Planning a night out at the movies this week, you have a choice (in Dublin, anyway) of The Beach, Double Jeopardy, The End of the Affair or Fantasia/2000. That's Leonardo Di Caprio, suspense, sex or cartoon characters frolicking about to classical tunes.
It's a tough decision - but it's probably not ridiculous to assume that Mickey Mouse and classical music might not be first choice. What better way to get teenagers in to see Fantasia/2000 than to organise educational school trips? The choice is then a bit more limited - you haven't got one.
Screening during school times isn't new; any Junior Cert or Leaving Cert student whose done Shakespeare could tell you that. Nor is the idea of accompanying educational material - an education pack which had cross-curricular relevance was distributed with A Bug's Life, and the Irish Film Institute has been producing impressive study guides to selected films for a couple of years now.
But Fantasia/2000 does lend itself particularly to fairly in-depth study of music, art and technology. And Disney has produced a considerable amount of material: there are teachers' resource guides on art, music, communication/technology; there are extensive production notes; and, this being the new millennium and all, there are also a CD-ROM and web-sites for both primary and second-level age groups. The material has apparently been adapted to meet Irish school needs.
The decision to screen Fantasia/2000 in IMAX theatres only - including Dublin's Sheridan IMAX - for the first few months of its run was a bit of a risk. The IMAX format is just beginning to make an impact world wide and up until now the films (Everest, for example) have been largely centred on picturesque educational subjects. IMAX theatres are not nearly as common globally as your average cineplex (there's only one in Ireland) and movies made for IMAX are, as yet, loss-making ventures.
A huge screen, with films often in 3D (which means you have to wear the funny sort of glasses granny wore to the movies in the 1950s) the IMAX format is hardly in keeping with a digital era, in which to shrink is where it's at. But flying in the face of the trend towards tiny-ness (it won't be long before you can download films on to your mobile-phone screen), the massive screen and surround sound experience is proving increasingly popular.
Filmmakers the world over are keeping an eye on Fantasia/2000; its early success, in spite of middling reviews overall, bodes well for film companies interested in making large-format films. According to Brad Globe of Disney's great rival, DreamWorks, which is considering using IMAX for its forthcoming animated feature Shrek: "Now that IMAX is opening up so many new sites at multiplexes, the economics are becoming very interesting."
However, according to Greg McGillvary of production company Laguna Beach, makers of Everest: "It probably doesn't make a lot of sense for studios to get real excited right now. The fact is that most IMAX films lose money."
Created over a nine-year period, Fantasia/2000 was overseen by Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt. Like its predecessor six decades ago, it uses animated imagery to "interpret" and accompany classical music, using state-of-the-art technology. So far, it's working. The special school screenings are sold out each day, and ticket sales for the general public are also healthy.
The original Fantasia is in some ways the embodiment of a particular Disney motif: music as an expression of mischief. Characters in his early films would dance on musical notes, and ordinary objects like towels would mutate into musical instruments. And technical innovation was a hallmark of the original Fantasia too: it was the first film to use a stereo sound method in some theatres.
The original film was released in 1940. The Sorcerer's Apprentice segment, starring Mickey Mouse getting into terrible trouble to music by composer Paul Dukas, is the only original segment which is reprised in Fantasia/2000.
Some of the other seven segments, similarly animated interpretations of pieces of music by Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, SaintSaens, Elgar and Stravinsky, were apples in Walt Disney's eye as far back as the 1940s, but they are all new pieces of animation art, in a wide variety of visual styles - including one based entirely on abstract shapes and another based on the style of a newspaper cartoonist. Each is designed to provide today's audiences with a accessible way into what might seem like difficult "art music".
After its initial exclusive showing at IMAX theatres, Fantasia/2000 is due for release at ordinary cinemas this summer. It may have some heavy competition in the way of your more typical summer teen flicks and kiddy cartoons, but if has anything like the appeal of the first Fantasia, it may well be very successful, and indeed, it could be a source of inspiration to other movie-makers for years to come.
