Rating: 
Summary: Good video, OK songs
Review: The pictures were amazing, but I didn't like the way they performed some of the songs (loud shrill singer at the end of Pomp and Circumstance, understated tone for Beethoven's Fifth) or the way the songs went with the pictures. The one exception was Rhapsody in Blue, which was a perfect blend of the story to the pictures.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantasia 2000, a cut below the rest.
Review: I was a big fan of fantasia, and was expecting something from fantasia 2000. It didn't happen. Fantasia was a beautiful movie with good music. Fantasia 2000 made a mockery of the artistry that went into the original. It was like taking "Star Wars" (circa 1977), and since it was old, replacing it with (you name any bad flick). Yes, the graphics were a little better, but the movie, and the whole feel of a once masterpiece, was disheartening. Only the people that had seen Fantasia in the original will understand; I would pay to see the original Fantasia on the screen, although the newer fantasia disgusted me. If you change the name, it would be OK, but don't defame fantasia. (If you've seen the original first, don't see it. )
Rating: 
Summary: Mystical, Magical--Classical Disney/Classical Music
Review: I saw the first Fantasia at the age of 9. I was fortunate enough to see this masterpiece in a theatre in my hometown. I now consider myself fortunate to have seen this newest Disney masterpiece. Fantasia 2000. I was quite surprised to read of the criticisms pertaining to this film. Many of which were of no merit. How can one expect a film 60 years down the creative path to be lesser than or greater than the original. The art of comparison is neither artistic or logical. The Art of Appreciation is much more appropriate in terms of identifying with art and the ones that create it. Fantasia, for all of its beauty, has both its own seperate identity and space in time. The same can be said for Fantasia 2000. As for the animation, seeing is believing. The fields of color are vast and the imagery is both stunning and captivating. Even more, it is done without overkill. "The Pines of Rome" segment is breathtaking, and its conclusion always brings a tear to my eye. The style and grace of the animators truly captures the majesty of these beautiful creatures. All in a way that is stunning both in a cinematic sense and creative sense. Of course, it is all beautifully tied to the selected musical arrangements. All of which are beautifully performed, thus solidifying the elegant and majestic nature of classical music. Hans Christian Andersen's "Steadfast Tin Soldier" is one of my personal favorites. It illustrates the beauty of Disney's magical use of whimsy, levity and creativity. Making you wish that you could be part of the landscape rather than just an outside observer. The rest of the stories are also beautifully rendered, yet stand out in their own special way. Though "Rhapsody In Blue" leaves me feeling a little jaded. All in all Fantasia 2000 does everything that I felt it would. The introductions by various artists such as Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Quicy Jones and James Earl Jones served as a nice touch. Giving the film it own unique fingerprint. One reviewer mistakingly called this movie "fragmented". Which makes no sense when one considers the architecture of the film. The purpose of this film is what makes it both beautiful and unique in the art of filmmaking. The advancement of the wheel did'nt take place by duplicating the same design over and over again. The same rule applies to art, as well as engineering and most other endeavors. In viewing a "suite" of different stories set to classical music, it is hard to imagine how one can deem such an original concept as fragmented. This film is close to its roots, while shedding light on its own originality and identity. The re-introduction of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is indicative of how rooted and grounded current Disney Animators are to the best traditions of Disney Animation. All the while displaying the newest of techniques and advancements in todays realm of animation and the stories that are told within its landscape. One need not be "highbrow" or "lowbrow" when viewing a film like this. Often times people can view a film and find need to make a political commentary. Speaking of "subliminals" or the so-called socially derisive images that were spoken of in regards to Disney's "Lion King" in the Summer of 1994. The so-called "intellectuals" had a field day. All that needs to be done is the ability to view with an open set of eyes. Eyes willing to see the beauty of yesterday (Fantasia-1940) while bathing in the light of a new frontier. Fantasia 2000 allows this to be done, and with flying colors...No two Sunsets are the same, yet one is no less beautiful or more beautiful than the other. Both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 serve as wonderful companions to one another. Seperate in time and technique, yet majestically woven in service to musical and visual creativity.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastica
Review: To start with, if you do not appreciate classical music, I advice you go somewhere else. For those of you that do ppreciate classical musis, I suggest you read on. About 6 months ago, I discovered an extreme appreciation for classical music. The talent it took to compose classical songs are amazing. Absent are words, but present is the feeling that the composer had in order to compose their pieces. Now then, combine some of the greatest music ever, with some of the best animators, and that means only one thing: A Classic is Reborn. Music with feeling is combined with animation that has feeling. There really are no stories in Fantasia 2000, it's more of the artists sharing their feelings with songs that have touched them. Fantasia 2000 is perfect for its generation. The original Fantasia was released in Disney's early days. It exemlified early Disney. Fantasia 2000 is second generation Disney, post Little Mermaid. Fantasia 2000 shows off the talents of Disney's current staff. The flying whales is a perfect example. I reccomend this for anyone who wants a Disney classic. Can't go wrong with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Dumbed down sequel still shines.
