Fantasia

I absolutely love Walt Disney's Fantasia. I watch it once a year, usually right around this time. It was released in 1940 as Disney's third full-length feature movie, after Snow White and Pinocchio. It was an unusual animated film (and a box office disaster) with eight segments all set to different pieces of classical music.

My mom took my brother and I to see it in the theater for its 50th anniversary in 1990. I was nine and I was bewildered. I loved the pretty goldfish swimming to the Arab Dance from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and the centaurs running around to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I was thrilled by the chaos in Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and totally freaked out by the Night on Bald Mountain part. The movie, and the music, are forever burned into my brain.