Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor and the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Disney movie ‘Fantasia’

Live action, movie animation and classical music were important features of the Walt Disney Studios movie we remember and review today. Featuring eight classical pieces performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra as conducted by Leopold Stokowski, the movie Fantasia (1940) brought us increasing in complexity interpretations of music through both performance and animation, with impressions, feeling and story playing various roles throughout. Fantasia is the first movie released using Fantasound, a system developed by Disney and RCA using multiple audio channels to produce a stereo listening experience.

(Deems Taylor in the Walt Disney Studios movie Fantasia).

The cinematic experience of Fantasia opens with the live scene of an orchestra gathering against a blue background. The musicians tune their instruments in half-light and half shadow as the master of ceremonies, Deems Taylor, offers the program’s beginning narration. The opening song performed was Toccata and Fugue in D Minor as composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Selections from the Nutcracker Suite by Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky followed. The presentation included various animated dances depicting the changing of season from summer to fall (autumn) to winter, with impressions and feeling accompanying the musical experience one might find in a music hall where the music was being performed live.

(Mickey Mouse, right, in the Walt Disney Studios movie Fantasia).

The Paul Dukas composed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, featuring animation with Mickey Mouse front and center, came next. A clear story with Mickey as the apprentice to sorcerer Yen Sid emerges. Mickey’s grasp of the sorcerer’s tricks exceeding his, Mickey’s, reach; this presentation distinguishes itself among the stories told within Fantasia for presenting a known character. The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky follows The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The animation accompanying the musical score shares the story of the earth’s beginning through the introduction of life through the extinction of dinosaurs.

(Cupids along with male and female centaurs in the Walt Disney Studios move Fantasia).

The Ludwig van Beethoven composition The Pastoral Symphony is accompanied by animation of Greco-Roman romance building for male and female centaurs. This sentiment gives way to a festival for Dionysus/Bacchus, the wine god, getting interrupted when Zeus directs Vulcan to forge lightning for use against the festival attendees. A comic ballet in four parts, based in Amilcare Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda, follows.

(An alligator and hippopotamus in the Walt Disney Studios movie Fantasia).

A pairing of Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky and Ave Maria by Franz Schubert are offered as a closing comparison of evil relenting to good. The larger feeling of this pairing is to offer an uplifting parting message for the full experience of all the music and combined live and animated reality offered through the course of the Fantasia movie. I grant the movie Fantasia as directed and written by many for Walt Disney Studios 4.25-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, June 29, 2024

Raymond Lee, Caitlin Bassett and Mason Alexander Park in Season Two of the continued ‘Quantum Leap’

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) continuation of Quantum Leap (1989-1993) recently aired the final two episodes of their second season last month. Quantum Leap (2022- ) extended the universe with a thirteen episode season, shortened a bit by the strikes among writers and then actors in 2023.

(From left, Eliza Taylor as Hannah Carson and Raymond Lee as Ben Song in the second season of the rebooted Quantum Leap).

The second season begins with our leaper, Dr. Ben Song as portrayed by Raymond Lee, in what the story tells us is an immediate leap not home but into an Air Force cargo plane for the United States over Russia in the year 1978. Ben works through the leap without support from the Project Quantum Leap (PQL) team, wherein three years had passed, the team had been disbanded, Ben had been taken for dead and, finally, the nature of the relationships and support Ben could expect had changed since the 18th and final episode of the opening season of the rebooted Quantum Leap owing to the passage of three years since the spring 2023 concluding episode wherein hope had been given that Ben would leap home.

(From left, Caitlin Bassett as Addison Augustine, Nanrisa Lee as Jenn Chou and Mason Alexander Park as Ian Wright in the second season of the rebooted Quantum Leap).

Bringing the PQL team back together becomes the task at hand with the second episode, as begun in the first episode of the second season thanks to Ian Wright as portrayed by Mason Alexander Park. A bank robbery gone wrong in Tucson, Arizona forms the leap underpinning the urgency of the second episode. We learn that Ben’s fiancée and primary hologram through the opening season, Addison Augustine as portrayed by Caitlin Bassett, has a new love interest with influence in United States Army intelligence in bringing the PQL team back. Tom Westfall as portrayed by Peter Gadiot serves as Addison’s love interest.

(Ernie Hudson as Herbert ‘Magic’ Williams in the second season of the rebooted Quantum Leap).

With Jenn Chou as portrayed by Nanrisa Lee reinforcing her role as PQL head of security and knowing confidant for Ian, she questions Ian from this episode about Wright’s means for finding the leaping Ben, who’s having been taken for dead led to the PQL team being disbanded. Starlight, New Mexico in 1949 offers an initial leap into the subject of aliens and unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the third episode of the second season. Ben encounters Hannah Carson on the leap in New Mexico, a waitress with above average intelligence portrayed by Eliza Taylor, for the first time. In the fourth leap of the season in Los Angeles, California (2000 for Ben before a separate leap to the same city in 1992), Herbert ‘Magic’ Williams as portrayed by Ernie Hudson introduces the PQL team to Tom Westfall.

