Lately, Wes Bentley has tried to bury someone who was alive, terrorized a paramour in a parking lot, and written suicide notes. He's also gearing up for some Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, but that's not all. The Hollywood Reporter posts that the actor has signed on for an independent psychological drama with Katharine McPhee (The House Bunny) and Anita Briem (who plays Jane Seymour in The Tudors) called The Storyteller.

Penned (and to be directed) by Robert Angelo Masciantonio (All Along), The Storyteller stars Bentley as "a writer who goes on a downward spiral when his father dies, causing his assistant (McPhee) to start investigating whether his muse, as well as narrator for his stories (Briem), is a figment of his imagination."

As I mentioned above, Bentley also got some Poe work on the way, an adaptation of the short story Ligeia, which also has him starring as a writer. So, which writer fellow will be next, should he continue the trend? My vote, based on looks: D.H. Lawrence.

I was beginning to think that the big-screen adaptation of Dolan's Cadillac had once again slid into development hell. First there was Kevin Bacon and Sylvester Stallone. Then, last February, Dennis Hopper was in talks to play the mob boss, and production was going to begin that Spring. Now, we've got a new cast and a new start date.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Christian Slater, Wes Bentley, and Emmanuelle Vaugier will star in the feature, which is being whipped up by Film Bridge International. This is, most definitely, not a cast I would have thought of. Dolan's Cadillac is a thriller about a man (Bentley) who is distraught when his school teacher wife (Vaugier) is murdered. She has seen a mobster, Jimmy Dolan (Slater), kill someone in the desert, and before she can testify against him, she is murdered. The widower then plans to get revenge on the Las Vegas mobster and his silver Caddy.

To think that I thought Eminem and Hayden Christiansen were an odd match. How on earth do you get from Hopper to Slater? I'm sad to say that this sounds like a desperate rush job now. I love Slater, and have really enjoyed Bentley, but this feels so very second-string. The new production start date: May 14.

This is a great week to catch up with a few indies that came and went quickly in theaters. Craig Zobel's Great World of Sound burst out of Sundance last year with positive notices -- check GreenCine Daily's roundup -- and our own James Rocchi named it one of the ten best of the year. The basic premise is that two music scouts go on the road in the American South to look for acts to sign. In James' original review, he described it as "funny and vital and tough." Magnolia's DVD includes an audio commentary and deleted scenes.

If Feast of Love had nothing else to recommend it, it would deserve recommendation as director Robert Benton's latest work. As Jeffrey M. Anderson commented, Benton's melodramas (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool) "almost always hit home." Feast of Love "focuses on several couples in a Portland college community," he wrote. "These characters may live in a college town, but in love, everyone has something to learn." Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear and Radha Mitchell star. MGM's DVD looks bare, with just one feature evidently on board.

Director Allan Moyle returned to his roots (Pump Up the Volume, Empire Records) to make Weirdsville, in which stoners, Satanists and drug dealers commingle. In her TIFF review, Monika Bartyzel called it "fun, endearing, and quite fluid for a stoner comedy. It's also recognizably Canadian (the drug dealer is into curling), but still completely palpable for wider audiences." Wes Bentley and Scott Speedman star. Magnolia's DVD includes an audio commentary and 14 featurettes: behind the scenes, making of, and interviews.

I've always loved movies that take place over a limited amount of time in a limited space, say over the course of a few hours or one day, in a specific neighborhood or building. Movies that take place over many years tend to skimp on the everyday details that really make a story, but when a filmmaker is forced to closely examine a specific space, those small things can come to life. (This excludes, of course, movies based on plays in which characters sit in a single room and talk.) These two extremes separate the men from the boys; anyone can blunder through an epic, lining up blocks of scenes one after the other like columns of marching ants, but it takes a real talent to find poetry in the mundane. While I can't say that the new thriller P2, which takes place entirely in a parking garage on Christmas Eve, is a shining example, it still has one or two worthwhile ideas, despite its clumsy flaws.

