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Whenever you remake a revered Hollywood film, there’s bound to be controversy, but going right to the original material is certainly an interesting approach. Warner Bros is in early talks with Robert Zemeckis to direct a live-action remake of the The Wizard of Oz and plans to use the original script from the 1939 classic. Warner Bros owns the screenplay because Ted Turner bought it along with the MGM library before Warner Bros bought Turner’s empire. This latest Oz twist comes as Disney is trying very hard to mount The Great And Powerful Oz. Sam Raimi is developing that film...

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) is the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel...

This video is the story on how they chose Margaret Hamilton to play The Wicked Witch of the West in the classic film The Wizard Of Oz (1939) directed by Victor Fleming. Originally the role was offered to Oscar Winner Gale Sondergaard. This is taken from the documentary Wizard Of Oz: The Making of a Movie classic. Narrated by Angela Lansbury

Allahu Akbar! The Taliban is reportedly training monkeys to shoot American soldiers.Dallas Blog reported: If President Barack Obama withdraws from the war in Afghanistan, he would be the first commander-in-chief in American history to surrender to an army of monkeys; and we’re not talking about fighting the ‘Planet of the Apes.’ The Taliban in Afghanistan has just gotten into the ‘monkey business’ of training primates to attack U.S. soldiers, according to a British-based media agency.The People’s Daily of China reports that, “reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few ‘monkey soldiers’ holding AK-47 rifles and Bren...

Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops, according to a recent report by a British-based media agency. Reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few "monkey soldiers" holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world. According to the report, American military experts call them "monkey terrorists." As a form of cruel political means, wars are launched to meet political goals through...

WASHINGTON – Afghanistan's Taliban terrorists are training monkeys to shoot American soldiers with automatic weapons, according to British and Chinese media agencies. In the Taliban stronghold of Waziristan, journalists took pictures of some "monkey soldiers" holding AK-47s and Bren light machine guns. The official People's Daily in China explained the emergence of "monkey soldiers" as just another facet of "asymmetrical warfare." "The United States launched the war in Afghanistan using the world's most advanced weapons, such as highly-intelligent robots to detect bombs on roadsides and unmanned aerial vehicles to attack major Taliban targets," said the report. "In response, the Taliban...

One of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard Of Oz, Meinhardt Raabe, has died at the age of 94. Raabe, who played the coroner of the Munchkin Country in the 1939 musical classic, passed away on Friday at a medical facility in Orange Park, Florida. The veteran star was admitted to hospital after reportedly collapsing at his retirement home. Raabe was plucked from obscurity at the age of 23 to play the famous role in The Wizard of Oz, which saw him declare the the Wicked Witch of the East "really most sincerely dead". After his appearance in the...

Meinhardt Raabe (born September 2, 1915 - April 09, 2010) has crossed over the Shifting Sands to take his rightful place in the Land of Oz. Formerly the oldest surviving Munchkin-actor from The Wizard of Oz, he was also the only surviving cast member with any significant dialogue in the film... In addition to his role in the film, Raabe worked for many decades as a spokesman for Oscar Mayer, where he was known as "Little Oscar, World's Smallest Chef"...

We the people of the United States owe Scott Brown's sup porters a huge debt of gratitude. They didn't merely elect a senator. They ripped the façade off the Obama presidency. Just as Dorothy and Toto exposed the ordinary man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz," the voters in Massachusetts revealed that, in this White House, there is no there there. It's all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement. At the center is a young and talented celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an...

Following is my tongue-in-cheek review of "The Wizard of Oz" which I posted on Amazon in 2003. It's gone unnoticed until late this year. Customer comments follow. THE WIZARD OF OZ "Troublesome film marred by vague subject matter", by A Customer This film is troublesome on too many counts to list here but I will try. First, the story is implausible. Oz is not the sort of place children dream of, usually they dream of running or flying or getting lost. The "Oz" story was already a tired conventional hackneyed subject and should never have been filmed in the first...

Dakota Fanning may play the lead in a sequel to The Wizard Of Oz, it has emerged. According to reports, the 15-year-old is being tipped to take the lead in a follow-up to the classic 1939 movie that shot Judy Garland to fame, reports Contactmusic. The original film was based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The film's producer, Basil Iwanyk, says, "It will be set in the present day and feature Dorothy's granddaughter."

Have any of you seen Wicked? I saw it for the first time about two months ago. For those of you that haven't, Wicked is the revisionist story of L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz. It follows the life of the intelligent, green-skinned Elphaba---the future Wicked Witch of the West. With creative clarity the musical shows how Elphaba's character was publicly smeared by a plotting, lying Wizard so that he could continue his plans for a corrupt government. The Wizard targeted Elphaba because she dared to stand against him. It is an incredible musical and I highly recommend it. You...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Mickey Carroll, one of the last surviving diminutive "Munchkins" in the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz," died of natural causes on Thursday in Missouri at age 89, a newspaper reported. Carroll, who stopped growing at a young age, was an entertainer early in life and befriended actress Judy Garland, leading to a role alongside her in classic "The Wizard of Oz," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. He was a violin-playing Munchkin "Town Crier" in the movie, dressed in purple with a yellow flower in his vest. There were dozens of Munchkins in all. In 2007,...

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of the world's best-loved fairytales. As Judy Garland's famous film nears its 70th birthday, how much do its followers know about the story's use as an economic parable? Dorothy in Kansas conjures up nostalgic thoughts of childhood Christmases hiding behind the sofa from the Wicked Witch of the West. Or those flying monkeys. It's unlikely its young fans will have been thinking about deflation and monetary policy. But the story has underlying economic and political references that make it a popular tool for teaching university and high school students - mainly in the...

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of the world's best-loved fairytales. As Judy Garland's famous film nears its 70th birthday, how much do its followers know about the story's use as an economic parable? Dorothy in Kansas conjures up nostalgic thoughts of childhood Christmases hiding behind the sofa from the Wicked Witch of the West. Or those flying monkeys. It's unlikely its young fans will have been thinking about deflation and monetary policy. But the story has underlying economic and political references that make it a popular tool for teaching university and high school students - mainly in the...

The Wizard Of Oz is on channel 11 (it started at 7:30pm), and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (with Chevy Chase) will be on at 9pm on NBC (channel 4) Dorothy runs away from home, taking Toto with her. Runs into Frank Morgan as Professor Marvel.

"The very thing!" exclaimed Professor Wogglebug, bounding into the air and upsetting his gold inkwell. "The very next idea!" Devotees of L. Frank Baum's classic children's books would quickly recognize the above excerpt as the opening of the 15th book in the Oz series, The Royal Book of Oz. They might be harder pressed to say whether these lines were actually written by Baum. The book appeared with Baum's name on the cover in 1921, which was 2 years after Baum's death, and it was billed as the final work of the Royal Historian of Oz. For decades, however, fans...

"Wizard of Oz" fanatics hoping to own the dress worn by Judy Garland in the iconic film might need to appeal to the "Great and Powerful Oz" for financial support. The blue and white gingham dress worn by Garland when she played Dorothy Gale in 1939 is on display at Bonhams & Butterfields here, and is set to be auctioned April 26 in London. Bonhams said the dress could fetch from $50,000 to $70,000.