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By
NICK ZEGARAC
By now, the tale of Dorothy (Judy Garland), the Kansas waif swept from her home to the mythical land over the rainbow by a cyclone in Frank L. Baum's immortal children's classic, "The Wizard of Oz" has become more than a literary or cinematic classic. It is folklore. When MGM acquired the rights, they sought out Shirley Temple as their Dorothy. Fortunately, Fox Studios refused to loan their biggest little child star out to anyone, leaving L.B. Mayer no choice but to cast teenager, Judy Garland instead. The choice in casting was, of course, fortuitous. Upon its premiere, lines began forming at five in the morning for advanced tickets. The film galvanized Garland's reputation and gave her one of the great signature songs in film history (Over the Rainbow). Time has been powerless to erode the book or the film's poignant simplicity.
Warner Home Video has outdone themselves on their Special Edition of "The Wizard of Oz." The disc features a newly mastered Technicolor print that positively glows. On rare occasions a bit of digital tiling is detected as well as pixelization. There is no edge enhancement. A new 5.1 digital soundtrack sounds decades younger than the original source material -- but for the purist, the original mono tracks are also included.
There is enough on this disc to fill two special editions, including trailers, interviews, test footage, deleted scenes, outtakes and the feature length documentary -- "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" hosted by Angela Lansbury. Unfortunately, Warner has compressed all of their features onto one side of one disc. The result is many compression related artifacts and problems, including tiling, slight aliasing and a harsh digital look to the documentary in particular and some of the other extra features as well. I'm surprised that the feature film doesn't suffer more heavily from the reduced bit rate.
Warner will eventually revisit Oz with another transfer and probably a 2-disc set. They will also probably do the same with "Gone with the Wind," another early transfer that doesn't quite hold up under close scrutiny. |
