Word: wizarding
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...climax with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. For the third December in a row, the year is capped with a robust cinematic retelling of the war of Middle-earth, as the hobbit Frodo (Wood) and his fellowship of humans, elves, dwarfs and the wizard Gandalf (McKellen) surge into battle against the dark power of Mordor's Lord Sauron...
...stalwart warriors. They know the enormity of their foe and know that the child hobbit who bears the Ring is far from them--surely in peril, perhaps lost forever. At one point Aragorn asks Gandalf, "What does your heart tell you?" and in a little movie epiphany, the wizard's face briefly warms, brightens, and he says, "That Frodo is alive...
...Return of the King occasionally slows to a trot. There's a long middle passage where half a dozen characters in turn muse and fret at length. After the climax there's a plethora of meetings and farewells, most of them extended versions of the goodbyes in The Wizard of Oz. But Jackson is entitled. He surely felt that he and his companions of the Ring had waged their own hard, heroic battle and that sentimental adieus were earned...
Nichols, Kushner and HBO all call Angels a movie (it will debut in two parts as it did onstage but will be rerun in one-hour episodes and in one six-hour shebang), but its high-literary and low--pop culture sensibility--it references Hegel and The Wizard of Oz--best recall Dennis Potter's British mini-series. (The Singing Detective's Michael Gambon even shows up as, of course, a ghost.) And it ranks in TV history with Potter's masterworks. The key to Angels is that it is realistic and fantastic at once--a miraculous event in mundane...
...readily came up with “The Wizard of Oz” when asked about her favorite movie—a question that caught other candidates unaware on previous shows. But in a sudden silence during a commercial break, Matthews could be clearly heard asking whether she ever got nervous...