Review: By far the best sections of the film are Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, both in terms of the musical performance and animation. It's just a shame these (and other) sections couldn't have been longer.Worst sections of the movie are the celebrity introductions and the truly awful Pomp and Circumstance section. Who thought it fit to have random female warblings at the end?. I must say, as an Englishman, I was perhaps naive in expecting 'Land of Hope and Glory' in an American production, but some discernable words would have been better than none at all. And why did they include an entire sequence from the original Fantasia? It is the most over-played section of the original film and yet hardly the most remarkable. This part as well as the Donald Duck sequence was merely to 'dumb down' the film for audiences with sort attention spans. It's a shame, but then I suppose, at least you are getting people to 'appreciate' classical music. A necessary evil, then... Rhapsody in Blue sits rather uneasily amongst the other pieces, both in terms of musical and animation styles, however that may be becasue I'm not a particular fan of Gershwin. Also, the opening sequnce (Beethoven's 5th - well, what there was left of it) was disappointing. It looked more like an exercise in showing off Disney's computer processing power than anything creative. And the colour scheme used was an awful mess of Blacks and purples that did nothing to evoke the musical score (unlike the wonderful Toccata and Fugue piece from the first film). The best thing about this DVD however is the sound. The original Fantasia's Achilles heal was the dreadfully slushy, portamento-laden and often doctored performances of classical works, to the point at which Stokowski must have scribbled extra notes in the musician's scores. On the Fantasia DVD the dreadful sound quality further ruins the mood - I can't think why no one has ever thought to re-record the soundtrack. Fortunately the Fantasia 2000 DVD excels in the sound department and really shows off the DVD format with 'crystal-clear' recording. For this reason and for the truly stunning image quality, I give it 5 out of Five.
Rating:
Summary: Tries too hard and comes out boring
Review: Credentials first: I know and love classical music; I have seen this movie in its original Imax format; since childhood, I've been an unabashed fan of Fantasia 1 which is even more remarkable on DVD. As to the music: yes... some of it is cut.... apparently Disney continues to think (as they did for Fantasia 1) that the "great unwashed" cannot handle a longish composition complete (so ... why choose it?). Everything is excellently performed. Animation concepts: quite terrible..... the R. in Blue is tedious; Noah's ark is interminable, it leaves a sour creationist-bible-proselitizing aftertaste, and, frankly, Donald Duck doesn't work. Presentation: A single presenter would have given a continuity to the film whereas multiple ones reinforce how structurally and stylistically fragmented a movie this already is. On the plus side: The final new-agey sequence is quite beautiful in a pseudo Maxwell Parrish sort of way. The environmentalist message is rather blatant (well, it's a cartoon isn't it). Throughout the movie, but particularly in the first sequence, the animation refers back in glimpses to Fantasia 1. Obviously the references can be appreciated only if you are familiar enough with Fantasia 1. Nonetheless it adds a warm,intelligent touch to a rather flat affair and provides a link to its much more distinguished and enjoyable predecessor. Summary: you are not missing much if you skip it. But get Fantasia 1.
Rating:
Summary: Quasi un Fantasia 2000
Review: Alongside the original Fantasia, Fantasia 2000 is even worse and more Philistine. The best cartoon in the original Fantasia was a rather creative setting of Beethoven's 6th Symphony, apparently uncut, in Arcadia, a setting which made sense given the 6th symphony's vision of redemption. But without apology, Fantasia 2000 brutally cuts Beethoven's Fifth symphony, for as opposed to 1940, when cultural figures like Toscanini and Stokowski had some real power, their descendants (in this case James Levine) must bow to the superior wisdom of the corporation, as expressed in damage to an organic unity. It is said that conductors like Toscanini and Stokowski were arrogant and their readings of the repertoire do contain a willingness (in the case of Beethoven) to slow tempos to a glacial and arrogant pace. But while the "original instruments" movement pretends to a certain purity, it can be read as a generational artifact in which Baby Boomers have been subordinated, not so much to mythical "original intent" (which ignores Beethoven's rage against the technical limits of his instruments and his human performers) but to a form of scientism...in which any sort of external direction is better than none, lest we have to actually *invent*. Thus James Levine is willing to humorously butcher, not the entire Fifth, but its first movement. Beyond this, the sly Disney visual coding holds stronger sway here than it did in 1940. Two episodes, at one and the same time, exalt the nuclear family while calling upon it to sacrifice its uniqueness, and also create a binary, Fundamentalist opposition between good guys and bad guys. The butchered Fifth is set to a conflict between multicolored and black butterflies sure to appeal to racists even if it was not written by conscious racists, with a subplot concerning a custodial parent butterfly and the eternal cute little guy of Disney films. Another episode completely undercuts