AMBER BENSON: Stalkery musings

Spotted in
The Armchair Anthropologist, the joys of having familiar faces come to your coffee shop:

I'm a television fanatic and genuinely enchanted by seeing the actress who played Willow's girlfriend, Tara, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer eating a sandwich, and not just because Amber Benson has lovely skin. What can I say? I'm white trash and this is what my people do. My sister will gladly tell you all about the time that Joey Lawrence (again --"Whoa!") hit on her at a New Year's Eve party in Lake Tahoe. My other sister has boasted that Tony Hawk's son is her six-year-old daughter's boyfriend ever since her family was invited by Hawk's ex-wife, (who knew my sis in high school) to stay in one of their houses and get celebrity passes to Disneyland. My niece doesn't particularly care about the pedigree of her kindergarten boyfriend, but give her time -- she's of my ilk.

We really do recommend the whole article, mind.

AMBER BENSON: Having sex with Willow

Harvested from our inbox:

Amber on the episode Seeing Red:

"There'd been hints that we were going to have some sort of love scene, but I didn't really understand what the extent of that was going to be until I went in for a wardrobe fitting and Cynthia, the wardrobe supervisor, said, 'Now, what kind of modesty clothing [flesh-toned garb to simulate nudity] do you want?' I hadn't read Steve DeKnight's script yet, and I was just like, 'What are you talking about? Modest - I'm not modest - I want fully clothed!' We [Amber and Alyson] both had band tops. I had boxer shorts and she had biker shorts. We were in bed with the stupid satin sheet. I'd never experienced satin sheets before. I'd pull the sheet up, and two seconds later, she's pulling on it, and it goes down, and I'm pulling it up - it's so slick that it won't stay where you put it. It slides. So I'm like this." [Amber mimes holding the sheet to her chest for dear life.]

ALYSON HANNIGAN: No fourth pie

Spotted in The Sun:

By SIMON THOMPSON
Sun Online
IT has been confirmed there will be a fourth American Pie movie - but the original cast will not be returning.

The comedy trilogy made stars out of Seann William Scott, Jason Biggs Tara Reid and Alyson Hannigan, and single handedly revived the gross out comedy genre.

However, the new movie will star a cast of virtual unknowns and will bypass cinemas, going straight to DVD.

American Pie: Band Camp will follow Stifler's little brother Matt as he heads off to the summer get together to try and copy his brother's lucky streak with women.

Instead he meets the girl of his dreams and decides to change his wild ways.

Although the main characters from the first three films will not be present, there will be a cameo from Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas).

American Pie: Band Camp is expected to be released on DVD in December.

It's going to be lacking a certain something, isn't it?




Buy the original trilogy (sure, it's rubbish, but you can't deny you've pulled the mental image up more than once, haven't you?)

MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Mysterious Skin Review

Spotted in Monterey County Herald by way of the Washington Post and others:

'Skin' deep

Indie filmmaker Gregg Araki comes of age with fascinating, disturbing 'Mysterious Skin'

By DESSON THOMSON

The Washington Post

Mysterious Skin" is a helter-skelter ride of the soul, an unblinking, white-knuckle crash landing into the mushy mysteries of the subconscious.

Gregg Araki's movie, which makes an ingenious, dark metaphor out of extraterrestrial visitation, is not for the fainthearted, the squeamish or the inflexibly decent.

It plunges headlong and unequivocally into themes of pedophilia, prostitution, rape and I haven't even mentioned alien probing.

While watching this movie, I scribbled the word "whoa" five times into my notebook.

Two young men, in voice-over, recount their traumatic stories, side by side, as it were.

One is 18-year-old Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet), who has no conscious explanation for two blackout experiences in his childhood, one of which has caused him to have spontaneous nosebleeds when he's under stress.

He has also suffered nightmares and wet beds. In his teen years, he sees a television show about alien abductions and comes to believe he may have been the victim of an encounter himself.

He contacts one of the women interviewed on the show and discovers she shares many of his experiences.

The other storyteller is Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a gay hustler in his late teens, whose formative sexual experiences consisted of pleasuring himself at the age of 8, while watching his promiscuous mother (Elisabeth Shue) in an intimate encounter.

At the same tender age, he also had consensual (according to him) sex with his male baseball coach Heider (Bill Sage).

Sick of the two-bit transactions he's having in his Kansas home town, he moves to New York City. But his risky behavior there sets him up for almost certain disaster.

"Where people have a heart," observes Neil's best friend, Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg), "Neil McCormick has a bottomless black hole."

Why these two men's histories are in the same drama becomes apparent later.

But until that time, we watch -- fascinated, appalled and powerfully moved -- as they recount whole lives spent in a downward spiral.

