Programming note
I will be out of town through Saturday, sans computer and thus sans blog. I trust nothing particularly interesting is going to happen between then and now.
Fairies and Fantasy: The Wizard of Oz part 1
The Wizard of Oz is the kind of movie that has been so totally absorbed by our culture, seen so many times by everyone from such a young age, that it’s easy to forget that it is, in the end, a movie, created by a team of artisans like any other movie, its basic ingredients — script, cast, costuming, scoring, editing, etc — no more magical or superior than the ingredients of tens of thousands of other movies. And yet, The Wizard of Oz endures like few other movies do, still holds audiences breathless in its narrative grip, despite the changing fashions of filmmaking, despite its stylized overacting, despite its gonzo, surreal production design. Even other tellings of The Wizard of Oz fail to enchant the way this movie does; why is this so?