all went downhill. Sure, “The Fisher King” and “12 Monkeys” kept Terry afloat for a while, but “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”? A cult favorite today, but reviled back then. His Don Quixote movie? Never even got off the ground due to production troubles. “The Brothers Grimm”? Failed in everything but the casting. “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”? His lead actor DIED halfway through filming (which makes me wonder if getting lost in playing the Joker was what really killed Heath Ledger). Terry Gilliam’s reputation for being a box-office curse has preceded him so much that he was turned down by Warner Bros. executives in favor of Chris Columbus to direct the first Harry Potter film despite being JK Rowling’s first choice, something that poor Terry has never gotten over.

I bring all this up because the film we’re looking at today, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, is practically a textbook example of Murphy’s Law, in that everything that could go wrong during filming did. You could write a book on the problems that occurred; in fact, they have! There was constant fighting between Gilliam, the producers and the studio, the production went tremendously over budget, I’m certain almost every actor involved got PTSD (Eric Idle flat out said no one in their right minds should ever be in a Terry Gilliam film unless they want to be driven insane. Ouch.), and a major change in management at Columbia resulted in the film getting limited release, ensuring its total box office failure…

…which is why it’s such a miracle that this film is as amazing as it is.

I mean it. I really do love this film. It’s easily in my Top 10 Favorites, and it saddens me that it does not get anywhere near as much love and appreciation as it should. There are very few movies as creative, as funny, as adventurous, as fantastical, as occasionally heartwarming, or as flat-out insane as Baron Munchausen. Time Bandits may have a lot of nostalgic value for some, and Brazil is daring and bizarre in all the right ways, but this? For all the fiascoes behind the scenes, you could never tell by how well they pulled it off. This is one of those rare movies that somehow, subtly, worm their way into my heart by including just a little bit of everything that I adore without me realizing it until after I’m hooked. With every viewing I discover some new detail or level of brilliance. I seriously consider it one of the last great fantasy films of the 1980’s, and one that is overlooked far more than it should be. It had a decent shelf-life after being released on video, but not to the point of, say “The Princess Bride” or Don Bluth’s films, where kids growing up renting them on VHS have made them household names today. I can name the amount of people I know who are aware of this film’s existence on one hand – my boyfriend, reviewer Huey Toonmore, the cashier at the Barnes and Noble where I bought this movie who started up a conversation about it with me, and the lady behind me in line at said Barnes and Noble who joined our conversation. It’s rare when you find something that manages to stop a line for several minutes so three random strangers can discuss it, but there you go.

So I know what you’re thinking about this review after my singing of its praises and giving an overly long backstory – I wish I could say that’s the last Python reference I’ll make in this review, but I make no promises. Let’s begin.