Brian is so traumatized he has been unable to enjoy any kind of intimacy, but Neil, who believes he feels a liberated awakening about his sexuality, walks without hesitation toward sexual self-obliteration.

Each story oddly complements and fortifies the other, in terms of gearing up the dread, the desperation and the suspense.

And when they converge, the boys' fusion of anger, bitterness, regret and revelation is mesmeric.

If you have thrived from your experiences with any combination of filmmakers David Lynch, Todd Solondz, David Cronenberg and Larry Clark, you might be prime audience material for this film.

And yet, Araki, who made such thematically intense and sexually graphic films as "The Living End," "Totally Fed Up" and "The Doom Generation," ratchets things even more acutely than those directors.

But he does it with silky, inspired skill. Despite the hard-edged, controversial subject matter, he makes you view the taboo from another perspective.

In those moments, you at least temporarily reconsider your paradigm for morality.

When Coach Heider seduces the boy, yes, it is pedophilia and a deeply immoral offense.

But in the context of Araki's film, something else is happening. The 8-year-old Neil, who has a big crush on his coach, has partly engineered this seduction, and he's perhaps even more lost in the passionate moment than Heider.

But whether Neil really had the halcyon experience he thought he did becomes a later matter.

Corbet is note perfect as the crushed, anguished Brian, who's determined to understand what has happened to him; and Gordon-Levitt's harrowing turn as Neil surely marks him for even greater roles ahead.

There's something extraordinarily tender about him as he takes you through his personal nightmare. (He has come a long way since playing Tommy Solomon in TV's "3rd Rock From the Sun.")

Their performances are so vital for the dangerous brinkmanship of this movie.

And behind the camera, Araki is the steadying force, hands firmly on the wheel of this bucking, swerving vehicle.

His unblinking conviction makes this movie, at least by its own standards, a disturbing triumph.GO!

'MYSTERIOUS SKIN' (Unrated, 99 minutes) -- Contains intense thematic material, pedophilia, violence, rape, obscenity and sexual scenes

Taut 'Skin' is brutal yet brilliant

'Skin' is both touching, unnerving

BY WESLEY MORRIS

The Boston Globe

The two Kansas boys who undergo a traumatizing sexual experience in the haunting new movie "Mysterious Skin" grow into young men troubled in radically different ways.

Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) becomes a gay hustler, a feral viper whose innocent eyes and drawn, boyish face suggest that his viciousness is just a pose.

But it's impenetrable all the same: He's equipped to hurt people.

Brian (Brady Corbett) turns asexual and reroutes his psychic disfigurement into a geeky, almost religious obsession with extraterrestrials.

He believes he was abducted by aliens and spends the movie trying to uncover the nature of the abduction.

His search leads him to another alleged abductee, played poignantly by Mary Lynn Rajskub, and eventually back to Neil, his Little League teammate all those years ago.

Set mostly in the late 1980s, "Mysterious Skin" traverses a pulpy, punky landscape of ache and rage.

The catalyst for that pain is the man who molested the boys, generically but indelibly called Coach -- played with surpassing tenderness by Bill Sage, who here sports a killer Mark Spitz mustache.

The scenes of the crime are discreetly, tastefully, almost lovingly filmed, mostly from the man's perspective. (It's one of the movie's more audacious suggestions that the teenage Neil is loveless because Coach stole both his innocence and his heart.)

Director Gregg Araki adapted "Mysterious Skin" from the evocative 1995 novel by Scott Heim.

The book worked hard to keep Brian's memory of what happened to him suspensefully opaque, while Araki focuses more on illustrating the evolution of Neil and Brian.

But more significantly, Heim's book has given Araki's filmmaking a new sense of narrative purpose.

The film is actually a major artistic breakthrough for Araki, a onetime bad boy of independent filmmaking.

Its psychological intelligence, attention to emotional currents, and humanity are surprises.

Could this be the same man who created the hateful wasteland known as "The Living End"? That movie was a long time ago (1992), and so were his others, including "The Doom Generation" and "Splendor," sensationalist films that sullied American art houses in the 1990s.

Araki's attraction to the danger in Heim's novel makes sense. The director used to be among a group of troublemaking gay directors (including Todd Haynes) who used controversy to combat artistic complacency.

Haynes evolved into "Safe" and "Far From Heaven." Araki long remained stuck in nihilistic petulance.

He's 45 now, and "Mysterious Skin" is his first movie of this millennium.

The usual Araki elements are here (hustlers, rebels, uproar, the absurd), but now he appears to be working with focus and compassion.

