News

In a bombshell Rolling Stone article, Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin says she was sexually molested at age 15 by Rodney Bingenheimer, the SiriusXM radio host once dubbed “The Mayor of the Sunset Strip” in large part due to his ownership in the influential 1970s rock ‘n’ roll hotspot the English Disco.

Wiedlin is one of five women who tell Deadline’s sister publication they were sexually assaulted or molested by Bingenheimer when they were minors in the 1970s and ’80s. The allegations come about eight months after Kari Krome, the songwriter for the ’70s all-female band the Runaways, sued Bingenheimer and the estate of the late Runaways producer Kim Fowley for sexual assault when she was a minor.

Wiedlin details the alleged assault in the Rolling Stone feature, recalling how she and other high school friends — they called themselves the Hollywooders — would sneak out of their homes to visit...

Four years before she co-founded the beloved New Wave group the Go-Go’s, guitarist Jane Wiedlin was about 15 years old living with her parents in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. It was around 1974, and she was enamored with glam-rock titans like David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Looking to get as close to the music as possible, she went to the hottest club in L.A.: Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco.

The club — which opened its doors in 1972 — had built a reputation as a well-known haunt for Bowie, Bolan, Iggy Pop,...

A songwriter for the influential 1970s punk group the Runaways has filed a lawsuit against the estate of deceased Runaways manager Kim Fowley and the former Kroq disc jockey and famed nightclub owner Rodney Bingenheimer, accusing them both of sexually assaulting her in the 1970s when she was a teenager. In the suit — filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by Rolling Stone — Kari Krome alleges that both Fowley and Bingenheimer groomed her before sexually abusing her.

The suit isn’t the first time Fowley has been accused of sexual assault.

Do not ask the Go-Go’s what they thought of their infamous 1997 episode of VH1’s Behind the Music. They did not like it.

“We really were unhappy,” frontwoman Belinda Carlisle says. “It dwelled more on the darker moments and all the negative stuff. We were kind of embarrassed and very, very disappointed.”

“We felt like that representation of us was really salacious,” guitarist and singer Jane Wiedlin says. “But it’s not like VH1 treated us any different than anyone else. I’m 100 percent convinced they had a template: the rise,...

Former Runaways frontwoman Cherie Currie will digitally release her long-awaited, star-studded album, Blvds of Splendor, via former Runaways guitarist Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records on April 28th.

The album previously came out as a vinyl-only release for Record Store Day last year, but didn’t get a wide release; the digital version includes three bonus tracks.

Currie first began teasing the album — which features guest appearances by Billy Corgan, Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum, Juliette Lewis and Brody Dalle, among others — in 2016. She shelved the project at...

Hollywood Vampires: The Birth of Midnight Movies on L.A.'s Sunset Strip is a three-part series of essays by Tim Concannon.Once Upon A Time On The Sunset STRIP1969 on the Sunset Strip was a period of dislocation, dissipation and dissolution from which the Hollywood of the Seventies emerged. A movie theatre adjoining Santa Monica Boulevard, where the Underground Cinema 12 film festival held sold-out midnight shows attended by thousands of Freaks, is an overlooked catalyst of L.A.'s underground scene, alongside Pandora's Box, the club recreated in Riot On the Sunset Strip (1967) and which was the focus of the November 1966 Sunset Strip disturbances.Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time...in Hollywood—which is woven around the Manson family murders in 1969, though it isn't focused on them—is situated in the same unsettling hinterland between film stardom and savage violence that Peter Bogdanovich's Targets touches on as well.

In the Netflix biopic “The Dirt,” Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live” fame portrays A&R exec Tom Zutaut, the man who signed Motley Crue to Elektra and Guns N’ Roses to Geffen, while veteran character actor David Costabile is manager Doc McGhee. They follow in a long and illustrious line of label executives portrayed on screen, ranging from critical and box-office hits like “Ray” and “La Bamba” to lesser-seen music pics like “Cbgb” and “The Runaways.” Here’s our list of 10 of the most memorable:

1. Steven Coogan as Tony Wilson (“24 Hour Party People”). Coogan’s brilliant portrayal of the Manchester icon and Factory Records founder in Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film also includes great turns from Paddy Considine as Rob Gretton, the manager of Joy Division and New Order who passed away in 1999, and “Lord of the Rings” star Andy Serkis as Martin Hannett, the noted producer and Factory partner...