the careful scientific research touted by Disney by having carefully and 100% accurate whales fly in the air, a sort of mechanistic Fundamentalism that replaces liberation with scientific and technical hegemony. These whales must, it seem, attend an Heideggerian Gathering on pain of being left behind on earth and they remind us of the Fundamentalist sub-text of science fiction which first occured in George Pal's 1930s film When Worlds Collide. Hirschfeld's setting of Rhapsody in Blue is an eagle among sparrows but even Hirschfeld subordinated himself to the self-contradictory imaging of New York as mired in Depression yet responsive to dreams as long as the dreamer was of pure heart. Hirschfeld illustrates a comforting moral lesson, which is that parents must not neglect their children in their mad pursuit of pleasure, or indeed give them too many paid lessons in upper-class skills. Of course, given that most viewers of Disney cannot afford classes for their children, this is apropos, but some of us would have preferred Eloise at the Plaza, mixing martinis for her French teacher. The DVD is accompanied by an eternal Disney supplement, "how we made this film." These supplemental documentaries manage, by clarity on the technical aspects, to completely obscure any real, social information on Disney which we have to remember is primarily a machine for obtaining and for retaining intellectual property. Jack Warner's animators did a far better job of using classical music in animation, in an hilarious sketch of Bugs Bunny the concert pianist versus a mouse. By contrast, Disney is at once too respectful and (in butchering Beethoven) not respectful enough. As in Adorno's regressed listener, the respect for the cultural authority (read class, as in social class) is compensated-for by rage at the actual work expressed in the eternal editorial move: shortening. Mama's little editors love shortening, shortening, for time is money. Fantasia 1940 was made by ingenious analog techniques that required astonishing amounts of dog-work, and this is why in the period from about 1940 to about 1980, animation (like that of Hanna-Barbera's Flintstones) was deliberately simplified; the actual employees would not stand for the hours required in the Depression of men who needed to pay the rent. It is clear, in Fantasia 2000, that arrays of software "objects" with well-defined behavior implement, for example, the clouds of butterflies in the first episode. However, actually fitting objects together and delivering a viewable product happens to bring back at least some of the dogwork involved in making "cels." The actual creators, pictured in the "making of" supplement, seem to be less the free-wheeling animators than exhausted and frazzled software developers, whose creativity has of necessity to be subordinated to vast corporate and social pressures, while constantly demanded. Having said this, honesty compels me to say that I get the debased "enjoyment" promised by the work, and it's better the kids watch Fantasia 2000 than Bride of Chuckie. But better theorists than I have located, almost to the year, that moment in the 1970s when the strange idea that debased enjoyment of butchered works was somehow more relaxing and sensible than real seeing and real listening.
Rating: 
Summary: 'Fantasia 2000'- A Worthy Sequel
Review: The original 'Fantasia', released in 1940, was meant to be the first in a series of similar movies; collections of animated shorts set to classical music. It's a format I can identify with- as a kid, I habitually made up stories while listening to orchestral recordings. Here, animators have done the same thing in visual form. 'Fantasia 2000' was formatted to be shown in Imax theaters. Unfortunately, Imaxes being so few and far apart, I never got a chance to see it on the Really Big Screen, and I know I've missed something. I can only advise fellow video-viewers to watch this one on the largest available TV. Another alteration; rather than featuring a single anonymous narrator, '2000' uses on-screen celebrities. I'm not sure this is any improvement , but at least some of them (Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones) have done previous Disney voice work, a couple (Quincy Jones, Itzhak Perlman) have bona-fide musical credentials, and one (Steve Martin) manages to be genuinely funny. Still, there's no doubt that the music and pictures are the real Stars of this flick. Following the pattern of it's illustrious predecessor, the opening piece- set to the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony- is semi-abstract. A conflict between hordes of black and pastel-colored butterflies is involved, but the real points of interest are the variant lighting effects. Next comes Ottorino Respighi's 'Pines of Rome', accompanied by images straight off a New Age calendar. A nova appears in the sky above the Arctic Ocean, inexplicitly giving the power of flight to a large pod of humpback whales. No plot to speak of; it's just an excuse to present hundreds of whales frolicking among storm clouds. Which is certainly good enough for me! In contrast, the following set is completely concerned with story-telling. Al Hirschfeld, acknowledged master of the affectionate caricature, provides the line-drawing style to accompany George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody In Blue.' A day in the life of four variant New Yorkers, each of whom longs for something, and achieves it (at least temporarily) by the piece's end. Strikingly apt in it's depiction of a uniquely Manhattan mood, it also includes an unprecedented Disney acknowledgement of racism- at