His movie is sensual and comic, bizarre and piercing, brutal and otherworldly, like Pedro Almodovar dreaming in the key of Gus Van Sant.

Araki has never been an actor's director (he rarely hires trained ones), but the performances here are generally strong (an exception is Michelle Trachtenberg, sadly miscast as Neil's artist-freak best friend).

Corbett does deceptively smart work as Brian, who is closed-off, weird, and remote in just the way you'd expect someone preoccupied with aliens to be.

Because Levitt is so volcanic, it's easy to overlook Corbett's sensitive work.

And Levitt, a long way from "Third Rock From the Sun," is very good in a part that calls for truculence and sorrow.

When the film goes violently bleak toward the end, Levitt follows, body and soul.

He shows us Neil's aching spirit, letting out a great, primal howl at one point that could have come from James Dean.

It's a shout that can't be lost on Araki. The rebel has finally found his cause.GO!

Mysterious Skin

Directed by: Gregg Araki

Written by: Araki, adapted from the novel by Scott Heim

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbett, Bill Sage, Elisabeth Shue, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Jeff Licon

Running time: 99 minutes

Rated: NC-17 (Language, scenes of simulated sex, and one sequence of child molestation)

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorrisglobe.com.

'Mysterious Skin,' deft and haunting

By ANN HORNADAY

The Washington Post

Of all the representations of pedophilia in movies recently, from "Mystic River" to Kevin Bacon's powerful performance as a recovering abuser in "The Woodsman" to Todd Solondz's treatment of the subject in the unsettling, if condescending, "Palindromes," "Mysterious Skin" might be the most unflinching depiction of how sexual predation reverberates over time, like toxic ripples through a pond.

In this sad, often unnervingly graphic adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Scott Heim, former child TV star Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("3rd Rock From the Sun") delivers a haunting, uncompromising performance as Neil McCormick, a young man who at 8 was seduced by his Little League coach.

Now a gay hustler cruising for tricks in his tiny home town in Kansas, Neil has the half-lidded, sneering gaze of a teen-ager who has embraced nihilism, not as a fashion statement but as a survival mechanism.

He's shut off and shut down, careering down a frightening path of unsafe sex and increasingly violent encounters that seem to be leading inexorably to his self-destruction.

Meanwhile Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet) is heading down his own path, searching for answers to the pivotal episode in his young life, when he witnessed a UFO landing and was abducted by aliens.

Narrated by both characters as young men, "Mysterious Skin" traces how their lives intersected as kids, and what led to the mysteries they're living with as adults.

Director Gregg Araki, until now best known for such transgressive gay-themed underground films as "The Doom Generation" and "Nowhere," has made the most mature movie of his career, one that deftly cuts not only between the stories of these wildly different young men, but also between past and present within those stories.

Capturing 1980s suburban ennui just as vividly as early-'90s New York, Araki suffuses both worlds with a dreamlike quality, one that at times threatens to make "Mysterious Skin" more like a parable than realistic drama.

Similarly, its characters often speak in improbably well-turned phrases that seem more literary than lived. (For some reason, the plummiest lines are given to the film's two female leads -- Elisabeth Shue, who plays Neil's blowzily unaware mother, and Michelle Trachtenberg as his bad-girl best friend.)

Still, for its occasional ponderousness, there is a terrible, terrifying honesty at the core of "Mysterious Skin" that will make it chillingly recognizable to some viewers and important to recognize for others.

Araki spares no detail in showing how Neil's coach (Bill Sage) cultivates his young victim, taking him home to a wholesome-looking ranch house full of video games, toys and variety packs of sugary cereals.

The scenes between the coach and young Neil (played by Chase Ellison) are sickening, as are the ways Neil later copes with his experience, becoming a kind of predator in his own right.

If "Mysterious Skin" becomes a bit schematic in keeping Neil and Brian apart and then bringing them together as adults (wouldn't they have known each other all along in such a small town?), and if it seems too deeply steeped in its literary provenance, it is still a startling portrayal of how the cycle of abuse plays itself out in the lives of its victims, who are in danger of either sliding into nothingness or becoming perpetrators themselves.

"Mysterious Skin" would be tragic if it weren't for the glint of redemptive hope Araki offers at the end, but its pervading mood of sadness nonetheless suggests that some wounds never heal.GO!

-- "Mysterious Skin" (99 minutes) is not rated. It contains graphic scenes of sexuality, sexual violence, profanity and drug use.

