‘Fantasia’ remake debuts at IMAX

Monday, Dec. 27, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.

Fantasia

What: "Fantasia/2000."

When: Saturday through April 30. Shows daily at 9 a.m., 10:25 a.m., 11:50 a.m., 1:15 p.m., 2:40 p.m., 4:05 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 6:55 p.m., 8:20 p.m., 9:45 p.m. and 11:10 p.m. Additional 12:35 a.m. screening Saturdays and Sundays.

Where: Luxor Las Vegas IMAX Theatre, on the second level.

Cost: $12 for adults; $10.75 for children 12 and under; $10 per person for groups of 15 or more; $8 per person for school groups.

Information: Call 262-4555.

"Let us temperately admit that 'Fantasia' is simply terrific -- as terrific as anything that has ever happened on a screen." -- New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther, Nov. 14, 1940.

" 'Fantasia' is indisputable proof of the amazing and wholly creative things that can be done by the combination of animated design, color and music and a most forbidding example of what not to do with this magnificent apparatus." -- New York Times music critic Olin Downes, Nov. 14, 1940.

Walt Disney's "Fantasia" spawned both intense praise and damnation when released in November, 1940.

Classical music purists condemned the film, crying that merging culture and cartoons trivialized the profound and debased the pure. It was lowbrow vulgarity.

Others lauded the two-hour animated film, which created preposterous images that allowed the audience to visualize an array of eight classical music pieces. The supporters celebrated the emergence of a new art form that had the potential of exposing the masses to the esoteric world of concertos and symphonies.

Almost 60 years have passed since Walt Disney's radical production, which bombed at the box office.

Times have changed and so has "Fantasia."

"Fantasia II," or to be accurate, "Fantasia/2000," will debut at more than 70 IMAX theaters around the country on Saturday for a four-month run that will end April 30.

Locally, it will appear at the Luxor hotel-casino's IMAX Theatre, where there will be 11 shows daily and additional screenings on Saturdays and Sundays.

Members of today's techno-generation can judge for themselves the merits of the pro-and-con "Fantasia" arguments that are still alive today.

Is it cheese or is it a profound, meaningful experience?

Disney officials chose to use IMAX for the initial release because they felt it would best capture the visual imagery that is the essence of the film and enhance the overall experience.

"The film is a tribute to the power of the imagination and seamlessly blends classical music, amazing animation and state-of-the-art technology," Roy E. Disney, the film's executive producer and nephew of the late Walt Disney, said in a statement. "My Uncle Walt envisioned 'Fantasia' as the ultimate in sight and sound and the IMAX experience clearly lives up to that ambition,"

IMAX-formatted film is larger in size than standard 35-mm film and is shown in special theaters where rectangular screens can be up to eight stories high.

"Fantasia/2000," which will have a 48-track, 24-bit stereo sound, is the first feature-length film released in the IMAX format, just as the original was the first feature film to be released in stereo.

The remake had its world premiere Dec. 17 at New York City's Carnegie Hall, with James Levine, artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, conducting the London Philharmonia. Levine conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the movie.

After the premiere, the film began a world tour that includes stops in London, Paris and Tokyo, with the orchestra playing at each stop. The film and orchestra are scheduled to play at the Pasadena Civic Center in Pasadena, Calif. on Friday, New Year's Eve, before the IMAX debut the following day.

Sometime after its IMAX run, the remade "Fantasia" will be released in 35-mm format in regular theaters.

Only one of the original film's eight segments survived the remake.

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Mickey's battle with a bucket brigade of enchanted brooms, remains a focus of the fantasy film. The 1896 composition is the most memorable work -- and the only symphony -- by French critic and orchestrator Paul Dukas, who died in 1935 at the age of 70. "Symphonic Scherzo L'apprenti Sorcier ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice)," was based on Goethe's poem, "Der Zauberlehrling."

The feature-length film grew out of an eight-minute animation of the Dukas symphony, in which Leopold Stokowski conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was during the making of the short subject that Disney and Stokowski decided to expand the project into a two-hour feature of assorted classical music selections underscored by a series of abstract images, some of them disturbing, some uplifting, some whimsical and amusing.

The original selections included:

* Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," a scene of wandering comets and fading musical instruments that is a segue into the film.

* Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite," featuring dancing wood sprites and mushrooms.

* Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," which depicted the creation of the world, with dinosaurs and other fantastic creatures.

* Beethoven's "Pastorale Symphony," a theme of Greek mythology that featured centaurs, unicorns, Cupids and a Bacchus.

* Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours," a ballet by hippos, ostriches and alligators.

* Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," a study of the "sacred and profane."

* Schubert's "Ave Maria."

Music critic Deem Taylor narrated the entire original film, moving it from segment to segment.

Taylor's role in "Fantasia/2000" is assumed by on-screen hosts Bette Midler, Quincy Jones, James Earl Jones, Penn & Teller, Steve Martin and Angela Lansbury, among others.

The seven new segments include:

* Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony," which uses abstract imagery to tell a tale of good vs. evil to begin the story.

* Ottorino Respighi's "Pines of Rome," a fairy tale about a child separated from its parents. The child, in this case, is a whale entrapped in a hollow iceberg.

* George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" is a tribute to caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

* Dmitri Shostakovich's "Piano Concerto No . 2, Allegro, Opus 102." This piece combines Shostakovich with Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," the story about a one-legged soldier and the ballerina he loves.

* Camille Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals," which includes flamingos playing with yo-yos.

* Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" has Donald Duck assisting Noah to put animals on the ark.

* Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird Suite" is animated by the brothers Gaetan and Paul Brizzi. The Firebird lives in a volcano and destroys a forest that must be restored by an elk and a wood sprite.

In 1941 "Fantasia" was beaten out of an Academy Award in the "Best Scoring of a Musical Motion Picture" category by "Dumbo," Disney's flying elephant. Perhaps embarrassed by its voting membership's tone deafness, the Motion Picture Academy gave "Fantasia," Walt Disney and his crew a "special" Oscar. In 1998 the American Film Institute named "Fantasia" one of the top 100 films of the century.

Although "Fantasia" did not fare well in its first run, the hippie generation discovered it when the film was reissued in 1968. Supposedly, many in the young, anti-establishment crowd consumed mind-altering drugs before viewing the film.

"Fantasia" again experienced some financial success when it was released on video in 1991, prompting the Disney studio to re-think the possibility of a remake.

Walt Disney's dream had been to update the film every year. The latest version owes its life to the persistence of Roy E. Disney, head of animation for the studio.

Disney's staff for the project included veteran producers and directors who worked on such projects as "The Rescuers Down Under," "Aladdin," "The Lion King" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

Roy Disney said that since the age of 12 he had thought about creating new segments for "Fantasia."

The new film, like the old, uses the latest technology available. Much of the imagery was created on computers (the whales, for example), although some scenes were drawn by hand (the Donald Duck sequence).

More than 1,200 artists, animators and technicians worked on "Fantasia/2000." The cost of the production has been estimated at $85 million, compared to $2.2 million for the original, which ran for 120 minutes, compared to the 75-minute length of the remake.

In a statement, Roy Disney said: "One of the things that I've always felt that 'Fantasia' accomplished was to move animation in a realm where it was accepted as an art form in a way that probably never could have been done without making 'Fantasia.' "

Gil Perez, director of Rides and Attractions at the Luxor, said the film that will be shown in his theater "is truly a landmark engagement and we're sure that audiences will love the experience."

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