This is one of the films that Father Geek and the rest of the AICN Headquarters Staff have been waiting for since the beginning of the site. We've been getting clips, and dailies, and storyboards, and pencils, and finished sequences for 3 years now. We've watched them over and over again. Most everything we've seen has been nothing short of outstanding and we've been following every bit of news with great interest. We fully intend to drive down in mass to the San Antonio Imax to see it opening day. Nothing can stop that... but it seems that all is not as we had hoped, a few (very few) stupid errors appear to have flawed this masterwork... maybe Roy & Company will fix it for us, come on guys just a little twiking. Give us that perfect dream of Walt's...
Hey there grand poobah of all Geeks-
I have just had one of the most bittersweet film experiences of my life this evening, and that was seeing Fantasia 2000 on the Imax. How can I sum this up best? Hmmmmm, well, the movie was kinda like Christmas when you're ten years old. You've been waiting and waiting for the day to come, and once it's here it's cool, but only when you get to rip open your presents. The rest of the time you have to kiss your stinky Aunt Greta, and eat over cooked turkey. That's what Fantasia 2000 felt like. Its really really cool at parts, but sometimes it just doesn't cut the mustard. Not that I'm saying I didn't like the film, I enjoyed it, but parts of it felt, well, like kissing stinky old Aunt Greta.
Take for example the whale sequence. Now in the trailer it looks fine, but on the Imax, you see a lot of stuff wrong. The whales themselves are 3-d, but their eyes are horribly drawn 2-dimensional monstrosities. And they don't stay still, it's like the eyes are constantly popping all around the faces of the whales.
Rhapsody in Blue is a great segment, until the characters open their eyes, then it just turns into a goofy looking character romp.
But the biggest mistake of the movie was the Sorcerers Apprentice. Not the cartoon itself, but inserting the new version of Mickey Mouse into the bumpers immediately following the classic piece. His design is horrible, and there were plenty of moans and groans from the audience too. He goes from the quintessential Mickey with big eyes spaced close together in Sorcerer, to a tiny eyed freak when he comes out to introduce Donald Duck's (pomp and circumstance) film. If you don't believe me just wait, it's pretty bad.
FATHER GEEK note: God, I hate to hear that! Stupid, stupid mistake! A shiny new penny to jar us back to the real world. An annoying alarm clock to wake us from a wonderful dream. FIX IT NOW!!!
As for the rest of the film it was great. My personal favorite had to be the flamingo sequence directed by Eric Goldburg. The short showed what would happen if you gave a flamingo a yo-yo. It was paced perfectly and had a lot of great character work. Other gems were the opening and closing sequences (symphony no. 5 with the geometric shapes and the Firebird Suite). The movie itself clocked in at around 85-90 minutes, and not once did I get dizzy or sick watching it on an Imax screen as I usually do with those types of movies.
At the end the audience didn't have to fill out a survey, which I thought was pretty weird since it was the first public showing on an Imax, but then again, every exec imaginable was there: Roy Disney, Michael Eisner, Eric Goldburg, the Brizzi brothers, and the list goes on and on.
-Baked Spam
