So…
Does that we we won’t see:
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse?
:mad:
Ah- hadn’t heard there was no nudity… darn- I was hoping there would be & it would be Leelee Sobrieski…
NOT ELLEN BURSTYN!!! :eek:
You know- if they must do a remake about an Evil- Pseudo-Wiccan- Matriachy…
Tom Tryon’s HARVEST HOME!
(The TV Bette Davis vehicle THE DARK SECRET OF … wasn’t bad but it could stand an update.)
No nekkidness, eh? How can they even call it The Wicker Man? That’s like making a remake of Star Wars without the, er…stars…or wars. Screw that.
“I’ll make my own Wicker Man! With black jack, and hookers! In fact, forget about The Wicker Man!”
Truly, I think that may be my favorite line from any TV show ever. I am sometimes tempted to flag down passing cars and shout it at them.
The two of you and my husband.
Man, that sounds kinky. I’m getting some popcorn.
My curiousity has been piqued. I’m thinking I’ll go see it.
I didn’t know it existed until I chanced across this thread. But the original was so awesome that even the remake has to retain at least some of that awesome. Right?
I will be there a week from tomorrow, on my birthday. Yes, no nekkidness in this version (though they would be hard pressed to find someone as enticing as Britt’s body double), and I’ve heard rumors that they’ve changed a few details, but I’ll still shell out $5.50.
Britt Eckland had a body double in the original? It was my understanding she had a voice double because she couldn’t convincingly do a Scottish accent. If she had a body double as well, there was no point in hiring her for the movie.
I’ve read that a double was used for a few shots in her nude scene.
Parts of her were doubled, but there are large stretches where she dances naked with both face and boobs in frame.
Only for a few of the nude scenes- she was, IIRC, pregnant at the time, and in the from-the-back shots they used someone else. There are one or two seconds where it’s pretty obvious- her head turns and you can tell it’s not Britt.
I’d never heard that that wasn’t her voice, though.
Well, you learn something new every day; from IMDB:
The main site for Wicker Man also confirms that Annie Ross (uncredited) did Willow’s voice. So I can’t answer your question, NDP, other than to speculate that they wanted someone who would bring in the moviegoers, and that was certainly Britt.
Basically, face & nekkid boobies- Britt, Voice- esp singing & nekkid butt- Doubles.
In another Wicker Man thread I mentioned that her hair magically changes length. I was challenged with: “You were watching her hair?!?” Well…not the first time. Or the second. Or…
The wonderful thing is how adaptable it is. The “new overlords” line is good, but…
Re. seeing the original (esp. the longer 99-min. restored extended version), your options are somewhat limited. TWM gets virtually no play on cable TV here (not even this week), and the “wooden box” limited edition was just that, a limited release, priced at around $40, containing both the 99-min. version and the 88-min. version released in theaters in the USA in the 1970’s – but what many 'Merkins have discovered is that the short version doesn’t play in our DVD players (it didn’t for me). There’s also the mass-market Anchor Bay DVD that I got for $10 about five years back. A certain major electronics retail chain, C------ C—, is selling a version of the movie for $10 (sale price) this week; the packaging is a bit different from my Anchor Bay version, but both DVDs have “spoiler” covers showing the wicker man itself. In any event, I bet it’s just the 88-min. “American” cut with new DVD cover art. (I wonder if this DVD has the Region-2-only commentary track? I would love to hear that!)
Nor is TWM all that widely carried in video rental places. It’s definitely a “cult” movie, with material that many people consider objectionable. I can imagine that in many locales, there simply aren’t any copies for rent. I’d never seen it in any rental place when I first saw (the budget version) for sale in an independent music store, of all places, and that was one reason why I bought it blindly.
No matter how badly the LaBute remake might suck, it stands to raise the profile of the Robin Hardy original and spur more retail/rental places to stock it. Who knows, it might even get little play on cable… say around Halloween?
As for the remake, LaBute has confessed in interviews to finding the original dated and not to his personal taste, esp. with respect to the music and the way it’s integrated into the film in the style of a musical, with characters and extras singing and dancing, etc. Expect the music in the remake to be a lot more subdued, scaled back in use, repetitive in its motifs, and contemporary in its instrumentation and style. I like Badalamenti’s work as much as anyone, but if ever there was a case for a movie to use Ye Olde Celtic or English folksongs, even if noticably updated or mutated, this story is it. His refrain from screen nudity also raises suspicion; the rationale for the copious use of nudity (and the fake nudity, via the use of bodystockings, of the fire dance scene) of Robin Hardy’s original was to underscore just how strange, sincere, earthy and uninhibited the villagers’ religious and cultural mores were. From this admittedly far remove of pre-screening speculation, it sounds like LaBute’s take on paganism will be a distinctively Puritanical one, with its deemphasis on joyous and erotic music and of eroticism and seduction. As such, the seductive appeal of such an atavistically matriarchal, Puritan, yet pagan community to a modern (or even postmodern) cop might be, perversely enough, in their bracing sense of discipline, purpose, and traditional communitarian values and lifestyle. Cage’s character will probably be depicted as being disenchanted with the mainland’s hedonistic, crass, grasping, alienated, and neurotic plugged-in culture, and tempted by the simpler, clean, modest, communal, spiritual, Luddite ways of the island villagers – just as Harrison Ford’s jaded character was by the ways of the Pennsylvania Amish in Peter Weir’s Witness.
What is this from? Sounds vaguely familiar.
I really like the “we follow the old ways here” theme, as seen in Wicker Man, Harvest Home, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Would like to see it done well…but the trailers don’t look promising.
I think it’s a Futurama reference. Bender says something about building his own amusement park, with the hookers and blackjack, and mid-thought decides to just keep the hookers and blackjack.
I just checked Netflix, and they only carry the 88 minute version with the spoiler cover… better than nothing, I suspect, and at least it’s THERE! So, for those who have Netflix and haven’t seen TWM, get it–because you won’t see the cover! Beautiful thing, isn’t it? 