Newcomer director Franck Khalfoun, along with his more experienced co-writer and producer Alexandre Aja (director of High Tension and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes), makes wonderful use of the big New York City high rise with all its sinister safety precautions that eventually turn against our heroine. Angela (Rachel Nichols) is forced to work late into Christmas Eve, finishing up an important document. Late for a Christmas party at her sister's house, she heads down into the parking garage only to find that her car won't start. A friendly night watchman, Thomas (Wes Bentley), tries to help, but to no avail. She calls a cab, but finds that she can't actually exit the lobby of the building. The locks that are designed to keep people out over the holiday are actually keeping poor Angela inside.

Cinematical has just gotten an exclusive clip and photos for the upcoming Alexandre Aja and Franck Khalfoun garage horror film P2, which will finally bleed its way onto the big screen this week. Filmed in a particularly creepy garage around the corner from Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario (pretending to be New York City), P2 is about a businesswoman named Angela (Rachel Nichols) whose Christmas Eve is anything but jolly. She finds herself to be the sadistic, lust-filled focus of Thomas (Wes Bentley), a psycho security guard, in a deserted parking garage.

Thomas doesn't take too kindly to Angela's sexual past, and this clip has him ready to give some ex-lover a taste of blood-filled horror medicine. Luckily, you don't even have to imagine what happens to the guy -- some extra clips over at JoBlo answer that question, and show you why Thomas is working as a security guard and not a makeup artist. The lipstick horror fest opens on Friday, so check out the trailer and more clips on the film's website. Additionally, stay tuned for Jeffrey M. Anderson's review tomorrow, and check out the gallery below -- featuring two new exclusive shots plus a bunch more creepy P2 images.

If Alfred Hitchcock taught us anything, it's that sometimes suspense can occur in the most unlikely of places: cornfields, brightly lit motels, and even Mount Rushmore. But I have to admit, I wouldn't necessarily count a parking garage as one of them -- they're kind of spooky, but only when you don't tip the attendant for bringing you your car. Shock Till You Drop now has the exclusive poster for the indie-thriller P2. The horror was created by the team behind the French thriller High Tension, Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes). This time, Khalfoun is at the helm, and he also contributed to the script along with Aja. Next up for Aja will be the horror flick Mirrors with Tension writer Grégory Levasseur, and starring Kiefer Sutherland and Amy Smart.

P2 follows a successful businesswoman who is kidnapped by a creepy security guard with an ax to grind over his spurned affections. Wes Bentley (who has been relatively absent from the movies since his big break in American Beauty) stars as the wacko parking attendant, and Rachel Nichols is the career girl on the run. Nichols is a relative unknown to most, but for fans of Alias, her face might ring a bell as 'Rachel Gibson'. Next up for Nichols is a role that is probably a little more high profile; she has a part in the Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson's War directed by Mike Nichols (no relation). P2 was shot on location in Toronto, Canada last January and is set to hit theaters on November 9th.

Like any fun but exhausting activity, you're anxious for it to be over, but then you miss it when it is. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, TIFF 2007 has wrapped. Eastern Promises nabbed the People's Choice prize, and the wonderful My Winnipeg grabbed top Canadian honors. (Rejoice!) But there was still lots of fun, great films, and some fest craziness that came before the awards were handed out.

My favorite story from TIFF came from a friend who had gone to see Starting Out in the Evening. She loved the film, and said that the end had made her teary-eyed. Impressed with Frank Langella's performance, she walked up to him as she was leaving the theater and told him so. "Are you crying?" he asked, and then wiped her tears away. That Frank is a slick, slick man.

