Thomas Dekker Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In the '90s, I adored exactly three parts of Hollywood: alternative music flicks like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, Gregg Araki, and David Lynch. The first always bled into the other two, Araki partaking in the musical joys of bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order, and Badalamenti creating his own unique world of music. But now the other two are combining. Sort of.

Remember how I posted a month ago about Araki's new film, Kaboom? Well, some images have finally popped up over at Quiet Earth, including the confused-faced Thomas Dekker above. There are also shots of Dekker in bed, and some looks of exasperation, but that's not the kicker -- it's the synopsis, which kicks off with "A hyper-stylized TWIN PEAKS for the Coachella Generation..." Yes, Araki's getting into a little small-town quirk.

Building on that whole all-too-brief sexual awakening description from last month, the movie is "a wild and sex-drenched horror-comedy thriller" about an ambisexual college freshman who trips on "some hallucinogenic cookies" and is "convinced he's witnessed the gruesome murder of an enigmatic Red Haired Girl who has been haunting his dreams." Is the girl in a room with a black and white floor and thick, red curtains?

What do you think about the idea of Araki getting a little Lynchian?

Bring on the Araki! After getting busy with candy-coated 3-ways in Splendor, Gregg Araki concocted a little yin and yang. First came the gritty drama of Mysterious Skin, which revealed a range we didn't know existed. Then came the exact opposite -- the ridiculous Anna Faris-starring stoner comedy Smiley Face. But now the cult director is heading back to the green sprouts of sexual exploration.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Araki is shooting his latest feature, Kaboom, and he's tapped Roxane Mesquida (Fat Girl), Thomas Dekker (Sarah Connor Chronicles), Kelly Lynch (Charlie's Angels), and Rooney Mara (Youth in Revolt) to star. Not much is being revealed at this time, but here's what I could find online. As THR notes, Kaboom will focus on "the sexual awakening of a group of college students." Araki started the feature last month, HELEN STELLaR is performing in a scene, and Ann Magnuson (Panic Room) has a cameo as "a rich Beverly Hills type who has weekly trysts with her hunky young gigolo, 'Thor' -- played by hunky young actor Chris Zylka."

I'm really curious about how this will play out. Will it have the weirdness of films like Doom Generation and Nowhere, or go for the brightly lit comedy of Splendor and Smiley Face? Over the last 10 years, Araki has displayed a whole different bag of cinematic talents, and as he heads back to the themes that made him famous, I can't help but wonder if it will play out in an old school way or be yet another Araki surprise. Thoughts? Predictions? Araki love?

I'm not ashamed to say that I cry at the movies. Not frequently, but occasionally a story and its characters will grab hold of me to the extent that I'm completely caught up in the emotions and feelings being expressed. Films as disparate as John Ford's The Searchers and Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express have caused me to weep with joy, relief, and sorrow.

Despite a relentless barrage of scenes evidently designed with the sole goal of jerking tears, Nick Cassavetes' My Sister's Keeper did not make me cry. It is, however, one of the most glorious-looking terminal cancer pictures I've ever seen. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Black Stallion, The Natural) paints the oft-mundane proceedings in an otherworldly glow, as though the transition to the next life had already begun. That's the guiding principle of the movie as a whole; even though an inflammatory and emotionally wrenching issue serves as the linchpin for the plot, great pains are taken to soften the blows so as not to inflict lasting damage upon the viewer.

Frankly, that latter point, much more than whether I personally shed tears, is what prevents My Sister's Keeper from escaping middlebrow territory. Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric are splendidly noble as Brian and Sara Fitzgerald, whose daughter Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) is diagnosed at a young age with leukemia. Brian and Sara conceive another child with genetic modifications so she can serve as a donor to her sister. Anna (Abigail Breslin) (*) seems fine with all the body part donations until Kate's condition worsens to the point that she needs a kidney transplant. Then 11-year-old Anna marches into the office of well-known lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) and demands medical emancipation from her parents.

It doesn't look much like him, but that's Adam Goldberg in the photo above. He looks tired. He has a gun. Things can't be going right for him on this particular day. Cinematical has just received two exclusive photos (see both in larger formats in the gallery below) from the upcoming film From Within -- which happens to be one of the more buzzed-about films hitting the Tribeca Film Festival later this month. From Within also stars Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Laura Allen and Rumer Willis. Additionally, it was directed by Phedon Papamichael, who worked as a cinematographer on films like 3:10 to Yuma, The Pursuit of Happyness and The Weather Man. Check out the synopsis below:

"The small, serene community of Grovetown is shaken by the dual suicide of a young couple. When more suicides quickly follow, people in the evangelical town turn a blind eye and cling firmly to their deep-seated beliefs. Lindsay (Elizabeth Rice), a local student and girlfriend of the pastor's son, is not so dismissive. She begins to prod deeper into the mystery and befriends Aidan (Thomas Dekker), a non-believer whose family has stirred controversy before. Lindsay soon discovers that something evil and indescribable is at work, moving parasitically from victim to victim. As the frightened locals begin looking for revenge, Lindsay is convinced she will be the next to die and realizes that Aidan may be the only hope of eradicating the suicidal plague."

Last month, the Fannings dumped My Sister's Keeper, and paved the way for Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva to take over the heavy fare. Now they've got a dad and boyfriend. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jason Patric and Thomas Dekker are joining the two girls and momma Cameron Diaz in the drama (which also stars Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack).

