The Wizard of Oz

Yesterday we watched The Wizard of Oz. It was Tracy’s first time. I knew that when I married her but never pressed the matter, until recently not having seen it has become a bigger issue in her life and I figured enough was enough. For me, it was probably the first time I saw it in the last 20 years without simultaneaously listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

You need to be a member of Captain Comics to add comments!

Join Captain Comics

Votes: 0
Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • Wow. I didn't think it was possible to grow up in this country without having seen that picture.  When we was kids it was on TV once a year and we never missed it.  I'd probably already seen it four times by the time I was eight.  I wonder what it must be like to first see it as an adult - I remember parts of it scaring the living excrement out of me when I was tiny.

  • Also, this:

    13486376570.jpg

     

  • That painting is so cool!

    The reason I broke this topic out into a discussion of its own rather than posting it to the “Movies I have seen lately” thread is that I saw the potential for discussion to break off in any number of directions. It kind of blows my mind, too, that someone could grow up in this country without the annual tradition of watching the Wizard of Oz (and “Peanuts” and Rankin & Bass holiday specials) on TV. Now that DVD has made these annual broadcasts superfluous, do today’s parents take the time to show their kids these programs folks of our age take for granted? I suppose there’s now a whole generation of parents who grew up without this tradition.

    True story: I didn’t realize the Oz parts were in Technicolor until I was 16 years old.

    Regarding seeing it for the first time as an adult, Tracy liked it. In fact, she refused to read Peter David’s column about it (as she did his column about Alien 3) because she didn’t want anyone to point out to her how stupid she was for liking it. I remember being scared by some parts and I remember being just generally creeped out by certain others. One such example of the latter (which creeped Tracy out, too) was the way the Witch of the East’s feet curled up after the Ruby Slippers (Silver Shoes in the book) disappeared from them and appeared on Dorothy’s. Peter David likened it to renting bowling shoes, but worse.

    In Tracy’s household growing up, their annual tradition was The Sound of Music (which I didn’t see until after I married her).

  • It's true - I never missed the picture when it was only on TV once a year - now that I own it on disk, I hardly ever look at it.

  • I think it was Mark Evanier who coined the term “video redundancy” for when you own a certain movie on VHS or DVD but don’t watch it… until you find it broadcast while flipping channels.

  • I got my 1st VCR years before most people I know (Nov'79).  I spent the next 10 years taping so many shows and so many movies, I hardly ever had time to watch any of the tapes back. I recall spending a lot of the 90's consciously trying to cut back on taping, or "close down" on big series where I had managed to finally get everything (or, all I was ever likely to).  There was a point in the last 10 years where I just about stopped taping everything, except for movies on TCM. Taping Tv shows had become more and more of a problem, between increasing schedule madness, and the way the networks kept finding new ways to screw over the shows.  (Some recent shows are actually shown more intact in syndicatied reruns than they ever were on networks.)

    These days it's nothing but watching tapes. And to my surprise, I'm finding certain movies have really become what I call "perennials".  I can watch them over and over and never get bored.Usually there's about a year between viewings, but with some, 6 months and I wanna see it again.  And in special cases, even more frequent.  It's like when I used to go to theatres to see the same film several times over a few months.

    Last time I saw THE WIZARD OF OZ was on TCM.  That must have been about 5 years ago.  Before that, I actually managed to see it on a theatrical reissue.  That was probably around 1999 or 2000.  I love seeing old movies on a big screen-- the way they were intended!

  • A few years go, TCM showed THE WIZARD OF OZ with "Dark Side of the Moon" as the secondary audio program.

  • Did they play the album during the first or second half of the film? The online instructions I found start the album at the beginning of the film. That method works okay, but it fits much, much, MUCH better if you start the album after the “lions and tigers and bears” section. (I can provide specifics if anyone is interested.)

  • I missed it, so I don't know for sure.

  • Ah, yes. I remember the annual watching of Oz as well. I don't know how many years in a row i watched it until I finally missed a showing. A good long while. I probably haven't seen it since the mid-'80s though.

This reply was deleted.