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Sunday, August 15, 2010

Tin Man (mini-series)



Since I read the Wizard of Oz recently I found this mini-series from 2007 that tied in with it.  It is a alternate retelling of that book mixed with a few elements from the movie.  DG is a waitress living on a farm with her parents when she is whisked away one night during a tornado.  She winds up in the O.Z. (Outer Zone) where she meets Glich, a man with half a brain (Scarecrow), Raw, a lion-like telepath (Lion), and Cain, who was imprisoned in a literal tin man, and is now looking for the man who put him there (Tin Man).  Together they work their way around the O.Z. with DG trying to find her way home and finding a lot more about herself than she knew existed.

This was a darker, more cynical re-imagining.  The characters are heavily flawed and can be downright scary at times.  Zooey Deschanel plays GD and I like her in general.  She has this deadpan way of speaking and she is so pretty.  Alan Cumming plays Glich in a wonderful performance.  The only one that seemed a little over the top was Kathleen Robinson who plays Azkadellia, the evil sorceress.  Or maybe that was just her costumes because some of them bothered me.

But it was good movie, if a little uneven, especially in the visuals department.  Sometimes they had beautiful effects and the other times the special effects were meh.  The story was very cool and I like the whole idea of it.  If you are a Wizard fan or a fan of sci-fi, I would check it out.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, I loved this mini-series! I also recently watched Return to Oz, which is based on several of the Oz sequels, and while it's visually not the greatest, I loved that the sequels were even adapted to film, and it was really awesome getting to see events from the later books on screen. :)

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  2. @Runa - Return to Oz was one of my favorite movies growing up. I recently saw it again after 15 years and yeah the effects weren't the greatest but it was still good and the Wheelies still freaked me out. :)

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