The latest Oz reading

As promised, I reread The Royal Historian of Oz now that the comic book series has been collected into a graphic novel. Yup, it still works in a collection. In fact, I think it works much better if you can read it all at once (or over a couple of days like I did) instead of having to wait a month for each chapter, as I did when the series first came out (and then had to figure out how to read issue #5 on my computer, delaying the ending even more). The extras are great, too, including a complimentary introduction by Eric Shanower, and David Maxine's interview with writer Tommy Kovac at this year's Winkie Convention (to be sure, I was at that interview, anyway, but having a record of it, in the context of the book, is great). Ah, but perhaps the best part is an excerpt from Jasper Fizzle's Oz novel, Nervous Nelly in Oz. There are an awful lot of current Oz "writers" who need to read this and take it to heart as the way to not write Oz — or just about anything else, for that matter! No wonder the Official Oz Society wanted to stop him from publishing new books!

Today's classic Oz Comic, Political Division

A local institution is leaving the area. David Horsey has been a political cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for thirty years now, and he's one of the best. Heck, he's won two more Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning than I ever will! But ever since the P-I went to online-only publishing a few years ago, it seems he hasn't put out as much. So perhaps it was inevitable that he would move on, and today he announced on his blog that he was leaving Seattle and heading for a new job at the Los Angeles Times. So, good for him!

But why do I bring this up in an Oz blog? Well, go take a look at his blog and scroll down a bit. I suspect you'll understand why when you see the second cartoon in this look back at his career. I just want to add that Horsey also contributed to one of the more unusual and tangential books in my collection, a 1984 collection of political cartoons about the then-President called, appropriately enough, Reagancomics. As you can see, David Horsey drew the cover.

"Wicked" in Dutch

It just occurred to me that Wicked has been open in the Netherlands for a few weeks now, and I haven't celebrated by posting highlights of the show! So here's an early Christmas gift:

And it took me the longest time to find one that wasn't just a bunch of still photos put together to a muffled sound recording taken during an actual performance. I really like Chantel Janzen's Galinda during "Popular", she obviously milked that for all she could.

Famous People Go See "Wicked"

A new series! Number one: Mark Evanier.

UPDATE: It turns out that Mark wasn't the only star there.

The latest Oz movie watching

With Dorothy of Oz coming out next summer, and Oz: The Great and Powerful following in spring 2013, you'd think there wouldn't be an Oz movie out right now. And you'd be wrong — sort of. I'd heard about The Way and how it was inspired in part by The Wizard of Oz, and thought I'd try to go go see it when I go out to my folks' place for Christmas. However, I found out that it was playing right here in the small farming community I now call home! I was surprised, as I didn't think this small word-of-mouth kid of movie ever played out here. But I was off to see The Way!

First off, I can tell you that is is a good movie, and I really enjoyed it on that level. The story is about Tom (Martin Sheen), a California eye doctor who's not having a good relationship with his adult son, Daniel (played by Sheen's real life son, Emilio Estevez, who also co-wrote the script and directed). When Daniel dies in a small town in France, Tom goes to recover his body, and impulsively decides to undertake the pilgrimage that Daniel had barely started. The Camino de Santiago is eight hundred kilometers from St. Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago, Spain, and it's not easy to do on your own, so Tom meets up with all kinds of characters along the way, from all over the world. He eventually settles in with Joost from Amsterdam, Sarah from Canada, and Jack from Ireland, and they help each other in more ways than one. It's much more of a character study than a story, and all four of them have their own issues to deal with.

But is it Ozzy? I can honestly say, not really. To be sure, one can draw parallels between Tom's three companions and Dorothy's new friends she met on the way to the Emerald City. They even meet Jack in a hayfield, not very dissimilar to Dorothy's meeting the Scarecrow. But it's not a true parallel to The Wizard of Oz. There is no outright equivalent to the Emerald City, the Wizard, or the Wicked Witch of the West. And the themes and ideas in The Way (and, for that matter, The Wizard of Oz) are universal enough that they don't have to have come from any particular source. In fact, if Estevez hadn't mentioned The Wizard of Oz as an inspiration in interviews, I would probably have never made the connection from just watching the movie. (Of course, if Estevez had never mentioned The Wizard of Oz, I wouldn't have heard about The Way in the first place, and wouldn't have had any special desire to see it.) So as a movie fan, I say go. But as an Oz fan, I can tell you to take a pass if you want to. But I'll be curious to see the extras on the DVD release.