'MYSTERIOUS SKIN' • Featuring:Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Jeff Licon, Michelle Trachtenberg, Elisabeth Shue, Bill Sage, directed by Gregg Araki • Where:Osio in Monterey • Rating:Unrated, contains intense thematic material, pedophilia, violence, rape, obscenity and sexual scenes • Running time:99 minutes

ALYSON HANNIGAN/JAMES MARSTERS: Gossipy Spike movie

Spotted on MTV.com - Movies - News - Movie File:

Alyson Hannigan made a name for herself telling band-camp stories in the "American Pie" films, but the actress' fans also remember her for kicking some serious butt as Willow on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV show. Now she's saying there's talk of reviving the show for the big screen. "There's talk of Spike movies, or a Spike movie," Hannigan reported of efforts to bring back James Marsters' bloodsucking breakout character. Hannigan said she won't be in the movie, and Marsden's manager said the project is "nothing we have on our radar at this moment." ...

MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Mysterious Skin Review

Spotted in Indianapolis Star:

Film about child sexual abuse dares viewer to look at subject differently


Mysterious Skin



• Cast: Brady Corbet, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elisabeth Shue, Bill Sage, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jeffrey Licon, Chase Ellison, George Webster.

• Location: Key Cinemas.

• Running time: 99 minutes.

• Rating: Not rated; language, violence, nudity, strong sexuality, drugs.

By Christopher Lloyd
christopher.lloyd@indystar.com


Haunted, harrowing and seductive, "Mysterious Skin" is one of the most audacious films ever made about the sexual abuse of children. Directed and written by Gregg Araki (based on the novel by Scott Heim ), "Skin" is at once disturbing and beguiling. It dares to show both the charismatic power an abuser can have over a child, and the insidious effects that abuse has, burrowing its way so deep it resides in the bones.

"Skin" follows two boys from a tiny Kansas town who barely know each other, even though they play on the same Little League team. Neil is the best player on the club, outgoing and good-looking, and he quickly becomes the coach's favorite. Brian is runty and wears Coke-bottle glasses, can't play a lick, and is so quiet and introverted it's like he's trying to erase himself.

In the summer of their eighth year, Brian and Neil each has an experience, at once entrancing and traumatic, that will set the courses of their lives in very different directions and yet bind them together.

Neil has a lengthy sexual relationship with the coach of his team -- a blond, handsome all-American type who entices with the lure of sweet treats stocked in his cabinets and the role of a father figure missing from the boy's broken home.

Brian, after seeing what he believes is a UFO, starts having dreams involving aliens with buggy eyes and snaky fingers stroking his face. His frequent blackouts and nosebleeds contribute to the mystery.

Flash 10 years later. Brian (Brady Corbet ) has become a reclusive college student who still lives with his mom and spends his nights scribbling drawings of his alien nightmares. After seeing a TV report about a nearby farmgirl named Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub ) who claims to have been abducted by aliens, Brian seeks her out and she encourages him to unlock what she claims are suppressed memories of his own UFO encounter.

A dangerous road

Neil has chosen a darker road and becomes a street hustler. Sitting in a gay bar with his sycophantic friend Eric (Jeffrey Licon), Neil coldly estimates that he's been paid to have sex with every man in the room. He can't wait to get out of town and join his best friend Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) in New York, where both greater opportunity and danger await.

Neil is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a powerful and charismatic performance that will stun those who know him only for his role as the geeky kid on the goofball TV comedy "Third Rock From the Sun." Sleepy-eyed and usually stoned, Neil slouches nonchalantly through life, willing to sell his lean young body to older men -- not because he likes it, but because it's the only thing he knows. He regards his seductive powers much like an Old West cowboy felt about his six-gun -- reliably within reach whenever needed.

The most difficult scenes to watch, but also the most compelling, detail Neil's childhood relationship with the coach. The older man is played by Bill Sage, who is so naturalistic and nonthreatening that it actually becomes difficult for the audience to generate ire for him, despite the despicable things he does to a little boy. Young Neil is portrayed by Chase Ellison in a knockout turn that conveys the innocent fascination -- and even twisted affection -- a child can develop for his abuser.

Araki stages the physical interaction between man and boy so masterfully that it's only with careful examination that one realizes they're not actually coming into contact with each other.

"Mysterious Skin" is an amazing cinematic experience because it takes a societal ill that evokes near-universal repulsion and makes you think about it in daringly unexpected ways -- some of which may well disturb viewers.

MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Mysterious Skin Review

Spotted in World Socialist Website:

Mysterious Skin, written and directed by Gregg Araki, based on a novel by Scott Heim

Mysterious Skin is the latest film by Gregg Araki, an American independent filmmaker often identified with radical gay cinema. Araki came to prominence with three movies that were considered landmarks in “New Queer Cinema,” a term coined by the media in the early 1990s for low-budget, gay-themed movies. The director professes an interest rather in “polymorphous sexuality.”

