The remake of the film “The Wicker Man” which was originally made back in the 1970’s and starred Christopher Lee and some relative unknowns, was remade with Nicholas Cage starring in the leading role just a year back.  I remember seeing the trailers for the remake with a little bit of interest, since I’m prone to liking things that are supernatural, and “The Wicker Man” seemed to fit that bill. 

Here’s the problem with The Wicker Man.  Nick Cage does a decent job acting, and the cast is actually fairly talented, with Ellen Burstyn, gorgeous as ever, playing the leader of the mysterious island of Summersisle which seemes to have a mysterious shortage of men and a lot of women who go by “sister” so and so.  However, the lines between supernatural and real are totally blurred, and a scene at the beginning of the movie where Nick tries to rescue a mother and daughter unsuccessfully from a burning car go completely unexplained and fall by the wayside as the murky story unfolds. 

The scene is never explained to us, and is one of the most potentially interesting scenes in the movie.  Once on the island of Summersisle at the beckon of his ex-fiancee to help find her missing daughter, Nick (a police officer, by the way), soon notices that something is very odd about this out of the way, private island, including the fact that no one seems to want to comply with his investigation in the case of the missing little girl, whom he does find out is his daughter later on. 

The story diverts from the original movie only a few times (I saw the original, it’s a bizarre movie, and the original is a lot more sexually based than the remake, perhaps for rating purposes the remake went with a less sexual theme), however the ending is the same, which is actually why I was disappointed.  It seemed to make the whole movie pointless, or at least was a let down that the character didn’t make his way through it. 

I’d recommend seeing the remake over the original.  The original was a unique concept, however it was just too abstract to hold my attention, and bizarrely shot. 

I’ve been hearing so many of my friends and coworkers complaining about their regular “land line” cable companies lately, that I’m so grateful when we moved into our new house we chose to go to satellite TV.  Not only have we had more outages, I feel our service is so much better since moving to this form of cable television.  Which brings me to my review of a specific satellite TV provide, Dish Network Satellite, which I’m sure you’ve heard of since it’s increasing popularity over the past five years.  It seems more and more homes are opting to get this minimally invasive, little satellite dish on their home since it’s spread in popularity thanks to good word of mouth. 

The best part about this is that you can opt for the plan that fits your budget comfortably, and their are plans that start as low as just under twenty bucks a month currently, which is a genuine bargain.  It’s easy to add the channels that you want to add as well if you find that you want more channel offerings after you get your initial package. 

Right now the very cool thing running with this particular Dish TV provider is that you can choose from 1 of 5 free specials, so if you want to choose the free installation, you can choose that, or if something else appeals to you, there are free channels that you can choose from for a limited time (and yes, they’re really good ones), free HD DVR upgrade, free activation, free activation and also they offer free fall specials and I’m sure there would be other ongoing changes to additional specials if one of those didn’t fit.

That’s a great deal, especially considering that one thing isn’t going to appeal to everyone when it comes to their cable provider, so they’ve let you do the choosing of what you get for free - talk about creative sales!   Dish Network also makes it totally easy for you to order their services by letting your order their television  cable services online or over the phone, which anyone, like me, who’s online all the time anyways and doesn’t like to talk on the phone, can always appreciate.  As a customer of satellite television, I can honestly say that I’d recommend this reputable company to anyone else wanting a reliable, easy service with flexible options and great entertainment capabilities! 

Well, I saw the other film that appears in the double feature Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez film Grindhouse, and I was disappointed in it after being blown away by the original artsy “Deathproof” by Tarantino.  True enough, Planet Terror accomplishes its goal of being an over the top, cliche ridden horror film, but something about it just didn’t ring totally favorably with me, and maybe it was the forced cliche in it, or the fact that I thought they could have gotten a better lead actress than Rose McGowan to play the stripper with the machine gun leg.

As a matter of fact, I think Rodriguez’ nepotism may have hurt the film a bit, but that’s just my personal opinion.  I like Marly Shelton’s character best as the nurse who’s husband was an apparently abusive bastard.  We find out early on that Shelton’s character is having an affair on her doctor husband and is planning to leave him (husband is played by Josh Brolin).  We then find out that the person she’s having an affair with is, in fact, Fergie of the black eyed peas who ends up getting offed pretty early on in the film by the psycho flesh eating zombie types that have been created by some mysterious gas that causes people’s flesh to boil and causes them to crave the flesh of other humans.

Now, here’s another gripe I have about the film’s over-the-topness.  There is a character, played by Naveen Andrews (Andrews does a good job, and departs from his Sayid character in Lost very well, I think he has a lot of diverse potential actually), who is some mysterious military type who has brought the gas back from Iraq. 

He has a penchant to cutting off men’s testicles and keeping them preserved.  This part was just so ridiculous that it seemed almost like the writer/director just wanted to put balls in there and forced them into the plot, whether it made any stupid sense or not.  It wasn’t funny or clever as it was intended to be, it was just total gross out, blatant idiocy that I guess I just didn’t “get”.  The boyfriend really liked it, but he likes anything by Rodriguez, and since Tarantino was in it briefly, and had a hand in making the movie, he likes it of course. 

OK, I never thought I’d say this, but that new show that’s based on the cavemen that were made (sort of) famous by the Geico commercials, isn’t as bad as I had thought.  My boyfriend actually DVR’d the show for us just to take a look at, since we both thought it would more or less be a train wreck that we just felt compelled to see, and we were almost surprised when we found ourselves laughing and giggling at certain points during the show.

The show centers around 3 cavemen who are living amongst modern men or “homosapiens” and find themselves caught in situations of discrimination, or at least what they perceive as discrimination.  It also is just kind of funny to see these men with acentuated brow bones, chins, and a lot of hair walking around amongst regular guys. 

There is the quintessential sensitive guy, the jerk who thinks that cavemen should only date within their “genus” - you’ll get that joke if you see the first show - and the regular guy stuck in the middle who’s just trying to be the “regular guy” who has a normal life, but has a wimpy brother and a smartass best friend.  You might be pelasantly surprised if you watch the show, but if not, then turn it off!