At the moment I'm watching the dvd of Disney's Fantasia for the first time in years. The imagination of the animation is wonderful. At that time it wasn't easy to do the animation- each frame had to be done separately and making the film almost bankrupted Disney. Nowadays technological advances mean that it is much easier and cheaper to do animation. Why then is so much of the animation lacking in imagination and fresh ideas?

In that criticism I do not include Pixar, which seems incapable of making a bad film, especially the Toy Story trilogy. Toy Story 3 in particular always makes me want to shed a tear and wishing that I still had my dolls from my childhood.

Interestingly the only part of Fantasia that really looks dated are the faces of the females in the mythological island for the Beethoven 6th Symphony. Disney showed real courage in including the entire symphony. Stokowsky makes a wonderful fist of the music.

Oh, the ostriches, hippos and crocodiles!