
When Disney Got Adult and Trippy - prismatic
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151112-when-disney-got-adult-and-trippy
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tunesmith
Fantasia is incredible. I also still think it's an underutilized art form to
have the music drive the picture rather than the other way around (three-
minute music videos aside). For instance, I've always thought that Mahler's
3rd symphony could make an epic fantasy film - actors, battles, special
effects, and no spoken dialogue.

~~~
leephillips
Kubrick does something like this, in parts of his films. Long scenes in Barry
Lyndon and 2001 strike me as driven by, or interpretations of, the music. Of
course there is a kind of "plot" going on, but these films can be seen as
stealth abstract art.

Also, in Tarantino the music is often one of the major characters.

~~~
Turing_Machine
The weird thing about _2001_ is that Kubrick actually commissioned an original
score for the movie. The classical music was just intended to be used as a
placeholder until the "real" music was ready.

After seeing how well it worked, Kubrick scrapped the original score and kept
it.

------
padobson
"Industry pundits predicted that no one would sit still for a cartoon feature.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved otherwise and blazed the trail for the
industry."

Nobody knew how to make serious money on short animations, animated features,
or theme parks before Walt Disney. He did it all though.

He also wanted to try out the utopia thing[1], and it's maybe the 20th
century's greatest missed opportunity.

If you haven't read Walt Disney's World[2], it's my favorite biography on the
great man.

[1][https://youtu.be/sLCHg9mUBag](https://youtu.be/sLCHg9mUBag)
[2][http://amzn.to/1lnptm0](http://amzn.to/1lnptm0)

~~~
plonh
Not sure I want to live in Walt Disney's utopia. He was great at his business,
the original Jobsian, but dialed it up a bit too far.

www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1623/was-walt-disney-a-fascist

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everly
I recently went to the Walt Disney Family Museum in SF for the special exhibit
"Disney and Dali" (still there until 1/3/16). It's an interesting look at
their mutual admiration and brief professional collaboration.

The regular museum is also well worth a few hours of time, even if you don't
consider yourself a huge Disney fan. Walt was an incredible innovator and
risk-taker and I found it very inspiring.

~~~
cpeterso
Disney and Dalí's unmade _Destino_ short film was eventually recreated
digitally by John Hench, the Disney artist who worked with Dalí back in the
1940s. It is on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GFkN4deuZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GFkN4deuZU)

Also, a link to the exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum:

[http://www.waltdisney.org/dali](http://www.waltdisney.org/dali)

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joe_bleau
The movie was also responsible for a variant (HP 200B) of the very first
Hewlett Packard product, the HP 200A audio frequency oscillator.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP200A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP200A)

[http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/The-Next-Bench-Blog/TFTNB-
Disne...](http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/The-Next-Bench-Blog/TFTNB-Disney-
Bought-First-HP-Product/ba-p/58303Disney-Bought-First-HP-Product/td-p/347165)

------
tcdent
I tried to watch Fantasia as a child a few times, but was never able to make
it all the way through. It remains sort of a misunderstood anomaly on the
shelf of early Disney movies.

Haven't given it an honest try in a few years. Perhaps some 'adult substances'
would help. I still enjoy most of the others.

~~~
mdlowman
I usually skip the Rite of Spring, but love every other piece. Probably
because I was trying to watch the visuals too hard instead of listening.

But the important thing to remember about Fantasia is that it's not a coherent
story, it's a set of shorts.

You can watch subsets, skip some, or really do what you want. Just watch Night
on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, or the Dance of the Hours, or whatever you want.
And give Fantasia 2000 a shot. Not as good, but still fun. Firebird was great.

------
darkr
I've just realised that the dinosaur scene from Terrance Malick's Tree of Life
is a hat tip/rip-off of the weird dinosaur battle set to Stravinsky's Rites of
Spring in Fantasia.

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100k0s
"People who insist on pigeonholing him as a purveyor of bland family
entertainment ..."

Seriously, who has ever said that?

~~~
smacktoward
Go back and look at what Disney was putting out when the Baby Boomers were
coming of age. The '60s and '70s -- the Dean Jones
([http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Dean_Jones](http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Dean_Jones))
era. It's all stuff like _That Darn Cat!_ and _Son of Flubber_ and _The Shaggy
D.A.,_ which is to say it's about as square as square can be. In an era when
the boundaries of popular culture were being very aggressively stretched,
Disney deliberately positioned itself as a producer of safe, conservative
entertainment.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Even if you're a staunch ally of safe, conservative family entertainment for
its own sake, Disney was pretty damn crappy for a while. Look at their
animated stuff in particular for plenty of mediocre storylines and bland
animation (e.g. _The Aristocats_ , _The Fox and the Hound_ , _Robin Hood_ ).
Children deserved better!

Eventually some meaningful competition from the likes of Don Bluth started to
push them in the right direction ( _Secret of NIMH_ , _Land before Time_ ,
_All Dogs Go to Heaven_ , etc.) and not too long afterward they were doing
things like _Little Mermaid_ , _Beauty and the Beast_ , _Aladdin_. Quite an
improvement, though I dare say the storylines have never quite caught up. (Of
course, all of Bluth's stuff would later be undermined as it was sequel-ized
to Hell and back, like _The Land Before Time XXIV: Teach Your Kids Roman
Numerals Edition_...)

Right now, though, after seeing Pixar's homages to Ghibli, I'm anticipating
the impact of recent works like _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_ , which really
pushed some boundaries in Japan. (If you're not familiar with it, I'll just
say... imagine if _Pan 's Labyrinth_ had been actively marketed to little
children as a happy family film and an homage to _Alice in Wonderland_... and
then translate that willful deception and the profound darkness onto _Sailor
Moon_.) If it does make a splash in the youth entertainment industry at large,
that will be quite interesting indeed.

~~~
mjevans
I think it depends more on the intended target audience. The films you have
issue with feel like they fit in well with the attention span, vibrant colors
and little funny scenes for children in the 6 to 9 year old range to enjoy. I
consider anything beyond that something added in to keep the parents awake and
the animators sane (or functionally insane as the case might be).

The second list of films you mention have emotionally moving plots and I'd
consider them a good fit for the next demographic bump, roughly 9-13. I think
I might have cried to a film for the first time watching ADgtH as a kid.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is definitely mature. It has intense situations,
highly emotional plot, and story elements that younger humans would be less
equipped to relate to. I still highly recommend watching at least the first 3
episodes. If you're still on the fence watch another 3 episodes. The third
movie is new content... I couldn't resist it, but the series/first two movies
are a complete story without it.

