Author: Jandy Page 42 of 145

Two Complaints About The Wizard of Oz

On January 10, 2014

Over the past several months, I’ve happened to hear a few different people talking about The Wizard of Oz, and though the general consensus on the film remains love, there have been some complaints that have surfaced repeatedly. Now, I know most of the people mentioning these things love the film, so we’re all really on the same page. I just think these two particular complains have some pretty decent defenses, at least in my head. Uh, spoilers for The Wizard of Oz, I guess.

First Complaint: Glinda is a jerk who sends Dorothy on a wild goose chase when she could go home all along

The argument here is that Dorothy has the red shoes the whole time and, as Glinda says at the end of the film, she always had the power to go home. All Glinda would’ve had to do is tell Dorothy to click her heels together and say “there’s no place like home” and BAM. No need to go see the Wizard, no need to kill the Wicked Witch, etc. In this reading, Glinda merely wants Dorothy to do her dirty work for her to get rid of her rival. I think that’s an interesting story (and Glinda as a not-so-good-witch is the thread taken up by Wicked), but really, I don’t think Dorothy could’ve gone home earlier. Glinda tells her she always had the power to go home, but she didn’t tell her before because she wouldn’t have believed it. But really, in order to go home what she has to believe isn’t that clicking some shoes together and saying a magic phrase will send her home, but that “there’s no place like home.” She had to go through the journey to Oz to really believe that, and without that belief, I don’t think any amount of heel clicking would’ve worked.

Second Complaint: The message of the film is that you should never leave home

I can definitely see this being a valid reading. Dorothy does say she’ll never leave again after she returns, but I don’t know that we need to read this at face value. It’s a pretty natural thing to say right after coming through a traumatic situation and finding yourself safe. In a broader sense, the film could be interpreted as saying that new, outside things are bad – Dorothy also says that everything she wants is right in her own backyard. But I think the message is really one of contentment. It’s fine to be ambitious and want to see new things, but if you can’t manage to find contentment where you are, chances are you won’t find it elsewhere, either. Add in the fact that all the characters in Oz actually already had the qualities they sought from the Wizard, and the journey becomes one of seeking your own inner strengths and the value of those around you, instead of believing you have to go somewhere else and be validated by someone else in order to be happy.

Blind Spots: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

By Jandy

On January 10, 2014

In Film

This year I attempted to watch twelve films off my extensive Blind Spots list. I didn’t manage to watch them all, but you know what, that’s okay. I still watched several that I might otherwise not have gotten around to, so I’m ahead.

There’s been some debate in the past couple of months over whether the whole Blind Spot project is worthwhile or not, stemming from Matt Brown’s post “Film is Not a Mission” and tumbling into a really great Mamo episode featuring Ryan McNeil, who has been a big proponent of the Blind Spots series. I think Matt’s point that becoming too beholden to “canon” is fair, but I obviously still think it’s worthwhile to identify holes in your viewing you’d like to fill and make a concerted effort to do so, and that’s really what this is for me.

That said, I did actually turn over part of my Blind Spot listmaking for 2014 to others, selecting a set of about 50 films that I consider Blind Spots and asking people to vote on which of those films they thought I should watch. But that’s really just crowdsourcing priority; I intend to watch all of the 50 films at some point.

Anyway, since I blogged about even fewer of my 2013 selections than I watched, I’m going to run down the results of my 2013 viewing, then list what I’m planning to watch in 2014.

What I Watched in 2013

My original watchlist is as follows:

Our Hospitality / The Navigator
Pandoraâ€™s Box
Vampyr
Island of Lost Souls
Zero de Conduite / Lâ€™Atalante
The Stranger
Wild Strawberries
Sanjuro
El Dorado
Cool Hand Luke
Serpico
Days of Heaven

And here’s what I thought of the six I managed to watch.

The Story of Film on TCM: Chapter 13

By Jandy

On December 2, 2013

In Film

This is the story of the end of an era. For 100 years, movies had been shot on this – celluloid. Paper-thin, shiny, perforated. A medium so sensitive it could capture the subtle colors in snow. But in the ’90s, the digital image and Terminator 2 came and reality got less real. In these last days before that happened, as if to stave off the moment when the link between reality and movies would finally be broken, filmmakers around the world made passionate movies about emotions not spaceships or other worlds.

In this first of two episodes devoted to the 1990s, Cousins highlights the humanist dramas and insistence on realism that characterize a lot of non-American film in the 1990s. According to Cousins’ interview with Robert Osborne, the ’20s and the ’90s are his two favorite eras, because of the great diversity and innovation found there. Of course, he’s talking about anything but mainstream Hollywood cinema in the ’90s, which were, as Robert pointed out, full of remakes and formula films. Instead, this episode will take us to Iran, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Denmark, and France, while Episode 14 will focus on the American independents like Tarantino and the Coen Brothers.

Chapter 13 is more polemical than most of the episodes in its fierce defense of filmmakers using film (the actual medium) to capture human themes, which Cousins continually contrasts to the digital revolution on the horizon. He is so tied to this theme that it makes for some really weird comparisons, including a repeated offhanded vitriol toward The Lord of the Rings movies. Even though I appreciate the films he’s talking about here and am really interested in seeing many of them, his apparent hatred of hobbits and the fantasy cinema they stand in for makes this episode a little repellant to those of us who rather like some fantasy films mixed in with our human dramas.

Book Notes: Divergent by Veronica Roth

By Jandy

On November 29, 2013

In Books and Reading

I‘ve seen a few reviews (online and from friends as well) that Divergent has lackluster worldbuilding, with not enough back story to explain why the world is the way it is. Now, I’m a total sucker for worldbuilding, so that had me worried, but I was intrigued enough by the concept that I plowed into it anyway.

That concept is that the society is divided into five factions based basically on personality – the brave and bold are Dauntless, the honest are Candor, the peaceful are Amity, the scholarly are Erudite, and the selfless are Abnegation. Every child chooses at the age of 16 whether they want to stay with the faction they were born into, or change into a new one, based on aptitude tests that supposedly show which one they naturally fall into. Our heroine Beatrice, born into Abnegation but uncomfortable there, turns out to be equally suited for multiple factions, making her Divergent, which is dangerous to the status quo. She keeps quite about her divergence and joins Dauntless; much of the book is taken up with the brutal training she and other initiates must go through to become full Dauntless members. Of course, things must come to a head, and it turns out that there’s an insidious conspiracy by one faction to take control of the others and Tris is the one to stop it.

Blind Spots Listmaking 2014

By Jandy

On November 27, 2013

In Film

The past two years I’ve followed the lead of Ryan McNeil of The Matinee (along with many others) and created a list of films I consider blind spots in my viewing history to try to catch up with during the year. Both years I have failed to actually complete the list, with the extenuating circumstances of pregnancy and a new baby. Still, I managed to see a few things from each list that I might not have made time for otherwise, so I think it’s still a worthwhile enterprise, and I’m going to do it again in 2014, even though I doubt a soon-to-be toddler running around will lend me much more time than I had last year or the year before.

This year I’m soliciting help to narrow down my options. I’ve created a list on Letterboxd with 50 films I consider blind spots – some of them canonical classics, others pop culture favorites I’ve missed. Comment either on Letterboxd or here with the 12 you think are the most egregious and I’ll make my final list based on everyone’s feedback.

Thanks for your input!