xxximagesxxx

in the mysterious east, well somewhat mysterious, in Kuala Lumpur, very nice but not the point, i got a copy of the wicker man for three bucks at the night market…and… pretty much exactly what i expected but somehow all the more miserable for having actually seen the thing… the main question is ‘why?’ do the producers, nick cage etc actually believe they are delivering a good piece of unfound art to the unknowing public? is it for mere profit motive? lack of ideas? its just uncanny how dumb the whole thing is… i was afraid that the end might be changed and that some dramatic dynamic force would come to the protagonists rescue, maybe a last minute shoot out with the villagers, but somehow unlike some other remakes the whole was retained… well almost; the originals Sergeant Howie is morphed into Edward Malus, maybe theres an indication in the name as howie is much more confident, not wracked with inner demons and psychological malfunctions as is poor malus (is it some inane reference to the Malleus Maleficarum, the ‘hammer of the witches’ that this name change derives from?, if so poor edward is a lousy hammer indeed) we have the new plot element of willow having a ‘connection’ to the sacrificial victim, drawing him to Summerisle after years of careful setup which may or may not involve their conceiving of a child together… there are annoying little differences all throughout while simultaneously there is an attention to recreating some of the old shots… but for me the biggest fuck up is the chickening out when it comes to tackling the religious aspect that and the miserable cliche hollywood soundtrack… the original wicker man is almost a musical film, it contains a wonderful soundtrack, just the opening is one of my favorite celtic ballads that i used to play over an over again and all throughout the film are great folk pieces that weave a great mood around the whole… i cant really convey how shitty the soundtrack is in the new version, its supposed to sound dark i guess but thats the whole problem of the fucking thing… i dont think the wicker man was originally conceived as a dumbass horror movie but thats another whole line of questioning… here we have an evil matriarchy with implications of infanticide really dumb… the christian versus pagan theme is tossed out likely out of fear… the sympathies of the original were quite different, the pagans were clearly the good guys in spite of their fire bug tendencies… you get the idea i could go on, maybe its even more insidious, the fact that the film twists the role of the villagers into that of the badguys, worshipping the goddess is portrayed as a ‘bad thing’ maybe it could be put forth that the new wicker man is some sort of dumb answer to the equally lousy da vinci code, i thought that sucked too, just for different reasons maybe there’s a secret anti Hillary Clinton message buried in the anti-matriarchal theme of the film, maybe its all tied together, blaming Bill Clinton for 9-11 it was his fault after all, all of that bullshit, that he had a pagan affair and was sooo distracted that he couldnt find osama when he was hanging out on the white house lawn that day… any how we have to do a show here in few hours, i will give up the paranoid theories for a while…