The latest Oz reading

The comics order came this past week, so you know what that means, don't you? Oz comics! There wasn't a huge lot this month, so I'll be brief:

• Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz #3. Yes, Eric and Skottie, usual bang-up job, probably get another Eisner, blah blah blah. But this issue sees the first big change Shanower has made in any of his comic adaptations of the Oz stories, and it's a good one. Dorothy's explanation of Ozma looking in on her, that doesn't take place until the book is nearly over? Here she gives it in the Mangaboo country, which therefore starts a ticking clock of the countdown to when Ozma will spot them and start a rescue. Genius! Oh, and also in this issue, they get to the Valley of Voe. But no encounters with bears yet. (And the cover for issue #4? Wow! That's an aspect of walking on water Baum never considered.)
  
• Fables #111. Yeah, yeah search for the new North Wind is over, yada yada. Meanwhile, back in the Pan Ozian Empire things are really, really NOT looking good for Bufkin the flying monkey. Let's just say this issue ends on a cliffhanger (and if you're paying attention to that cover, you can probably guess what it is). I would wonder how he's going to get out of that, but watching Doctor Who cliffhangers for decades now makes me think there will be a way.
  
• I haven't read it yet, but the collected edition of Tommy Kovac's The Royal Historian of Oz also came, and I am really looking forward to it. Not only does it have all five issues of the comic (including the never-before-published-on-paper chapter 5), it has an introduction by Eric Shanower, an excerpt from one of Jasper's Oz stories (so I guess we really can judge just how bad of an Oz author he is), the common here's-how-I-turn-a-script-into-the-finished-page feature, and a transcript of Tommy's talk at this year's Winkie Convention.
  

It takes two!

Hey, my fellow Oz fans, can you spare two dollars? Good! Because the L. Frank Baum/Oz museum in Baum's home town of Chittenango, New York, needs some help to keep its doors open. All they ask for is two dollars from as many people as possible. So, not only will I be sending in my two dollars soon, I'm also passing the word along. Here's the web page with all the information. Send in your two dollars, then pass the word along!

The latest Oz reading

I finally got around to reading Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master over the past few weeks. Yes, my non-reading life has been busy, and this is one big book. But that's fitting for a larger-than-life subject like Fleming. Of course I knew he directed Gone with the Wind and some other movie that also came out that same year, but this book really put that in perspective, and 1939 was just a small part of his career. He started off as a cameraman and cinematographer in the very early days of Hollywood, then was drafted into the army during World War I. He pioneered the use of film in gathering intelligence, then was selected to be Woodrow Wilson's cameraman during the Paris peace talks. After returning to civilian life, he returned to Hollywood and became a director, where he worked with some of the biggest stars of the silent era. Transitioning to sound, he continued to crank out all kinds of films, never becoming pigeonholed in one genre like so many others. He inspired Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Gary Cooper in developing their screen images. He was also extremely popular with his leading ladies, having love affairs with Clara Bow, Bessie Love, and Ingrid Bergman, among others. He was also MGM's most successful director in the '30s, having hits with Captains Courageous, Test Pilot, Treasure Island, and Bombshell, among others, and made uncredited contributions to The Great Waltz. Yet in his afterword, author Michael Sragow claims that Fleming is all but forgotten because he died in 1949, before the general public became enthralled with movie nostalgia and celebrated those early film pioneers who were still alive at the time. Surprisingly, this is the first book-length study of Fleming's life and career, whereas two other directors on The Wizard of Oz, George Cukor and King Vidor, have had several books written about them.

In case you haven't already figured out my reaction, I found this a fascinating read, and I'm just sorry that I didn't have more time to devote to it. Having said that, however, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to Oz fans, just because there's not a lot of Oz content in it, as the making of The Wizard of Oz is only one chapter. And a lot of that material will already be familiar to many Ozmologists. However, if you're interested in how Oz fit into Fleming's career as a whole, or are just interested in Hollywood history, or his pioneering work as a military cameraman and his role in the peace talks, I heartily recommend this book.