House of Wax

House of Wax is a horror movie. It stars Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Jared Padalecki, and the (in)famous Paris Hilton. I must admit that I did not expect much from the movie. Truth be told, I expected this movie to be a cheesy horror film because Paris Hilton was in it. The only reason I decided to suck it up and suffer through it was because my dear Winchester brother, Jared Padalecki of Supernatural (CW15, Thursdays at 9 p.m.--it's an awesome show!) fame, was in it and he's not been in much besides Supernatural.

Alas, I was pleasantly surprised by this little movie. It follows a group of six college age friends on a road trip and, of course, they run into car trouble. They are forced to seek help in the small town of Ambrose where appearances can be deceiving and things are not what they seem. The small group of friends has no idea what horrors await them when a serial killer who keeps unique souvenirs from his kills decides they'll make nice additions to his collection and begins stalking them. The friends are forced to fight for their survival against a seriously twisted serial killer.

This movie is freaky, gruesome and scary. The fairly common premise of a group of young people stranded in the middle of nowhere and stalked by a serial killer is made freshly freaky by the setting and the freak show ending. While Paris Hilton turns out to be a decent actress, her socialite reputation and celebrity persona takes you out of the movie in her scenes.

Horror film buffs will enjoy this movie, and I recommend you check it out. It is available upon request from Annville Free Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Night Villa by Carol Goodman

It's the number sequence that's clued me in: 3-4-5, the simplest representation of the Pythagorean theorem. Ely was obsessed with it. He heard it in the cawing of the grackles outside our Hyde Park bungalow and claimed the traffic lights on Guadalupe were timed to it.

from page 12, The Night Villa

The Night Villa is Carol Goodman's latest novel. This one, like its predecessor, The Sonnet Lover, begins in the U.S. before moving the action to Italy.

Dr. Sophie Chase, a classics professor at the University of Texas, is working on a book about a first century Roman slave woman named Iusta who essentially took her masters to court to sue for her freedom. Iusta's fate--both the outcome of her court case and her life--is vague as she disappears from the historical record when her village, Herculaneum, is buried by fallout from the eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The eruption buried the entire town and many of its inhabitants, preserving them in volcanic ash until they are unearthed by archaeologists a couple thousand years later.

Dr. Chase is invited to work on a project over the summer in which she will participate in the scanning and translating of newly discovered papyrus scrolls from the excavated Roman villa where Iusta once lived as a slave. The scrolls may shed light on Iusta's fate as well as the fate of a rare scroll purportedly written by Pythagoras. Soon it appears that a sinister cult from back home--that may have ties to the disturbed student who shot up a UT conference room and killed two of Dr. Chase's colleagues and that follows Pythagorean teachings-- also has an interest in acquiring the rare scroll by any means necessary.

Twists and betrayals accompany this historical mystery buried for thousands of years under hundreds of feet of ash and dirt. This latest novel differs slightly from Goodman's previous works. Besides difference in settings--most of her previous novels take place in New York, even The Sonnet Lover begins at a NYC college before the setting shifts to Italy--the contemporary murder mystery doesn't play a large role in relation to the historical mystery. This isn't a big deal since the historical aspect of Goodman's story is by far the most intriguing. One thing I wish Goodman would work on is developing her minor characters rather than focusing all development on the narrator/main character. Underdevelopment of characters can largely detract from the story especially if a minor character comes out of nowhere to be revealed as the 'bad guy' in the story's resolution. I'm not sure if this is so much a problem in her earlier works or if its just that having read all of her fictional works, I'm now picking up on other elements of her writing.

Overall this is a satisfying read. I recommend it if you are a Carol Goodman fan. You won't regret checking it out and you might even have a hard time putting it down. This novel is available at Matthews Public Library upstairs in adult fiction.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie