Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Conversions, Orders, & Pix, Oh, my!

Today I finished converting my foreign language Oz videos to DVD. I also recorded six "Tales of the Wizard of Oz" cartoons to DVD: "The School Marm," "An Optical Delusion," "Watch the Bouncing Bull," "All In A Lather," "The Green Thumb," and "Leap Frog," as well as the opening sequence and the closing credits. (I slipped that into a CD/DVD envelope and put it in with my copy of the Rankin-Bass "Return to Oz" DVD. That concludes the conversion of VHS to DVD for now, until more VHS tapes I ordered arrive, or find a way to record Universal's “The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus.” Anyone got any screen grab requests?


Yesterday, I ordered "The Emerald Wand of Oz" and "Trouble Under Oz" by Sherwood Smith, as well as several of the "Oz Kids" videos. I'll order the rest later.


Also, I found an advertisement in an issue of "Amazing Spider-Man" for their adaptation of "The Marvelous Land of Oz," which they had available for quite some time. I'm also re-posting the pictures from my last entry because I noticed they were too small to be fully enjoyed...

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Ozzy stuff

Okay, yesterday I got my copy of The Woggle-Bug Sheet Music Book, and it's very nice with it's brand-new cover, and exactly the same inside. Not bad.

As for VHS to DVD conversion, so far I've done the CTC Marvelous Land of Oz, the animated Russian Adventures in the Emerald City series on one disc, and a Russian live action version of Волшебнык Изумрудного Города/Volshebnik Izumrudnovo Goroda/The Wizard of the City of Emeralds. (Eric Gjovaag, yes, I did copy-paste the titles from your FAQ.) I've also ordered...
  • 1982 Paramount animated "Wizard of Oz," with Lorne Greene as the Wizard.
  • "Dorothy Meets Ozma of Oz"
  • The Rankin-Bass "Life & Adventures of Santa Claus"

Here's a clip of the second "Adventures in the Emerald City" movie...



And here are some DVD covers I've designed for my finsished DVD's...

CTC Marvelous Land (I adapted the VHS cover)...



The Russian movies...




Last night, I was reading over a digital Amazing Spider-Man comic from 1975, and came across this:


An ad for the Marvel/DC adaptation of MGM's The Wizard of Oz. I'll post up an ad of Marvelous Land... if they had an ad for it.

In addition, after finishing re-reading Lord of the Rings, I turned to Baum's Daring Twins for some lighter reading.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Farewell!

I found out today that Mark Haas has died.

I never got to meet him in person, sadly, but he and I did e-mail each other a few times. He even read an Oz short story of mine once. I also got the pleasure to read his book The Medicine Man of Oz, featuring Dr. Herby. (This book was pulled from publication because the main character was still copyrighted. Very sad, as I think he improved the character.)

In addition, he wrote some Oz books himself, including Leprechauns in Oz and the forthcoming The Emerald Mountain of Oz.

He was also an active poster at the International Wizard of Oz Club Message Board. Although he and I often had conflicting viewpoints, his posts helped provoke thought among Oz fans. He could disagree, but not be completely against who he was disagreeing with. He was the first one to sign my petition for a new Oz movie.

I will miss him very much. Mark has follwed some of the great Royal Historians over the Shifting Sands.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

At last!

Yesterday, I finally got a VCR/DVD recorder. Hopefully now I can make DVD's from some of my Oz VHS tapes that have movies that are not available on DVD, like...
  • The Marvelous Land of Oz (The Minneapolis Children's Theatre)
  • Tramps & The Wizard of Oroz
  • The "Adventures in the Emerald City" series
  • "The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus" from Universal
  • The Turkish Wizard of Oz
  • "The Wizard of the City of Emeralds"

For anyone who thinks this is a good idea and wants to do it, it's legal as long as you make the DVD's yourself and keep the original VHS. (Meaning that it's YOUR video!)

And today, I ordered the Dorothy 2007 calendar.

Monday, February 12, 2007

The Latest Baum Bugle

Last Friday, I got the latest issue of The Baum Bugle.

The always wonderful cover featured a piece of artwork by William Stout, which was going to be the cover of The Winged Monkeys of Oz by Sherwood Smith, before it became The Emerald Wand of Oz. How this happened is explained in the issue, so I won't talk about it here, but the artwork is beautiful.

The main topic of the issue is Sherwood Smith and William Stout's contributions to the Oz series, The Emerald Wand of Oz and Trouble Under Oz. Marcus Mebes has articles on both author and illustrator. I haven't read or bought the Smith and Stout books, but from reading these articles, I think I'd like to.

There's a bit about Oz comics in this issue too. The webcomic Chesire Crossing (featuring Dorothy, Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice books, Wendy Darling from Peter & Wendy/Peter Pan, as well as Mary Poppins as their "nanny") is covered in Oz & Ends (I already knew about this, thanks to Eric Gjovaag's blog), along with Illusive Arts' Dorothy calendar (which I don't own), as well as the interesting fact that the writer of Oz Squad is putting this series on the Internet.

In the reviews, there's a review of Eric Shanower's Adventures in Oz book, and the first collected volume of Oz Squad. I didn't find the review on Adventures wasn't terribly interesting, but perhaps that's because I wrote my own. (A link is in one of my previous blog entries.) It did, however, mention that IDW Publishing is putting an idea of mine into action: in late April this year, the hardcover edition will be available again, except it will not have the signed limitation plate. (I own that one!) In case you're wondering where I mentioned it, it was on a thread in the International Wizard of Oz Club's message board.

Eric Gjovaag reviewed the Journey Back to Oz DVD for this issue. He only briefly reviewed the movie, but had a lot to say about the DVD presentation, which, I suppose, is what he was reviewing after all. He also shares my problem with finding no DVD-ROM content on the DVD. Um, should we start e-mailing Andy Mangels or Ink & Paint about this?

There is also a review of a documentary called Yellow Brick Road, which I hadn't heard of until I read this review. There is also a review of Trouble Under Oz and The Scream of the Sacred Ape, the latest addition to Hungry Tiger Press' Pawprint series. And speaking of which, the series will continue, and as long as I can afford to, I'll keep buying! They're also still planning on reprinting John Dough & The Cherub, and, as far as I know, Fate Of A Crown, two Baum books, one indirectly related to Oz (John Dough appeared at Ozma's birthday party in The Road to Oz) and one that has nothing to do with Oz, except the fact that Baum wrote it.

Jane Albright walks us through the Wonderful Art of Oz exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum, Sherwood Smith takes us with her to the Winkie Convention, we're given a tour of the Ozmapolitan Convention by Scott Cummings, and Scarecrow Sean Barrett takes us down the Yellow Brick Road through Banner Elk's Land of Oz park. John Fricke also donates some interesting advertisements for TV airings of MGM's The Wizard of Oz.

Sadly, two features that were in the last two issues I got were not here: Oz in the News, covering Oz media references or coverage of Oz-related material, and the usual rare short piece by L. Frank Baum. Don't tell me they ran out of things to put in after 50 years!

All in all, even though I missed those two, the Baum Bugle is something I always look forward to. It always makes for good reading.

And come to think of it, if I want to get the next issue, I need to renew my membership!

Ooh! There's the mail man! I wonder if my check from Disney is here...