Wizard of Oz

[Ben]

That should be an alternative music track!

[GeorgeC]

TheDigitalBits.com has the covers up for Tom & Jerry: Spotlight Collection Volume 2, The Wizard of Oz 3-disc Collector's Set, and The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3.

All sets are due to be released on October 25th. It is, as the Bits says, a VERY expensive day for animation collectors!

Here's hoping WB addresses the issues people had with Tom & Jerry Volume One and do the right thing -- not that I think they will. It's almost a minor miracle that a second volume of T & J is being released, but I think it's inevitable considering T & J is one of the prize jewels of WB's animation empire.

Ironically, the only DVD cover I like is the Oz cover. The animation sets have pretty generic, off-model covers that look like they were slapped together. I think even a still frame or model sheet reproduction would be preferable to the licensed art produced for the new DVDs...

[Ben]

Links? Went to the site:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com

...but no cover art anywhere.

I know this is pushing things, but wanna provide a link please George?

[GeorgeC]

The Digital Bits doesn't provide links to the covers UNLESS the DVD covers are linked from Amazon.com on The Digital Bits.

The latest update for news at The Digital Bits is always http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

You just have to look on yesterday's update there to see the covers... They're at the very end.

[Josh]

John Boorman is directing a $25 million computer animated version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, says Variety. More artwork for the film may be viewed at the Action Synthese website.

I'm eager to see this new animated version of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Still, I wish someone would adapt Baum's Oz books, Lord of the Rings-style. There are several books in the series. I imagine that a studio could create a fantastic and profitable film franchise out of them.

[EricJ]

John Boorman is directing a $25 million computer animated version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, says Variety. More artwork for the film may be viewed at the
I'm eager to see this new animated version of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Still, I wish someone would adapt Baum's Oz books, Lord of the Rings-style.

I don't know if you'd have wanted to say that if you knew what Boorman was going to do with Lord of the Rings...
(And it was only a matter of time, after he was thrown off of an early Chronicles of Narnia project, too.)

And as for the CGI, on the Synthese website...why look!--There's Doogal!

[Josh]

I didn't realize Boorman was once involved with a Lord of the Rings adaptation. After reading your post, I did a little research on the project. Yeah, I don't think that Boorman's Lord of the Rings would have turned out as well as Peter Jackson's adaptation.

I still wish that a major studio would hire a true visionary director to craft an epic, live-action/CGI adaptation of not only The Wonderful Wizard of Oz but other Oz books as well.

[EricJ]

And before, as destiny decrees, any mention of the Oz-sequel books mires us back into mentioning.....THAT movie: Don't.
It missed the tone of the other books by a four-lane highway.
(Anybody who says "And it was just as scary as the original books!" just plain hasn't read them...)

[Ben]

Boorman's Rings was rumored to have starred The Beatles!

Lest us forget, however, that he made Excalibur...a true precursor to the kids of fantasy epics we're seeing now.

This is interesting news...Boorman is a great filmmaker (Deliverance, The Emerald Forest, etc) and it could be a worthy combination.

I did think that Warners were interested in making the seven original Oz books into fantasy epics and had hired a writer-director to start script work. Sounds like that's not happening, or this is a replacement or rival project.

The original Oz books <I>are</I> scary...at least I thought so, and they were overall much better and more consistent than the Narnias. They also, after Alice In Wonderland, pioneer the entire alternate/fantasy universe that Tolkein and Lewis would use in their Rings and Narnia books respectively. Baum got there first, after Carroll, in creating an entirely believable world with its own lands and inhabitants.

Lucas/Disney's Return To Oz captured the tone of the two books it melded together very well, with a terrific score by David Shire and stop-motion effects work that still stands up.

[EricJ]

Oz's books are adventurous, but still under the 1900's shackle that nothing particularly BAD has to happen in them to frighten our 1900-protected young people--The villain at the end was often given a magic spell to forget he had ever been bad, etc. (as all punishments in Oz are enlightened and non-violent by order of Glinda, you see).

