YouTube is great, really — certainly as a waste of time, but also as a canny means of cultural distillation. Despite no small amount of admiration for each of them, I didn’t catch last fall’s Nicolas Cage/Neil LaBute remake of The Wicker Man, though I did a DVD review of the
special edition original when it came out late last year. Now, thanks to this inspired, two-and-a-half-minute YouTube mash-up, I’ll never have to see the the re-up.

I personally loved the roundhouse kick to the face and the bear bitch-slap.
For what it’s worth, it really seems like Cage’s performance is modeled somewhat
closely after Edward Woodward’s from the original film, except with general irritation
replacing a moral stodginess. Madly bubbling-over frustration is part of what The Wicker Man is about, and here, in the remake, it just seems amped up a bit, though I (want to) believe the hill-tumble exclamations of, “The bees, the bees… not the bees!” might be overdubbed or laid in.