Let me start by saying that I loved the original Disney animated masterpiece Fantasia. My daughter K and I watched it together many, many times over. So when the film’s re-release, Fantasia 2000 came out, I assumed it would be the same film cleaned up a bit. I din’t bother going to see it, because I could call up the original in my head with zero effort. It never occurred to me that it would include new material. I learned only yesterday (FFS) that it included a beautiful animation in the style of my favorite caricature artist, Al Hirschfeld, and was set to my favorite piece of music of all time, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The sheer quantity of marvelous things I missed boggles the mind.

Hirschfeld was actually heavily consulted during the making of the animation, and had a lot to do with the character design. The whole production is delicious from beginning to end. After watching it a few (okay, 10) times, I stumbled upon a video with some of the backstory about how it got made. Fascinating stuff!

Below is the amazing animation, followed by that making of video. Unfortunately, the quality of the video isn’t very good, but it was the best I could find. Knowing Disney as I do (my friend calls it the Haus of Maus), they’ll likely get this one knocked down too. Clearly, I’m going to have to figure out how to watch the full film to see what else I’m missing!