nature boy

                  John Leech sketch ‘Lazy Contributor’ from Punch (1800)

” Please Sir, Here’s The Printer’s Boy Called Again”

“Oh, Bother! Say I’m Busy!”

maximiliani:

Quite frankly, if I was in charge at Disney, I would make sure there was a Fantasia production every few years or so. Pretty much follow the original concept of it being something like a revue or follies, something they could continually add to and never really be finished with. Thus it wouldn’t progress in a Fantasia 3, Fantasia 4 manner, more like how they used to treat something like the Ziegfeld Follies, go by year as they did with Fantasia 2000. Thus it would be Fantasia of 2013 or Fantasia of 2020. 

I think not only would it be a good way to showcase different aesthetics and animation styles but it could be a think tank for animators and a place to test different types of animation technology that could be later used in full feature projects. Plus the use of orchestrated music from various genres can help educate children (and perhaps even parents themselves) and introduce them to music that isn’t today’s noxious top 40 pop. It doesn’t have to be overplayed classical stuff either.  Make Mine Music and Melody Time, two other Disney compilations featured a lot of music-synced pieces of various styles, from swing jazz to opera, could have easily been packed as another Fantasia installment. So not just classical.

I think it would be a good idea.

Do it.Do it Disney. Fucking do it.

p.s.

the ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ and ‘Ave Maria’ melody segments breaks my heart, first because the Ave Maria segment with the monks in the forest is beautiful beyond belief and it wasn’t until now that I actually appreciate it, as a child I never understood it, except that it was morning. Second, ‘The Night On Bald Mountain’ segment itself it some of the most amazing animation EVER, and what breaks my heart is that today’s Disney would never make anything like it. The Firebird Suite in Fantasia 2000 was close, and certainly matches it in terms of grandeur, but it still was tamed, relatively PC. They don’t have the balls to animate such demons or especially the erotic Beardsley-like nude witches, spirits and harpies flying around in this. Seriously so many boobs in this segment, even in the smoke there are naked spirits that flash across the screen.

Wanna bet stupid mothers across the USA, if Disney produced anything today with characters/creatures remotely as naked as these spirits were, would raise such a fuss. Fox News would love it. 

Seriously, something is wrong if we are more neurotic and whine about female nudity today than in 1941, when I’m sure this was absolutely scandalous.

Bugs Bunny is better than you.

                                       gesture in animation

Cab Calloway as Koko The Clown singing - ‘St. James Infirmary’ in Fleischer Brothers’ Snow White Betty Boop cartoon (1933).

HNG rotoscope. Look at that soft-shoe step dancing!

Quite frankly, if I was in charge at Disney, I would make sure there was a Fantasia production every few years or so. Pretty much follow the original concept of it being something like a revue or follies, something they could continually add to and never really be finished with. Thus it wouldn’t progress in a Fantasia 3, Fantasia 4 manner, more like how they used to treat something like the Ziegfeld Follies, go by year as they did with Fantasia 2000. Thus it would be Fantasia of 2013 or Fantasia of 2020. 

I think not only would it be a good way to showcase different aesthetics and animation styles but it could be a think tank for animators and a place to test different types of animation technology that could be later used in full feature projects. Plus the use of orchestrated music from various genres can help educate children (and perhaps even parents themselves) and introduce them to music that isn’t today’s noxious top 40 pop. It doesn’t have to be overplayed classical stuff either.  Make Mine Music and Melody Time, two other Disney compilations featured a lot of music-synced pieces of various styles, from swing jazz to opera, could have easily been packed as another Fantasia installment. So not just classical.

I think it would be a good idea.

Tex Avery is my muse.