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go to shutterstock.com and use the offer code, Spoiler 2. I'm Dana Stevens, and this is a Slate

spoiler special on Oz, The Great and Powerful,

the new Wizard of Oz prequel directed by Sam Ramey.

Joining me in the studio to talk Oz is Forrest Wickman.

Hey, Forrest.

Hey, Dana.

You were a Slate staff writer.

Mm-hmm.

And you saw Oz the Great and Powerful by my side because right by me was John Swansberg, Slate's editor who was watching the entire thing while listening to Dark Side of the Moon, hoping to write about that experience.

Yeah, he's doing a journalistic experiment where he's trying to do the Pink Floyd Wizard of Oz sync up with the new Wizard of Oz.

So we'll see what kind of...

To mix results from what I've heard so far. Yeah, it sounded like he could not wait to turn

that thing off. And then when he turned it off, he wasn't much happier with what the movie

had to show either. So before we get into spoiling, I just want to know overall. Would you recommend

this movie or not? I would faintly, I mean, if you are looking for a family movie, I think this is better than a lot of the other fairy tale remakes that have come out, which actually that's one thing that really struck me as soon as I sat down.

I was thinking of you mentioned, you said it's a Wizard of Oz prequel, although technically it is totally not, according to Disney, a Wizard of Oz prequel because they don't own the rights to the original Wizard of Oz movie.

So this is actually a fairy tale adaptation as far as they're concerned.

And it does feel like that sometimes.

It seems to me more like I did not know that going in of the MGM Disney dispute and the fact that since the original Wizard of Oz is an MGM movie and Disney doesn't own the rights, they aren't allowed to directly reference the movie, right? And they have to instead go back to the books, the L. Frank Baum books, and draw their inspiration from there.

I mean, it seems like a lot of legal pussy footing to me because there are obvious, obvious visual and dialogue references to the Wizard of Oz constantly throughout the movie.

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