Bericht aus dem Wilmington Star

Stars of the Wilmington-filmed drama have had slow film starts

With Dawson's Creek apparently in its last season (beginning Oct. 2), what will happen to our favorite ex-teens after they "graduate?"

The prognosis isn't good.

Face it: Hollywood can be a cold, cruel place for reformed teenagers. Ask yourself: Whatever happened to Molly Ringwald? To Corey Feldman? To Ally Sheedy? To Anthony Michael Hall? (OK, he came back to play a sixth-sensing teacher in USA's The Dead Zone. But you catch my drift.)

It's even tougher for last season's TV sensation who tries to jump to the big screen. For every George Clooney (who made it from ER to Three Kings, Oceans 11 and O Brother, Where Art Thou?), there's a David Caruso, whose career pretty much tanked after NYPD Blue. (Remember him in Proof of Life or Body Count?). This fall, he's back, doing a network cop show, CSI: Miami.

By this calculation, Dawson and his pals suffer from a double whammy. The news might not be so bad, though. Let's check out what some of our young pals from Capeside have been up to, and what's on their horizons:

James Van Der Beek: He survived Texas football and Coach Jon Voight in Varsity Blues (1998), played himself in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) and scored an uncredited cameo as "Dawson Leery" in Scary Movie (2000).

From the looks of things, though, Dawson ought to stick with directing. His 1999 feature, Harvest – a straight-faced drama about straight-laced farmers switching to marijuana to keep afloat financially – slunk into video as Cash Crop.

This fall, Mr. Van Der Beek stars in Rules of Attraction (tentative release Oct. 11), based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis about a bisexual romantic triangle at a New England college.

Katie Holmes: "Joey" has had probably the most successful movie career of any of the Dawson alumni. She scored memorably in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997) (along with other young up-and-comers, such as Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood) and popped up, uncredited, for a cameo in Muppets From Space (1999).

Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), her first starring role, was a misfire, although it gave her a chance to co-star with the great Helen Mirren (Prime Suspect). The black comedy (written and directed by Dawson creator Kevin Williamson), about a gang of students who take a classroom tyrant hostage, hit at an especially bad time. The original title, Killing Mrs. Tingle, was changed after the Columbine High School shootings.

The year 2000, however, more than made up for it. Ms. Holmes played a nice college student opposite Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys (which also reunited her with Tobey Maguire). Then she showed her stuff (in more ways than one) as the bad girl who comes to a bad end in the Dixie ghost yarn The Gift.

Ms. Holmes has two more movies in the lineup this fall: the Joel Schumacher sniper drama Phone Booth (Nov. 15) and Abandon (Oct. 18), a thriller in which she'll star as a college senior whose boyfriend mysteriously reappears after vanishing without a trace two years earlier.

Can she outgrow the Creek? A key sign will come next year, when she plays a nurse opposite Roberty Downey Jr. and Mel Gibson in the remake of Dennis Potter's surreal musical/mystery The Singing Detective.

Michelle Williams: "Jen" was voted one of the "21 Hottest Stars Under 21" by People magazine in 1999. Since then, however, most of her film projects have barely escaped the art/festival circuit.

She appeared in the movie version of Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, co-starring Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange and directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, who shot the original Norwegian version of Insomnia. Reviews, however, were underwhelming.

Me Without You (2001) and Beatrice (2002) had virtually no U.S. circulation.

But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) actually did reach Wilmington, on the Cinematique series. She played "Kimberly" in the broad spoof of efforts to deprogram homosexuals. It wasn't Ms. Williams' only stand for diversity; she also co-starred in the "1972" segment of the HBO drama about lesbians If These Walls Could Talk 2.

Ms. Williams made her debut in a 1994 Lassie remake, then switched gears to play the young alien clone (the same character Natasha Henstridge played) in the original Species (1995). In Dick (1999), she co-starred with Kirsten Dunst as teen-agers who unwittingly expose the Watergate break-in. (Dan Hedaya from Swimfan played President Nixon).

Her next feature, due in 2003, will be The United States of Leland, co-starring Kevin Spacey, Jena Malone, Don Cheadle and Lena Olin. No, it's not set on the west bank of the Cape Fear; "Leland" is the name of the central character, a 15-year-old who murders an autistic child.

Joshua Jackson: Since The Mighty Ducks and its sequels, young Mr. Jackson has made a specialty of horror, with roles in Scream II, Apt Pupil and Urban Legend. (Like Katie Holmes, he also appeared as his Dawson character in Muppets from Space.

He starred in The Skulls (2000), about a murderous secret society on an Ivy League campus, and in Gossip (2001), in which his character was falsely accused of rape. Reviews on both movies were lousy.

Since then, he's shown up in The Safety of Objects (2001), an indy project with Glenn Close and Dermont Mulroney and cable's The Laramie Project (2002), about the torture-murder of a gay Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard.

On his horizon is A Lone Star State of Mind (2003), in which he supposedly plays a young man who wants to marry his sister. Unless he can reverse his typecasting fast, young Joshua may be on his way to the Wonderful World of Infomercials.

Kerr Smith: Mr. Smith, who turns 30 this year, may be aging himself out of the teen horror circuit – most of his film work until now.

In Final Destination (2000), he played a teenager stalked by Death after he misses an airline flight that's doomed to crash. In Forsaken (2001), he drove a Mercedes into the middle of a vampire war in the desert. His 2002 movie, Pressure, about a medical student on the run for a murder he didn't commit, went straight to video. Prognosis: Guarded.

Mary C. Gilliam of Wilmington wrote that I left a biggie off my list last week of Hollywood's "Mrs. Robinson" movies: The Summer of '42 (1971), starring Jennifer O'Neill and Gary Grimes. She plays a war bride at a New England coastal resort, who couples with a lonely teenaged boy the night after she learns her husband was killed in action. Thanks for reminding us.

Quelle: www.wilmingtonstar.com