Short Circuits: 'Oz the Great and Powerful' out on DVD

In "Oz the Great and Powerful," Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is a sideshow conjurer with a traveling circus in 1905 Kansas, captured in the black-and-white, square-framed format of old-time cinema. He's forced to make a quick escape from the midway via hot-air balloon, at which point he's caught in a cyclone that plops him down in a brightly colored, widescreen world.

If that all sounds familiar, it's meant to: "Oz the Great and Powerful" hews faithfully to Victor Fleming's "The Wizard of Oz." Time travel might be one element of the L. Frank Baum stories on which "The Wizard of Oz" and this incarnation are based, but plopping a Gen-X California boy into a role that calls for swift instincts and shrewd alertness is an error from which "Oz the Great and Powerful" never recovers.

As Oz and his motley band travel down the Yellow Brick Road, director Sam Raimi punctuates their journey with references to the classic "Oz" film, introducing a fierce lion, an army of scarecrows and a field full of horses of a different color along the way. But what's meant to be an affectionate, clever way of establishing continuity between the two narratives instead serves to remind viewers of the enduring superiority of the classic.

The DVD and Blu-ray (Disney, $30-$45) include bloopers and featurettes.

Washington Post

Colin Covert says: "Oz the Great and Powerful" is a lollapalooza of funhouse thrills and visually sumptuous filmmaking.

Movies: "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," "Killing Lincoln," "Snitch."

Blu-ray debuts: "Tom & Jerry: The Golden Collection, Vol. 2," "Wild Strawberries."

What if Apple introduced a new handheld product and nobody knew about it?

That was essentially the case when the tech giant recently introduced a new model of its iPod Touch, as reported by AppleInsider. The company didn't hold one of its famous press events or put out a press release. Apple did little more than update a page deep within the iPod area of its website and put a "new" tag next to a smallish picture of the device.

Introduced May 29, the new device is a cheaper, less-capable model of the fifth-­generation iPod Touch that Apple introduced in September. It comes with 16 gigabytes of storage space; previously, the fifth-gen models were only available with 32GB or 64GB of storage. Unlike the other fifth-gen iPod Touch models, it lacks a rear camera and its rear case comes in only one color: silver. But it costs $230; the 32-gigabyte model costs $300.

San Jose Mercury News

A: Like any mobile device, when you connect to the Internet, download anything or click on links, Android devices are susceptible to mobile malware and viruses.

Actually, devices that run on the Android operating system are the most susceptible to viruses and malware when compared with other operating systems. Lookout Mobile Security recently predicted that 18 million Android users will encounter mobile malware by the end of 2013.

The fact that Android devices are most susceptible to malware is mostly due to Android's free and open app market. This is unlike Apple's App Store, for example, where each app must be approved to be listed in the store for download. So, app developers can freely upload their apps, and Android users then download them, without any knowledge of any viruses that might be housed within.