The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz


I've been a fan of The Wizard of Oz forever, and I've recently watched a special on TV about the 1939 film. Here are some of the facts I learned that I thought were pretty cool:

- Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch was so frightening at the time that most of her scenes had to be edited
- Some of the actors playing Winged Monkeys got injured when the piano strings that were holding them up snapped
- Munchkins earned $50/week while Toto earned $125/week
- The colored horse in the Emerald City was made by smearing Jell-O crystals over the horses used, and they had to shoot the scene fast before the horses licked them off
- Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion costume weighed 90 pounds
- The head of the Winged Monkey is Nikko, who is named after the Japanese town where the shrine of the Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil monkeys originated
- Baum came up with the name "OZ" when look at filing cabinets - they were labeled A-N and O-Z
- Four slipper sets were used in the film - one of which was stolen from a MN museum in 2005 (insured for $1 million)
- Margaret Hamilton was hospitalized with burns from a botched explosion of smoke. Then she got back and refused to do a scene where she flies off on a smoke-billowing broomstick, which the stand-in actor actually got injured doing the scene

Ponyo

I'm really surprised that I haven't watched Ponyo before because I'm a fan of Hayao Miyazaki's animated films. I was a little disappointed in this one though, it definitely wasn't his best work. The whole time I was watching it I kept thinking about how Disney's The Little Mermaid did a better job with this type of story. Something that really threw me off was all of the American actors that did the voices like Tina Fey, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, and especially Liam Neeson (his voice just did not fit his character and I couldn't take him seriously). But the visuals are just fantastic, and I'm extremely jealous of his imagination, I just want to take a vacation in his head and literally drown in it.

I think Howl's Moving Castle might be a better choice to watch with The Wizard of Oz, but I don't think that's available on Netflix. Whenever I watch it, although it also isn't one of my favorites of Miyazaki's, I always think of The Wizard of Oz meets The Brothers Grimm.