Araki summarizes these early films, which he refers to as his “teen apocalypse trilogy,” as depictions of “the chaotic violent world of teens, where bad things happen unexpectedly.”

That bad things happen in an Araki film is an understatement. Totally F***ed Up (1993) is the story of teenage angst and suicide. The Doom Generation’s (1995) contains a brutal, if cartoonish, scene of rape and castration (heads and limbs are also blown apart in graphic detail) and the bloody finale of Nowhere (1997) features a character being transformed into a giant cockroach.

Although Araki abandons some of his trademark outrageousness in Mysterious Skin and considers this a more “mainstream” project, the movie nevertheless still tends toward the sexually and emotionally extreme, and not in particularly enlightening or useful ways. Based on a 1995 novel by Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin focuses on two Kansas adolescents, the victims of sexual molestation, and the parallel stories of how they process the experience.

“The summer I was eight years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours, lost, gone without a trace,” says Brian (Brady Corbet). A decade after the rape, he explains the time lapse, as well as his frequent nosebleeds and fainting spells, as the work of alien abductors. Emotionally disfigured, he develops a quirky relationship with Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub), a teenage alien abduction theorist who is probably also repressing memories of abuse.

On the other hand, Neil (Joseph Gordon Levitt) not only remembers his molestation but thinks he was in love with his victimizer—the boys’ Little League coach (Bill Sage). His consciously chosen career, prostitution, allows him to exalt in the sexual power he exerts over the older men who pay for his services.

Neil has a reasonable support system that includes a loving, hip, but promiscuous mother (Elisabeth Shue) and a female “soul mate,” Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg). He is cold to the more normal love offered him by his best friend Eric. Both Wendy and Eric fear the dangers attendant to Neil’s profession. “Where normal people have a heart, Neil McCormick has a bottomless black hole,” says Wendy, after one of her many lectures on the deadly risks of unsafe sex.

In their separate worlds, Brian and Neil exist as emotional lepers. As the film progresses, Brian develops a compulsion to uncover the truth about his childhood that leads him to a life-changing encounter with Neil. When the latter reveals the horrific details of their shared abuse, recovery becomes a possibility.

Araki has a talent for directing actors and at its best, the film exhibits moments of real sensitivity. Neil and Brian are affecting, as are Neil’s mother (Shue), Wendy, Avalyn and Eric. Performances are enhanced by an intelligent musical score and adept cinematography. But the emotional energy generated is truncated and marred by the film’s relative flatness. More serious is the fact that the movie registers its observations with sexually manipulative and violent imagery. In short, not much happens dramatically except when the film pumps up on gratuitous shock-tactics.

In justifying this distasteful aspect of Mysterious Skin, Araki states: “I want the film to let people go through what these boys went through and feel their suffering. I want to give people something to think about.” The question is: what induces people to think? Making an audience squirm at provocative sex has nothing necessarily to do with encouraging thought. It’s a peculiar form of preaching to the choir, which tends to reinforce the viewer’s existing prejudices. One walks out of the theater with as little or as much insight into child abuse—and sexual orientation—as when one sat down to watch the film.

Araki’s limited but belligerent presentation of sex does not, contrary to his opinion, make the director a forthright, sex pioneer. The increasing repression faced by homosexuals is a legitimate subject for artistic treatment. To ask how far explicit sex and pointless exoticism advances this struggle does not imply a prudish adaptation to hypocritical, bourgeois mores. Mysterious Skin’s innumerable, graphic sex scenes between Neil and his clients are unnecessary. They are clearly a substitute for dealing in a more substantial way with the film’s central theme—the variegated repercussions of pedophilic sexual abuse.

Furthermore, the film’s treatment of this sensitive topic borders not only on pornography, but sadism. In an interview with suicidegirls.com, Araki reveals that Neil’s move to New York was calculated solely as a plot device to augment the level of danger involved in his prostitution. In small-town Kansas, Neil maxes out on clients—all average “Joes.” New York City offers far more varied and exotic encounters, culminating in Neil’s vicious rape by a deranged psycho from Brighton Beach. This last is a repulsive scene suggesting an alarming degree of insensitivity and indifference on the part of the film’s creators. Such depictions of torture, whatever the director’s intentions, emanate from a general process of brutalization in the culture and have the effect of further inuring the population to suffering.

