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Looking at various Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptations

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, Wizard of Oz with tags books, comic books, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, Wizard of Oz on February 24, 2012 by Paxton

Earlier this week I posted my review of Baum’s first and most famous Oz novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Now let’s take a look at some of the adaptations/re-interpretations of that original Oz book.

There were several Broadway and stage plays of the Wizard of Oz especially in the nearly 40 years between the release of the novel and the production of the MGM movie. Baum originally had no intention of writing an Oz sequel but he did produce a stage play of the novel. The popularity of one of these stage plays directly led to Baum writing the first Oz sequel.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) – The original MGM musical. At this point, this movie is probably more well known than the books. I watched it on Blu-Ray right after I finished the book. I love this movie so much. It’s just amazing. Every time I watch it I love it more. I think I’ve mentioned that I own the soundtrack and you should know I’ve been listening to it all week.

Journey Back to Oz (1974) – Animated movie that is the “official” sequel to the 1939 MGM movie. Not really based on any of the other Oz books. The producers really went all out. Dorothy is voiced by Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minelli. Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch in the 1939 movie voiced Aunt Em in this sequel. The audio track for this movie was recorded in 1964. It took 10 years for the producers to raise enough money to complete the animation which was done in 1974. This is the first time I remember seeing the character Jack Pumpkinhead who actually shows up in Baum’s later books.

MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz (1975) – The first comic collaboration between Marvel and DC. Written by Roy Thomas and drawn by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga. It’s a straight adaptation of the MGM movie. Nothing more, nothing less. Great art, though. Marvel continued this series with one more issue which you’ll see in my next installment.

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Review of Oz Book 1: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum (1900)

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, Wizard of Oz with tags Book Report, books, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz on February 22, 2012 by Paxton

Earlier this year I vowed that I was going to read all of the original 14 Oz books this year. And to hold myself accountable, I’m going to blog reviews of the books as I read them.

And so the journey begins.

I began my reading with my Books of Wonder copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I’ve read this two or three times now, but it’s such a quick and easy read I had no problem jumping right in.

It’s hard not to compare this book to the 1939 movie with Judy Garland and company. That movie is so iconic it’s tough not to picture it when you are reading. However, I did my best. Denslow’s illustrations really help, though. Plus, the basics of the plot in this book are woven all through the movie. But the differences between this book and the movie make the book that much more endearing.

Wizard of Oz 1st edition

Like I said, the basics are the same. Young Dorothy and her dog Toto are whisked away to the land of Oz by a cyclone leaving behind Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. There she travels to the City of Emeralds to see Oz, the great and powerful, in hopes that he can return her to Kansas. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion. While these basics are the same, the journey these characters make is different and much more dangerous than the MGM movie.

Some of the differences in the book include Dorothy meeting the Good Witch of the North in Munchkinland instead of Glinda, the Good Witch of the South (who she meets in the movie). Glinda doesn’t show up until the very end of the book. Also, and I think many people know this now, the magical shoes are silver in the book instead of ruby. We also don’t meet the Wicked Witch of the West face to face (they talk a lot about her) until the last third of the book. And those are just some of the differences to the movie.

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TV Guide Star Wars Episode I collector covers from 1999

Posted in movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags movies, pop culture, Star Wars on February 17, 2012 by Paxton

This week I’ve been taking a look at some of the promotional items that were released in 1999 to celebrate the first new Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi in 1983. I’ve looked at the current 3D movie promotions as well as the Pepsi Episode I collector soda cans as well as soda bottles. Continuing my look at the promotional extravaganza that was the Star Wars Episode I marketing machine, today I’m going to look at two separate TV Guide promotional cover spreads for Episode I.

The first group of covers was from May 15 – 21, 1999. There were four collector covers featuring various Star Wars characters. When you laid them all side by side they combined to form one giant painting.

You can click the images to see them bigger on Flickr. I love these images and the artwork is great.

The second set of covers was a month later on Jun 12 – 18, 1999. It was also four collector covers featuring Star Wars characters that combined to form one giant image. This group focused more on the CGI characters of Episode I.

You can click the images to see them bigger on Flickr.

Not surprisingly, Episode I made the cover of Time Magazine.

This issue was a month before the release on Apr 26, 1999.

Here’s some other random Pepsi promotional material I recently found.

This is a group of four Pepsi stickers promoting Episode I. I think I got these at the first Star Wars Celebration in Denver.

Here’s a Pepsi promo poster to “Collect All 24 Cans”. It was used in supermarket displays and schools. Notice it uses the image of one of the stickers in the previous post. I like that they have all the cans displayed around the poster’s border. I’m not sure if there were other posters featuring the images in the above stickers.

Here’s a corner sticker promotion. It was normally stuck in the corner of fridge case doors in gas stations. It also compels you to collect all 24 Pepsi cans. I like the prominent image of Darth Maul in this one.

Pepsi’s 1999 Star Wars Episode I collector bottles

Posted in Mountain Dew, movies, Pepsi, pop culture, soda, Star Wars with tags Mountain Dew, movies, Pepsi, pop culture, sodapalooza, Star Wars on February 16, 2012 by Paxton

The other day, I took a look at the 1999 Pepsi Star Wars Episode I collector cans. At the same time as the collector cans, Pepsi also put Star Wars characters on their bottles. They were the same characters that are on the cans, but the bottles included soda flavors not involved in the can promotion. And only one character per flavor.

Here are the main Pepsi Star Wars character bottles.

This is the regular Pepsi and Pepsi One bottle labels. Anakin was on all the Pepsi bottles as he was the #1 character can. C3PO was the only one on Pepsi One bottles and he was also on the Pepsi One cans.

These are the Diet Pepsi and Mountain Dew bottles featuring Queen Amidala and Darth Maul. They both were also on those respective cans.

Diet Mt Dew and Wild Cherry Pepsi were not a part of the collector can promotion. Padme was originally on Diet Pepsi cans and Capt Panaka was on Mountain Dew cans.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 24: Giving anime a chance…

Posted in cartoons, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags cartoons, movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, podcasts, pop culture on February 15, 2012 by Paxton

We’ve had to move our podcast to a different host server because we keep bumping against our bandwidth caps. You may have noticed since the last few episodes would throw up a “Nerd Lunch is too popular” page when you tried to download. Apparently we are pretty awesome. So I hear. Anyway, we’ve moved to a newer host with higher bandwidth caps, but due to the upload restrictions, we can’t put all of our past episodes up at once. So we’ll be adding several older episodes a month along with our new episode uploads. It’ll take a few months to re-populate the archives, but we are working on it. Thanks for liking us enough to make us have to do this.

Anyway, Nerd Lunch episode 24 is now LIVE for your enjoyment. This week the rotating fourth chair is occupied by a regular guest, Shawn Robare from Branded in the 80s. Shawn is an anime aficionado and since none of the Nerd Lunch hosts have ever really enjoyed anime, we thought Shawn would be the perfect guide as we force ourselves to “Give it a Try”.

And the anime movie Shawn picked for us to talk about is Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. So come join us as Shawn, CT, Jeeg and I dive head first into the strange and often nonsensical world of anime.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner. And yes, we are still on the Zune Marketplace.