Choking on the Yellow Thick Chode.

Honestly, I don’t know how Zooey Deschanel continues to get work.

In TIN MAN, a re-visioning of L. Frank Baum’s THE WIZARD OF OZ, Zooey is ersatz Dorothy, named DG (oh, that’s soo street-cred!), lost in the magical world of O.Z. (the Outer Zone – oooh! That’s even more street!), and aided by three inhabitants of the Zone, who are analogs of the Scarecrow Without A Brain, the Tin Man Without A Heart and The Lion Without The Noive; they are named Glitch, Wyatt Cain and Raw (ooooooh! That’s the most street-credible credibleness of all! Please, oh please, may I bow down before you and self-flagellate for my uncouth uncoolness?)

The title refers to Wyatt (Neal McDonough) being a sheriff (tin star/tin man – ha! Get it?) – AND – he is found imprisoned in a steel iron maiden device. Ha! This movie is just full of those things called ideas! (May I please lie on a bed of nails to punish myself for my dearth of originality?) He’s out for revenge on the people who imprisoned him and made him watch re-runs of his family dying. Hey, it might have been an iron maiden, but at least it had cable.

The ersatz scarecrow is Glitch (Alan Cumming), once an advisor to the Queen, fallen out of favor and caged in a hanging prison like a go-go dancer. DG is thrown in with him and continues to un-act while he shows her the zipper in his head where they removed his brain (shouldn’t he just collapse in a heap or something? I thought the brain controlled, oh, EVERYTHING).

The great Raoul Trujillo is the ersatz Lion “Raw” who makes an assface of himself by looking like a cross between a bum and a Barbary sheep, and being seen so close to Zooey Deschanel.

After witnessing the unbridled vapidity of Zooey delivering every line blanker than a bedsheet, we must surmise that those acting teachers that told her she would never be an actor were right. Any jackass can do what she is doing – but it isn’t what anyone in their right mind would call acting.

The Sorceress (Kathleen Robertson, perfect physical beauty), is the magical villain: two armored neck plates which she wears constantly, so wondering why she keeps her BREASTS so open to attack – picturesque tattoos, targets for man-tongue, grab apple Bs crushed to resemble Ds, penile landing site.

And Richard Dreyfuss (oh God! Was he that hard up for work?!) is the Wonderful Mystic Man of O.Z.

TIN MAN might have been a dark adventure through new territory in an old realm; there are even some interesting twists involving DG’s parents and their relationship to the Outer Zone; instead, we get Zooey Deschanel reading her lines like a cooking recipe.

Surrounded by actual actors, Zooey does nothing for this TV mini-series (directed by Nick Willing) except bog it in the cowdung from whence she sprung. I constantly ask myself: Are these filmmakers not watching the rushes? It’s like having a veteran cast of British thespians and well-respected American actors – and then having Hayden Christensen play the lead. If you can stand Zooey’s bland delivery, bug eyes working overtime to disguise the fact she doesn’t know what to do with her monotonous face, you may be able to work your way torturously to the end of this 3-parter. Me, I’m busy bowing down before the filmmakers for their bravery in making it through a whole production without laughing at Zooey’s unthinkably ignorant attempts at acting.

Honestly, I don’t know how Zooey Deschanel continues to get work.

END

Follow the yellow slick road…

An origin tale of how a sideshow charlatan becomes the Wizard of Oz, OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL is as wondrous and exciting as the film that inspired it, which means it is kaleidoscopically trippy and makes no sense.

In 1905 sepia-toned Kansas, James Franco is carnival magician Oscar Diggs, a womanizing narcissist, swept away in a tornado to a bombastic Technicolor land where animals talk, magic exists and women are (still) witches. He uses his duplicity and illusionist sleight of hand to dupe the populace into thinking he is the great Wizard spoken of in legends, and is emplaced in the Emerald Palace just before Judy Garland arrives with all the good drugs.

First there was the vaudeville B-Movie that became a legend in 1939, THE WIZARD OF OZ; the blaxploitation remake THE WIZ in 1978; the dark, largely-overlooked RETURN TO OZ in 1985 (which would be appreciated more readily in these DARK KNIGHT times); and now, adhering to the fad of the age, OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL is a prequel exploring how the Wizard became The Man Behind The Curtain.

An intriguing concept, the visually gluttonous GREAT AND POWERFUL could have been darker, but unfortunately ends up drowning in Disney syrup (except for the fearsome flying baboons, which I suspect caused as much sleep trauma for today’s kids as the now puppet-looking flying monkeys caused for 1939’s kids). Its pedigree will give it more impetus than it deserves, umbilically linked as it is with 1939’s WIZARD. Not to say that WIZARD was a daring film – a product of its times, only achieving classic status for the fact that parents keep administering it to their children as readily as Ritalin, lending it more credibility than the half-baked LSD trip that it really is.

When Oscar lands in Oz, he meets three women (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams), all of whom seem morally ambiguous; no matter how tasty each of them looks, they all have some ulterior agenda and at the slightest prompting are apt to suddenly turn into evil witches – in other words, they’re your average woman.

