13 November: Fantasia

On this date in 1940, the Walt Disney animated film Fantasia had its world première in New York. 10 things you didn't know about Fantasia.

1. It was the first film to use stereophonic sound and the only film ever to use Fantasound, a system invented specifically for Fantasia.
2. Fantasia is two hours and six minutes long, making it the longest animated film Disney ever made.
3. It was originally going to be even longer, with a ninth segment, Clair de Lune.
4. It was the first time ever that Walt Disney wasn't picky about the colours the animators used. He gave them no intructions and instructed them to use whatever colours they liked.
5. Disney had plans for a sequel, in facts, he wanted to produce a new Fantasia film every year, but ticket sales in the initial run were small. This and the onset of the second world war meant the sequel wasn't made until the segments he envisaged, including Ride of the Valkyries and Flight of the Bumblebee, were included in Fantasia 2000.
6. The sorceror in The Sorceror's Apprentice sequence was based on Walt Disney himself. The sorceror's name is Yen Sid, which is Disney backwards.
7. Because there's no dialogue, you might be forgiven for thinking a lot of the characters don't have names, but they do. The ostrich in The Dance of the Hours is Mlle Upanova, the alligator is Ben Ali Gator and the Hippo is Hyacinth Hippo. There's also Little Hop Low, a dancing mushroom, Peter Pegasus, a baby flying horse and Jacchus, the tipsy Donkey.
8. Mickey Mouse nearly wasn't the apprentice. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was about to make it big, so Disney's collaborator on the project, Leopold Stokowsky, suggested Dopey from that film instead, or even a brand new character. Disney, however, stuck to his guns and kept Mickey in the role.
9. Disney wanted the film to feature "smell-o-vision" as well as 3D. Floral perfumes and gunpowder were considered as possible olifactory effects. It didn't happen, though, because it wasn't possible to clear the auditorium of one smell in time for the next one to be introduced.
10. The team were still putting the finishing touches to the film four hours before the New York premiere.

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Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

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