Author Topic: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"  (Read 5652 times)

Offline TOoP/Bruce

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Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« on: July 16, 2012, 02:59:12 pm »
For those that haven't noticed, Sam Raimi's "Oz the Great and Powerful" is coming out next year, and it features James Franco (Milk, Howl, The Broken Tower), Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain), and Milla Kunis (The Black Swan).

Franco is the Wizard, and Michelle Williams is Glinda.

Milla Kunis is the Wicked Witch of the West.

This should be interesting! The trailer looks a bit like "The Wizard of Oz" crossed with "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus".

The trailer looks amazing! [youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1NGnVLDPog [/youtube]


Alas, it looks like Anne Hathaway's Judy Garland project has been shelved indefinitely...

P.S. Not sure how "friend of Judy" became old fashioned code for being gay, unless it had something to do with her husband Vincent Minelli being gay?
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Offline Meryl

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2012, 03:27:00 pm »
Ooh, that does look like fun!  8)

P.S. Not sure how "friend of Judy" became old fashioned code for being gay, unless it had something to do with her husband Vincent Minelli being gay?

I always assumed it was because so many gay men were huge fans of Judy Garland.
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2012, 03:39:10 pm »
I thought it was another husband who was gay...Peter somebody the Australian.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2012, 04:01:36 pm »
P.S. Not sure how "friend of Judy" became old fashioned code for being gay, unless it had something to do with her husband Vincent Minelli being gay?

I always understood the phrase to be "friend of Dorothy." Clearly that's a quote from The Wizard of Oz, but that still begs the question as to how it became code for being gay.

I thought it was another husband who was gay...Peter somebody the Australian.

That would be Peter Allen, and Liza was married to him, not Judy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Allen

Edit to Add:

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the phrase, "friend of Dorothy":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2012, 04:08:57 pm »



"[I was] the only child in the audience that always wondered why Dorothy ever wanted to go back to Kansas. Why would she want to go back to Kansas, in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me, when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys and gay lions? I never understood it."

--John Waters







Alas, it looks like Anne Hathaway's Judy Garland project has been shelved indefinitely...

P.S. Not sure how "friend of Judy" became old fashioned code for being gay, unless it had something to do with her husband Vincent Minelli being gay?




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

Friend of Dorothy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Judy Garland in her role as Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz  is one of two likely
origins for the phrase "friend of Dorothy"
referring to a gay man or LGBT person.


In gay slang, a"friend of Dorothy" (occasionally abbreviated FOD) is a term for a gay man. The phrase dates back to at least World War II, when homosexual acts were illegal in the United States. Stating that, or asking if, someone was a "friend of Dorothy" was a euphemism used for discussing sexual orientation without others knowing its meaning. A similar term "friend of Mrs. King" (i.e. Queen) was used in England, mostly in the first half of the 20th century.


Origins
 
The precise origin of the term is unknown and there are various theories. Most commonly, it is stated that "friend of Dorothy" refers to the film The Wizard of Oz  because Judy Garland, who starred as the main character Dorothy, is a gay icon. In the film, Dorothy is accepting of those who are different. For example the "gentle lion" living a lie, "I'm afraid there's no denyin', I'm just a dandy lion." Others claim that the phrase refers to celebrated humorist and critic Dorothy Parker, who included some gay men in her famous social circle.


Misunderstanding
 
In the early 1980s, the Naval Investigative Service was investigating homosexuality in the Chicago area. Agents discovered that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as "friends of Dorothy." Unaware of the historical meaning of the term, the NIS believed that there actually was some woman named Dorothy at the center of a massive ring of homosexual military personnel, so they launched an enormous and obviously futile hunt for the elusive "Dorothy", hoping to find her and convince her to reveal the names of gay servicemembers.


(....)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland_as_gay_icon

Judy Garland as gay icon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Judy Garland as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz  
(1939)


Actress Judy Garland is widely considered a gay icon; The Advocate  has called Garland "The Elvis of homosexuals." The reasons frequently given for her standing as an icon among gay men are admiration of her ability as a performer, the way her personal struggles seemed to mirror those of gay men in America during the height of her fame, and her value as a camp figure. Garland's role as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz  is particularly noted for contributing to this status.


Garland as tragic figure
 
The tragic aspects of gay identification with Garland were being discussed in the mainstream as early as 1967. Time  magazine, in reviewing Garland's 1967 Palace Theatre engagement, disparagingly noted that a "disproportionate part of her nightly claque seems to be homosexual." It goes on to say that "[t]he boys in the tight trousers" (a phrase Time  repeatedly used to describe gay men, as when it described "ecstatic young men in tight trousers pranc[ing] down the aisles to toss bouquets of roses" to another gay icon, Marlene Dietrich) would "roll their eyes, tear at their hair and practically levitate from their seats" during Garland's performances. Time  then attempted to explain Garland's appeal to the homosexual, consulting psychiatrists who opined that "the attraction [to Garland] might be made considerably stronger by the fact that she has survived so many problems; homosexuals identify with that kind of hysteria" and that "Judy was beaten up by life, embattled, and ultimately had to become more masculine. She has the power that homosexuals would like to have, and they attempt to attain it by idolizing her."
 
Writer William Goldman, in a piece for Esquire  magazine about the same Palace engagement, again disparages the gay men in attendance, dismissing them as "fags" who "flit by" chattering inanely. He goes on, however, to advance the tragic figure theory as well. After first suggesting that "if [homosexuals] have an enemy, it is age. And Garland is youth, perennially, over the rainbow," he wrote:
 

Homosexuals tend to identify with suffering. They are a persecuted group and they understand suffering. And so does Garland. She's been through the fire and lived – all the drinking and divorcing, all the pills and all the men, all the poundage come and gone – brothers and sisters, she knows.


Openly gay comedian Bob Smith offers a comic take on the tragic figure theory, imagining an "Elvis king" and a "Judy queen", debating the idols:

 
"Elvis had a drinking problem."
 "Judy could drink Elvis under the table."
 "Elvis gained more weight."
 "Judy lost more weight."
 "Elvis was addicted to painkillers."
 "No pill could stop Judy's pain!"




Garland as camp
 
In discussing Judy Garland's camp appeal, gay film scholar Richard Dyer has defined camp as "a characteristically gay way of handling the values, images and products of the dominant culture through irony, exaggeration, trivialisation, theatricalisation and an ambivalent making fun of and out of the serious and respectable." Garland is camp, he asserts, because she is "imitable, her appearance and gestures copiable in drag acts". He calls her "ordinariness" in her early MGM films camp in their "failed seriousness" and her later style "wonderfully over-the-top." Garland herself acknowledged her camp appeal during her lifetime, saying "When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast." Fire Island, a resort community with a large LGBT presence, is also referenced in Garland's final film, I Could Go On Singing,  described as "her most gay film" and as the film most aware of its gay audience.

Other connections between Garland and LGBT people include the slang term "Friend of Dorothy", which likely derives from Garland's portrayal of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz  and became a code phrase gay people used to identify each other. Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz "mirrored many gay men’s desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of small town life...for big, colorful cities filled with quirky, gender-bending characters who would welcome them."
 
In the film, Dorothy immediately accepts those who are different, including the Cowardly Lion (in a very camp performance by Bert Lahr). The Lion identifies himself through song as a "sissy" and exhibits stereotypically "gay" (or at least effeminate) mannerisms. The Lion is seen as a coded example of Garland meeting and accepting a gay man without question.
 
In the 2001 documentary Memories of Oz,  openly gay cult film director and social satirist, John Waters opined about his perceptions seeing The Wizard of Oz  as a child:
 

[I was] the only child in the audience that always wondered why Dorothy ever wanted to go back to Kansas. Why would she want to go back to Kansas, in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me, when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys and gay lions? I never understood it.


(....)


"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


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and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2012, 04:21:23 pm »
Quote
[I was] the only child in the audience that always wondered why Dorothy ever wanted to go back to Kansas. Why would she want to go back to Kansas, in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me, when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys and gay lions? I never understood it.

--John Waters

There used to be a t-shirt out there with the inscription:

"Aunt Em,
Hate you. Hate Kansas. Took the dog.
--Dorothy"

 ;D

"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2012, 04:32:12 pm »



   




There used to be a t-shirt out there with the inscription:

"Aunt Em,
Hate you. Hate Kansas. Took the dog.
--Dorothy"

 ;D




 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:


"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline TOoP/Bruce

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #7 on: July 16, 2012, 04:33:37 pm »
Thanks Jeff and Aloysius for all the info!  

(God, you have to love the pithy John Waters quote.  He's like Dorothy Parker in a blue pencil moustache...)
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Offline southendmd

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #8 on: March 10, 2013, 09:24:48 pm »
Has anyone seen the film yet?  ***spoilers probably***




I recently went to a matinée, just to get out of the snow.

OK, fellow friends of Dorothy.  "Oz:  the Great and Powerful" is neither.  It's big on 3-D effects and they're sometimes pretty stunning, but unlike the flim-flam man Oz, no effects can save this film.  I know it's cliché but this film is witless, heartless, and nerveless.  

Sure, it's either gutsy or stupid to take on Oz.  The '39 film is such a part of our culture.  So.....either pay homage or do something completely different.  Sam Raimi seems to want it both ways.  He does the black-and-white Kansas intro (not sepia, and surprisingly dull), whilst introducing characters that later appear in Oz in another form (sound familiar?).  His garish Land of Oz includes familiar and bumped-up characters (for example, the winged monkeys are now winged baboons with big teeth.  Hunh?  And the winged monkey--in a bell-hop suit rather than a fez--becomes the typical Disneyesque cute companion).  The poor Munchkins get short-shrift (sorry).  The gee-we-had-it-in-us-all-along theme is there too.

