... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 38 - 'FANTASIA/2000' EDITION)"

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: Fantasia/2000 (1999)

The Plot: A series of animated segments set to classical music, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conducted by James Levine.

The Segments: Symphony No. 5 in C minor-I, Allegro con brio (Ludwig van Beethoven), Pines Of Rome (Ottorino Respighi), Rhapsody In Blue (George Gershwin), Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major-I, Allegro (Dmitri Shostakovich, based on The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen), The Carnival Of The Animals, Finale (Camille Saint-Saëns), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Paul Dukas), Pomp And Circumstance - Marches 1, 2, 3 and 4 (Edward Elgar), Firebird Suite - 1919 Version (Igor Stravinsky)

... FOR "'THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN' AND THE ART OF THE CYNICAL CASH GRAB"

Because there's no better way to ring in the release of The Dark Knight Rises than by talking about a competing superhero franchise from a competing motion picture studio...

I was just about to publish some thoughts on Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man last week, starring Andrew Garfield as everyone's favorite web-slinging superhero, when I happened across my friend Drew McWeeny's (second) write-up over at HitFix.com, which pretty much rendered anything I had to say on the subject moot. If you don't mind a spoiler-filled discussion on the plot's more "intricate" twists and turns, then you should really give that a shot, or at least check out Drew's initial review of the movie itself, as it sums up basically everything diehard fans find so frustrating about Spidey's big-screen reboot. (What follows is a slightly modified version of my original piece.)