We saw The Illusionist tonight. It was beautiful done and well acted. My only problem with it was that I figured out the major plot twist halfway through. Has anyone else seen it yet?

But now I have to ask:

Narrator, I don't know from the remake, but IIRC, it's a scene straight from the original, which involves everyone in the pagan community on the island getting dressed up as animals and such for a festival leading up to the burning of the Wicker Man.

Not yet, sj. I considered going to it this weekend, but ended up doing other things. How did you like it otherwise?

I really loved it. The costuming and the look of it was beautiful. The actors were all very good. Jessica Biel, who I have really never seen in a film was surprisingly good. Plus, it is the kinds of movie that kept Teacup Guy and I talking about it all through dinner, which I always like.

That's great, as long as you don't fight.

No, no fighting. Just theorizing.

Sean is correct regarding the bear suit. Somehow, it's not a laugh-out-loud funny scene in the original the way it is here...

sj, I had the same issue with The Illusionist -- since offscreen death = not really dead, I spent the last hour of the film waiting for Paul Giamatti to figure it out and wondering what the hell Ed Norton was still doing in town, since if she's not dead, the prince didn't murder her, and he has no reason to want revenge! I guess we were supposed to think that he was also really opposed to him ever becoming emperor, but...meh. There just didn't seem to be any motivation for his actions after Sophie "died" that weren't directly tied to misleading the audience.

[Ironically, DH and I saw both the same day and were surprised to find that The Wicker Man was the one generating more conversation. The Illusionist, we both thought was fine, kind of disappointing, and very predictable, so not much to talk about. But The Wicker Man sucked in all sorts of fascinating ways.]

Jessica, I assumed he stuck around because the prince had it in for him and, therefore, it was better to do a big disappearing act. Plus it brought the story back around to the beginning.

sj, I had the same thing. I figured it was just me, since I almost always figure out a mystery before I'm supposed to. With The Illusionist, it was the items Norton packed into the suitcase, which we see him give to Biel. He packs a glass jar of something, and glass jars mean some kind of medicine, and I just automatically made the leap to Juliet faking her death with a potion that puts her into a coma. I saw the jar and immediately knew, and spent the rest of the movie half-wondering whether I was wrong.

P.S. Did you catch the modern panty line at the end? All movie long, mostly-respectable historicity, and then that panty line.

In the original Wicker Man, it's a Punch costume, which has all sorts of symbolism. Bear costume, NSM.

Too bad the director didn't have the cojones to put Cage in a Scream costume.