one point, an African-American construction worker is repeatedly ignored by the taxis he's trying to flag down. Shostakovich's 'Piano Concerto #2' provides the soundtrack for Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" (or rather a version of that tale- per usual for Disney, Andersen's sad ending has been perked up.) This is the only section of the movie done entirely with computer-generated animation, which seems appropriate; it *is* a toy story. Next: a brief, highly energetic cartoon. One member of a flamingo flock acquires a yo-yo, entanglements ensue, to the sounds of Saint-Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals' finale. Easily the most amusingly silly segment. Then comes a transplant from the original 'Fantasia'; Mickey Mouse in Dukas' 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice.' Nothing more to say about that. Apparently somebody at Disney thought Donald Duck deserved a similar showcase, for he has a comparable role in the next piece. Donald and Daisy are Noah's assistants in the story of the Ark, set to Edward William Elgar's 'Pomp and Circumstance' (the first time I've heard that work played in it's entirety.) Donald without his voice is definitely more diminished than a mute Mickey, but the duck manages some funny bits without it- I loved his double-take after directing a pair of mallards aboard. And there's some genuine pathos when Donald and Daisy, separated in a loading mix-up, are both led to believe the other missed the boat. These two Disney love-birds have never been more sympathetic. They saved the best for last. Igor Stravinsky's powerful 'Firebird' frames a dramatic account of the Mount Saint Helen's eruption, with some mythical entities added. A verdant-tressed sprite represents life and renewal, while a truly frightening Firebird symbolizes the destructive power of the volcano. Their's is a primordial clash, but it's inevitable which one will finally win, and Stravinsky's score makes that triumph nearly as moving as the real-life events. Overall, I'd say this video is not *quite* as good as the first 'Fantasia', but as the original is among my all-time favorite movies, that's hardly criticism. Certainly '2000' is a very fine effort, well worthy of a sequel. Here's hoping the gap between this and the next Fantasia will be somewhat shorter than sixty years.
Rating:
Summary: a collectors' item
Review: If your home theater is fully set up with either Dolby Digital (DD) or DTS, you should definitely consider getting this DVD. Whether you like Fantasia as a movie or not, you should still consider getting this DVD--it will push your audio/visual system to its limit. I usually don't listen to classical music, but, listening to Fantasia with digital surround sound (DD or DTS) is an experience. It is unlike listening to a classical CD on your stereo. The difference is almost like as if you are in the orchestra instead of in the audience. Other than the amazing soundtrack for your receiver, special features on this F2K are interesting. Artists/graphic artists will appreciate hearing the commentary from the art director.
Rating:
Summary: Three Stars Because They Knew Who To Imitate and Did It Well
Review: Three stars entirely on the basis if the Hirshfield-designed "Rhapsody in Blue", a perfect capture of what it would have been like as a '40s Warner Bros short directed by Chuck Jones -- i kept expecting the little baggy-eyed guy to find a singing frog... (The multiple but obviously-destined-to-happily-intersect plotlines, meanwhile, rather put me in mind of Will Eisner's "Spirit" -- particularly of the story of Gerhard Schnobble, the man who could fly.) Absolutely the high spot of the film. The flying whales that so many have loved were, for me, beautiful graphically and technically, but just a little bit silly. The "Pomp and Circumstance" sequence, featuring Donald Duck in an unusually good-humoured mode as Noah's Executive Assistant was about the most typical piece of Disney short-subject animation in the film -- which meant i enjoyed it, laughed heartily over it, and don't much care if i never see it again (contrasted to Warner's "Duck Amuck" or "What's Opera Doc?", which i could watch every other day and not tire of for a long time). "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" was very well done -- though i thought that the ballerina keept looking like heavily-processed motion capture CGI of a human dancer, in contrast to the soldier and the jack-in-the-box who looked mostly hand-animated. Also, can we *please* stop adapting Hans Christian Anderson stories and giving them "happy" endings? The "Firebird" suite was pretty, but, indeed, suffers a bit too much from being altogether like the "Bald Mountain/Ave Maria" ending of the original version. Skipping back to the "Flamingoes with a YoYo" sequence -- it was hilarious. Reminded me of something i'd have expected to see in "Allegro non Troppo", Bruno Bozzetto's brilliant Italian satire/homage to the original "Fantasia". I skipped over the "Sorceror's Apprentice" sequence -- however much i liked it when i saw it on the original "Disneyland" teevee show forty-odd years ago, i've seen it too many times in between. (Also, based on the few seconds i *did* see, the picture quality suffers by comparison to the rest of the film.) The various "host/narrator" characters were, for the most part mostly harmlsee -- except for Steve Martin, whose mere presence had my thumb hovering over the "Stop" button on the remote. So -- three stars because of the "Rhapsody" sequence, and the rest gets a free ride.
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