ENTERTAINTMENT

'Amityville Horror' remake breaks Away from Original Script
Jason Kimbro | Staff Reporter

It was about a year and a half ago when Michael Bay sat in the producer’s chair and contributed to the horrid remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” It was horrid, not in the way a scary movie should be horrid, but in the way Hollywood is best, or worst, at being. The flick was full of clichés and derivative horror-movie formulas that weren’t even smoothed out after they were imported from the original.
With that in mind, my expectations for Bay’s most recent film, a remake of “The Amityville Horror,” were hardly high.
I went into the theater expecting to be, well, unimpressed. I wish I could say I was proven wrong. This movie provides its audience with a few decent scares, but mostly I was subjected to the same vomit that burned my eyes a year and a half before.
Well, maybe it wasn’t all that bad, but hey, it is a lot more fun this way. Anyway, here’s the gist:
George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds) has just married Kathy (Melissa George), a widow with three adorable children. They are trying to live the American dream in Long Island, but it is taking George some time to get his construction business on its feet.
What better way to improve your lifestyle than to move into a classy neighborhood in an upscale town? This dream seemed out of reach due to a lack of funds – that is, until they find the home of their dreams barely within their budget.
The house is a steal! Huge!  Immaculate! Historical! Haunted! Yes, the house is apparently cursed. 
Just a year before, a whole family was murdered by one of its members who claimed to have been possessed (Supposedly some of this is based on fact, but I am sure its creditability reaches into the realms of my stories of sleeping with Angelo State University Cheerleaders in the basement of the Alamo).
Well, even though the real estate agent was kind enough to inform them of the tragedy behind the house, they decided to purchase the home anyway. Then, zip, bam, boom! They’re moved in.
Sinister and disturbing things begin to happen soon after they move in. The audience is treated to a scene with bloody-jawed pedophiles watching the youngest son urinate.
George, who was a fun-loving, grown-up version of Van Wilder, begins to get a bit fussy and abusive. He now likes to play sick games. One particular favorite is having the oldest boy hold onto logs while he whacks at them with an ax. Fun stuff!
The daughter befriends a girl by the name of Jody. Jody just so happens to be the ghost of the youngest victim of the massacre from the year before. But for the most part, Jody is a nice ghost – unless you are a bong-smoking babysitter with a killer bod.
The days add up, and, right on the 28th day, Kathy discovers after a bit of research that it was on the 28th day that the other guy went crazy and shot up the rest of his family.
It is then that she finally decides to get the family out of the house, so what do they do in order to escape the clutches of the crazed Van Wilder? Kathy decides to make her family follow the young daughter onto the roof in the middle of a thunderstorm! Now that makes sense!
I really would like to tell you how this movie ends up, but alas, you would be pissed off at me for giving such an obvious spoiler.
The film lacked enough scares to make it a great horror flick, though it did have a few decent jumps – especially the pedophile ghosts. They scared the poopie right out of my diapie!
The story was basic. This is, in all senses of the word, I suppose, a remake, and a remake is difficult to give a new life to. So, with this in mind, I will actually be a little kind here. Well, I would be a little kind, but some of the crap they pulled in this flick was just too ridiculous. The roof? The roof! I mean, come on, man!
Plus, the ending was pretty awful.
Performances were decent. The best were probably those of the two sons. The older son (Jesse James) really took the cake as the rebellious preteen.
There was a fairly decent aura presented in this film. The house was definitely creepy, but I cannot give the credit for that to Michael Bay and his team, as it was the house from the original flick.
And there we have it again. So much crap, so little toilet paper. If I run out, I will at least have my ticket stub. I will be back next week with my review of “PeeWee’s Snuffhouse Adventure!”  Or maybe I should choose something else. We’ll see.


Prepare To Die: The Kills bring back Old Sound
Richard Carter | Dance Music Critic

Whenever I get bored with contemporary music, I go back to the tunes of the olden days.
There’s numerous forays into late 19th and early 20th century classical music, avant-garde jazz from the ‘50s and ‘60s and my all-time favorite diversion, the Velvet Underground.
Though the short lived ‘60s New York group only made four studio CDs, these recordings remain timeless and brilliant. No band has had a larger influence on what I consider to be the best music of the last 35 years than the Velvets.
Everyone from the German band Can to the English gloom rockers Joy Division to the new Anglo duo “The Kills” listened to the Velvet Underground and found some manner and means to express themselves.
It’s almost as if rock music reinvents itself whenever a new band rediscovers the Velvets’ “Sunday Morning,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Heroin.”
The Kills fell in love with the Velvets on their way to becoming what singer Alison Mosshart called  “a lawless left-field Bonnie & Clyde.”
The band recently performed a critically-revered set at SXSW in support of their new CD, “No Wow,” a collection of 11 low-fi songs written and recorded raw, the way rock was supposed to be.
Comprised of singer and guitarist, VV (Mosshart) and guitarist, drum machinist and second vocalist, Hotel (Jamie Hince), the duo plays a root-ish raw rock based on anger and desire, muffled and reverb drenched guitars and a steady-as-she-goes drum machine.
I could do without the drum machine, and so could the duo on their first CD, “Keep on Your Mean Side,” but the new CD still works in spite of the canned beats.
The album, production-wise, plays about as direct as Mosshart’s opening line on the CD, “You’re going to have to step over my dead body, before you walk out that door.”
The duo, though not a couple, began when the two members started sending tapes to one another. Exasperated by the mail delay, they finally met in London, and started doing low-fi recordings that exuded a certain warehouse and garage-like grunge.
Mosshart often captures the intensity and attitude of early P.J. Harvey vocals, while Hince seems content to structure songs on rough Velvets-like guitar strums.
What I like best about “No Wow” is that, the more I listen to the songs, the more I appreciate them. (Familiarity only seems to breed contempt with most listening nowadays). The duo’s riffs became catchier with successive listens, and the nuances of the writing and emotions become clearer.
Live, I’m told by my Austin friends, the duo often physically act their tunes out, so they appeal more immediately to crowds. But with no show scheduled for Dallas anytime soon, it looks like the CD will have to suffice. It’s worth the effort.
 
CD loaned for review purposes by Hastings Entertainment on Southwest Pkwy and Kemp Blvd. Dial 696-8029, punch 3 and ask for tunes.