What Ho Friends and Neighbors! It has been a great week for viewing around the T-Town. Some of the what I have been watching is old, some new - All Awesome! Let's dig in.
Oz The Great and Powerful
Let me start off by telling you how really good this film is. It is not a remake of the MGM classic, it is a prequel tale set in the wonderful world of Oz. The film starts out with the best title sequence I have seen in years. A real nod to the style of cinema from days gone by. 
First and foremost, the black and white opening is not simply an homage to the original movie's format - but it even takes on the aspect ratio of 4:3 whilst the story is in Kansas. For those of you thinking it was hack to have the Wizard come from Kansas in a twister to Oz... well that is pretty much verbatim from the 1939 movie. Once the Wizard gets to Oz, the color comes in and the screen grows (like the eye opening experience that it is) to a full 16:9 format. Very well done.
Now I am not going to spoil a bunch... but it involves the Wicked Witch of the West and Glenda the Good Witch and yeah the Wicked Witch of the East. This was all tricky, as I will get into later, but well done considering the hurdles. So we see the story of how the Western Witch became so wicked. A damn sight better than the story given in that Broadway play too I might add... The story makes sense with the follow-up. You develop sympathy for the witch without having to denigrate the other characters and add metachlorions to make it all work.
You must watch this film.
Some great stuff to look for: 
Dorothy’s mother might just be in this movie, so too might the Cowardly Lion. Fans of the book will note the map describing the landscape is featured in Glenda’s place. A really neat method of showing how the water melts witches is incorporated. The Winkies, the Quadlings, China Girl, Poppies, Scarecrows, Tinkerers and the Wizard's most powerful device of all are all there.
Now for some actor props. Fans of Bad Santa will rejoice as Tony Cox plays a munchkin... were it not for the G rating... still hilarious. Additionally Zach Braff's characters have more charm than expected. The doorman Bruce Campbell plays has so much proper prosthetics as to look like Frank Morgan's role- it is uncanny. James Franco really does the 'ol Kansas boy justice. he is the right blend of goof and serious. Mila Kunis falls more into the role than she does out of it. Her Margaret Hamilton channeling is broken most of the time, but as she develops more and more she becomes almost the same wicked witch.
Finally, I have to mention the downsides of the movie. There are some people who will call foul at how easily some things seem to be solved by magic and how others seem to take much more. To that I say... have you watched the original? Glenda could have at any point told Dorothy how to get home. She waits... it seems magic often involves learning a lesson first...
Speaking of those slippers... where are they? Oh, Raimi did not forget them. Nor did he make Glenda the Witch of the South for accuracy to the book and the trademark striped socks of the WWotE were not lost in Wardrobe. No, this is the greatest atrocity and ball dropping incident since Chris Nolan was discussed to do Batman in the Justice League. Warner Brothers owns the MGM movie. They have licensing issues with the imagery and some elements of the story that are not in the public domain story written by Baum. Those Ruby Slippers... originally silver. That means that Disney would have to pay a king's ransom to Warner in order to use these things. Apparently Warner was not bright enough to see how enriching this new movie would dramatically increase sales of their property. These omissions do not break the movie, but they would have greatly made even more people happy. That was a bad move Warner... A bad move.
The Cabin in the Woods
So it has been a long time coming. Too long. Man I really needed to see this earlier. I dropped that ball. This is not simply an overdue review but an admission of my secret shame. However, I have fixed the deficiency. 
This is just perfect. The proper amount of horror and comedy. The connection to the tropes, the use of satire. I want sequels. Hell, I want just to see whatever else they had. Further stories in the same woods with the different options! From the Hellraiser homage to the merman... well everything is better with a merman I think. This is the sort of flick that really make you think and enjoy other films more.
The Bible
What a good series. Dramatized and narrated. Differing perspectives and not entirely missing the point that it is all from the perspective of the characters. Well done.
That is about all the time for today,
Be Excellent to Each Other.
~BAT
#Be2eO