Sleeping Beauty (1959)

With some of the hype around the classics, it can be hard to watch them without prejudging. It's a princess movie, it's a classic story, it's beautiful.

It IS beautiful. The backgrounds may the most detailed work Disney's ever done. It's like fine art, really. You can spend most of the running time of the film just admiring the backgrounds.

That's a good thing, because in the foreground is not one of Disney's best works. Let's start with the main character. What is Princess Aurora known for? She has a lovely singing voice. And she sleeps for a long time. And that's about it. She doesn't do anything. She is completely unmemorable.

Which is more than I can say for Prince Whathisname. He is even less memorable. The king is so overdone as comic relief that he's unwatchable. Short of the fairies, who aren't bad, and of course the glorious Maleficent, the characters are too one dimensional.

The other major flaw is the story. Princess falls asleep. Is kissed. Wakes up. This is not exactly a feature length idea. And the attempt to make it a love story by adding some secret romance just doesn't work.

So despite some incredible animation, and a stunning music, this all adds up to rare Disney animated film I can't quite recommend. Grade: C

Fantasia 2000 (uh...2000)

Yesterday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of Fantasia 200, I pulled out my VHS copy and rewatched it. It still holds up. Fantasia is to me one of the greatest achievements in cinema history, and this is an excellent follow-up.

The basic idea of Fantasia is to replicate a symphony concert, but to add images. My main complaint about Fantasia 2000 is that is too much refective of our ADD times. The sequences are too short. I love the flamingos and the yo-yo, but only a minute and a half?

But every sequence does work. And when my main compaint is that I want the sequences to be longer, well, that means the movie works. Seeing this film in IMAX (twice) was one of my true movie-going pleasures of 2000. It is still a great pleasure today. Grade: A

The Disney List

One of my reasons for starting this blog was to provide myself more focus when attempting to watch more films on my movie lists. One of those lists is based on Leonard Maltin's book The Disney Films. I've wanted to try and watch as many of those films as possible.

Using the book, I have found 236 feature films by Disney from the beginning (Snow White) until January 1, 2000 (Fantasia: 2000). My other movie lists have left them out so that this list would be seperate. Unlike the other lists, this includes the films I have seen, but my goal is to watch as many as possible, so I can sure them with my children while visiting and revisiting them myself.

Any films watched before this date do not count. I have reset my list and started today -- with the last film on my list.