FANTASIA/FANTASIA 2000 (1940 / 1999, Blu-ray released November 30, 2010 – MSRP $45.99)
| MOVIE: | ★★★★☆ |
| VIDEO: | ★★★★½ |
| AUDIO: | ★★★★★ |
| EXTRAS: | ★★★½☆ |
| BLU-RAY: | ★★★★½ |
Disney‘s Fantasia is out on Blu-ray and I don’t know what to rave about first – the beautiful, fully restored animation or the robust, full DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround tracks!
Walt Disney’s animation classic was intended to be something of an experiment – animated shorts inspired by and set to pieces of classical music. When it was released in 1940 it didn’t perform as well at the box-office as Disney had hoped and as a result he abandoned his plan to update the film and re-release it with new animated segments. Cut to 1999 when, in an effort to honour their founders’ dream, the studio which bears his name created a whole host of brand new shorts released under the name Fantasia 2000. Cut to the 2010 release of both films together in a great new Blu-ray combo pack set, where each film and its related special features are given their own BD as well as an accompanying copy on DVD.
Both films look stunning on Blu-ray. But you’d expect no less from Disney, after incredible releases like Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. Fantasia and its sequel are so vivid and colourful, with every detail perfectly rendered. Fans will note that the controversial footage edited out of the original film in 1969 is still absent from this version, with the offensive images simply kept off screen as the camera zooms into a part of the frame that’s more appealing.
Speaking of absent film elements, it turns out that when Fantasia was restored and re-assembled, a lot of the reinstated footage of host Deems Taylor was without any usable soundtrack. The decision was made to use an actor (Corey Burton, Braniac in Superman: The Animated Series) to dub all of his dialogue. I find the slightly out-of-sync dialogue awkward but honestly, all the Taylor footage is a bit superfluous. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 sound track is fantastic and full, expressing the full dynamic range of the music. It’s truly a joy to listen to and one of the highlights of the disc set.
There’s both good and bad news regarding the special features of the Fantasia Blu-ray set. The good news is that both Blu-ray discs have an abundance of quality extras on them. The bad news is that almost all of the great docs and featurettes from the Legacy series DVD set have been relegated to an online repository, accessible via BD-Live from the Fantasia 2000 disc. That’s almost 5-hours of stuff not included on the discs this time around, that you’ll have to stream through your network connected player anytime you want to watch it. Kind of a drag. I mean, I’m happy it’s still available but would have much preferred the features be included on a disc.
What is included in the 4-disc set is a collection of excellent commentary tracks, several per film, new HD short featurettes and “Interactive Art Galleries“. The high-point of the special features collection is, without question, the Salvador Dali/Walt Disney short film called Destino. Competed only recently but begun decades before when both men were in their prime, Destino is truly a unique combination of both artist’s styles, rendered using modern animation techniques. The 82-minute “Dali & Disney: A Date with Destino” documents their friendship and the process that brought the short film to completion.