Popular Science shuts off its comments; a letter to Grand Theft Auto's progagonist Niko Bellic; why "Man of Steel" co-writer doesn't buy into a no-kill policy for Superman; a new theater resurrects lost musicals; odd habits of famous writers.
Is it worth seeing "The Wizard of Oz" in the new IMAX 3D presentation?
Marie writes: If you're like me, you enjoy the convenience of email while lamenting the lost romance of ink and pen on paper. For while it's possible to attach a drawing, it's not the same thing as receiving hand-drawn artwork in the mail. Especially when it's from Edward Gorey..."Edward Gorey and Peter Neumeyer met in the summer of 1968. Gorey had been contracted by Addison-Wesley to illustrate "Donald and the...", a children's story written by Neumeyer. On their first encounter, Neumeyer managed to dislocate Gorey's shoulder when he grabbed his arm to keep him from falling into the ocean. In a hospital waiting room, they pored over Gorey's drawings for the first time together, and Gorey infused the situation with much hilarity. This was the beginning of an invigorating friendship, fueled by a wealth of letters and postcards that sped between the two men through the fall of 1969."
If there's a (horror) movie that seems to exist outside of film history it's the strange case of "The Wizard of Oz," newly released in a 70th anniversary package on DVD and Blu-ray. It's credited to director Victor Fleming, whose directorial stamp (if not his signature) was also emblazoned on another 1939 release, "Gone With the Wind." "Oz" is one of the first "scary movies" many boomer and post-boomer kids ever saw (even before exposure to the truly terrifying Disney versions of "Bambi" or "Dumbo" -- or, for today's kiddies, "Saw" and "Hostel" and "Irreversible"), and remains a formative childhood experience for millions. (Forget the flying monkeys; I was terrified by the tornado, then shocked and traumatized by the sadistic use of sarcasm, which I'd never encountered in a movie before, when the Wicked Witch mocks Dorothy's desperate cries for her surrogate mother: "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!") In a Newsweek interview, Dave Eggers (co-writer of Spike Jonze's film of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are") says that "Oz" is his daughter's favorite movie and that her favorite part is the bleak, sepia-toned beginning set in Kansas. Sendak responds:
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