Oktoberjest
Ain't got much to say these days. A bunch of my favorite TV shows have returned from summer hiatus, with "The Office" and "Lost" looking particularly excellent this season. I finally decided on a Halloween costume. Epica is amazing live. The SuicideGirls' burlesque show is hot. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" is not. I'll probably have some movie reviews for you soon, since I've been hitting the local Blockbusters' 4-for-$20 used DVD bins. Until then, I offer some other points of diversion.
-X-Entertainment's 4th annual Halloween Countdown is well underway. I have been reading Matt's amazing pop culture site since its near-infancy, and although it has steadily grown more impressive from a design and writing standpoint, he has never wavered from addressing most of the non-metal things that infatuate me. This guy loves Halloween as much as any smart person would, so the site always gets a makeover for the season. He frequently posts short, funny articles about everything from the year's new trick-or-treat candy offerings to reviews of old sitcoms' Halloween episodes to weird crap he picked up at a craft store. (He also does it for Xmas, complete with vintage commercial downloads and a daily dramedy created with toys that come out of the Playmobil Advent Calendar.) I love this site. I could not survive without it. Those who have never visited, please do.
-An early "Tom Goes to the Mayor" web-isode, in honor of the much-hated Adult Swim series' fantastic second season, which recently ended:
-Click here to read a great think-piece about heavy metal, ostensibly a review of Sam Dunn's semi-recent documentary "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey," but exploring a number of ideas crucial to understanding the music's place in today's cultural environment. The writer, Todd DePalma, touches on conundrums that have arisen alongside metal's recent commercial boom, as well as various means through which it has become "legitimized," such as academic study or accolades from mainstream rock stars. He even takes "Metalocalypse" to task for the exact things I find troublesome about it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: right now, it's an interesting time to be a headbanger in America. Just looking at last month, Lamb of God's fifth album debuted at number eight on the Billboard Top 200, while Iron Maiden's fourteenth somehow bowed at number nine - the highest U.S. chart debut in the band's 31-year history. And while nothing particularly innovative has been coming out of the bigger bands, there's a fascinating indie scene around where experimentalism reigns, warping boundaries as all underground scenes should. The Dunn documentary is widely available, from Netflix to my DVD shelf, and I encourage all to check it out. Like Ian Christe's "Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal," it's not extremely deep, but a knowledgeable overview that provides a good point of entry for those who don't sleep, breathe, eat and shit metal on a daily basis.
-Who a computer thinks I looked like circa Memorial Day 2005, when I had a novelty trucker moustache for a weekend:
-Good new tunes that recently joined the collection: Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Letting Go, Norma Jean's Redeemer, Mouse On Mars' Varcharz, Heaven Shall Burn's Deaf to Our Prayers, God Dethroned's The Toxic Touch and Parenthetical Girls' Safe as Houses.
-X-Entertainment's 4th annual Halloween Countdown is well underway. I have been reading Matt's amazing pop culture site since its near-infancy, and although it has steadily grown more impressive from a design and writing standpoint, he has never wavered from addressing most of the non-metal things that infatuate me. This guy loves Halloween as much as any smart person would, so the site always gets a makeover for the season. He frequently posts short, funny articles about everything from the year's new trick-or-treat candy offerings to reviews of old sitcoms' Halloween episodes to weird crap he picked up at a craft store. (He also does it for Xmas, complete with vintage commercial downloads and a daily dramedy created with toys that come out of the Playmobil Advent Calendar.) I love this site. I could not survive without it. Those who have never visited, please do.
-An early "Tom Goes to the Mayor" web-isode, in honor of the much-hated Adult Swim series' fantastic second season, which recently ended:
-Click here to read a great think-piece about heavy metal, ostensibly a review of Sam Dunn's semi-recent documentary "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey," but exploring a number of ideas crucial to understanding the music's place in today's cultural environment. The writer, Todd DePalma, touches on conundrums that have arisen alongside metal's recent commercial boom, as well as various means through which it has become "legitimized," such as academic study or accolades from mainstream rock stars. He even takes "Metalocalypse" to task for the exact things I find troublesome about it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: right now, it's an interesting time to be a headbanger in America. Just looking at last month, Lamb of God's fifth album debuted at number eight on the Billboard Top 200, while Iron Maiden's fourteenth somehow bowed at number nine - the highest U.S. chart debut in the band's 31-year history. And while nothing particularly innovative has been coming out of the bigger bands, there's a fascinating indie scene around where experimentalism reigns, warping boundaries as all underground scenes should. The Dunn documentary is widely available, from Netflix to my DVD shelf, and I encourage all to check it out. Like Ian Christe's "Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal," it's not extremely deep, but a knowledgeable overview that provides a good point of entry for those who don't sleep, breathe, eat and shit metal on a daily basis.
