All TV: 'Tin Man' takes all the fun out of Oz

Today's column previews Sci Fi's underwhelming "Wizard of Oz" updating, "Tin Man":

Imagination is hard. Imagination requires the creation of new ideas. Re-imagination, on the other hand? That just requires taking a pre-existing idea and changing it ever-so-slightly. Since new ideas in Hollywood are hard to come by, we get lots of re-imagining these days, from simple TV-to-movies translation like "Transformers" to more radical changes like the new political allegory incarnation of "Battlestar Galactica."

The problem with re-imagination comes when the material's so popular that any changes - or, for that matter, the reason for telling the story again - have to seem justified.

In the case of "Tin Man," a six-hour miniseries debuting Sunday night at 9 on Sci Fi, the source material is one of the most beloved stories ever: L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz." The press notes insist that "Viewers familiar with Baum's storyline will delight in the dozens of clever ways in which this new interpretation echoes the old," but for the most part, the changes all seem puzzling and arbitrary.

There's also a review of HBO's Don Rickles documentary, "Mr. Warmth," which I liked a lot more. To read the full thing, click here.