elias koteas Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When Universal shuffled their slate last month and pushed The Wolf Man back to 2010, they filled its early November void with the alien abduction thriller, The Fourth Kind, and as such have wisely opted to attach their first trailer to District 9 (which I'm guessing must be some sort of Milla Jovovich biopic).

Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, a Nome, AK psychiatrist whose multiple patients are all spilling forth similarly cryptic stories of what would appear to be occurrences of bona fide alien abduction. (Anyone else picking up a Fire in the Sky vibe all of a sudden?)

For some reason best left to psychologists, there are people who are attracted to what I call ... sex creeps. This type of character goes beyond what is called jolie-laide in women, a term that directly translates to pretty-ugly, although is generally used to describe "unconventional" beauty. There's no real correlation between the jolie-laide and the sex creep. No, the sex creep is attractive but prone to certain, shall we say, peccadilloes that go beyond the pale -- dating blow-up dolls, crashing cars to get off, dabbling in experimental gynecology. These guys all slime their ways between the lines.

In any case, here are seven of my favorite sex creeps. You might also notice there's a certain director who shows up a few times on the list -- he's an honorary sex creep as well. I hope he takes his title in the complimentary manner in which it's given.

There are plenty of John Hughes fans that consider Some Kind of Wonderful to be little more than a recycled Pretty in Pink. But today I'm going to nominate the story of Keith and Watts for Scenes We Love for a very important reason: it's about righting some wrongs. If you're a regular around here, you might remember a little theory I have about the ending of Hughes' teen masterpiece Pretty in Pink, and as it turns out I wasn't the only one who had a problem with it; as the story goes, Hughes wrote Wonderful as a way to finally get the ending that he preferred.

Wonderful was the story of Keith, a sensitive painter, and his best friend, a tom-boy drummer named Watts. When Keith makes good on the life ambition of every teen movie protagonist and goes for the popular girl (played by Lea Thompson), Watts realizes that her feelings for Keith go beyond friendship -- and, of course, what would any Hughes movie be without the abusive beautiful people (headed by Craig Sheffer) and the hoodlum with the heart of gold played by Elias Koteas -- who I've had a bit of a crush on ever since thanks to this movie.

After the jump: why I love this movie and Sheffer gets his well-deserved comeuppance..

Hold up. No one told me about the adaptation of Jim Thompson's classic The Killer Inside Me. A true '50s noir, Thompson's book is a bite-your-nails tale about a Texas sheriff's deputy who is also the town murderer. He's calm and cool on the outside and a brutal killer on the inside. And yes, it's also a song by MC 900 FT Jesus.

I'm down with that, since the younger and less chinny Affleck proved his chops in Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse Ford by the Coward Robert Ford, although IMDb pro also lists him as the director of "Untitled Joaquin Phoenix Documentary," so we've got him to thank for that sh*tshow. Bill Pullman and awesomely creepy Elias Koteas (Crash) also star.

On the other hand, the rest of the cast is a uneven, and this particular adaptation has quite the long back story. Kate Hudson plays Lou's good-girl girlfriend Amy Stanton, while Jessica Alba is Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute who digs Lou's ugly side. And then there's Simon Baker, star of TV's "The Mentalist" and films like Sex and Death 101 and The Devil Wears Prada, Something New, Land of the Dead, and The Ring Two, as the small-town lawyer out to get Lou.

At this point, touting any horror movie as 'based on a true story' or 'inspired by true events' or however you phrase it serves to me as an indication that "we didn't think this was scary enough, but we want the gulliable teens to buy tickets" -- a marketing tactic which occasionally backfires (my younger brother knocked the plausibility of The Strangers on this count, but if they DIDN'T say it... would it have been a scarier film? How about a successful one?).

Regardless, The Haunting in Connecticut -- starring Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan and Elias Koteas -- appears to be following in those footsteps, with first a poster and then a trailer purporting that this tale of a family tormented in their new home with a mysterious past is at least fact-based(-ish). (Why, yes, you're correct in thinking that they already remade The Amityville Horror.)

Throw in a bunch of loud noises, and you've got yourself a probably PG-13 one-weekend wonder that was shot in 2007, but won't get dumped in theaters by Lionsgate (without press screenings, natch) until 2009. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it'll land somewhere between next Feburary (in the wake of other teen-targeting horror fare of The Unborn -- which actually looks creepy, if familiar -- and The Uninvited and My Bloody Valentine 3D and Friday the 13th) and maybe next April, before hitting DVD just in time for Halloween renters to settle for anything vaguely supernatural on the 'new release' wall.

