‘The Runaways’ Premieres In Hollywood

Grrrl Power
Friday, March 12th, 2010

Last night the ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome hosted the Hollywood premiere of the much-anticipated biopic The Runaways which features Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning as the leading ladies of the 70’s rock group of the same name. Joining Stewart and Fanning at last night’s premiere was Joan Jett, Cherie Curie and a host of other folks who either appear in the film or just wanted to lend some support at the premiere. Here are a few photos from the red carpet arrivals and some deets about last night’s event:

She’s famous for her role in the fantasy Twilight films. But for her latest movie Kristen Stewart, 19, has taken a reality check and plays iconic rock star Joan Jett of the Seventies band The Runaways. The pair posed together on the red carpet of the film’s Hollywood premiere, but Joan, 51, threatened to almost upstage the young ingenue as she showed off an amazing youthful look. The pair posed together on the red carpet alongside Dakota Fanning, 16, who wore a strapless silver sequinned dress, and her real-life counterpart Cherie Currie, the group’s former lead singer. And Kristen looked rather more cheerful than usual in a coral pink dress as she arrived at the Cinerama Dome Arclight Theatre. Her Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner also came along to the event … Jett, 51, who founded The Runaways along with drummer Sandy West, has been a huge help to Kristen throughout the filming of the biopic. While on US TV’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this week, Kristen said of the role: ‘I was really lucky to have her [Jett] be so into the project and so open about it, because not a lot of people my age know about The Runaways. It was the most important part of her life and kick-started her career. And also, they were the first girl band. They were the first girls to ever play aggressive, sexual assertive rock and roll.’ The Runaways were an American all-girl teenage rock band, on the music scene between 1975 to 1979. The band is best known for the songs Cherry Bomb, Queens of Noise, Rock n Roll, Neon Angels (On the Road to Ruin) and Born to Be Bad.

The film doesn’t open in theaters until next Friday (the 19th) but we are deffo in the homestretch. It’s a bit unusual for a movie premiere to be held this early before the film opens but, in all liklihood, there will be other premieres in other cities next week leading up to the film’s opening. As the article says, Taylor Lautner was in the hiz at last night’s premiere — after the jump, find out who else attended last night’s event …

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Watch: Dakota Fanning Featuring Kristen Stewart, ‘Cherry Bomb’

The Real Deal
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Last week we got our first listen to the Runaways song Cherry Bomb as performed by Dakota Fanning featuring Kristen Stewart, stars of the upcoming biopic The Runaways. Today we get our first look at the official new Cherry Bomb music video … here are a few screencaps:


At last … in this music video we get to see the other young actress who play the other members of The Runaways in the film! It’s not a bad video but I like the song so … that’s to be expected. After the jump, check out the video and judge for yourselves …

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Listen: Dakota Fanning Featuring Kristen Stewart, ‘Cherry Bomb’

"Hello daddy, Hello mom"
Thursday, March 4th, 2010

The biopic The Runaways won’t hit theaters for a couple of weeks but right now we get to hear actresses Kristen Stewart (who plays Joan Jett) and Dakota Fanning (who plays Cherie Currie) singing the Runaways hit song Cherry Bomb!


I gotta admit … they sound pretty damn good. I’m guessing their vocals were autotuned to perfection for the soundtrack but still … they sound like the real Runaways. After the jump, check out a couple new promo photos from the film and listen to the song Cherry Bomb, as sung by Fanning and Stewart, in full …

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Joan Jett Talks To ‘Interview’ Magazine

While Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning pose for pictures
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Rocker Joan Jett is featured in the new issue of Interview magazine wherein she talks to interviewer Evelyn McDonnell about her life in The Runaways and the upcoming biopic of the same name. While new photos of Joan are not featured in the mag, new photos (shot by director Floria Sigismondi) of Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett (along with Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie) are featured with her interview. Here is one of those photos and some excerpts from Joan’s interview with Interview:

