Technically we should resist going all Yes No Maybe So on teasers. When we have in the past everyone expected it all over again with the subsequent full trailer... and I can't do redundancy like that. I don't have it in me like all those heavy traffic movie blogs that will post at least five identical posts on everything "rumor. denial of rumor. updates of rumor. facts concerning rumor. rumor becoming fact." or slight variations thereof and a post for each and every minor iteration of a trailer and each batch of stills and each poster that appears for a grand total of about 250 posts about each film before the readers have even seen it. The studios know how to play the internet these days. But that's why we see too much of movies now before we even see them if you know what I mean. Nobody has any self control and we're all starting to ruin our virgin experiences with new movies.
But I'm a Friend of Dorothy so I can't resist Oz. I'm whisked up in that tornado every time.
yes no maybe so breakdown if you click your mouse three times...
there's no place like blog. there's no place like blog.
YES
- Well it is the wonderful world of Oz.
- Every shot of Glinda is exciting though Michelle Williams has a very solemn face for such a previously cheerful witch. It's intriguing that the clouds she appears to be summoning move more like waves of water. But are we not going to get her signature pink bubbles?
- The move from black and white to color is 1000% obvious but it's tweaked enough with the shift from square frame to widescreen (and it's easy to forget that movies were square before they were rectangular.)
- That bit with James Franco in the Oz role putting his hat back on when things start suspending in mid air is a nice touch.
- Sam Raimi is a terrific director with a mischievous sense of humor and a gift for iconography so he might be a great fit for the material.
NO
Oz. You're in Oz."
-Mila Kunis as "Theodora"
- Actually Mila, it looks like we're in Tim Burton's Eyesore in Wonderland... my least favorite movie of the past several years. It looks so much like that. The frames are so fussy and hideous with color and mad-hatter like art direction. Like leprechauns have puked rainbows all over the set. Anything that reminds me of Eyesore in Wonderland is troubling.
- I h-a-t-e Mila's costume and look here. Sorry Gary Jones. I don't understand the 1940s Joan Crawford shoulder pads influence in garish red (the sets have enough color) and Mila looking like Catherine Zeta Jones instead of herself. What is this?
MAYBE SO
- For every seemingly ugly shot I keep coming back to this one of a living doll, which is creepy and beautiful simultaneously. It's beyond. Plus it's simple enough to be iconic if its a great moment in the movie. I want to see the movie just to see how this fits in but I worry that the movie will be mostly horrible with these weird flashes of inspiration.
- The little "tag" after the title, the spot where a laugh line or scare usually goes is reserved for the Wicked Witch of the West. It'd be super effective if the rest of the tease didn't worry me so much.
- Oz's yearning to be a great man, which opens the teaser and which we're reminded of at the end 'Are you the great man we've waited for?' sounds like the emotional arc, but I'd so prefer the emotional arcs to belong to the witches. Will James Franco care enough to send his very best? He has to care or he's barely there.
Yes, it's true. I'm a "Maybe So" verging on "No" because mostly it didn't sell the movie to me. It made me scream "YES" for Wicked instead. Which wasn't what it was hawking. (Um, Nathaniel... it kinda was. Obviously this movie is trying to capitalize on the Oz craze that Wicked caused.) But that's another movie. With a similar plot. Only with songs. And what is Oz without musical numbers? A less fantastical place.
HOW ABOUT YOU? YES, NO or MAYBE SO?
P.S. Speaking of Wicked, Deadline is reporting that Universal wants Stephen Daldry to direct it and I think I'm feeling relief. A) He's a friend of Dorothy. B) He's such a less scary option than some of the other people who've been interested in helming that billion dollar stage musical's screen transfer. C) He proved with The Hours that he can handle multiple female arcs intertwined with one another. D) He proved with Billy Elliott that he can do heightened emotion through musical expression (dance rather than singing but...the ballpark, you know).
Did he prove with The Reader that he can do sympathy for the devil Wicked? That film is so divisive that the answer must be Yes and No.