This raises the problem of how an artist is to oppose a profoundly antidemocratic and anti-gay administration in Washington. Araki’s cinematic equivalent of shouting angrily at the top of his lungs and ripping off everyone’s clothes could not be less effective. It has all of the impact of streaking in front of the White House. American culture is awash with artists who specialize in this type of criticism, which is not criticism at all. Such antics are essentially the “left-wing” of media sensationalism and tabloidism. Lurking underneath is a demoralized attitude that anti-gay bias is persuasive and cannot be successful challenged. In a statement that exudes more than a whiff of revenge, Araki told RadioFree.com: “My goal with the movie is to devastate people.”

Araki has missed an opportunity to delve into what is only hinted at in Mysterious Skin: a dead-end society, where in the forgotten towns and impersonal cities, loneliness and alienation—and sexual dysfunction—are widespread. More could have been made of Neil’s mother, a good-hearted, but lost and desperate soul. One only catches glimpses of Brian’s family, whose Betty Crocker mom is oblivious to her son’s classic symptoms of sexual abuse, writ large as a billboard. A state of acute denial persists as her family implodes. Attempting to unveil the social circumstances responsible for this misery would have yielded a more enduring work. The movie’s timeframe is referred to rather than shown dramatically—the film’s timelessness is part of the same lack of interest in concrete conditions.

In several interviews, Araki states that child abuse has become a cliché. Despite massive attention paid to the problem by the media, with three-ring circuses like the Michael Jackson trial, and television programs, such as “Law and Order,” there exists no empathy or understanding within the general population, according to the director. This is no doubt true.

Child abuse is a social problem. It has been reduced to a cliché in a cinema and media that can only explain any dysfunction in society as originating in individual neurosis or “evil.” The pedophile is a monster, non-human—full stop. Complexities of life are boiled down to individual psychic experiences. How far outside this orbit is Araki? Although he introduces certain ambiguities—i.e., whether Neil’s sexual orientation is innate or conditioned—Araki adopts the same general template.

Tragedies such as child abuse are real tragedies. But it is necessary to explain the role the present state of society plays in making them possible. There is nothing anti-establishment or original about this outlook in the accepted formula that individual traumas in childhood, rather than a social order at the end of its rope, create the world’s problems.

That there is an audience for this line of reasoning is underscored by the wide critical acclaim heaped on the film. The fact that many reviewers warn that Mysterious Skin is not for the faint of heart does not stop them, in many cases, from issuing hearty recommendations. To please this crowd, the artist cannot divert far enough away from the more challenging task of social analysis—even if it means crossing the boundary between art and pornography. By uncritically projecting on screen their own confusions, filmmakers like Araki end up, with works such as Mysterious Skin, encouraging retrograde fascinations.

BUFFYVERSE: New series

Spotted in Philadelphia Daily News:

Boreanaz is also part of another group of returning favorites. The former "Angel" star, whose character was launched on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," is just one of a number of former "Buffyverse" denizens who'll be working this fall.

Alyson Hannigan, who played Willow, is co-starring in CBS' "How I Met Your Mother," while Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia on both "Buffy" and "Angel," is joining the cast of UPN's "Veronica Mars."

Nicholas Brendon, who was Buffy's friend Xander, will be dealing with diners, not demons, in Fox's "Kitchen Confidential," while James "Spike" Marsters will show up as a completely different kind of bad guy - without the English accent and the bleached hair - in the WB's "Smallville."

Overbrook Park's Seth Green, who since his stint as Willow's werewolf boyfriend Oz has worked steadily on everything from the "Austin Powers" movies and indie films to the Cartoon Network's "Robot Chicken," will settle down in a slightly more conventional role in ABC's buddy sitcom "Four Kings."

However all these new projects turn out, the actors will likely face questions for the rest of their careers about the roles that first brought them to our attention.

Even if they weren't particularly memorable.

Heather Graham, who despite a stint on "Scrubs" last season, is still more known for movies than TV, will be starring in ABC's midseason comedy, "Emily's Reasons Why Not."

Her network bio mentions a stint in "Twin Peaks," though not one even most TV critics appear to have remembered.

One finally asked what she'd done on the show.

"Oh, I was Annie Blackburn," she said. "I'm not positive that was my last name, but I was Peggy Lipton's sister. I tried to commit suicide. I was a nun, and I was Kyle MacLachlan's love interest.

"And I think we went on a boat and we made out, and we started a relationship.

"It was very, very far towards the end of the show," she added.

Hey, laugh if you like, but there may come a day when Boreanaz will have piled up enough other roles that he'll actually have to explain to a group of professional couch potatoes that he once played "a vampire with a soul."

