Wicked witches put spell on audience

Becoming an actor isn’t as easy as tapping your sparkly red slippers together, Wicked star Jay Laga’aia has told a group of aspiring performers. Laga’aia, who plays the Wizard of Oz in the upcoming Auckland season of Wicked, visited Wellington’s Whitireia Performance Centre on Tuesday to give advice to about 100 students who want to break into the theatre industry

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BBC blasted for use of Thatcher "Witch" song

Britain’s public broadcaster came under fire on Friday for compromising over the song Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead that was sent flying up the UK charts by a campaign to celebrate former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s death. The song from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is vying for the No 1 slot in the UK’s weekly list of the top 40 best-selling singles that are usually played in full on a BBC Radio 1 chart show on Sunday

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Into a world of magic

Oz: The Great and Powerful (PG) 130 mins ——————– Sam Raimi probably set out to produce an ambitious, cutting-edge prequel to the Wizard of Oz, but instead Oz: The Great and Powerful offers something of a return to classic Disney storytelling values, and that’s no bad thing. There’s already plenty of negative online chatter about Raimi’s arguably excessive use of CGI animation and other fripperies, but you should ignore that and look at how Oz does the basics, and does them well

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‘Race to Witch Mountain’ casts a spell at No. 1

The Disney family film update, "Race to Witch Mountain," won the weekend box office in fine fashion, grossing $25 million according to Sunday’s estimates from Media by Numbers. That’s the second best opening ever for a movie fronted by Dwayne Johnson alone, trailing only the first feature that starred the artist formerly known as The Rock, “The Scorpion King,” which banked $36.1 million in its 2002 debut

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