Hollywood Popular Artists

Feb 4th 2013, 22:00

"The Wizard of Oz" has really entered a one-of-a-kind stratosphere of pop culture recognition. There's the ruby slippers, the songs. Even the Wicked Witch of West's musical cue is burned in the brains of the children who grew up on the MGM classic. Most people know it beat for beat, so why is its inclusion on a Blu-ray set worth pointing out?

When that set is the recently released "Best of Warner Bros 50 Film Collection," it's absolutely worth taking note. As the name of the package implies, the collection brings together some of the most beloved films from the studio's 90-year history. Everything from "The Grand Hotel" to "The Hangover" can be found in one box.

So what is an MGM classic doing in the box?

One controversial characteristic of the set—well, controversial if you ask the Amazon reviewers—is that the "Best of Warner Bros" also includes movies that the studio did not produce, films they only bought the rights to, which has upset a vocal minority of purists.

In reality, the inclusion of those films only ups the value of such a set, and "The Wizard of Oz" is a perfect example of what makes this robust collection something worth investing in.

Unless you're a super fan, "The Wizard of Oz" may not be a movie that naturally pops into your head when you're thinking of new Blu-rays to pick up. You think of the "Transformers," "Dark Knights," and "Prometheuses" of the world, not a flick from 1939.

But when you pop "The Wizard of Oz" into your futuristic Blu-ray player, the old cliché of "it's like seeing the movie for the first time" absolutely applies. The restored print of the film is virtually flawless, uncovering the astonishing beauty of the picture like never before and while the credit goes to that film's individual restoration, its appearance in the set is a really nice surprise.

Over the next nine days, MTV Movies Blog will be traveling through cinematic time and the nine decades of movies featured in the "Best of Warner Bros 50 Film Collection." Each day, we'll review one film from one decade of the box set and taking a look back at the history of the studio.

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