One of the witches (claiming to be “good”) sends Oscar on a quest to destroy the “evil” witch in order to claim his castle of gold. On his quest along the yellow brick road, Oscar is aided by a monkey called Monkey (Zach Braff) and a cute little china girl that he calls Little China Girl. (She seems like Jena Malone, but she is voiced by Joey King.) They all, in turn, call him Wizard. An endearing moment when Oscar tells the china girl of “a real wizard – Thomas Alva Edison – the Wizard of Menlo Park.” A very cool real world credit in this fantasy film.

Directed by Sam Raimi (of the SPIDER-MAN trilogy, which means that Bruce Campbell will somehow make a cameo – he does, as an Emerald City Guard), GREAT AND POWERFUL looks striking, and will amuse the same demographic that the original film was aimed at (i.e. very young hyperactive kids on Ritalin). And James Franco is the perfect foil for this land where duplicity reigns over naïveté, able to pull off that innocent smile to sell his snake-oil, yet having the braggadocio to counter the witches.

It’s a great angle – that of an illusionist tricking his way into the post of Wizard; that is, after all, what the actual “wizard” turns out to be in WIZARD OF OZ – a charlatan. And strangely, it is through his mendacity that Oscar finds redemption, as the very same trickery he used to charm people into believing he was a Wizard is employed to defeat the evil witches.

But there’s a conceptual problem: when you bring REAL MAGIC into the mix, it skews everything, including good storytelling, because the boundaries of Real Magic are never delineated. For example, when the baboon grabs the good witch, she has her wand with her – a wand that can conjure tornadoes of fire and liquid nitrogen and laser blasts – yet the baboon grabs her anyway. Was the wand battery low or something? And why is china girl so amazed at Edison creating “pictures that move” when she lives in a world where witches can fly in bubbles and shoot lethal energy bolts from their hands? And she’s a porcelain doll that lives and breathes, against all biological laws! Gimme some rules, people!

And the greatest conundrum of all: how could the evil witches possibly be fooled by Oscar’s trickery? Playing devil’s advocate, I guess that in a world of REAL magic, you would not be expecting, nor would you even conceive of, someone bringing ILLUSION into the fray. So when Oscar projects his face onto the town square in a pillar of smoke, these witches would be inclined to believe that he must be using magic, because in their minds there is no other option. Still, I’m sure the 5 – 15 demo is not rationalizing this scenario.

They’re all on Ritalin.

END

If you’re thinkin’ of being my remake, it don’t matter if you’re black or white.

Took brass balls to remake the legendary WIZARD OF OZ – or maybe just black balls. The pinky-white euphemism “urban” doesn’t disguise THE WIZ for what it is – a black version of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

It’s what the original WIZARD OF OZ desperately needed to be: more raw, more earthy, more funkaaaay. On paper, THE WIZ sounds cool as James Brown in a popsicle factory. On stage (music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls), the 1975 Broadway production won seven Tony awards. On film… uh, well, on stage it won seven Tony awards…

Dorothy (Diana Ross) is a Harlem kindergarten teacher who is transported via a snowstorm to the Land of Oz (i.e. New York on LSD), where she is told that the only person who can get her home is the powerful Wiz in the Emerald City, which she can find by easing on down the yellow brick road. Along the way, she meets three misfits who join her trek, Scarecrow (Michael Jackson), Tinman (Nipsey Russell) and Lion (Ted Ross).

The story retains all the themes and messages of the original – that of belief in yourself, with each character exhibiting the characteristics they think they lack – and the throughline of seeking the Wiz for favors. Then there are the brainless messages, as when Dorothy is captured and lets all her friends get mutilated instead of surrendering her slippers to the wicked witch (Mabel King). Just when we think Dorothy has such staunch principles, the witch threatens to fry Dorothy’s dog Toto (which isn’t even cute) and she relents. Hey, nice priorities: let your friends die but don’t harm the pet. Take notes, kids.

Joel Schumacher (CAR WASH) screenplays THE WIZ for director Sidney Lumet (DOG DAY AFTERNOON). Really? Two whiteys in charge?

At least they retained composer Charlie Smalls’s music, augmented by Quincy Jones as MD/composer. And that makes the music – contrary to most musicals – the only redeeming factor in THE WIZ. Usually in musicals, we tune out when the action stops for the tiresome musical numbers; here, with Smalls and Jones in super funky mode, the songs are the most interesting diversions. Not all of them are catchy or enjoyable the first time round, and some may sound disco-dated, but for the most part, they raise the pedestrian level of the action tenfold.

To wit: the movie’s signature song Ease On Down The Road (equivalent to the original’s We’re Off To See The Wizard); or check out the powerful tenor on Ted Ross as the Lion and the saucy brass section on his signature tune, I’m A Mean Ole Lion. (I especially like his high-heeled paws!) Like the original, the Lion garners the most laughs (until Richard Pryor appears and then it’s all laughs on him).

Years on, the achievement of the monumental dance numbers in the Emerald City still amaze, with Quincy Jones cameoing as a piano player.

Lena Horne cameos as good witch Glinda. And Richard Pryor is The Wiz! (Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for The Wiz to be the great and powerful Quincy Jones?) And the same twisted messages of magic muddled with platitudes wash over us like a retarded tsunami.

In the end (except for some of the songs) THE WIZ is as silly and badly-structured as THE WIZARD OF OZ. Only blacker.

END