Latest news with #TheWonderfulWizardofOz
Time of India
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Wicked: For Good's new behind-the-scenes video and posters released to tease fans months ahead of movie release; details inside
A new behind-the-scenes video of ' Wicked: For Good ' has been released by Universal Pictures on August 6, 2025 (Wednesday). It is the sequel to Wicked and will hit the theaters on November 21, 2025. The teaser of 'Wicked: For Good' features Cynthia Erivo, who plays Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda, and John M. Chu, the Wicked movie director. It highlights the film's emotional journey, exploring Elphaba and Glinda's broken friendship amid Oz's political chaos. It also features new songs and character posters. The key cast and crew of the movie are seen discussing where the two witches are right now and where their friendship i,s and its future. They also made a mention of Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The latest teaser gives a sneak peek of Elphaba becoming the Wicked Witch of the West. Along with the teaser, character posters were also released, showcasing Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. Productivity Tool Zero to Hero in Microsoft Excel: Complete Excel guide By Metla Sudha Sekhar View Program Finance Introduction to Technical Analysis & Candlestick Theory By Dinesh Nagpal View Program Finance Financial Literacy i e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By CA Rahul Gupta View Program Digital Marketing Digital Marketing Masterclass by Neil Patel By Neil Patel View Program Finance Technical Analysis Demystified- A Complete Guide to Trading By Kunal Patel View Program Productivity Tool Excel Essentials to Expert: Your Complete Guide By Study at home View Program Artificial Intelligence AI For Business Professionals Batch 2 By Ansh Mehra View Program — wickedmovie (@wickedmovie) The first of the two new movie posters shows Ariana Grande as Glinda with her signature pink dress and a hint of green. She is seen walking a pink carpet surrounded by fans. — wickedmovie (@wickedmovie) Live Events Meanwhile, as far as the other poster is concerned, it features Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, where she is standing on a rock, with the Flying Monkeys behind her in the distance, along with her castle, Kiamo Ko. — wickedmovie (@wickedmovie) Earlier in June 2025, the acclaimed movie-musical Wicked returned to over 100 theaters across the U.S. and Canada for a special one-night event. This screening not only revisited the highest-grossing Broadway musical adaptation but also offered audiences an exclusive first look at the sequel, Wicked: For Good. The original film, starring Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, garnered ten Oscar nominations.
Irish Examiner
26-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Book review: Familial bonds tested in harsh locale
Mentioned just a few times in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum, Dorothy's aunt, Emily Gale, is brought to life in this engrossing historical novel. She's one of three sisters whose family emigrated from Ireland to the US. Her heritage is very important to her, she plays the fiddle and sings Irish songs. As young women, Annie and Emily live together in Chicago — but a distance starts to develop when Annie marries John Gale, 'a man of capitalism and industry', and that strained relationship gets worse. Emily falls in love with John's cousin, who couldn't be more different — 'a man of community and nature'. She has always been attracted to the idea of moving to the prairies, influenced by her mother's fascination with a pamphlet written by the Irish priest Reverend Thomas Ambrose Butler entitled The State of Kansas and Irish Immigration. The first time she meets Henry, he talks about his plans to farm there and, while partly frightened at the thought of heading off into the unknown, she's also excited and prepared to face challenges. When she joins husband Henry in Kansas her immediate reaction is: 'The sense of isolation was unfamiliar and daunting, but it was thrilling.' Emily throws herself into the traditional lifestyle and the surroundings are idyllic when there is sufficient rain, but they are soon faced with the harsh reality of drought. When Emily receives news of the tragic death of Annie and her husband John, and has to make the trip to Chicago to collect her orphaned niece Dorothy, she is faced with another challenge. Will she succeed as a surrogate mother? During the 1920s, the American government encouraged people to buy plots and work the land. However, they used ill-informed farming practices including removing topsoil, so the 'unstoppable power of nature' created an unsustainable environment. Will we ever learn? Gaynor's descriptions of the power of nature and its effect on human health during the Dust Bowl years are truly frightening. 'Animals were falling sick and dying from dust fever, and prairie folk were dying from dust pneumonia caused by a layer of dust settling deep in their lungs … There was no colour there, no joy…' Into this depressing world arrives Adelaide Watson, an aviator, a colourful character who gives them hope by promising to bring them a rainmaker. Though fictional, she is a reminder of Amelia Earhart. There are wonderful descriptions of the freedom of flight. The author weaves historic people and events into her narrative as well as references to the original story and its characters. Integral are the silver shoes Dorothy inherits from her mother, which were changed to the famous red slippers in the film as they stood out better on the Yellow Brick Road. Emily is a well-rounded and likeable character, whose inner struggles and triumphs are eloquently revealed in her journal entries. The novel explores relationships between sisters, wives and husbands, and the real meaning of motherhood, as well as the importance of home. You do not need to have read the L Frank Baum novel or seen the film to enjoy this novel. It's moving and uplifting, and you will also learn a lot about the 1920s and 1930s in the US. Highly recommended.
