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Return To Oz
''Return to Oz'' is a 1985 dark fantasy film released by Walt Disney Pictures, co-written and directed by Walter Murch. It stars Nicol Williamson, Jean Marsh, Piper Laurie, and Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale in her first screen role. The film is an unofficial sequel to the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film '' The Wizard of Oz,'' and it is based on L. Frank Baum's early 20th century ''Oz'' novels, mainly ''The Marvelous Land of Oz'' (1904) and ''Ozma of Oz'' (1907). In the plot, Dorothy returns to the Land of Oz to find it has been conquered by the Nome King; she must restore it with her new friends Billina, Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Gump, and Princess Ozma. In 1954, Walt Disney Productions bought the film rights to Baum's remaining ''Oz'' books to use in the television series ''Disneyland;'' this led to the live-action film ''Rainbow Road to Oz'', which was never completed. Murch suggested making another ''Oz'' film in 1980. Disney approved the project as they were due to lose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drew Struzan
Drew Struzan (; born March 18, 1947) is an American artist, illustrator and cover designer. He is known for his more than 150 movie posters, which include ''The Shawshank Redemption'', ''Blade Runner'', ''Mallrats'', as well as films in the ''Indiana Jones'', ''Back to the Future (film series), Back to the Future'', and ''Star Wars'' film series. He has also painted album covers, collectibles, and book covers. Early life Struzan was born on March 18, 1947 in Oregon City, Oregon. In 1965, at age 18, he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design, then in West Los Angeles. Career Early career A counselor asked Struzan about his interests and told him he had a choice between fine art or illustration. The counselor described the two careers, telling Struzan that as a fine artist he could paint whatever he wanted, but as an illustrator he could paint for money. Struzan chose to be an illustrator, saying, "I need to eat." In his first year, he married and became a father. Stru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark Fantasy
Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror or has a gloomy dark tone or a sense of horror and dread.Stableford, Brian, "Dark Fantasy", in ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'',(p. 97), Scarecrow Press,Plymouth. 2005. Definition A strict definition for dark fantasy is difficult to pin down. Gertrude Barrows Bennett has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy". Both Charles L. Grant''The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders'', Volume 1, edited by Gary Westfahl, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. and Karl Edward Wagner are credited with having coined the term "dark fantasy"—although both authors were describing different styles of fiction. Brian Stableford argues "dark fantasy" can be usefully defined as subgenre of stories that attempt to "incorporate elements of horror fiction" i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walt Disney Anthology Television Series
The Walt Disney Company has produced an anthology television series since 1954 under several titles and formats. The program's current title, ''The Wonderful World of Disney'', was used from 1969 to 1979 and again from 1991 to the present. The program moved among the Big Three television networks in its first four decades, but has aired on ABC since 1997 and Disney+ since 2020. The original version of the series premiered on ABC in 1954. The show was broadcast weekly on one of the Big Three television networks until 1990, a 36-year span with only a two-year hiatus in 1984–85. The series was broadcast on Sunday for 25 of those years. From 1991 until 1997, the series aired infrequently. The program resumed a regular schedule in 1997 on the ABC fall schedule, coinciding with Disney's purchase of the network in 1996. From 1997 to 2008, the program aired regularly on ABC. Since then, ABC has continued the series as an occasional special presentation from 2008 onward, the most recen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princess Ozma
Princess Ozma is a fictional character from the Land of Oz, created by American author L. Frank Baum. She appears in every book of the Oz series except the first, ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900). She is the rightful ruler of Oz, and Baum indicated that she would reign in the fairyland forever, being immortal. Baum described her physical appearance in detail, in ''The Marvelous Land of Oz'': "Her eyes sparkled as two diamonds, and her lips were tinted like a tourmaline. All adown her back floated tresses of ruddy gold, with a slender jeweled circlet confining them at the brow." As originally illustrated by John R. Neill, she fit this description; however, in most subsequent Oz books, Ozma's hair became darker. The classic books Ozma is the daughter of the former King Pastoria of Oz. As an infant, she was given to the witch Mombi of the North by the Wizard of Oz. Mombi transformed Ozma into a boy and called him "Tip" (short for Tippetarius) in order to prevent the rightf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gump
This is a list of characters in the original Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. The majority of characters listed here unless noted otherwise have appeared in multiple books under various plotlines. ''Land of Oz, Oz'' is made up of four divisions that surround the ''Emerald City'' in the center. The country as a whole was originally enchanted by a character named Queen Lurline, who is described in the Oz backstory. Additional characters were added in regions surrounding ''The Land of Oz'' (beyond the deserts) as the series progressed. Aside from the immigrant humans and Dorothy's and Betsy's pets, the characters here are each listed under what division they are most associated with in the storyline or storylines. Immigrant humans and pets Aunt Em and Uncle Henry Aunt Em and Uncle Henry appear in ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz''. They are Dorothy Gale's guardian aunt and uncle. They live a joyless and gray life on a small farm on the prairies of Kansas. Neither of them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Pumpkinhead
