Rating: 
Summary: A great family classic
Review: The DVD has great picture and sound quality, in addition to bonus features that every Wizard of Oz fan will enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh Great Oz, Grant Me Something Less Scary!
Review: Amazon recommends this for ages 3 to 6? Who decided that was a good idea? I think I was six when I first saw this movie and it left me with nightmares! I have never held any great affinity for the great classic Wizard because it traumatized me so, but then again, I was also terrified of the Snow White ride at Disney when I was about three. Everyone has to see it simply because it's such an integral part of our great American lifestyle--there are so many references and spinoffs concerning it, if you haven't seen or read the story everyone around you will think you're an idiot--but if you're with a child who's watching it for the first time, be sensitive to the fact that some of the stuff in it is rather disturbing, and be sure to talk about it afterwards with your little friend. Sorry, people, but this surreal stuff for kids (like Alice In Wonderland and Dr. Seuss) always makes me wonder what drugs the authors were taking when they conceived some of this stuff. I can endure Wizard and the like now and be bored, but a 3 to 6 year old might grow to fear flying monkeys for awhile or green witches who crumple and dissolve like salted garden slugs. Classic American weirdness. Was it really just a dream? Run, Toto, run! Why own it anyhow? It's played with a lot of pomp and hype at least once a year on regular tv. D'ya really need to see it more often than that?
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest!
Review: What can I say...this is such an awesome movie! The DVD is amazing in that you get the extras-deleted scenes, background info. Anyone who loves movies should have this one in his/her collection!
Rating:
Summary: Best film - best format - a "must buy"!
Review: Just a few thoughts on the DVD release of this classic film. I won't summarize the story here - let's face it, everyone already knows the story. In my opinion, this is the best film ever made, for a very simple reason; it does best what a film is supposed to do - it entertains. Adults or children, anyone will enjoy it. But if anyone still has any doubts about the clarity and quality of DVD, this movie will change their mind. Even in the Kansas scenes, you'd think you're looking at a first generaton print. And the color scenes are simply brilliant. About the only thing missing is watching it on a large screen TV. Lots of bonus items - a documentary on making the film, cut scenes, audio commentary, all sorts of things. Two minor complaints, however. On the scene selection menu, the screen may freeze. Sometimes you can pick a specific scene, sometimes you can't. It must be a problem with the DVD itself - I returned my original DVD purchase, and the problem repeated itself with the exchanged DVD. Not a major problem, more an annoyance. The only other complaint is with the deleted "Jitterbug" scene. While still photos and home movies play on-screen, the audio portion on the DVD is not the actual film version (with Judy Garland singing, as it is on the soundtrack CD). No explanation is given, even though the Garland version does appear on the VHS tape. With these problems, I would have preferred to give 4-1/2 stars, but that wasn't one of the choices. Overall, you will not be disappointed. You can't go wrong if you purchase "The Wizard Of Oz" on DVD.
Rating:
Summary: there's no place like home
Review: The Wizard of Oz has been around for almost a century. This beloved tale of a young girl's journey to find out that her heart's desires are right at home has been pin pointed as one of the best movies ever made in America. And that's for a good reason. Released in 1939, The Wizard Of Oz tells the story of Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland), a young girl about the age of eleven who is very adventorous. She lives in Kansas with her aunt, uncle, Toto her dog, and a handful of farm hands known as Hunk/Tin Man (Jack Haley), Zeke/Cowardly Lion(Bert Lahr), and Hickory/Scarecrow (Ray Bolger). The story starts in a typical afternoon as Dorothy returns home from school. Miss Gulch/Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) comes by the farmhouse with an order from the sherriff to take away Toto and thus Dorothy and Toto run away. She meets up with Professor who tells her that her Aunt Em is sick and so she hurries home but a storm is brewing and everyone has gone into the cellar so Dorothy goes into the house and gets hit on the head. She wakes up to see the window outside her window swirling and sees many sites. She assumes she is up in the cyclone and then a thunk comes and she lands in the wonderful world of Oz. From then on, her journey becomes a goal to get back to Kansas without having any trouble with the Wicked Witch of the West. This is a wonderful story complete with an assortment of unique characters such as the munchkins, ozians, flying monkeys, and talking trees.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Greatest Motion pictures to hit the screen.
Review: Who could not forget this Great and Incredible masterpiece?
Remembered how Dorothy got to Oz by a House? Remembered how
The Lion would always be scared of little things? remembered
how the Witch Died? well yes, we all remembered those things.
The DVD here is a nice transfer with awesome extras, if you like
Fantasy get this movie for DVD. I would also recommend it's dark sequel Return to Oz.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhere over the rainbow...
