When the Walt Disney studios opened in Paris in 2002, the Cinemagique" attraction was one of the best one of the park. For those of you who have never seen it, the attraction was a tribute to cinema history. Here is the story line: The movie begin by a black and white 1920's sequence until somebody from the audience is magically transported inside the movie - just like in Woody Allen's Purple rose of Cairo. Then, the man - played by Martin Short - goes from one famous movie sequence to another - digitally included in the original shots, and funny and emotional scenes happen between him, the characters of the original sequences and a girl played by Julie Delpy. That's, basically, how the storyline goes.
The Cinemagique attraction at DLP Walt disney Studios was one of my favorite. It was a brilliant tribute to Movies and Cinema in general and the show even have a lot of emotion thanks to Martin Short and Julie Delpy, as well as brilliant editing and visual effects. Cinémagique was an attraction unique to the WDS so if you've never visited the park chances are that you don't know it. Unfortunately Cinémagique is now gone for ever, and the Studio Theatre will reopen June 10, 2018 with a rumored show with Marvel Super Heroes. One of the reason of this is because that part of the park will be come a Marvel land in the future, as you probably already know.
But thanks to JordiFun who filmed the entire Cinémagique show you'll be able to discover right now this great and now extinct attraction movie with the two parts videos below, and this is the original version of the movie before it was slightly updated some years ago. So, go ahead, choose the 1080p definition and watch it full screen as usual!
Now, there is more as sometime ago i was reading an article on the excellent Cartoon Brew web site, talking about something called "Balloon movies" done by a mysterious director...just to discover that what they were talking about was one of the first and abandoned concept for Cinemagique!
In this other concept, we always had the famous movie sequences, but a facetious balloon - digitally included in the original shots with After Effects - was going from a sequence to another. Not only it's perfectly done, but also funny or poetic. Here is what the director said in his own words about it:
“The main through line was a romance between a guy in the audience and a woman in the movie. The “every man” goes into the movie (right through the screen) and meets a beautiful woman there. There is a spark of romance. He is then chased by villains out of her movie and stumbles through many other classic films, lost and alone. The woman leaves her movie to go on a quest to find him.
So — now you’re probably wondering where the balloon shots come in. Well they don’t. Not in the final show. However, just before we committed to film the project, we decided to go through a kind of wild card period. Float some totally different ideas. I thought it might be fun to do a nod to “The Red Balloon”. I did a few of these balloon shots at home and took them into the studio. Everybody enjoyed them. So we explored a possible version centered on that idea. I did more and more shots, took them in, hunkered down with the editor and stitched together a draft. We all got a kick out of it, but utimately decided that we missed the romantic comedy of Plan A. So after the diversion, we returned to our original course.
So I had all these shots at home that I’d done on spec. I figured that since I did them and they contain no material from the studio, and I don’t reference the context we used when toying with them, they’re safe to post.”
Please note that he didn't say that it was in relation with "Cinemagique", I did, but it's pretty obvious that it was.
Of course you certainly would like to see more about this, and here is a youtube video where you will see the 18 different sequences he is talking about all together, plus a new one on "Lord of the Rings".
And remember to look for the arrival of the balloon!
Here are the name of the famous movies :
Harold Lloyd
King Kong
Casablanca
The Wizard of Oz
Singing in the rain
African Queen
Buthch Cassidy and the Sundance kid
Once upon a time in the west
North by northwest
The Empire strikes back
Nikita
A" musical"
Gentlemen prefer blondes
Mary Poppins
Lord of the Rings
Youtube videos by Jordifun, Cybershire
Picture and video: copyright Disney, Photos Magique
