View in High-Res
David Edelstein reviews the new prequel to The Wizard of Oz, Oz The Great and Powerful:
The filmmakers’ notion is to go back before Dorothy and Toto and chart the journey from Kansas to Oz of the wonderful wizard himself — here called Oscar Diggs and played by James Franco as a traveling-carnival magician who uses his bag of tricks to get women into bed. No, it’s not author L. Frank Baum’s wizard, but I for one think the idea for the character is inspired. He’s the kind of flimflam artist Mark Twain might have come up with — and, in fact, did in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Image from Oz courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures
