Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful is one of the biggest blockbusters of the year to date. I can't claim to be an Oz expert, although as a child I di...

Teddy Wayne's novel The Love Song of Jonny Valentine tracks the faltering tour of an 11-year-old pop singer in the mold of Justin Bieber. In Wayne's novel, one of the most salient aspects is the way that this young mind has been shaped by his unique position as a pop star.

I'd heard that it lingered in some parts and that the matching of James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams were off-the-charts wrong and that the whole story's alignment with its predecessor was a total failure but I admit, I was totally wrong.

What with the new movie, Oz: The Great and Powerful out in the theaters, it got me thinking about The Song. There have been a lot of wonderful interpretations of "Over the Rainbow," but this might be my favorite.

At this point in movie history, the Hollywood studios are to movies what McDonald's is to cuisine: a factory producing products that are nearly identical in their lack of depth, quality or concern for the viewing audience's intellect.

The rescheduled, heavily cut, and seemingly dumped January release may look and feel like both a punchline and a 'why they hate us' representation of everything wrong with popcorn filmmaking. But unlike certain re-imagined fairy-tales, it didn't cost $200 million. It cost just $50 million.

"Oz The Great and Powerful" was the number one movie in North America for the second straight week, grossing an estimated $42.2 million according to f...

Why would a movie studio try to stop critics from reviewing movies? It's called a review embargo -- and it seems a little self-explanatory. But still, I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss a little movie-critic inside-baseball stuff. Perhaps we can get a larger discussion going.

The women of Oz: The Great and Powerful may have serious issues in how they are written and presented, but at least Oz: The Great and Powerful has women (plural) in it at all.

Narrative, dramatic tension and character development are often overshadowed by look-at-me CGI. Beautiful and impressive, especially the use of 3D. At other times, its a bit like the later wizard who wanted Dorothy to focus on his smoke and mirrors.

Another film that answers questions we didn't ask, Oz the Great and Powerful is a prequel showing how the magical land over the rainbow got its formidable-but-all-too-fallible wizard.

Any review of Oz the Great and Powerful that fails to use some variant of the word "wretched" is not to be trusted. A critic who avoids "queasy," "soul-chafing" and "aspartame" has almost certainly been paid off by Disney. It's conceivable that someone somewhere has taste just rotten enough that they can dodge these terms without being slipped a few bucks. But unlikely.

It was a huge weekend for "Oz: The Great and Powerful" as the new Disney film opened to $80.2 million across 3,912 theaters. Starring James Franco, Mi...

While Oz: The Great and Powerful has its writing issues, it's far more satisfying than Alice in Wonderland and I can confirm that it went over like gangbusters with the packed general audience crowd I saw it with. All the signs indicate that it is in it for the long haul.

"Oz: The Great and Powerful" took a major lead at the weekend box office Friday as the film opened at 3,912 theaters. The James Franco-led "Oz" brough...

This movie will be a classic; one our children, our children's children, and even their children will enjoy and talk about for years to come. The movie is a prequel at its best, laying out for us everything we would need to know to understand L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Disney is already planning a sequel to "Oz The Great and Powerful" just as the James Franco film hits theaters Variety reports that Mitchell Kapner...