Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Wizard of Oz
3D

Director – Victor Fleming – 2014 (1939) – US – Cert. U (A) – 102m

****

UK release April 8th, 2014.

A Hollywood classic gets the restoration / 3D treatment. On the big screen, the effect is something like seeing a stage production in places populated with hordes of extras as the spectacular studio sets are revealed in all their glory as never before. After three quarters of a century, the pre-computer twister effects stand up well too.

Alongside Judy Garland’s girl next door Dorothy, other equally memorable archetypes include three Kansas workmen who become her travelling companions (lion, tin man, scarecrow) on the Yellow Brick Road and Dorothy’s protector and adversary in the form of Glinda the Good Witch and the terrifying Wicked Witch Of The West.

This 3D restoration is as good as you’ll ever see the film, which still packs a punch today.

Reviewed for Film Review Annual 2014-15.

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Twister

UK PAL laserdisc review.

Originally published on London Calling Internet.

Distributor Pioneer LDCE

Cat No: PLFEB 35411

£24.99

BBFC Certificate PG

Director Jan De Bont (1996)

Starring Assorted CG tornadoes

(oh yes, and Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes)

Running Time 108 min

Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 2.35:1

Chaptered? Yes

CLV

2 Sides

(4 sided CAV version also available for £34.99)

Trailers (Twister – two different ones, Jurassic Park)

A twister, as lovers of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) will know, is a tornado that snatches up objects in its path into the air and then dumps them down again. The one that snatched Dorothy into the air was a cheap special effect in a wonderful film. The current movie, on the other hand, is the other way round: basically, it’s a rotten movie with awe-inspiring special effects. The cast here is not so much the workmanlike group of American actors playing uninspired characters as the incredible series of tornadoes which appear one after another, each seemingly darker and by inference more evil than its predecessor.

This may also be one of those rare movies (I can’t think of another) that requires a big (cinema) screen, with all the resolution that a projected celluloid image can give these tornadoes, to really work its magic.… Read the rest