Hello — Happy Ides of January.

The connected folk at Trailers from Hell sent this one along. As reported on the Al Hirschfeld Twitter page, it appears that the great cartoonist and illustrator created art for the original 1939 ad campaign for The Wizard of Oz. Here are a couple of inserts from the poster … let’s hope this isn’t a copyright infringement.

It does make me reflect on the general badness of poster art for many golden-era MGM movies. Although gems did sneak through, the average MGM poster could be really ugly, and Wizard was no exception. It took me about 20 seconds to see a Yellow Brick Road motif here. It looks like Hirschfeld was contracted to produce a stack of classy caricatures, and then somebody decided to throw them into this hodge-podge.

Zooming or opening the images in a new window will reveal more detail. Did Hirschfeld have Vivien Leigh on his mind when drawing Dorothy?  I can see Ray Bolger in the scarecrow, however.

CineSavant’s advisor and accomplice Gary Teetzel is keen on film composers, so thought this arts post by Bryan Erdy on vimeo was noteworthy. For its music bed, a ballet called Belling the Slayer makes use of the Capricorn One soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith.

I haven’t seen Capricorn One more than once or twice; so I’m afraid that for me it sounds like they’re all dancing to Goldsmith’s soundtrack for The Satan Bug!

And we’ve received word that on March 22 Paramount will be releasing a boxed-set 4K UHD Godfather Trilogy as part of its 50th anniversary celebration for Francis Ford Coppola’s mighty trilogy. There will be theatrical screenings as well. The set will present Godfathers I & II plus the recently re-edited version of the final film, The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.

According to Paramount, Coppola oversaw a new 4K remaster, the first since Robert Harris’s 2007 restoration. For Godfathers I & II the 2007 Walter Murch audio will be present, along with original mono tracks. Extras will include a hardcover ‘coffee table’ book and codes for digital versions, plus new bonus extras.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson