1. Well, I made it through my first week of the new teaching job. It was overall easier than I expected; it felt like slipping back into a somewhat familiar routine, the same sense of just standing up and talking to the class.

2. That said, it did feel a bit like building a railroad track while the train is already in progress, Gromit style. I’m hoping to be able to use this weekend to get a little ahead of things so that it feels a little more manageable.

3. I confess I retain a sneaking liking for Napoleon, for all that I abhor basically everything he did. This is less because of his military brilliance than because of the streak of class and sensibility that I detect in him. Things like his declining to sit in Charlemagne’s throne, or commenting “This is no place for an atheist” in Chartres Cathedral, or the line “From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.” These are things that a mere over-ranked thug (like, say, Hitler) couldn’t have done or understood, and for that sake I can’t help but hold warmer feelings towards him than he probably deserves.

4. Movie night last week was Return to Oz, my first time seeing it since one dimly-remembered viewing in childhood. It’s overall pretty good; one of those strikingly imaginative (not to say mildly terrifying) fantasy films that were typical of the 1980s. It served to remind me how very bland and samey most works of fantasy really are. Most of them roll over the same tired tropes that amount to “go to the folklore section of the library and copy and paste as needed,” with ‘originality’ meaning more or less “he adapted from a different folklore this time.”

What we have here feels much more like a direct line to the author’s imagination, drawing only lightly from existing sources (e.g. the gnomes) and playing fast and loose when he does. Things like the Wheelies (creepy monsters scooting about on wheels), Tick-Tock, the witch who swaps heads like other women swap hats, the Deadly Desert that turns people to sand, and so on. It’s all refreshingly strange and interesting.

5. Not only that, but the Oz stories in general are a relatively rare effort to build a fairy tale out of distinctly American trappings. Things like the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman in the original, and Jack Pumpkinhead and Tick-Tock in this one have that perfectly American and even Midwest tone (Tick Tock feels like he wandered in from a fairground somewhere). Even the Wheelies have a feel of 80s Biker gangs run through a fantasy blender.

America doesn’t seem to lend itself to this sort of fairy tale style story, or at least it seems to me that very few have made an effort in that direction, apart from Mr. Baum. Even Walt Disney ended up looking more to the old world for fairy tale settings. I think that’s honestly a real shame and crying out for correction.

6. The film is smart enough to aim for the same dynamic between Dorothy and her friends as there was in the original: namely, that Dorothy, the sensible farm girl, naturally slips into a leadership or even maternal role with her wacky and less mature companions. The dream, if it is one, is one of Dorothy assuming something like the role of her Aunt Em for her friends. This helps it to feel of a piece with the original, even when it adopts a starkly different approach.

I also really like the sense of melancholy and desolation from seeing the iconic relics of the original in a state of ruin: things like the Yellow Brick Road having been torn up, or the Emerald City in ruins. There’s a wonderful bit where Dorothy comes across a painting of her three friends as the lords of Oz and we the audience feel the ache of their absence.

I hardly need to say that it’s not as good as the original. It’s got less of the vibrant energy and dream-like wonder, the pacing lags in parts, the Gnome King can’t quite measure up to the Wicked Witch as a villain (and his defeat is much less satisfying, being essentially a freak accident as opposed to a side-effect of Dorothy trying to protect her friends like in the original), and apart from Tick Tock the new companions, while charming enough, can’t hold a candle to the originals in terms of character or chemistry.

So, it’s not on the level of one the best films of all time, but it’s still quite good.

Billina the Chicken is pure gold, however.

7. I also have to give points for providing the great Nicol Williamson with one of his best on-screen roles as the Gnome King (this and Merlin from Excalibur are probably his top cinematic performances, or at least the ones he’s most famous for). He was widely considered one of the finest actors of his generation on stage, but almost never got a chance to translate that onto film (albeit partly due to personal issues). I’ve always liked him as an actor, and as I say, it’s rare to see him in a role this juicy.