In the four years that they were together, the quintet of teenage girls that made up The Runaways cut a swath of hard rock, harder kisses, and, eventually, scary-hard drugs through the legendary glam scene of 1970s Los Angeles. Their exploits-and exploitation-are the stuff of legend and now of The Runaways, the debut feature film from photographer and video director Floria Sigismondi. Based on trouble-doll lead singer Cherie Currie’s 1989 autobiography, Neon Angel, Sigismondi hones in on the relationship between Currie and the band’s co-founder, songwriter, and guitarist Joan Jett (Currie’s book, written with Tony O’Neill, is being published in an updated version this month by HarperCollins). Dakota Fanning plays the beautiful, damaged Currie; Michael Shannon steals the show as the evil genius svengali Kim Fowley; and Kristen Stewart plays Jett, all black-leather attitude and sex appeal-Elvis plus estrogen. In part because of rights issues, The Runaways pays short shrift to the band’s other members-guitarist Lita Ford, bassist Jackie Fox, and drummer Sandy West. But driven by great songs, the film-and the feeling of liberation, love, and pain teenagers find in music and each other-is dead on. “I was looking for raw,” says Sigismondi, who has directed videos for the likes of Marilyn Manson, The White Stripes, David Bowie, Björk, The Cure, and Interpol. “This very short period of time held a big place in all of their lives. It was a very delicate thing, but it wasn’t all heartfelt. There was anger. There was resentment. There was sorrow. They were breaking new ground. They were taking risks. They were doing things that brought them up against walls.” I recently spoke to Jett-creator of some of the greatest-of-all-time anthems like “Bad Reputation” and “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and who, with her manager, Kenny Laguna, executive-produced The Runaways-about what it was like to see her youthful triumphs and excesses (including some steamy scenes with Currie) on screen. “Joan Jett-she’s just one of a kind, and has never veered from her path,” Sigismondi says. “She’s gone out there and said, ‘This is who I am.’ And she’s still doing that.”

Joan’s interview begins after the jump — where you can also check out other photos of Kristen and Dakota as photographed by Floria

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Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning Talk Rock & Roll And ‘The Runaways’

Not as awkwardly painful to watch
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Yesterday we watched a (painful to watch due to extreme awkwardness) short video of Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart participating in a Q&A session after the Sundance Film Festival screening of their film The Runways and today we get to watch another video interview with the ladies. Thankfully, this vid is not as painful to watch … tho, K. Stew still seems a bit jittery in the clip:


This clip was filmed backstage, out of sight of the huge audience … perhaps that had a calming effect on Kristen’s speech. After the jump, check out the clip and see for yourselves …

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Dakota Fanning & Kristen Stewart Participate In A Sundance Q&A

Painful Expression
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

As we all should know by now, The Runways biopic debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this past Sunday night but today we learn that principal stars Kristen Stewart (who plays Joan Jett) and Dakota Fanning (who plays Cherie Currie) participated in a short Q&A with fans and reporters after the film’s Sundance premiere and we get to watch a short video clip from it:


I must warn you, tho, K. Stew’s painfully obvious uncomfortableness with public speaking makes it very difficult to watch this video clip without your wanting to cringe every other second. Her fidgety demeanor and odd manner really makes it truly painful to watch … which is exactly why you gotta watch. Check it out after the jump …

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‘The Runaways’ Premieres At The Sundance Film Festival

At last
Monday, January 25th, 2010

Last night The Sundance Film Festival hosted the world premiere screening of the new biopic The Runaways at the Eccles Center Theatre in Park City, UT. As I mentioned yesterday, actresses Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning were joined by director Floria Sigismondi at last night’s premiere. In attendance as well were original Runaways bandmembers Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. Here are a few pics from the red carpet arrivals along with a review of the film from Entertainment Weekly magazine:

The most entertaining thing about the movie is that its writer-director, music-video veteran Floria Sigismondi (making her feature debut), has a sixth sense for how the Runaways were an image first and a rock & roll band second. Early on, we see Stewart’s black-shag-haired Joan in an L.A. boutique, where she has to coerce the sales woman into selling her a man’s studded biker jacket, which she wears as if born to it. Stewart’s no-frills, casually likable performance begins with Jett’s distinctive tough-girl saunter — which is to say, the actress knows just how to walk like a skinny dude. At the same time, we meet Cherie Currie (first name pronounced Sher-ee), who chops her platinum-blonde mane into a David Bowie shag, paints on the facial lightning streak from his Aladdin Sane cover, and lip-syncs to him at a high school talent show, which results in her being pelted with wads of paper. These girls, it’s clear, have their underground fashion bona fides down. But it takes Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), the noted record producer who becomes their psycho Svengali, to teach them how to rock out like boys. Fowley, who favors red-leather jackets and dog collars the size of tiaras, is a hyped-up hustler-manipulator who looks like a punk Frankenstein and shouts everything as if in mid-tantrum. He’s a ruthless creep, a kind of jadedly oversexed type-A head case, but he knows what sells. He finds Cherie in a nightclub, immediately placing her in the band as if he were casting a porno film. The fact that she’s only 15 is, to him, icing on the bad-girl cake.

The EW review continues after the jump …

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