Chicago Tribune
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Elgin News Digest: Carpentersville police officers lauded for saving a life with AED; Elgin Summer Theatre to present ‘Wizard of Oz' at Hemmens
Three Carpentersville police officers who used an AED device to save the life of a 40-year-old man in August 2024 are being celebrated on the Firehouse Subs Foundation website. According to the post, the officers found the man unconscious and not breathing. They used CPR and an AED defibrillator to help revive him and keep him alive so he could be taken to a local hospital. Carpentersville Police Chief Todd Shaver said the incident happened in the 1600 block of Seminole Lane. The officers who saved the man's life were Jose Chamorro, Ryan Miles and Nick Valzano. Each was recognized by the Carpentersville Fire Department with a Life Saving Award at an awards banquet earlier this year. In 2023, the village received a donation of $23,979 from Firehouse Subs for lifesaving equipment, which allowed the department to purchase AEDs, Shaver said. Elgin Summer Theatre's production of 'The Wizard of Oz' will be presented by the Up And Coming Theatre Company and the city of Elgin at The Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin. Shows will be presented at 7:30 p.m. July 11-12 and 18-19 and at 3 p.m. July 13 and 20, according to the city of Elgin's website. The musical is a stage adaptation of the classic 1939 movie, which is based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.' Songs from the movie, including 'Over the Rainbow' and 'We're Off to See the Wizard,' will be part of the show. Tickets are $24 and $30 and can be purchased at To show its appreciation for the community's support, the Food for Greater Elgin food pantry will hold an open house from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday, July 11, at its Elgin warehouse at 1553 Commerce Drive. The 'Open Doors, Full Hearts' event will feature behind-the-scenes tours of the facility, light refreshments and a chance to meet volunteers and staff, according to the nonprofit's website. For more information, go to or email Emily Tyler at etyler@ The Rotary Club of Carpentersville will host 'Blind Flights,' a picnic-style craft beer tasting, from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 12, in Carpenter Park, 275 Maple Ave., Carpentersville. Attendees will vote on their favorites in various categories without knowing which brewer produced what beer, according to the club's website. The event will feature beers from 11 breweries as well as food for purchase from No Manches and Duke's Blues-N-BBQ, a social media post said. Proceeds will help support Rotary programs, including those that provide winter coats for kids in need, fund scholarships and assist local food pantries. Tickets are $38.10 and can be purchased at
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I Was Undocumented for 21 Years. This Is Why I Tell My Story
Credit - Getty Images For 21 years, I was undocumented. While I am an American citizen now, this fact still remains the boldest and most dangerous thing I can say out loud. The danger of being undocumented, of course—greatly heightened by President Donald Trump's administration—is of deportation. When my family entered this country, my parents warned me of the possible consequences. 'If you tell anyone you're illegal, they'll report you to Homeland Security,' they'd say. I was four years old. There's an existential power that deportation holds over the undocumented community. It is another form of death, never to see your loved ones again from home. That's how it felt for me—too young to remember my birth country of Brazil. It's no wonder The Wonderful Wizard of Oz transfixed me as the first book in English I stayed up late to read; it made an image of what deportation might be like: a sudden and violent transport to an unknown realm (or so I'd been told about Brazil, compared to Queens, N.Y., since I could barely remember it when parents came to America) where one's only mission is to return home. Though I claimed no citizenship in the U.S. at the time, I found citizenship in literature. Literature is an easy place to make a home, and my schoolteachers and librarians invited me out of Oz and onto the American prairie, the English drawing room, and to poetry. They directed me toward Homer, Emily Dickinson, and Audre Lorde. They assigned writing, too; for poetry is never solely to be read. They showed me that part of literature's generosity is that one may try a hand in creating it, in joining the great conversation that crisscrosses generations, cultures, languages, and people—the glorious and the meek. As I became a poet, literature—and the power of the language—continued to be my most stable home. Read More: Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation Growing up, I wanted to be like Jack Gilbert, Elizabeth Bishop, even Adrienne Rich, poets who I imagined bore traits I perceived as quintessentially American: so cheerful, I thought, in their privileges that they had to conjure their artistic melancholy. So, at the writing table, I pretended my fears were not mine, but of a stranger; and that I was a typical Asian American, whose problems were 'merely' bigotry and, say, filial piety. Problems that I too confronted but felt safer to discuss on the page than my status. Generations of immigrant writers had demonstrated how one writes on such troubles, and it would be expected of me, since I look like an Asian American. Instead of writing about my whole undocumented self, I pretended I was an actor of heroines, like Joan Chen and Gong Li. Someone who surely had no legal problems to obscure from my classmates. But dishonesty of this nature does not yield good art—at least, not truthful art. And my poems were