(From left, Peter Gadiot as Tom Westfall and Alice Kremelberg as Rachel in the second season of the rebooted Quantum Leap).

Future leaps take Ben to Princeton, New Jersey in 1955, Middletowne, Massachusetts in 1692, Cairo, Egypt in 1961, Trenton, New Jersey in 1970, Mexico in 1953, Denver, Colorado in 1982, Baltimore, Maryland in 1974 and, finally, Sonoma County, California in 1976. With a love quadrangle of sorts being a recurring storyline through the season, the love shared by Ben and Addison is juxtaposed against Addison and Tom on one hand and Ben encountering Hannah on six different leaps across 27 years on the other. In short bursts, Hannah and Ben develop intense feelings across a lifetime of other experiences for Hannah. This notion of lifetime experiences underlines a significant plot development that includes recurring roles for Gideon Ridge as portrayed by James Frain and Jeffrey Nally as portrayed by Wyatt Parker. The Gideon Ridge storyline is further punctuated with storylines that include Ian Wright, Ian’s girlfriend Rachel, Jenn Chou and Herbert ‘Magic’ Williams. Alice Kremelberg reprised her role as Ian’s girlfriend for a second season.

(From left, Wyatt Parker as Jeffrey Nally and James Frain as Gideon Rydge in the second season of the rebooted Quantum Leap).

The manner of storytelling in the rebooted Quantum Leap sticks to the episodic perspective of the original 97 episodes over five seasons of the source Quantum Leap series. There is a bigger focus on the interpersonal relationships in the world external to the leaps, though the sense of righting wrongs and setting things up for the better remains true to the series. Another season for Quantum Leap hasn’t yet been announced, though my appreciation for the stories leads me to hope for an additional season. I grant 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars for the second season of the rebooted Quantum Leap.

Matt – Saturday, March 2, 2024

Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan and Kevin Hart in the Jake Kasdan movie ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’

It was late May when we at Matt Lynn Digital first reviewed the movie Jumanji (1995). Today we enjoy a look into the Jake Kasdan movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), which theoretically plays in a movie universe that is shared. For the sake of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, it is not necessary to have seen the movie Jumanji to understand what is happening.

(From left, Alex Wolff as Spencer Gilpin, Ser’Darius Blain as Anthony ‘Fridge’ Johnson, Morgan Turner as Martha Kaply and Madison Iseman as Bethany Walker in the Jake Kasdan movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle).

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle speaks to an unusual circumstance of real world characters that are drawn into an experience that resembles something outside the real word. In Jumanji, the alternate experience was in the real world mixing in the with a board game. The world of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle takes this concept into a virtual world through a video game console. Alex Wolff as Spencer Gilpin, Ser’Darius Blain as Anthony ‘Fridge’ Johnson, Morgan Turner as Martha Kaply and Madison Iseman as Bethany Walker are the four real life friends brought into the new world.

(From left, Jack Black as Bethany Walker and Professor Sheldon ‘Shelly’ Oberon, Nick Jonas as Alex Vreeke and Jefferson ‘Seaplane’ McDonough, Karen Gillan as Martha Kaply and Ruby Roundhouse, Dwayne Johnson as Spencer Gilpin and Dr. Xander ‘Smolder’ Bravestone, and Kevin Hart as Anthony Fridge Johnson and Franklin ‘Mouse’ Finbar in the Jake Kasdan movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle).

The strongly comedic turn that Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle takes is in turning the board game notion of the original movie into a video game setting. The comedy rests in drawing the characters who crossed over from real life to the video game storyline in the film as distinctly different from who they started. The proposition freshens the theme of the initial movie with a brand of humor that moves from adults and kids to a group of teenagers. From the original high schoolers in this film, Jack Black as Bethany Walker becomes Professor Sheldon ‘Shelly’ Oberon, Karen Gillan as Martha Kaply becomes Ruby Roundhouse, Dwayne Johnson as Spencer Gilpin becomes Dr. Xander ‘Smolder’ Bravestone, and Kevin Hart as Anthony Fridge Johnson becomes Franklin ‘Mouse’ Finbar. Nick Jonas as Alex Vreeke is introduced in game, becoming Jefferson ‘Seaplane’ McDonough.

(Colin Hanks as adult Alex Vreeke in the Jake Kasdan movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle).

Alex Vreeke exists in the “real life” of the Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle world, being discovered as a character in the game world presented in the movie. The story of Alex is unique, and is distinct from the characters of Professor Van Pelt and Nigel Billingsley, portrayed respectively by Bobby Cannavale and Rhys Darby. Colin Hanks portrayed Alex Vreeke.

(From left, Bobby Cannavale as Professor Van Pelt and Rhys Darby as Nigel Billingsley in the Jake Kasdan movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle).

The sensibility of adventure, character interaction, and video game rules for an entertaining, funny and fresh movie experience. That Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle kept the irreverent, not taking itself seriously quality made for a good change of pace in comparison to recent movies we’ve reviewed here. I give Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle 4.0-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, June 19, 2021