AMBER BENSON: Shadowplay interview

Spotted on The Comic Wire:

Certain entertainers seem to revisit the same milieu again and again-- whether they choose to or not. It may be fate, or perhaps destiny, but these genre "niches" seem to bring these artists luck. Steven Spielberg started his career with aliens ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), had his biggest success with aliens ("E.T."), and is currently enjoying a huge box office hit this summer thanks to aliens ("War of the Worlds"). Between "Bull Durham," "Field of Dreams," and "For Love of the Game," Kevin Costner has cornered the market on sentimental baseball flicks. For actor-director-writer Amber Benson though, her "lucky charm" seems to be vampires.

While she began her career as a professional actress at a young age, Benson is best known for playing the character of Tara on the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" television series. Since finishing with that role, however, Benson has co-written (with Christopher Golden) several comic book stories for Dark Horse's Buffy-licensed line, she co-wrote and directed the animated "Ghosts of Albion" series for the BBC website, and wrote/directed/acted in the live-action feature "Chance." For her latest project, though, it's back to vampires as she writes a tale about young bloodsuckers for the four-issue "Shadowplay" miniseries coming this September from IDW Publishing.

The format of this miniseries is a bit unique: each issue contains two separate stories that run through all four issues. Benson's story is called "Demon Father John's Pinwheel Blues" with art provided by Ben Templesmith ("30 Days of Night"). The second vampire-centric story is called "Shunt" and is written by Christina Z ("Witchblade") with art by Ashley Wood ("Metal Gear Solid"). CBR News was fortunate enough to catch up with Benson and Templesmith to find out more about this intriguing collaboration.

Benson began with a quick explanation of the project's origin. "'Shadowplay' actually came about because Steve Niles approached me to do a few issues of his '30 Days of Night: Bloodsucker Tales' comic. He's a very cool guy and I really liked his '30 Days of Night' series, so I was totally excited to be working with him. But part way through the process, things kinda fell apart. Steve gave us his blessing to continue working on the project, so Ben and I decided to finish the work we'd started and the whole thing metamorphosed into 'Shadowplay.'"

As for her story in particular, Benson said, "'Demon Father John's Pinwheel Blues' is all about a little boy named Pinwheel who gets sucked (literally) into the vampiric world against his will. All he wants is to be human again and go home, but he finds himself trapped in a David Copperfieldian-type scenario where he's forced to join Demon Father John's gang of vampire children.

Benson said she has no idea where the idea for the story exactly came from, but that the title flashed into her mind and the Pinwheel's story unfolded from there. "I've always been fascinated by the idea of the failsafe point and what happens after you cross it," said Benson. "And that's what happens to Pinwheel: he crosses over the point of no return, but refuses to accept that his fate is sealed."

For someone who is fairly new to the comic industry, Benson has come a long way in a short amount of time. According to the writer, her experiences in the world of filmmaking have aided her greatly in this endeavor. "Writing a screenplay is similar to writing a comic book. Actually, comic writing is akin, I think, to the art of storyboarding, which is uber-important to the filmmaking process. Once I realized that, I definitely wasn't as nervous about writing my first comic with Chris [Golden - a 'Willow & Tara' one-shot].

"I was very lucky to learn the comic book ropes from Chris Golden. He basically put me through comic book writing boot camp when we did the 'Willow and Tara' stuff for Dark Horse. Afterward, I felt completely comfortable in the world of comic writing. The more I do, the better I think (and hope) my stuff gets."

It would appear that Templesmith would agree with this assessment. "Her scripts are a breeze to work on though: detailed but open enough to allow me a little experimentation, which I'm definitely doing with the colour," Templesmith told CBR News. "I wanted to have the guts to use true grey scale (with more vivid colour highlights) for ages and she's given me that chance."

Benson is also excited to be working with Templesmith on this project, and sounds pleased with what they've achieved. "I was very lucky to get to collaborate with Ben," said Benson. "He's an amazingly talented artist and I think the work he's done on Demon Father John is fantastic. He actually brought tears to my eyes at one point. I just love his stuff."

With regards to vampires being Benson's "magical milieu," she responded, "For some strange reason, the cult of vampire has become an integral part of my life. I guess it's just karma for being such an Anne Rice fan as a teenager. My love for Lestat and Louis has followed me into adulthood. But seriously, I think there's always something new to be found in the vampire mythology and I just dig as hard as I can to make it interesting to the readers and myself. Obviously, my time on 'Buffy' opened the door to all this vampire stuff, but I don't regret any of it, no matter how odd my life has become."

As for Templesmith, his decision to draw another vampire-based comic came down to the kind of story Benson wrote. "More than anything else, I've had comments about the kiddies I draw-- the vampire-type kiddies," said Templesmith. "It was my idea to do that as much as we did on '30 Days of Night.' There's just something more creepy about the nasty kiddies. I love drawing them. Let's just say there's plenty of kiddies in this-- has them in spades and that does it for me.