On Wednesday, The Last Lear Q&A with Rituparno Ghosh was cut short when someone pulled the fire alarm. As is usually the case when the bell starts ringing, everyone ignored it and we continued the discussion. (How often do people actually pay attention to those things from the get-go?) Then, mid-sentence, Ghosh was cut short and we were told to exit the theater immediately, because it wasn't a drill as they initially assumed. Whoops. At least it didn't happen during the film. Pisay, on the other hand, had a few technical problems -- thankfully, it was a digital screening, so we didn't end up missing anything.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was first introduced to Allan Moyle in Squeeze Play, when he was the "Wet T-Shirt Waterboy." The flick is an old, risque adult comedy that my friend and I would sneakily watch late at night during sleepovers (when we were way too young for the buttocks-ball-catching material). But it wasn't until the '90s that Moyle hit his stride, directing two music-laden, teen cult classics -- my beloved Pump Up the Volume and the goofy yet lovable Empire Records. After that, he was teen-tuckered out and made a few forgettable movies with Baldwin brothers and the surprisingly mellow New Waterford Girl. But now he has revisited some of his previous music magic with the quirky, Canadian black comedy -- Weirdsville.

The flick is pretty much Harold and Kumar meets Bubble Boy, but take away the Fabio-freaks and add in some Satanists. Wes Bentley's Royce and Scott Speedman's Dexter are stoners who hang out with a waifish escort named Matilda (Taryn Manning -- what a surprise). They owe a drug dealer named Omar (Raoul Bhaneja) a big chunk of change, so they strike up an agreement to sell drugs to pay it off. But Royce and Matilda speed through the stash in a marathon week of drugging, and now the trio is without the money or drugs to pay Omar back. Oh, and Matilda has OD'd and died.

The poor Easter Bunny only seems to hold onto the smallest bit of cred, and probably only that because he buys kids off with chocolates. Although stores become awash in pastels after February 14, cinemas don't get much at all. We've got a bunch of biblical films to entertain us, yet we don't give much cinematic love to the bunnies -- definitely not on-par with Santa Clause and Christmas. While the landscape of family Easter films will still be sparse, we're actually getting an Easter bunny-themed adult movie that seems to mix elements of Bad Santa and Office Space.

Of course, any adult film of childrens' figures must add smoking, booze and other lascivious activities, and Hank and Mike is no exception. The gist of the film -- two foul-mouthed Easter bunnies lose their job and must find alternate employment. As acerbic as they are, the duo realize that their lives are coming apart because their lives are their jobs. Writers and producers Thomas Michael and Paolo Mancini have been honing the characters for years on stage and television, and star as the gritty rabbits. The Hollywood Reporter has now released additional cast for the film -- Joe Mantegna and Wes Bentley. The former is the owner of Easter Enterprises and obviously Hank and Mike's boss. Bentley comes in as an efficiency consultant. The film was shot last fall in Toronto, so I assume Bentley jumped on board after his stint in P2.
Although no official release date has been set, the movie has a website and trailer online. Beware: they are bad bunnies, so the trailer is full of adult language and some sexual content.

There's no lasting money in the beauty of plastic bags. American Beauty was Wes Bentley's lone gem among a handful of low-buzz releases. However, as an expert of the creepy stare, it's no surprise that he's diving into the darker films like the upcoming P2.

Under the eye of first-time director Franck Khalfoun, the creators of High Tension (Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur) are turning their attention to the creep factor of parking garages. The main premise: a successful business woman (Rachel Nichols) spurns the advances of a security guard (Bentley). Not happy with her refusal, Bentley beats her unconscious and holds her captive. Nichols must not only escape his eerie stare, but also the scary parking garage.

The locale makes sense. I've been in the Toronto parking garage they filmed in, and it is quite creepy. Eerie stillness, the buzz of fluorescent lights, and strange, echoing noises are all mainstays of horror/suspense. That being said, I wonder if they can keep the tension in a relatively small and empty place. There is only so much running and hiding one girl can do. Or, will it really matter? Nichols obviously had to strip down to her camisol to grab an axe and hide amongst the pillars of P2, so it the plot goes slow, moviegoers will still have her sweaty, heaving bosom. Yes, the picture at the right is from the released still, which you can see in its full glory at Jo Blo's Arrow in the Head.