Review: "Oz: the Great and Powerful"

This review was originally published @ Towleroad in my weekly column

You're basically asking for a trouble with that title, you know? OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict how this will turn out. If the movie is neither great nor powerful, tomatoes will be thrown. It feels weird to abbreviate the new picture as simply Oz, since it's a derivation rather than an original, so we'll call it Great and Powerful moving forward despite the misdirection. The filmmakers would approve since the movie begins with a clear and charming admission that James Franco's "Oscar Diggs" is no wizard at all but a travelling con-artist. So I come not to throw tomatoes (too easy), at least not at first, but to marvel at how red they are as they fly through the air.

The trailer brags that the movie comes from the producers of Tim Burton's Eyesore in Wonderland, a gargantuan box office success but one of the worst films of the new century, so there was cause to worry. Could any film be as simultaneously garish and muddy to look at? The happy answer is no. 3D technology has come a long way and director Sam Raimi (most famous for the Spider-Man and Evil Dead trilogies) has far more taste and control of his color palette than Burton has had recently. 

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Linkology

Details our friend Kurt interviewed Stoker baddie Matthew Goode
Salon on the depiction of Hitchcock's misogyny and voyeurism in recent biopics
Yahoo I missed this incredible make you feel super old news: Ralph Macchio is now as old as Pat Morita was inThe Karate Kid (1984). 

Guardian celebrates the worst mothers in film history from Now Voyager through Suddenly Last Summer to The Others - pretty solid choices among this collection of 10
Cinema Blend Danny Boyle apparently not interested in being the next James Bond director
/Film collects reactions to the first 30 minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness, shown in rough cut format
Awards Daily the press release for Black Nativity, a new Kasi Lemmons picture starring Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson and Forest Whitaker. Ooh, I hope it's good. On other note: how weird is it that Angela Bassett is the only member of that trio without an Oscar? 
NPR interview Rita Moreno on her career in musicals, movies and tv and her Oscar win...

I was sure that Judy Garland would probably win, because she was up for Judgment [at] Nuremburg. It was a straight role, not a musical. And I was so amazed and so surprised. Never even dreamed of doing a just-in-case little speech — 'and I want to thank Robert Wise and Jerry Robbins' — nothing! I didn't even work on anything like that, so when I got up there I did this memorable nonspeech. I said, 'I don't believe it!' And there's this pause, and then I say, 'Good lord.' And then I'm trying to think of something, and then I finally say, 'I leave you with that!'

I ran into the wings and I started to cry."

Hemlock Grove trailer

There's a lot of horror-themed tv shows on the way (this, Psycho-inspired The Bates Motel, and Hannibal) are you a Yes on any of them? Or perhaps a No or Maybe So

75th Anniversary: In Old Chicago's Stolen Oscar!

On this very day in 1938, 75 years ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences met for the 10th time to honor the films of 1937. There was still no television to compete with but that also meant no televised ceremony. Which is too bad really because how great would it be to see one of Oscar's very oddest anecdotes happening "live"? According to legends, though the legends conflict either an Alice Brady impostor or a impostor Brady representative accepted the trophy which was never recovered! Drama. What then? Either the statue was replaced 12 days later or the more dramatic the statue was never replaced. This much is true: Brady, the second winner of this then brand new category, died a year and a half later at only 47 years of age.

In Old Chicago
Alice Brady plays the matriarch of the O'Leary clan (anniversary aside, since we're approaching St. Patrick's Day, it felt like appropriate viewing). After the father dies in a dumb luck tragedy on the way to the big city in 1854, dragged to his death by runaway horses, widowed Brady raises her three sons alone in the rapidly rising city described in the title cards as "a fighting, laughing, aggressive American city". Within seconds of arriving she makes a name for herself as a talented laundry woman.

Two of her sons become major power players, one an honest crusading lawyer (Don Ameche), the other a charming playboy (gorgeous Tyrone Power) with a taste for money and women of questionable provenance.

Yes, by all means Tyrone, find a reason to get your shirt off...

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Say What? Watts & Chastain

You amused us by adding dialogue or a caption to this snapshot of Naomi Watts & Jessica Chastain taken Wednesday in Paris.

AND THE WINNER IS...

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Visual Index ~ The Wonderful Best Shot(s) of Oz

can you believe that no one chose this shot?Do I plug this series too much? "Plug! Plug!"

The next Hit Me With Your Best Shot is Barbarella (1968) on Wednesday March 13th (join us!) but I wasn't quite ready to let The Wizard of Oz go just yet. My review of the 2013 prequel of sorts will be up at Towleroad today and here tomorrow. By Monday we'll undoubtedly be sick of Oz and let it rest... at least until its 75th anniversary (August 25th, 2014!). But in the meantime I thought it might be fun to do a...

visual link round up experiment

After the jump, see all 22 favorite shots from the awesome bloggers who participated.

Narrative! I've arranged in linear order as they happen in the movie. Click on an image you're intrigued by and it'll take you to the corresponding article. Or read them sequentially to experience this movie through 23 different sets of eyes!

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