Review: Kansas represents our dreary lives & we, kids & adults alike, often wish for something else, thinking that it would enhance our lives, even for a bit second --- even if it was just a dream. We hope & dream that somewhere over the rainbow there is a place like Oz. But wait, is Oz that perfect? Yes, it seems better off with its yellow brick road, with munchkins roaming around in their colorful outfits, the Emerald Palace, but are the inhabitants happy & safe there as you would have thought? No, there is evil & fear of the wicked witch, deception by the wizard himself & his taking advantage of his blind followers. But most of all, there is still this disatisfaction as you know, by the brainless scarecrow, heartless tin man & cowardly lion, who could have represented anybody in that kingdom -- real or imagined. Despite this seemingly adult plot, the film appeals to children as well, basically because of its fairy-tale type manner of presentation -- all these splendid architecture, colorful costumes, vibrant songs, & of course, a fairy tale will not be complete without the presence of the evil villainess - the witch! Taking all these in consideration, the film is just as timeless as it relays a very special message. You don't have to look far to seek happiness or satisfaction, for you can find it in yourself. We might be just like the scarecrow, the tin man or the lion, continuously searching for what they already have deep inside. & yes, most of the time, we are like Dorothy, always wishing to escape reality but only realizing at the end that true happiness is being with your loved ones, through thick or thin.
Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: This movie is one of the most enchanting movies ever made. Judy Garland is perfectly cast as Dorothy, and her singing just blows me away. It's seems almost impossible that MGM almost chose Shirley Temple to play Dorothy rather than Judy Garland. They made the right choice in the end. When the film changes from sepia to technicolor, it gives you that feeling of entering a magical land. Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Billie Burke, and Frank Morgan add to the movie, and I could never imagine this movie being the same without them. Everyone should get this movie, and skip down the yellow brick road with Dorothy, because it is simply one of the best movies ever made.
Rating:
Summary: He's wonderful.
Review: 'The Wizard of Oz' is so resonant and enduring and vital, not just because it deals in archetypal narratives about home and escape, duty and desire, good and evil, friendship and individuality, or the strange changes sparked by adolescence; but becauuse, more than any other film to which we are exposed from a young age, it explains to us why we watch films. When Dorothy wakes up in the middle of a twister, she looks out the window which plays like a cinema screen, and sees not her life flashing before her as she nears certain death, but the other characters in her life comically and ominously transformed - two farmhands in a boat, a flying cow, Miss Gulch on a bicycle becoming the Wicked Witch etc. It's always assumed that we go to the cinema to escape, but our relationship is more complicated than that. The black and white prologue is more distressing than anything in Oz - not ony is Kansas the bleakest wasteland imaginable; not only is Toto snatched for execution; not only is the precarious farmstead at the mercy of large landowners, banks and the law (I hadn't realised how political 'Oz' could be), but Dorothy herself is de trop, a nuisance, her seemingly petty or childish concerns having no purchase in the hard, economic realities around her. Literally weighed down by home, with all its negative connotations, she dreams of escaping into an abstract realm over the rainbow. The twister becomes a projection of her natural feelings suppressed in a home that ignores her, just as we project our desires on to the phantoms on the screen. The house is literally freed from the land that burdens it (by needing to be worked), and from the laws that turn citizens into slaves. But Oz is no escape. Not only is it defined in terms of what Kansas is not - verdant not desert; watery not barren; urban not rural; colour, of course, not monochrome; a place where Dorothy is central, life- or freedom-giving; a place where death can be liberating, and where the inanimate become animate - but also by what it is: the metamorphosis of characters from one section to the other; the attempts to steal what little 'property' Dorothy has (this IS an American story!); the transformation of the farm's drearily familiar landmarks (fences, prison-like wheels) into the architecture of Oz (especially the Emerald City). We don't go to the cinema to mindlessly escape, but to 'play' with the idea of our own lives, to test other possibilities, to realise the viability of dreams; to enquire who we are. It is Dorothy, the audience, if you like, who negotiates Oz, not the studio-producer-like manufacturer of fantasy worlds, the Wizard (ditto, the crystal balls, another form of image-projection - cinema as surveillance - controlled by dubious adults). In that hurricane sequence, the uprooted house, the bedroom, the dream, the natural force as Id-like disruption and the cinema are all connected. Whatever. Judy Garland aching 'Over the Rainbow'. Margaret Hamilton in one of the immortal dual roles. The first dazzling panorama of Oz. The scary Lollipop Guild. The twinkling ruby slippers. The inspired melange of European fairy tales, Ruritania, operetta and folk Americana. The fight between the apple trees and the Scarecrow. The Tin Man's lunging dance. The engineering feat of the Cowardly Lion's moving tail. Snow sprinkled on the poppy fields (cold reason resisting the soporific lure of Hollywood? Arf!). The vaulted corridor of the Emerald City. The truly terrifying broom-seeking/escape sequence in the witch's castle. The Alice-in-Wonderland subtext, with Dorothy's puberty matched by the interest in vulnerable bodies and things budding, blooming, changing and falling apart. Frank Morgan in many roles and one. The Wizard's refreshing cynicism about worldly intelligence, courage and philantropy. 'The Wizard of Oz'. No place like it.
Rating:
Summary: Every queen's dream
Review: Fabulous! Every queen's delight. And I'm not trying to be funny. But, girl, if you don't have this one by now, you need to buy it NOW.
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