skittish, little creatures. Like blindfolded sheep, they bumped around the fields of my page, grazing, stumbling, and ultimately beset by the wolves that were my bewildered classmates, who were keen enough readers to notice that these poems weren't quite working, but without the context to understand why. And how could they? A lifetime of pretending I was just another American meant that when I tried to speak honestly, I couldn't actually do it. Ostensibly, I had much to write about. I could've written about how my father had designed hydroelectric dams in Brazil and then labored at a laundromat in New York City. Or how both my parents survived civil war and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Or how, in the U.S., my mother sought refuge in Dami Mission, a doomsday cult that prophesied a mass rapture to heaven. But these were all unavailable to me; I couldn't write about any of it. I first needed to feel secure to tell my story. Perhaps it is surprising to learn that even as a naturalized citizen, I remain wary to this day. My green card arrived when I was 27. Yet I did not travel abroad for another seven years, and that was to Canada. The outside world had become forbidden fruit—and an object of dread. My writing, however, was impatient to change. The year I received my green card, Irish poet and professor Eamon Grennan counseled me. He said: 'Esther, lay bare the narrative field.' What he meant was, tell the story. Tell my story. Slowly, I did. My first decent poems imagined parts of my mother's life. What I guessed about her feelings. I wrote about being her daughter. I described my father's voyage from Hong Kong to Brazil by way of Africa. I wrote about Queens. Eventually, I wrote about my own experience of being undocumented. I followed Grennan's advice: I laid bare the narrative field. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, reads like a memoir in poems. A memoir was not necessarily my intention, but the book does tell the stories of how my mother frog-leaped from marriage to marriage to defect from China. Of how I muddled through my own marriage, which made me eligible to apply for a green card. Of how two signs, 'European only' and 'Black only,' at a post office in South Africa baffled my father. Telling stories allowed for another discovery: just as I fell in love with the raw, fickleness of the English sentence, its straightforward subject-predicate structure began to enchant me, too. I like a brutally direct poem, with unembroidered language and simple, but elegant, syntax. Such a structure means I cannot hide or delay the revelation of things that are painful but true. I laugh when one of my poems emerges especially dark. It's dark because I was truthful. Sometimes, there is no solace. Unlike African American poets, we undocumented poets do not hold centuries of literary tradition, with great names like Phillis Wheatley, Lawrence Dunbar, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Among the general population, we cannot identify who is undocumented or a citizen—it is taboo to ask casually what an immigrant's visa status is, or it should be taboo to ask about such private, life-determining matters. Like the LGBTQIA+ community, we undocumented may or may not be 'out' about our status. Happily, though, there is a 'we.' In 2015, three poets formed the Undocupoets, an organization that I now co-run, with two other formerly undocumented poets, Janine Joseph and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Our organization awards three $500 fellowships each year to other undocumented poets and raises awareness within and without the literary world. As of this writing, Janine has published two books of poems, most recently Decade of the Brain, and Marcelo has published a book of poems and a memoir, titled Children of the Land. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, came out in March. So this is a young tradition. Our other work is ensuring that undocumented people and citizens know of this tradition. We don't wish to pass as simply American, as if we do not hold a uniquely American story. Rather, we wish to help archive undocumented art, because we are a fundamental part of this country's history. And we wish to let undocumented writers know that they too are part of a we (if they wish); and that our community is larger than we think. We are vocal; we are present. Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
I Was Undocumented for 21 Years. This Is Why I Tell My Story
For 21 years, I was undocumented. While I am an American citizen now, this fact still remains the boldest and most dangerous thing I can say out loud. The danger of being undocumented, of course—greatly heightened by President Donald Trump's administration —is of deportation. When my family entered this country, my parents warned me of the possible consequences. 'If you tell anyone you're illegal, they'll report you to Homeland Security,' they'd say. I was four years old. There's an existential power that deportation holds over the undocumented community. It is another form of death, never to see your loved ones again from home. That's how it felt for me—too young to remember my birth country of Brazil. It's no wonder The Wonderful Wizard of Oz transfixed me as the first book in English I stayed up late to read; it made an image of what deportation might be like: a sudden and violent transport to an unknown realm (or so I'd been told about Brazil, compared to Queens, N.Y., since I could barely remember it when parents came to America) where one's only mission is to return home. Though I claimed no citizenship in the U.S. at the time, I found citizenship in literature. Literature is an easy place to make a home, and my schoolteachers and librarians invited me out of Oz and onto the American prairie, the