"That makes me sound really sick, doesn't it? Heh…"

When asked how he differentiates the bloodsuckers in this story with the ones from "30 Days," the artist responded that the Pinwheel vampires are "very different. More classic vampires really. Not so ghoulish-- more defined incisor teeth, etc. Slightly different look overall for them. The art in general is a bit clearer-- more inked/definite, and the colours should be a bit of a departure. The '30 Days' vamps were meant to be grotesque distortion-- lots of jagged teeth, almost gouls in appearance more than anything else. These guys are something different to that, really."

Both Templesmith and Benson are excited for the book to hit stands, but in the meantime, it appears that each of them have plenty to keep them busy. Benson said, "Chris Golden and I have a novel coming out in November from Del Rey called, 'Ghosts of Albion: Accursed.' I wrote and directed a new film called 'Lovers, Liars, and Lunatics' which I am in post-production on. And another film I acted in called 'Race You To The Bottom' just appeared at Outfest in LA."

Templesmith ran down his laundry list of upcoming projects as well: "'Fell' with Warren Ellis of course, and a miniseries that's ending up going through Image apparently that'll be announced soon, so I won't say much more. And hopefully another monthly (or semi-monthly thing) from IDW called 'Wormwood,' if the gods are kind to me…and the sleep deprivation doesn't kill me. This would be a more personal thing, offbeat crazy stuff-- like a Guinness-drinking, slightly black, horror version of the old Doctor Who, but he sleeps with his companions, is a bit of a bastard, and already happens to be dead. I've had him for years and he's already appeared in LOFI magazine periodically.

"There's probably other stuff I'm forgetting, but perhaps I'm repressing the rest, or I'll go mad and my head will explode."

As no one wants Templesmith shrapnel on their clothes, suffice it to say that "Shadowplay" is a 32 page book with a cover price of $3.99 that arrives in stores this September.

MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Dive From Clausen's Pier interview

Spotted in South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Michelle Trachtenberg isn't the one who makes The Dive From Clausen's Pier in her new Lifetime movie.

She's taking a major leap of another kind, however. Buffy's little sister is growing up.

Adapted from a best-selling novel, Dive casts 19-year-old Trachtenberg, formerly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Carrie Beal, who plans to break off her engagement to her childhood sweetheart after a Memorial Day picnic with friends. At the lakeside gathering, however, Mike (Will Estes, American Dreams), makes an ill-advised dive into shallow water, resulting in paralysis.

Confused over whether she should stay in a relationship she had planned to end, Carrie bolts from her Wisconsin hometown to New York, where she quickly falls into an affair with an older man (Sean Maher, Brian's Song).

Trachtenberg says she relished playing Carrie, a young woman going through a painful passage in her life, even as the actress herself is making a professional transition into adult roles.

"What attracted me to Carrie is that she is so flawed and realistic," Trachtenberg says. "She has problems that people deal with on a daily basis. I don't mean everyone has a fiance who is suddenly in a life-threatening accident, but everyone has to make sacrifices and choices in her life.

"Carrie is closer to me in maturity level than other characters I've played in the past. I was attracted to her strengths and the way she handles the situations she finds herself in. It takes a lot of guts to leave everything you know and go out on a limb."

The role also calls for some tasteful but sexy love scenes with Maher and Estes, and she says she's ready to leave behind those naive teens she has played so successfully to date.

"It feels very natural and organic for me to play a character like Carrie right now, because I'm not a 15- or 16-year-old anymore with huge insecurities," she says. "I know how to talk to boys. I appreciate parts like Ice Princess and other past roles, but Carrie is sort of a transitional character, testing out the waters, seeing if I felt comfortable being more mature."

MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: ICE PRINCESS REVIEW

Spotted in Playstation Magazine:

IMDb assures me that Michelle Trachtenberg is 20 years old, and yet she projects such an air of dazed teenage gawkiness in this film that I feel I should be cuffed with a sex offender GPS anklet just for looking at her.

ALYSON HANNIGAN: Geek Love

Aly's character from American Pie comes in sixth in JoBlo's Geek Top Ten:

6. Michelle Flaherty - AMERICAN PIE (1999)

"This one time at Band Camp...." ....there lived the only girl to crack the top ten. Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) is a perfectly written character. Her constant lip flapping and general annoyance throughout the film are enough to drive a deaf man insane. Which is why we were absolutely floored when it was time for her confession about inserting a musical instrument into her privates. It was the conversational equivalent to beer goggles. You immediately forget that this woman is the queen of losers and her barrage of boring Band Camp stories. This girl is now a hottie and there's nothing you can do about it.