Oz (that is, Oscar Zoroaster etc etc etc Diggs--known to his buds as Oz) ain't no Professor Marvel of the earlier film.  He's a callow womanizer and a little too sure of himself without anything to back it up.  It doesn't make sense that the sisters Theodora and Evanora, the future evil witches of Oz fall for him and his pathetic act.  Are they using him?  Or, do they "need" him?  Oy.

Katherine posted (on facebook)  an insightful article about the anti-feminism here.  Baum himself was a staunch feminist and all his heroines are, well, female, the boys hanging out in supporting roles.  Why do a film focused on the boy, and I mean boy?

James Franco is out of his league here.  While I like him in some roles, he is too much James Franco here, mugging all the while.  (I loved him in "Howl" where he completely disappeared.)

Mila Kunis starts out promising, meeting our charlatan as he finally touches down in the balloon.  She's got huge, Bette Davis eyes, and a big red hat. But again, when it's so obvious he's inept, and she's supposedly a witch, why is she so deluded by his nothingness?  Her later transformation--due to his jilting????--to Margaret Hamilton on steroids again makes no sense.  

I had great hopes for Rachel Weisz, however, again, no there there.  Sadism on parade.

Poor Michelle Williams.  At least she tries hard not to look ridiculous.  Her turn in the black-and-white beginning as one of Oz's exes, now betrothed to John Gale (hunh? Is she supposed to be Dorothy's mother?) confused me.  As Glinda, she is patient of Oz's shortcomings, and rises above this lousy script.  

The CGI China doll had more expression than some of the live cast.  (Just like the magic carpet in "Alladin" acted circles around the other animated characters.)

Bad script, bad casting.  

Danny Elfman did the score.  Why not add some musical numbers?  He did well in "The Nightmare Before Christmas".  Why not make it a real musical???  

Better yet, if you got a few hundred million dollars, why not make a film of "Wicked", a real juicy story of the witches of Oz, where the Wizard is pretty secondary.  As he should be.  

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Over the Rainbow -- "Oz: the Great and Powerful"
« Reply #9 on: March 11, 2013, 12:25:00 pm »
Has anyone seen the film yet?  ***spoilers probably***




I recently went to a matinée, just to get out of the snow.

OK, fellow friends of Dorothy.  "Oz:  the Great and Powerful" is neither.  It's big on 3-D effects and they're sometimes pretty stunning, but unlike the flim-flam man Oz, no effects can save this film.  I know it's cliché but this film is witless, heartless, and nerveless.  

Sure, it's either gutsy or stupid to take on Oz.  The '39 film is such a part of our culture.  So.....either pay homage or do something completely different.  Sam Raimi seems to want it both ways.  He does the black-and-white Kansas intro (not sepia, and surprisingly dull), whilst introducing characters that later appear in Oz in another form (sound familiar?).  His garish Land of Oz includes familiar and bumped-up characters (for example, the winged monkeys are now winged baboons with big teeth.  Hunh?  And the winged monkey--in a bell-hop suit rather than a fez--becomes the typical Disneyesque cute companion).  The poor Munchkins get short-shrift (sorry).  The gee-we-had-it-in-us-all-along theme is there too.

Oz (that is, Oscar Zoroaster etc etc etc Diggs--known to his buds as Oz) ain't no Professor Marvel of the earlier film.  He's a callow womanizer and a little too sure of himself without anything to back it up.  It doesn't make sense that the sisters Theodora and Evanora, the future evil witches of Oz fall for him and his pathetic act.  Are they using him?  Or, do they "need" him?  Oy.

Katherine posted (on facebook)  an insightful article about the anti-feminism here.  Baum himself was a staunch feminist and all his heroines are, well, female, the boys hanging out in supporting roles.  Why do a film focused on the boy, and I mean boy?

James Franco is out of his league here.  While I like him in some roles, he is too much James Franco here, mugging all the while.  (I loved him in "Howl" where he completely disappeared.)

Mila Kunis starts out promising, meeting our charlatan as he finally touches down in the balloon.  She's got huge, Bette Davis eyes, and a big red hat. But again, when it's so obvious he's inept, and she's supposedly a witch, why is she so deluded by his nothingness?  Her later transformation--due to his jilting????--to Margaret Hamilton on steroids again makes no sense.  

I had great hopes for Rachel Weisz, however, again, no there there.  Sadism on parade.

Poor Michelle Williams.  At least she tries hard not to look ridiculous.  Her turn in the black-and-white beginning as one of Oz's exes, now betrothed to John Gale (hunh? Is she supposed to be Dorothy's mother?) confused me.  As Glinda, she is patient of Oz's shortcomings, and rises above this lousy script.  

The CGI China doll had more expression than some of the live cast.  (Just like the magic carpet in "Alladin" acted circles around the other animated characters.)

Bad script, bad casting.  

Danny Elfman did the score.  Why not add some musical numbers?  He did well in "The Nightmare Before Christmas".  Why not make it a real musical???  

Better yet, if you got a few hundred million dollars, why not make a film of "Wicked", a real juicy story of the witches of Oz, where the Wizard is pretty secondary.  As he should be.  

Yeah but it has James Franco smiling.  ;D  I liked it. Nice little movie.
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