The BBC reports that the ever-green film The Wizard of Oz has been lovingly cleaned up and restored for a release in UK cinemas next month. Some may scoff and wonder why go to see a movie from 1939 in the cinema, especially one which most people have seen repeatedly on television (usually on holiday weekends); well, if you think that way then there probably isn’t much point in you going. For the rest of us though the opportunity to see the film in its natural setting – a darkened cinema with other people sharing it – offers a unique experience.
It is now well over a century since L Frank Baum published his classic novel and both his book and the famous Judy Garland movie continue to fascinate audiences and readers as well as inspiring countless other creators – just look at the number of comics alone drawing on the tale and its characters, from Eric Shanower’s beautiful Adventures in Oz through the use of Dorothy in Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls, manga variations and more (and this isn’t counting creators who don’t reference the work directly but have had their imagination stoked at a young age by the tale). And it continues, with Image due to release an English-language edition of the award-winning Wonderful Wizard of Oz adapted by David Chauvel and Enrique Fernandez in the near future.
Like Lewis Carrol’s Alice In Wonderland (darkly referenced by Del Toro in his magnificent new Pan’s Labyrinth), the Wizard remains a story which works well in all sorts of mediums because it counterbalances reality (the poor farm) with wild fantasy, the longing for adventure and wonder with the need for family and belonging, all elements of story any person in any age in any medium can and will empathise with. And the movie, of course, has flying monkeys and that song… Oh yes, go on, be cynical and scoff but I know a lot of you secretly want to go and see it on the big screen.
Thu, Nov 30, 2006
Books, Comics and cartoons, Film, TV and radio