Breslin plays a 13-year-old who sues her parents, former district attorney Diaz (heh) and fireman husband Patric, for emancipation because she was "conceived and underwent several operations" to help save the life of her cancer-ridden sister (Vassilieva). Dekker, meanwhile, plays the boyfriend of the older sister, who has survived his own fight with cancer.

I guess that they changed the script around in the last month? A reader pointed out when the Fannings left that the original story has the sisters a bit older than Elle and Dakota. That's not too hard to switch. However, it's a bit of a jump to add John Connor as older sis' beau. Perhaps they just made the boyfriend older (Dekker is 20), or switched a friend into a boyfriend? Dakota is mature, but not that mature! Whatever the case, the playing field is different now, and the drama is currently filming in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, lots of posters these days don't amount to much. Either they're too run-of-the-mill, or they use so much damn airbrushing that it looks like Robert Zemeckis took over production and live captured the whole movie, instead of it being a plain-jane live-action film. Everyone once in a while, a simple one surfaces that just seems to get it -- often with Steve Carrell. (The 40-Year-Old Virgin poster was brilliant, and the Get Smart poster, which we premiered yesterday, isn't too shabby either.) And then sometimes, just sometimes, the posters just plain rock.

If the four pics that Entertainment Weekly just released of The Sarah Connor Chronicles are any indication of the show's content, this sucker should be great. Making a show based on Terminator is all sorts of tricky, but man, they knew how to cast. The first poster has Summer Glau, probably one of the coolest fighters ever, in all of her robot glory. Then there's Lena Headey channeling Linda Hamilton with that tough tank and bulging veins. And then, delightfully, more Glau. There's one with her naked torso, boobage covered by her hair (see pic to the right), and another where her skin is burned away to show the machine below.

I think the lesson is simple. For the most part, the simpler, the better. Sometimes studios try so hard to make it look cool, that any appealing potential gets stripped away. There's a reason why posters like these work -- they take the best of what the movie has to offer, or in this case a show, and lets it speak for itself. That being said, I wonder why Thomas Dekker doesn't appear in any of them?

Entertainment Weekly has published the first photo of Owain Yeoman as one of the new evil Terminator's in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a new show hitting Fox this January (click on the image for a larger version courtesy of Coming Soon). The series picks up, time-wise, after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, while Sarah Connor (played by the very lovely Lena Headey, 300) and her son John (Thomas Dekker) are on the run from the authorities and, well, evil robots. Eventually, they decide to stop running and confront their problems head-on. To make things interesting, John meets a girl at school (Summer Glau) who turns out to be the new Terminator sent to protect him and Sarah. In addition to the television show, we'll also be getting three more Terminator films, all of which (we believe) will take place in the future and not in present day. Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins (aka Terminator 4) may or may not be directed by McG and is scheduled to hit theaters in 2009.

What do you think about this new Terminator TV series? Does it have any promise, or do you not see it making it past the first season?

If you watch any amount of television, or keep your eye on TV news sites, you've probably heard of Thomas Dekker -- the kid who played Zach, the cheerleader's gay friend on Heroes. The actor found himself in the middle of controversy when his character was "de-gayed" on the show. There were claims that it was Dekker's agent who started the mess, while the actor says that Zach was always straight. From Heroes, he nabbed the role of John Connor in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and now he's going to star in Phedon Papamichael's indie thriller From Within. Presumably, everyone is on the same page this time about his character's sexuality.

Anyhow, the film is about a God-fearing town and a young girl who lives in it. She's torn between her Christian roots and her desire to experience the outside world. Her urge to leave increases when people of the town being to die suspiciously. I imagine that Elizabeth Rice, also listed to star, will be the girl, and that Dekker is her something or other -- friend? Boyfriend? Sexually-confused counterpart? Who knows. Medium co-star Jake Weber is also starring, along with Adam Goldberg of all people. That's right -- the Hebrew Hammer is in the Christian thriller movie -- as the token character, perhaps, or maybe the guy who whets Rice's out-of-town desires? The script was written by Brad Keene, whose sole writing credit is last year's The Gravedancers, which Christopher Campbell described as: "good, stupid entertainment that knows its ghosts and has a lot of fun introducing them to you." Production on the movie begins next month in Maryland.

OK, we're skirting dangerously close to TV Squad's turf here, but hey, it's not every day you get a new TV series based on one of the most popular science fiction series of the modern age! Click right here to check out the brand-new promotional trailer for Fox's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which not only delivers the seriously sexy Lena Headey as the titular character, but also Firefly's Summer Glau as a sexy robotic butt-kicker sent back from the future to keep our young hero safe! Cool! (Oh, and the young man looks like he could be potentially "dreamy." His name's Thomas Dekker and he can presently be seen as Zach on Heroes.)

Created by genre veteran David Nutter (he's worked on geek-shows as cool as The X-Files, Roswell and Smallville) and written by War of the Worlds co-penner Josh Friedman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles will take place between the action of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the deliciously dark ending of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Won't that placement kind of spoil some of the surprises since those of us who saw T3 already know what happens to these characters? Well, maybe. But I'm pretty sure that Nutter and Friedman have considered that angle. Plus we can always use another GOOD sci-fi series on television, so color me suitably psyched to see Sarah this fall. (Just in case you forgot: Lena Headey was the woman in 300. The only woman.)