Baum was conscious of the fact that practically all children's books in 1910 were judged against "Alice in Wonderland": His first book of proto-Oz stories was titled "A New Wonderland", and he later chimed in on the Alice-Dorothy debate by saying that while kids might not warm to Lewis Carroll, they liked both girls for being "real" characters.
The difference being, Baum wanted the Oz stories to be "the first American fairytales", by having Dorothy resolve situations with Kansas farmgirl Yankee-horse-sense, and even Oz has its own silly version of sensible small-town logic.

"Return" mood-swung schizophrenically between sadistic nightmare-fodder, mushy post-Spielberg heart-tugging, and attempts to invoke the MGM version like they said they wouldn't, none of which even came close to what the Man From Kansas intended.
Yes, the Shire score (and the one upbeat scene at the end of the movie) are the one reason for watching, albeit the rest of the movie didn't deserve them.

[GeorgeC]

So...

Can it be said that Disney no longer has the rights to translate the Oz books into movies?

I know that for a long time they did have adaptation rights but after the critical drubbing they took on Return to Oz ("ooh! It's too scary!" "This isn't Disney!" "It's not for kids!"), the studio backed away from doing more Oz books.

That's a darn shame. People should really pick up the books and see what they're missing. A lot got cut out from the MGM film for sure! That shouldn't be the only valid way to adapt the material. It's just a bit too confining and frankly should still be able to stand on its own without yet another musical version.

Traditional fairy tale books for kids have always featured some pretty dark material. Heck, the Bible has plenty of dark and sordid tales, too! It's just that people have become incapable of talking to their kids about a bunch of things and have become overly protective about older books with kids. Granted, you don't want to expose very young kids to a bunch of sex and violence (watch out for those videogame, folks!), but the old fairy tales have absolutely been neutered by the politically correct, moral guidance, and PTA crowds that don't take things into balance.

Aside from another live-action project, CG might be the way to do another Oz film. We'll see.

In the meantime, there are some excellent adaptations that have been done of Oz in comic books.

There was a recent Wizard of Oz adaptation published by Antarctic Press which is an excellent manga-style version and the writer-artist is apparently continuing onward to do more Baum adaptations, the critically-acclaimed (in comic awards) Eric Shanower series, a French adaptation which was translated by Image Comics, and now an upcoming Marvel Comics version which is NOT using any of the traditional superhero artists and is being written by Shanower.

It's a real renaissance period for the Oz universe in graphic adaptations.

[Ben]

As I understood it, WB have the Oz rights currently, though I don't know how that works out with Disney doing the Muppet Wizard Of Oz (yeah, yeah) and Universal's Tin Man miniseries for Sci-Fi.

I never picked up on any "mushy post-Spielberg heart-tugging" in Return To Oz, nor the "attempts to invoke the MGM version"...the film was its own thing through and through. A little dark, but closer to Baum than any other.

The source is there to create a fantastic film series...next to getting my hands on Superman, Oz is the only other property I'd love to be able to make a movie based on.

[EricJ]

There was a 50's Shirley Temple variety show that, in its own low-budget live-television way, captured a more book-whimsical "Marvelous Land Of"--
No prize for production values, but at least it kept in the "translated" conversation between the Scarecrow and Jack Pumpkinhead...
(A bit of Baum humor that, like most Baum humor, would've been treated so ponderously in the "Return" movie, it would've inscrutably lead-ballooned like most of the other jokes.)

And as for "closeness to Baum", when you stop and notice that Frank Morgan is playing actual book characters in his MGM bit parts (the Guardian of the Gate, and the Royal Army of Emerald City), you start to appreciate just how well Noel Langley knew his book-Baum better than any of the other screenwriters on the project, and replicate it from memory.

[GeorgeC]

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

You have to see this... It's on the June 10th update for The Digital Bits.

The BD looks to be one of the most comprehensively restored and updated video releases.

There are going to be tons of extras ported from the last 4-disc DVD release along with a lot of new audio and video features created for the new BD and DVD release. (Yes, there will be a new 4-disc DVD release for techno dinosaurs).

This very easily has the potential to be the best BD release of the year and one of the best Blu ray disc sets to be released so far.

[Randall]

Y'know, I wasn't planning to do so much upgrading to Blu, but sets like these make it hard to stick with that notion. It looks teriffic. Nice to see the Ritter TV movie on the new set, as well as the copious features being ported over.