The Amityville Horror – movie review

I was not scared by this movie. Even the things that were supposed to be startling were not startling to me. The story of why the house is evil gets a very brief treatment and doesn’t match up well with the symptoms we see during the course of the film. And a lot of the time, the things the ghosts/house are doing just don’t make sense.

Which is not to say the film doesn’t work at all. Some of the things that were going on (especially re: the boat house) were clear and specific and working to drive George Lutz (played amazingly by Ryan Reynolds) mad and get him to murder his family. And Ryan’s performance was outstanding. His transformation from the light-hearted, happy-go-lucky man that Ryan has played perhaps too often in the past into the fierce, angry, determined being that is being driven to acts of increasing menace and violence is well done. Perhaps too quick, to keep the pacing of the movie up to modern audiences’ standards, but otherwise believable and the scariest scenes in the movie feature George when he’s in between sane and that point of being totally under the house’s control. This is the most impressive performance I’ve ever seen Ryan Reynolds give, and it really shows his range as an actor.

The special effects are excellent, the lighting and cinematography are appropriate, the sound is sufficiently well-produced. The other performers do well enough, and the children were all well cast. Especially Jodie (Isabel Conner), a little dead girl, whose performance shines nearly as bright as Ryan’s. Phillip Baker Hall almost seemed to be phoning in his performance as a priest scared of the house; he has done, and could have done here, much better work.

Overall, if you are a fan of horror films, you will probably enjoy this one. I may just not have been in the mood to be scared. If you don’t like horror, or if you are highly critical or remakes and adaptations, stay away.
One more thing:

Ryan Reynolds is … very fit.

Remarkably so. The most memorable visual in the movie may not have been any twisted, bloody, rotting, horrible apparition, but Ryan Reynolds walking around without a shirt on.

Ripped. Ripped is a good word to describe him. I’d seen that he’d put on a lot of muscle for Blade III, but it’s all still there, maybe moreso, for Amityville. His entire upper body looked carved. Broad, muscular shoulders, well-defined pectorals, six-pack abs, huge arms…

If nothing else, watching The Amityville Horror instilled me with a renewed drive to work out. I actually used my Bowflex again this morning, did a full set of upper body exercises on it, was somewhat surprised that my strength seems to have gone up since the last time I used it. Plus I was easily able to do about 360 crunches (about half of them oblique) with 50lbs resistance. I’ve been working on following my diet (the one I’m writing the diet book for right now), and between that, getting back to using the Bowflex, and probably some bicycling, maybe I can get into that kind of shape myself.

I mean, if Carrot Top and Van Wilder can do it, I can. Right?

(Have you see Carrot Top without a shirt? I thought it was a fake chest at first.)

shuffling my projects again

Okay, so here’s what I seem to be doing: I am no longer trying to get the graphic novel completed before the end of April. I started working on my ‘sin eater’ novel again the other night, though, and am makng progress. I got to the end of the first two scenes last night (I’ll probably put one of them online later), and with perseverence I should be able to finish this novel by the end of the month. And the diet book.

I still fully intend to complete it in at least one format, at the very least number of drawings, a novel with a dozen or so full-page illustrations, and possibly a graphic novel comprised of around 14 comic-book-length chapter, and maybe also a mini-comic featuring stick figures, depending on how satisfied I am with whatever the main portion of it works out to be. I’ve been having trouble nailing it down; I have the basic story in mind, the characters and dramatic structure and all that, but I haven’t worked out the format that best suits it. I’ve got it started in at least four different major styles so far, one in poetry with no illustrations yet, one in third person omniscient with reasonable quality illustrations, one in first person with stick figures, and some notes on how to do it as a novel with illustration. Maybe I’ll tell this story four or five ways. Two of the styles listed require me to tell the story twice each.

Anyway, what I was wondering is what you’d call this sort of thing. Is it just re-scheduling? That’s what it feels like; I wasn’t able to wrap my head fully around the drawn comic in the first half of the month, so I’ve pushed it back and moved up some projects I can get work done on immediately. Or does it look like I’m covering up over-reaching? I mean, in some respects it could be seen that way; I said I’d do more than I’m going to be able to do in the time period I specified, and I’ve taken a major project off the list of projects with ‘deadlines’ altogether. Though I am thinking of trying to do a 48hr comic on the weekend of 24hr comic day (next weekend), which, at my 4hr comic rates could be graphic-novel-length, to make up the difference. Or does this all look like something else I’m not seeing?

Maybe it just looks like me. I have big deams, ideals, and goals. I intend to do a lot, and I announce it. Some of it I get done the way I said I would, some of it I get done a little slower than I expected, and some of it ends up on the endless “to do later” list, and more stuff gets added to the top of the queue all the time so I never run out of big projects. Heck, after I came home from writing last night I started painting with gouache on illustration board in my old geometric style. Who knows what I’ll be working on a month from now?

reading after writing

Reading good fiction has become very strange and frustrating for me.

It is an affirmation and condemnation at the same time.

Generally, fiction I consider ‘good fiction’ tends to also be what I consider far, far better than my own writing. This may be some internal self-deprecation at work or my inability to separate myself from what I have written, but … I think most of all it is that I don’t seem to write like other people, so my writing is just … different. Better or worse, depending on personal opinions, but inherently merely different. Yet, when I read something by someone else and am drawn into the story, the characters, the highs and the lows, I seem unable to stop thinking about how much “better” the writing is than mine, how mine doesn’t look anything like theirs.

Continue reading reading after writing

nbt – never been thawed : a movie review

(cross-posted from Modern Evil)

If you don’t already know what nbt is about, go to neverbeenthawed.com and watch the trailer, maybe look around the extensive site, and then come back here to read what I have to say about it.

Now, assuming you’ve watched the trailer, you probably already have a good idea about whether or not you’ll like this film, and the basic elements that run through the experience. My review probably won’t sway you one way or the other – you either like offbeat humor, faux documentary style, and can handle (or better yet, appreciate) the humor of the skewed and hypocritical “Christian” characters, or you can’t. If this movie were rated by the MPAA, it would get an R rating for “language” and “suggestive dialogue” alone – so if you’re sensitive to obscenities, you, too, should stay away.

For the rest of you, my review:

Continue reading nbt – never been thawed : a movie review