English drawing room, and to poetry. They directed me toward Homer, Emily Dickinson, and Audre Lorde. They assigned writing, too; for poetry is never solely to be read. They showed me that part of literature's generosity is that one may try a hand in creating it, in joining the great conversation that crisscrosses generations, cultures, languages, and people—the glorious and the meek. As I became a poet, literature—and the power of the language—continued to be my most stable home. Growing up, I wanted to be like Jack Gilbert, Elizabeth Bishop, even Adrienne Rich, poets who I imagined bore traits I perceived as quintessentially American: so cheerful, I thought, in their privileges that they had to conjure their artistic melancholy. So, at the writing table, I pretended my fears were not mine, but of a stranger; and that I was a typical Asian American, whose problems were 'merely' bigotry and, say, filial piety. Problems that I too confronted but felt safer to discuss on the page than my status. Generations of immigrant writers had demonstrated how one writes on such troubles, and it would be expected of me, since I look like an Asian American. Instead of writing about my whole undocumented self, I pretended I was an actor of heroines, like Joan Chen and Gong Li. Someone who surely had no legal problems to obscure from my classmates. But dishonesty of this nature does not yield good art—at least, not truthful art. And my poems were skittish, little creatures. Like blindfolded sheep, they bumped around the fields of my page, grazing, stumbling, and ultimately beset by the wolves that were my bewildered classmates, who were keen enough readers to notice that these poems weren't quite working, but without the context to understand why. And how could they? A lifetime of pretending I was just another American meant that when I tried to speak honestly, I couldn't actually do it. Ostensibly, I had much to write about. I could've written about how my father had designed hydroelectric dams in Brazil and then labored at a laundromat in New York City. Or how both my parents survived civil war and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Or how, in the U.S., my mother sought refuge in Dami Mission, a doomsday cult that prophesied a mass rapture to heaven. But these were all unavailable to me; I couldn't write about any of it. I first needed to feel secure to tell my story. Perhaps it is surprising to learn that even as a naturalized citizen, I remain wary to this day. My green card arrived when I was 27. Yet I did not travel abroad for another seven years, and that was to Canada. The outside world had become forbidden fruit—and an object of dread. My writing, however, was impatient to change. The year I received my green card, Irish poet and professor Eamon Grennan counseled me. He said: 'Esther, lay bare the narrative field.' What he meant was, tell the story. Tell my story. Slowly, I did. My first decent poems imagined parts of my mother's life. What I guessed about her feelings. I wrote about being her daughter. I described my father's voyage from Hong Kong to Brazil by way of Africa. I wrote about Queens. Eventually, I wrote about my own experience of being undocumented. I followed Grennan's advice: I laid bare the narrative field. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, reads like a memoir in poems. A memoir was not necessarily my intention, but the book does tell the stories of how my mother frog-leaped from marriage to marriage to defect from China. Of how I muddled through my own marriage, which made me eligible to apply for a green card. Of how two signs, 'European only' and 'Black only,' at a post office in South Africa baffled my father. Telling stories allowed for another discovery: just as I fell in love with the raw, fickleness of the English sentence, its straightforward subject-predicate structure began to enchant me, too. I like a brutally direct poem, with unembroidered language and simple, but elegant, syntax. Such a structure means I cannot hide or delay the revelation of things that are painful but true. I laugh when one of my poems emerges especially dark. It's dark because I was truthful. Sometimes, there is no solace. Unlike African American poets, we undocumented poets do not hold centuries of literary tradition, with great names like Phillis Wheatley, Lawrence Dunbar, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Among the general population, we cannot identify who is undocumented or a citizen—it is taboo to ask casually what an immigrant's visa status is, or it should be taboo to ask about such private, life-determining matters. Like the LGBTQIA+ community, we undocumented may or may not be 'out' about our status. Happily, though, there is a 'we.' In 2015, three poets formed the Undocupoets, an organization that I now co-run, with two other formerly undocumented poets, Janine Joseph and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Our organization awards three $500 fellowships each year to other undocumented poets and raises awareness within and without the literary world. As of this writing, Janine has published two books of poems, most recently Decade of the Brain, and Marcelo has published a book of poems and a memoir, titled Children of the Land. My first book, titled Cold Thief Place, came out in March. So this is a young tradition. Our other work is ensuring that undocumented people and citizens know of this tradition. We don't wish to pass as simply American, as if we do not hold a uniquely American story. Rather, we wish to help archive undocumented art, because we are a fundamental part of this country's history. And we wish to let undocumented writers know that they too are part of a we (if they wish); and that our community is larger than we think. We are vocal; we are present.
