Oz the great and powerful [film review]

It's already the highest grossing film of the year, earning Disney more than $280 million in its first two weeks, but is Oz the great and powerful really, well, great and powerful?

Oz is a prequel to the Wizard of Oz movie from 1939 and, like that well known classic it uses the exact same trick of starting in black and white and then, upon entering Oz, changing to glorious colour.

And glorious it is. With quite possibly some of the most beautiful imagery seen on film since the best scenes of Life Of Pi, Sam Raimi (yes, he of "Evil Dead" fame) transports us to the very different, and magical, world of Oz in which a sideshow magician is hailed as the prophesied wizard that will defeat the wicked witch and rule in peace as the king of Oz.

Of course it isn't the peace that attracts our hero but the copious amounts of treasure and he soon, somewhat reluctantly, heads off to find the wicked witch and kill her. But there's a catch, well several.

First, the wicked witch has a secret of her own, and second, only a real wizard can defeat her magic...and wannabe wizard Oscar Diggs is anything but a real wizard.

The film is a little slow paced to begin with, it takes a while to get going, but the key to a good film is whether at the end of it you've enjoyed the experience, and Oz is certainly a good, if perhaps overly cute, film.

This is not the film for fans of action or science fiction, but it is the film for lovers of fantasy worlds, of redemption, of stunning visual imagery or who just want a feel good family friendly trip to the cinema.

The story is good, although most adults will guess a lot of the films key plot twists in advance, but then that isn't actually a bad thing because it gives plenty of time to focus on the land of Oz itself and it is this that really steals the show with quite possibly the most beautiful surroundings yet seen on film.

The entrance into Oz is a sight to behold, particularly the beautiful red tree which isn't as it appears, and yes you will get to see munchkins and yes even the wicked green witch herself. In fact you get to find out just why the original films wicked green witch got to be so wicked...and green in a role played well by Family Guy's Mila Kunis (and yes, it is strange hearing Meg Griffins voice coming from such an attractive visage).

Surprisingly Oz is one of those films that, despite a running time of more than two hours, doesn't actually feel like it overstays its welcome, unlike some other films of similar length, and this is due in no small part to the beauty of its environment and the admittedly predictable but enjoyable story which culminates in a riveting half hour finale that more than makes up for its slow start.

Overall a fun family film that has enough going for it to keep the majority of viewers interested throughout.

PS4 and Xbox 720 launch date and basic specs

When Sony announced recently that the next generation of their Playstation games console would launch sometime in the holiday season of this year rumours spread like wildfire as to when exactly it, and it's main rival Microsofts Xbox 720, would go on sale.

In an interview with Outside Xbox the creative director Assassins Creed 4 has revealed that ALL versions of the game will share the same shipping date, that being October in the US and November in the UK.

Not a big deal you might think but here's the interesting part, the game will release on the current generation AND next generation consoles, so if indeed all versions will be go on sale simultaneously this means the PS4 and Xbox 720 versions will also be on sale then and, consequently, also means that those much anticipated next gen rivals will both be out in October. After all you don't usually release a game if the console it plays on isn't yet available.

So what can we expect from these next gen marvels? Well the PS4 will have a whopping eight gigabytes of blisteringly fast gddr5 ram which, unlike the current Playstations 512 megabytes, is not split equally in half between the cpu (central processing unit) and gpu (graphics processing unit).

That means the PS4 has an astonishing sixteen times more ram than the PS3, and with its eight core 1.6 gigahertz cpu and a 1.84 teraflop Radeon gpu Sony's upcoming Playstation 4 will be more than capable of producing state of the art high definition graphics that can blow away anything seen on current consoles.

The Xbox 720 will also have an eight core 1.6 gigahertz AMD cpu, eight gigabytes of ddr3 ram and a 1.2 teraflop gpu.

The ram is noticeably slower than that of the PS4 (as is the gpu) but Microsoft will be using special chips inside the console to help cache that memory and transfer data much quicker than typical ddr3 speeds and this will bring the Xbox close to the same level of performance as that of the upcoming Playstation but without costing quite so much money (gddr5 ram is much more expensive than the slower ddr3 memory).

A canny move on Microsofts part, why? Because both machines will be pretty similar in terms of graphics as they are now. Again Sony will have the upper hand in terms of graphics and processing power but there really won't be a lot of difference between the two, certainly not enough to convert die hard fans of one platform to the other.

Despite current rumours the Xbox 720 is almost certain to ship with a Bluray drive built in. Microsoft are already marketing the new console as an all round home media centre with high definition films and content, they can't really make such claims if the 720 still uses a standard dvd drive or the now defunct HD-DVD.

Of course they could always have invented a proprietary disc format but given their intent on the system being a home media centre and given the popularity of bluray as a distribution media it makes little commercial sense for them to take such a chance, and a dvd drive would not be able to store highly detailed next generation games when current generation games can easily use the space of a dvd up already.

Both will have USB 3.0, the PS4 will have bluetooth as expected, but surprisingly the Xbox will come with a high definition and upgraded version of the Kinect motion sensor included.

At a likely lower purchase price than the Sony, and with Kinect included as standard, the Xbox 720 could well be the console that finally kills off the Playstation. With similar horsepower and graphics the major difference between the two consoles will be down to the games available and the firmware for each platform.

To end users the appeal of Kinect gaming plus its ability to control the xbox with gestures and movements, and its lower purchase price, may swing votes in favour of Microsofts offering. The Xbox will likely also be able to play previous generation Xbox games whereas, because of the significant difference between the processor architecture of the PS3 and PS4 such backward compatability is highly unlikely and thus another possible drawback to those considering buying one.


As a PS3 user you may expect me to be somewhat biased against the new Xbox but from what we know already it seems Microsoft are making all the right moves and producing a console that will perform close to its main competitor, cost less to purchase and have the added benefit of an already proven motion control system.

While on paper the PS4 will out perform the Xbox 720 these factors are ones that will make a real world difference as to which system customers go for, Sony have made the PS4 easier to develop for, so there will be more equality between the two with most games being able to take advantage of the full power of each console, but Microsoft may have done just enough to land a knockout punch on its biggest rival.