Or, who knows, it could be good; if it takes proving me wrong to do that, I've eaten feet for less. (True story.)

As someone who grew up in Connecticut, I can agree the state is good for two things, Christmas and hauntings. We've already seen a few versions of Christmas in Connecticut, and now it is time for us to see a movie called The Haunting in Connecticut. I only wish that Ed Warren, one of the state's legendary and expert ghost experts, was still around to offer some help with it. At least his wife and partner, Lorraine is still with us. Anyway, now that Connecticut is welcoming so many film productions to shoot in state, it is only fair that our reputation for spookiness be well represented. And hey, if such a movie wants to use my last name, then that's cool, too. Like countless other residents of the state, my family thought our house was haunted. Of course, The Haunting in Connecticut is not based on my family; instead it is based on a documentary titled A Haunting in Connecticut, which presented the true story of the Parkers and the evil ghost that terrorized their home.

We already learned The Haunting in Connecticut would star Virginia Madsen, as Sara Campbell (again, no relation), but now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, we have more of the Campbell clan: Martin Donovan (Weeds) will play Madsen's husband, while Kyle Gallner (Big Love) will play their cancer-ridden son. Also joining the cast is Elias Koteas (Zodiac), who will play the obligatory priest who comes to help the family. In my day, you'd either call The Warrens -- who actually appear in the original documentary -- or someone from the local historical society (this is what my mom did), but seeing as how the convention of this genre is to follow the model of The Exorcist, a priest is a requirement. And yes, it seems there was at least one in A Haunting in Connecticut, so I shouldn't complain. Ironically, despite Connecticut's currently trendy tax breaks, The Haunting in Connecticut began shooting this week in Winnipeg.

There's a funny moment about twenty minutes into Skinwalkers, when a balding protagonist, played by Elias Koteas, has to explain what's going on to a confused Rhona Mitra. "We're called Skinwalkers," he says. "You would call us werewolves." Oh, thanks. That clears it up. It turns out that Mitra's character is more or less the only non-wolf character in the entire film. She's caught in the middle of an idealogical war between opposing clans of werewolves, some of whom believe that being a werewolf is a bad thing and want an out, and those on the other side who believe being a wolf is fun and have formed themselves into a motorcycle gang of marauding lycanthropes. There's a nice little moment when a pistol-packing granny throws down against the gang when they ride into town looking for trouble, but I'm already stretching to be nice. The good moments are actually few and far between. Only Stan Winston completists or late-to-the-party casting agents wanting a good look at Mitra in action will find much on offer here.

The entire premise of a war between reluctant and self-righteous monsters has already been done (and better) by the X-Men series, which is the obvious inspiration here. There's even a blatant rip-off in the form of a 'boy cure,' which was the plot-engine in the third X-Men film. (To be totally fair, Skinwalkers could have been written long before that film, for all I know.) The boy in this film, played by Matthew Knight, has some kind of special, rare blood that can turn werewolves back into men, or something like that, so he was long ago spirited away to a small town to live with his in-the-dark mother, played by Mitra, all the while secretly protected by good wolves who never let anyone know they're even wolves at all. At night, these good wolves strap themselves into harnesses so that when the moon is full and they wolf-out (thanks to the drama coach in Teen Wolf for that phrase) they won't cause damage. Every night, from sundown to sunup, they howl and thrash, harmlessly.

Based on this trailer, it looks like the new Lionsgate horror film Skinwalkers is going to be sort of a Sam Peckinpah-style vampire movie, but Wikipedia, which knows more than I do, describes it as a "werewolf/horror/action/thriller," so there you go. Directed by the guy who brought us Jason X, the movie is most notable for having effects guru Stan Winston's company involved with the production. The plot involves two warring groups of werewolves who are waiting for the moon to reveal an ancient prophecy. Caught in the middle of the two groups is a young boy who is, unbeknownst to him, being protected by the good werewolves and being sought after by the bad wolves. Representing the good wolves is leader Elias Koteas, while the bad wolves are counting on Jason Behr. And there you have it.

The new trailer gets a lot of mileage out of talking, giving us a lot of build-up about how "there is a gene ... that separates ... man ... from animal ..." before some action shots are kicked in towards the end. I can't say I'm terribly impressed by what I see here -- it looks a lot like an 'original movie' cooked up by one of those cable channels, especially with the casting of Koteas, but I might check it out when it finally hits. I like the Mark Romanek-style poster, represented above. The film has played musical release dates, first opting for December 2007, then March 2007, and now set for July.