Jack Pumpkinhead is a fictional character from the Land of Oz and appears in several of the classic children's series of Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. The Classic Oz Books Jack first appeared as a main character in the second Oz book by Baum, ''The Marvelous Land of Oz'' (1904). Jack's incredibly tall and skinny figure is made from tree limbs and jointed with wooden pegs. He has a large carved jack-o'-lantern for a head which is where he gets his name (unlike most jack-o'-lanterns, the seeds and other pumpkin guts were not removed so it substitutes for his brain). Jack was made by a little boy named Tip to scare his guardian, an old witch named Mombi. From Mombi's chest he took some old clothes for Jack; purple trousers, a red shirt, a pink vest with white polka dots, and stockings, to which he added a pair of his shoes. When Mombi saw Jack, she almost smashed him to pieces. Instead, she decided to test her new Powder of Life on him. The powder worked and Jack came ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tik-Tok (Oz)
Tik-Tok is a fictional character from the Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. He has been termed "the prototype robot," and is widely considered to be one of the first robots (preceded by Edward S. Ellis' Huge Hunter, or ''The Steam Man of the Prairies'', in 1868) to appear in modern literature, though the term "Robot" was not used until the 1920s, in the play ''R.U.R.'' Baum's character Tik-Tok (sometimes spelled Tiktok) is a round-bodied mechanical man made of copper, that runs on clockwork springs which periodically need to be wound, like a wind-up toy or a mechanical clock. He has separate windings for thought, action, and speech. Tik-Tok is unable to wind any of them up himself. When his works run down, he becomes frozen or mute. For one memorable moment in ''The Road to Oz'', he continues to speak but utters gibberish. When he speaks, only his teeth move. His knees and elbows are described as resembling those in a knight's suit of armor. Being a machine, he is quite s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billina
Billina is a fictional character in the classic children's series of Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. She is introduced in ''Ozma of Oz'' (1907). Jack Snow, ''Who's Who in Oz'', Chicago, Reilly & Lee, 1954; New York, Peter Bedrick Books, 1988; p. 17. History In ''Ozma of Oz'', Billina becomes Dorothy Gale's animal companion after she and the girl are on a small ship and are thrown overboard. Dorothy was traveling on an ocean voyage to Australia with her Uncle Henry when a violent storm hit, thus tossing the ship over the waves. The two wash up on the uncharted shores of the enchanted country of Ev in a chicken coop they had taken refuge in. Billina serves in this adventure, the role that Dorothy's pet dog Toto served in the first Oz book, ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900). A spunky, sassy and talkative chicken, Billina was originally named Bill because, she tells Dorothy, "no one could tell whether I was going to be a hen or a rooster". Dorothy insists on changing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nome King
The Nome King is a fictional character created by American author L. Frank Baum. He is introduced in Baum's third Oz book ''Ozma of Oz'' (1907). He also appears in many of the continuing sequel '' Oz'' novels also written by Baum. Although the character of the Wicked Witch of the West is the most notable and famous Oz villain (due to her appearance in the 1939 MGM musical '' The Wizard of Oz''), it is actually the Nome King who is the most frequent antagonist throughout the entire book series. Precursor Katharine M. Rogers, a biographer of L. Frank Baum, has argued that there was a precursor of the Nome King in one of Baum's pre-Oz works. In the '' A New Wonderland'' (1899), later known as '' The Magical Monarch of Mo'', there is an extremely similar character called King Scowleyow.Rogers (2002), p. 59-61 Rogers finds him a "convincingly evil" villain despite his ridiculous name. His people reportedly live in caves and mines. They dig iron and tin out of the rocks in their envi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Land Of Oz
The Land of Oz is a magical country introduced in the 1900 children's novel ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Oz consists of four vast quadrants, the Gillikin Country in the north, Quadling Country in the south, Munchkin Country in the east, and Winkie Country in the west. Each province has its own ruler, but the realm itself has always been ruled by a single monarch. According to ''The Marvelous Land of Oz'', this monarch is Princess Ozma. Baum did not intend for ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' to have any sequels, but it achieved greater popularity than any of the other fairylands he created, including the land of Merryland in Baum's children's novel '' Dot and Tot in Merryland'', written a year later. Due to Oz's worldwide success, Baum decided to return to it four years after ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' was published. For the next two decades, he described and expanded upon the land in the Oz Books, a series which in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Oz Books
The Oz books form a book series that begins with ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900) and relates the fictional history of the Land of Oz. Oz was created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen full-length Oz books. All of Baum's books are in the public domain in the United States. Even while he was alive, Baum was styled as "the Royal Historian of Oz" in order to emphasize the concept that Oz is an actual place. In his Oz books, Baum created the illusion that characters such as Dorothy and Princess Ozma relayed their adventures in Oz to Baum themselves, by means of a wireless telegraph Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term ''wireless telegraphy'' was also used for other experimental technologies for .... Original Oz books by L. Frank Baum Story compilations and other works by Baum In addition to the canonical Oz books, several ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wizard Of Oz (1939 Film)
''The Wizard of Oz'' is a 1939 American Musical film, musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). An adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy novel ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', the film was primarily directed by Victor Fleming (who left the production to take over the troubled ''Gone with the Wind (film), Gone with the Wind''), and stars Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton (actress), Margaret Hamilton. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but others made uncredited contributions. The music was composed by Harold Arlen and adapted by Herbert Stothart, with the lyrics written by Yip Harburg, Edgar "Yip" Harburg. Characterized by its use of Technicolor, fantasy storytelling, musical score, and memorable characters, the film was considered a critical success and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Academy Award for Best Pictur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
