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Preview
The following list is a briefguide to
weekend events. Please call venues
for more information.
CONCERTS:
Duggan’s Pub, 440 S. 11th St ^
Friday and Saturday: Radio King ^
Guitars & Cadillacs, 5400 O St U
Friday: Sandy Creek m
Saturday: Step Child
Knickerbockers, 901 O St
Friday: Almost None, Lowercase i
Saturday: The Mediums, Blacklight
Sunshine, Rich Schultz
Sunday: The John Entwistle Band
Lied Center for Performing Arts,
301N. 12th St
Saturday: Klezmer Conservatory Band
Sunday: Victor Boige
Royal Grove Nite Club, 340 W.
Cornhusker Highway
Friday: Version 3
Saturday: Self-Rightous Brothers
i
Zoo Bar, 136 N. 14th St.
Friday afternoon: Blues Mechanics
Friday evening: The Paladins
Saturday: Mark Hummel, the Blues
Survivors ‘ ~ *'
THEATER:
Lincoln Community Playhouse,
2500 S. 56th St i
Friday, Saturday and Sunday: “Big
River”
Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater\ $
12th & R streets
Friday, Saturday and Sunday: j
“Smoke Signals” I\
UNL Department of Theatre Arts, (
Temple Building, 12th and R streets '
Friday and Saturday: “Waiting for
Godot”
Wagon Train Project, 512 S.
Seventh St ^
Friday: Heidi Ameson
Sunday: Nena St. Louis. !
GALLERIES:
Joslyn Art Museum, 2200 Dodge
St, Omaha
Saturday: opening of “Arts of Asia”
Haunted houses going high-tech
,
\ By Jason Hardy
1 Senior staff writer
They’ve come a long way from the days of
ummies in high tops, cotton cobwebs and some
body’s unemployed uncle wearing a spooky sheet
They’re haunted houses, and nowadays
they’ve become big business. _
Thanks to top-of-the-line special effects
technology, a new commitment to believability
and lots of Pepsi sponsorships, haunted hous
es are now high-tech monuments to human
. gj- carnage and macabre bliss.
Jytj s Don C. Losole owns Design Effects, a
' if' nationally known manufacturer of haunted
8 house props, which is a major contributor to the
/ fear technology that is taking haunted houses
rx , screaming into the future.
w-A “It’s definitely more realistic,” Losole said of
\ his newly remodeled, three story, 2,500-square
—\ foot Fright Zone, 1711 California Drive, in
Omaha. “We can get pretty close to what it
looks like in die movies.”
Y Things like mechanical monsters, voice syn
7 thesizers and even souped-up sound systems Jhave
' become commonplace in the last four years and
are no longer unique to Hollywood horror films.
“It’s not just two little speakers and a boom box
anymore,” said Losole, attesting to the realistic
sounds created by his house’s Sony Minidisk sys
tem.
Jason Egan, a University ofNebraska-Lincoln
junior and co-owner of Lincoln’s newest haunted
house, The Tomb of Darkness, 126 N. 16th
St., said he, too, enlisted high-tech spook
props temakehishoase more^eafyr'50.'
“I’ve got a flying corpse that
shoots 8 feet over the crowd, a volcano
tunnel, and I hire all drama students,”
Egan said. “It’s not one of your black
wall haunted houses.”
With the technological leaps and
bounds comes a price, however, and
Losole, who has been in the business
for about five years, said it’s easy to
£ wrap up a small fortune in a
single haunted house.
^“Nowadays you
can’t build one for
$10,000 or $15,000,”
w * Losole said. “Some
of our props
cost $15,000 and the Fright Zone itself costs
$500,000. We’re also sponsored by Pepsi, who
helped us get sponsored by Taco Bell and Baker’s
Supermarkets.
“We also honor the Baker’s value card.”
Tom Godard, president of Haunted Mansion
Inc., a haunted-house and prop manufacturer out
ofKisimmee, Fla., can attest to the industry’s esca
lation toward big-business costs and strategies.
“It progressed slowly at first and then by leaps
and bounds in the last few years,” Godard said.
To update his Haunted Mansion to the ’90s
standards, the 13-year spook veteran spent more
than $7 million on animatronics, latex props, gen
uine antique accessories, real snakes, spiders and
chain saws-oh my!
“To make a successful haunted house is
expensive beyond most people’s budget,” Godard
said. “But it makes available a much wider range
of attractions.” '
uespne me minions or dollars poured mto
haunted houses each year, Godard and Losole
claim die old-fashioned basics have to take priori
ty over the technology for a haunted hbtisetobe
successful ^ :
“No matter how many animatronics, no matter
the sound quality and no matter die money, it’s still
the people that make haunted houses work,”
Losole said. “You could have a gorgeous set, but if
you don’t have the right people, it just won’t work.
People are still the backbone of the haunted-house
industry.”
Godard agrees.
“There is no computer fast enough to analyze
how a person is acting or approaches a scene. They
can’tmake those quick decisionsandact appropri
ate!#* Godard sM fcitQMOT
is looking a^ay;^
But does all this ensure a higher level of fear?
“I think it’s a lot scarier,” Losole said. “Every
year our attendance increases,
and so far this is the
best we’ve ever had.
“I’ve had adults
come out crying
and people scared
out of their minds.
You know those
best. We
those guys.”
Film
Courtesy Photo
The first feature film to be completely directed
and produced by an all American-lndian team,
“Smoke Signals” explores the stereotypes and
hurdles of the American-lndian commngity.
By Sabah Baker
Senior staff writer
More often than not, movies based on books
tend to go awry from die original text and lead
viewers to think they should have spent their six
bucks at the bookstore instead of the theater.
But “Smoke Signals,” based on the stories
from Sherman Alexie’s book “The Lone Ranger
and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” breaks the long
standing pattern of sub-par film adaptations.
The film is the first full-length, feature film
written, directed and co-produced solely by
American Indians.
It tells the story ofVictor Joseph, who travels,
along with his childhood companion Thomas
I Builds-the-Fire, from his home on an Idaho
Indian reservation to Arizona to recover the
remains ofVictor’s unexpectedly deceased father.
The two companions were saved by Victor’s
father, Arnold Joseph, as children from a blazing
fire that encompassed Victor’s childhood home
and killed Thomas’ parents.
Thomas and Victor are linked from the start
after both being rescued from the fire. But as they
grow older, the two become complete opposites.
Victor is the popular, handsome one who
buys into the idea of being an American-Indian
“warrior” and approaches life with an attitude
that everyone is out to get him, while Thomas is
an oddball with an obscure talent for storytelling
and a pair of geeky braids.
Once tiie two leave on the trip after Arnold’s
- Tfte Facts
Title: "Smoke Signals”
Stare: Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard
Director Chris Eyre
Rating: PG-13
Grade: B
Five Words: Adapted book makes great movie
death, the story becomes one full of emotional
turmoil, for both toe viewer and characters.
The story relies on a mix of flashbacks and
present day scenes, making for smooth and often
Please see SMOKE on 10