-Who a computer thinks I looked like circa Memorial Day 2005, when I had a novelty trucker moustache for a weekend:
-Good new tunes that recently joined the collection: Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Letting Go, Norma Jean's Redeemer, Mouse On Mars' Varcharz, Heaven Shall Burn's Deaf to Our Prayers, God Dethroned's The Toxic Touch and Parenthetical Girls' Safe as Houses.
posted by SoulReaper at 7:05 PM
2 Comments:
"Chainsaw" prequel loses its focus on the family
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" reveals the past of one of cinema's most enigmatic monsters. Yet, it doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
This is not a prequel to director Tobe Hooper's 1974 masterpiece of indie horror. It's a prequel to the modestly budgeted 2003 Hollywood remake, which, while no scratch on the original, at least managed to be unpleasant.
This one is just unnecessary.
Andrew Bryniarski, returning from the remake, becomes the only man to play Leatherface twice. Scene thief R. Lee Ermey and the other members of the cannibalistic Hewitt family are back as well, while director Jonathan Liebesman ("Darkness Falls") steps in to ostensibly explain how these Southern folk got so dang dirty and mean.
The 1974 film's quick exposition revealed an unhinged brood whose livelihood (slaughtering animals for meat production) disappeared due to mechanical advancement. Victims of technology, they bitterly secluded themselves in their farmhouse and became modern primitives. This all-male household lived off the land, hunting, eating and adorning their home with the bones of their prey – which often happened to be human.
The fleshed-out back story here isn't nearly as provocative. It opens in 1939, where we see a woman die giving birth on the floor of a meat packing plant. The baby is discovered in a dumpster by dotty old Luda Mae (Marietta Marich), brought home to the Hewitt house and dubbed Thomas. When he grows up to be an ugly, hulking, frustrated man, he cuts meat at the plant.
The facility is condemned in 1969. This makes Thomas so mad, he kills the owner with a sledgehammer. Ermey, acting as the dominant male in the family, shoots a sheriff to cover up Thomas' deed, assuming the cop's outfit, car and name: Hoyt. The family eats the evidence, Hoyt swears they'll never go hungry again and Thomas starts hiding his hideous mug behind masks he fashions out of his victims' faces.
And that's really all we get. Sure, there's a vague stab at contemporary resonance in the clan's prey, two brothers and their girlfriends whose road trip gets sidetracked by a car crash. Eric (Matthew Bomer), is heading back to fight in Vietnam, and thinks his younger brother, Dean (Taylor Handley), is coming with him. But Dean and his lady, Bailey (Diora Baird), plan to run to Mexico, while Chrissy (Jordana Brewster) silently wishes her squeeze Eric would stay.
The fact that we find all this out means too much time is spent with the victims, and not enough with the killers, whose story we're supposed to be witnessing. Just as all the sequels ran their characters through scenes carbon-copied from the original, so this prequel trots out the same old "Chainsaw" scenes (the patriarch turning from kindly to crazed, the dinner table torment, the getaway chase) with minimal variation.
It's occasionally gory, but even in that department it pulls some punches. Sometimes, we get suggestions of chainsaw carnage. Other times, it’s full-on shots of Leatherface's phallic power tool lopping off limbs or running through a torso. Along with the capricious application of gore effects, the film's drab look, bounteous cheap jolts, pointless slow motion shots, overactive score and social superficiality are blazing signposts of half-assery.
Not enough? How about using The Ides of March's "Vehicle," a classic blue-eyed soul single that was released in 1970, in the context of a movie set in 1969? The makers of "Beginning" must assume no one who was alive to hear that horn-driven hit's debut will be seeing this flick. Hopefully, they're right.
"Beginning" producers Hooper and Kim Henkel, co-writers of the original film, each already filmed their own goofy "Chainsaw" follow-ups, in 1986 and 1994, respectively. Along with the 2003 remake and 1990's MPAA-hacked "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III," the concept – which wasn't very deep to begin with – has been thoroughly explored.
But fright flicks are still surefire moneymakers when released during the off-seasons. 2006 has proven a decent year for horror cinema, having already delivered the playfully ugly "Hostel," the comedic '80s throwback "Slither" and the domestic release of Britain's cerebral 2005 creeper "The Descent." With the original "Chainsaw" looming as a large influence on the current trend of gritty, realistic, sun-bleached horror flicks ("The Devil’s Rejects," "Wolf Creek," "The Hills Have Eyes" – itself a remake of "Chainsaw" progeny), it was inevitable that the gang behind the lucrative remake would pick up the saw again. Too bad it's run out of gas.
Actually, with the 'stache I think you look a bit like Jim Croce.
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