The wizard of Oz

Letter from The Order of Fantastical Reading:
”Dearest Great Wizard!” (That’s me, as you know.)
”We were appalled to read your latest so-called review of The Lord of the Rings. Of course, any wizard who condescends himself to watching muu-wies instead of reading books cannot be a book reviewer here at The Order of Fantastical Reading. Also, your view and opinion of the book LOTR differs so much from our own -this monumental work of art that we all read from beginning to end without being bored at all!- that we really don’t think that you belong in this book-club at all. You are hereby EXCLUDED, and your membership annihilated as of yesterday. Goodbye.
Yours sincerely,
Hexia de Trixius
President of The Order of Fantastical Reading

Well, you old broomsticks, I don’t want to be a part of your dreadfully snobbish hag-club anyway!
Take your dusty hats and stick ’em!

I’ll keep on reviewing movies!

The Wizard of Oz

By Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

I’m telling you, getting to see this film turned out to be a bit of a challenge. At the library I had gotten my hands on a well-used copy with scratches and all. Back home in my tree hut I also made a somewhat unpleasant discovery of something on the underside of the disc… it looked a bit like chocolate and chili mayo. My DVD-player stubbornly refused to have anything to do with this shabby thing. I then tried to add a little mustard and roasted onions. (Just kidding! I would never add roasted onions to a DVD.) In the end only some serious spell casting made the film work and I got to watch at least some fragments of it – although it did turn out a bit strange, for instance some parts of the movie had colours while others didn’t. I don’t know if any of you will ever get a chance to see it. You might have watched this movie as kids, in that case you can probably make a better resume yourselves. Otherwise, just use your imagination to fill out the missing gaps in mine. Here goes.

Summary:

Merrily singing Dorothy takes a knock to the head and swooshes away in a flying house together with her brave little dog, Toto. She is blown all the way over the rainbow to The Land of Oz where she incidentally dumps her house onto a wicked witch. After this rather (un)fortunate incident, she discovers that she has landed in the job training centre for 122 singing dwarves, and she immediately decides to return home, since she is a very good singer herself and doesn’t need any voice training at all. To get home, she must follow the yellow brick road and meet with the great and powerful Wizard of Oz in Emerald City.
Enter the scene: a scarecrow with no brain, a tin man without a heart and a lion with no courage. Since scarecrows don’t usually have brains and tin men don’t have hearts this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to any of them, but nevertheless this clearly is a big issue.
The lion is particularly troubled, and when I put on my monocle and looked closely at the screen I absolutely understood why: The lion isn’t a lion at all – it is a man dressed as a lion who believes that he is a lion. Oh dear.
The three of them join up with Dorothy and her dog. Instead of looking for a psychiatrist (for the lion) they all head for the presidential palace in the Emerald City. Upon their arrival, the lion sings a song (to my great displeasure there was not a single scratch on the DVD during this part) and they find the leader of the country, The Wizard of Oz, who sends them on a quest to obtain a broom from another wicked witch (yes, there are indeed multiple). They manage to acquire the requested cleaning article, and in the process also happen to melt the Wicked Witch of the West. They return to The Wizard of Oz, only to discover that he is actually an old fraud! ”I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.” He declares. And then he hands them some cheap presents and announces that he has solved all of their problems.
Dorothy discovers that she can get home by using her glittering, ruby shoes and that she was actually just having a concussion. Voila!

Review:

There’s no place like home, and people without brains do an awful lot of talking.
Indeed. I couldn’t agree more.

Alas. No dragons!
Only some evil flying monkeys…

Other people with limited magical abilities might relate strongly to this story. As you might expect, I, myself, don’t relate much to the “wizard” of Oz, as his magical powers are not very impressive.

I am happy to say that this story of The Wizard of Oz is highly unrealistic.
Never in history have any incompetent elderly men lacking in either consciousness or ability tried to take leadership of any country anywhere in the world as the Wizard of Oz does here.
Let’s all be grateful for that.

The fake wizard has no beard – and rightfully so.

All in all, this movie is very diverse. I immensely enjoyed watching a beautiful friendship form between four completely different individuals. Bravo.
Also – I’m especially happy to see a kind and friendly scarecrow represented in this movie!
Scarecrows are often depicted as evil and murderous – such a misunderstood species. I find that most of them are actually very nice.

I was stunned by all the fashionable and peculiar clothes in this movie. To tell you the truth, I am speechless and don’t feel ready to talk about it at all.
I would just like to mention Glinda’s sparkling dress, as it was the most magnificent.

Well, ehh maybe.
There are a lot of munchkins, though it’s hard to tell whether they are Danish or not. But if you were to collect all the munchkins on planet earth (as they seem to have done here) mathematically speaking at least a few of them should be Danish.

Top points go to the song: ”Somewhere over the Rainbow”.
As for the singing dwarves, I salute all 122 for their eagerness and hard work. It was truly overwhelming. I must say, in another sequel it would be really nice to see some singing giants to spice it up.

Conclusion

Due to technical problems caused by the condition of my DVD I only watched the film in fragments, so it is really hard to pass judgement. I will give the film credit for all the missing scenes though, as I am sure they were all splendid.

Wizards hats: 6 out of 7