New Wicker man

[raj]

Quiet Ed, or Hollywood might hear you.  JLo won't merely star in the remake, but it'll be a musical no less.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Yes, a comedy musical!  We must have Owen Wilson too!

[Yaddo 42]

The Fall preview issue of Entertainment Weekly has a small section on the new Wicker Man. The director Neil Labute says "I think the original protagonist was very hard to like." Well, yes Mr. Director, that was part of the point of the character, he was as rigid in his beliefs as the islanders and hidebound to his duties as a cop. He was supposed to be uptight and cold. That made the practices of Lord Summerisle and his followers even more alien and decandent to him than would have been to the average viewer. Shesh, now I'm a little less encouraged. And Labute is supposed to be a fairly intelligent and insightful guy capable of handing dark material.

[ulthar]

Yes, well Hollywood does like pure black and white, now don't they?  Shades of grey in character development, when it exists at all, might only serve to ask the audience to THINK.  Can't have that.

[trekgeezer]

I'm wondering how they are going to ruin the ending. If they let him get out of it some how that will kill the movie.

[Amanda]

Well, even though I am not happy about them remaking this...I so love the original.  I will probably go see it.  

I just was so horrified about seeing Nicolas Cage in it, I wanted to scream.  I think I did yell No! in the theater during the preview.  Of course, I'm just as horrified that he's making Ghost Rider.  People give Keanu Reeves crap for being emotionless and bland, well, Mr. Cage isn't that much better.  Oi.

I don't know.  I am sure Hollywood is going to go balls-up on this one.  Especially since religion is such a huge focal point.  And I agree with a previous statement - can't have the audience THINKING, heavens NO!

[peter johnson]

I quite like Cage as an actor -- I thought he's shown great nuance in lots of his roles & I really loved him in Raising Arizona and Mermaids, to name 2 roles --
     No, I think the film will SUCK big-time for the same reason The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen failed so horribly:
     No respect for nor understanding of the Source Material.
     Hammer had lots of people on board who had read the Dennis Wheatley novels when the film was being made --
     How many people do we think that were involved with this remake have even read a single work of Classic British Horror?  Even one?  I strongly doubt it.
     I'm usually an optomist, but I think this thing will stink up the theatre and die an ignoble death.
peter johnson/denny crane

[Yaddo 42]

Dennis Wheatley? "The Wicker Man" novel and screenplay were written by Anthony Shaffer. Dennis Wheatley was the author of "The Devil Rides Out" and "To the Devil a Daughter" source material for the films of the same names.

[ulthar]

peter johnson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think this
> thing will stink up the theatre and die an ignoble
> death.

And in the process, introduce a large fraction of young movie-goers to the concept of THE WICKER MAN, thus insuring that the remake is the ONLY chance they will ever give the story.  Many will not even know it is a remake, nor the power of the original.  They'll hear "Wicker Man" and say "oh I saw that, it sucked."

[raj]

ulthar Wrote:

> And in the process, introduce a large fraction of
> young movie-goers to the concept of THE WICKER
> MAN, thus insuring that the remake is the ONLY
> chance they will ever give the story.  Many will
> not even know it is a remake, nor the power of the
> original.  They'll hear "Wicker Man" and say "oh I
> saw that, it sucked."

I wonder if that isn't Hollywood's intent.  Remake decent movies with plots (Wicker Man, Rollerball) with craptacular pieces of s**te that remove any vestige of thinking.  Once the past has been shredded and discredited, they can peddle their movies with out worrying about any criticism.

No, I'm not paranoid.  The black helicopters really are out to get me.  Why do you ask?

[Dr. Whom]

Still, the main question hasn't been answered yet. DOES IT HAVE A NUDE DANCE?

[Vermin Boy]

The funny thing about this thread is that the original Wicker Man WAS a musical (of a sort), and I kinda doubt the remake will be.

[peter johnson]

Vermin makes a very excellent point, as he always does --
Yaddo 42 misses my point completely, by being too literalistic --
     Yaddo first:  Yes, Yaddo, you are 100% correct.  That man wrote that book and the other man wrote other books.  And?  My point was not a quiz, but rather to denote that nobody reads anything in Hollywood.  Yes, you have named the authors with their novels very accurately.  I stand corrected.  That wasn't what my tirade was about.  I could have said Arthur Macken or even Conan Doyle or whoever.  I was trying -- badly -- to say that literacy is cumulative, that by having read a lot of people in a grand tradition, one is more able to understand it.  If you haven't really read anything in that genre, then you have only the genres you are familiar with -- rap music/music videos/slasher films/Disney films/Film-films -- to try and create your films with.  That's what happened with Extraordinary Gentlemen and why it went wrong.  
     This is why I put "Source Material" in caps, and not lower-case --
     As Vermin notes, the ritualistic music of the unrecalcitrant Pagans is a driving point of the film, from the given nude dance number to the elaborate Full-Regalia Morris Horse at the very end.  If they can do "Batboy:  The Musical!", then the world is ripe and ready for "Wicker Man, The Extravaganza!!"
peter crane/denny oh what the hell . . .

[Yaddo 42]

Maybe it'll be a rave then, since it seems like any contemporary American film with people dancing that isn't strictly a musical (Chicago, Rent, Moulin Rouge, whatever), espeically any genre film, has to have a rave scene no matter how pointless or unlikely.

[peter johnson]

Yes!  Yaddo is right!
This could be the next big Dance Movie -- sort of like how the Drew Carrey show tried to create a rivalry between the Midnight showings of Rocky Horror vs. Priscilla:  Queen of The Desert.
They'll be dancin' in the streeets!
Yes -- Dance, Animalia!  Dance!!
(Ever see The Lost Skeleton of Cadavara?)
Ah, modern life . . .
peter johnson/denny crane