The proto-punk icon comes over as generous and self-aware in Kevin Kerslake’s documentary, which ropes in starry friends like Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop

It is an odd but all-too-common phenomenon that cinematic biographies about musical stars often leave the viewer liking the subject less as a person, sometimes in direct proportion to how much he or she liked the subject’s work beforehand. It’s pleasing to report that’s not the case with Bad Reputation, a career-long retrospective devoted to rock star Joan Jett, who comes across here every bit as funny, smart, self-aware and generous as you could hope for. Ageing gracefully now that she’s into her seventh decade, Jett reflects with honesty on her career highs and lows, from her early days as a founder member of proto-punk girl-group the Runaways to the solo-star years of her hits I Love Rock ’n’ Roll and...

Alley Oop, the 86-year-old comic strip caveman who spawned a popular song, a TV animated cartoon series, and whose adventures once appeared in 800 newspapers, may be going extinct.

Cartoonists Jack and Carole Bender announced last month that they are retiring from creating the strip, with the last original Alley Oop appearing yesterday. Andrews McMeel Syndication, the distributor, said the strip will go into reruns through the end of the year. After that, no plans have been announced.

Alley Oop was created in 1932 as a syndicated comic by cartoonist V.T. Hamlin. The character’s name was taken from a phrase allegedly used by French gymnasts and means “let’s go.”

Originally, Oop’s world was centered around his prehistoric kingdom of Moo. But in 1939, Hamlin took it in a different direction. A time machine invented by 20th century scientist Dr. Elbert Wonmug transported Oop to modern times. Hardly phased by this abrupt shift,...

It's that vocals that always gets you first – the snarl that comes through Joan Jett's singing, sandpaper-rough around the edges and 100-percent fuck-you attitude. Yes, she's a first-class rhythm guitarist (listen the opening of the Runaways' "You Drive Me Wild" and tell us that's not gloriously, gut-punchingly rifftastic). But that voice ... that's what rock & roll sounds like. Seductive. Jagged. Rebellious. Like her vocal cords are going to jump out of her throat and kick your ass.

Bad Reputation, Kevin Kerslake's doc on Joan of Rock that premiered Monday at Sundance,...

Cherie Currie and Joan Jett have both offered statements following fellow former The Runaways band member Jackie Fuch‘s account of a night in which she was allegedly raped by band manager Kim Fowley as they watched on. Cherie Currie, Joan Jett Respons To Jackie Fuch’s Story “All I can say is if Joan, Sandy and I […]

The post Cherie Currie, Joan Jett Refute Runaways Bandmate Jackie Fuch’s Account Of Alleged Rape appeared first on uInterview.

In the wake of Jackie Fuchs's damning claim to the Huffington Post that the Runaways' manager, Kim Fowley, drugged and raped her in front of her bandmates at 16, two former Runaways have pushed back. Joan Jett, who previously denied witnessing the rape as Fuchs described it, stood by her story on Saturday, saying she was "not aware of this incident." Cherie Currie, in response to accusations that she watched Fuchs's rape and "did nothing," wrote on Facebook on Sunday that she "would have hit him over the head with a chair" had she seen what Fuchs told HuffPost. Now Fuchs has spoken out for the first time since the piece went live last week, in a lengthy Facebook post. In addition to thanking fans for their support and detailing Jason Cherkis's extensive reporting process, she also empathized with her doubtful ex-bandmates: I know some people watching the online drama...

More than 35 years after famed all-girl rock band The Runaways disbanded, its members are facing some serious allegations. Joan Jett and Cherie Currie recently released statements defending themselves after bandmate Jackie Fox alleged that the band's manager, Kim Fowley, raped her in front of the band. Fox, 55, told her story in a headline-making interview with The Huffington Post last week. The musician recalled an alleged incident that happened after a Runaways performance, in which Fox was given and told to take Quaaludes. Fox said that [...]...

Speaking with the Huffington Post recently, Jackie Fuchs alleged that former Runaways manager Kim Fowley raped her in front of her former bandmates. One of those former bandmates, Joan Jett, issued a response, saying she “was not aware of the incident.” Now another Runaways member, Cherie Currie, has offered her own response via Facebook: I have been accused of a crime. Of looking into the dead yet pleading eyes of a girl, unable to move while she was brutally raped and doing nothing. I have never been one to deny my mistakes in life and I wouldn't start now. If I were guilty, I would admit it. There are so many excuses I could make being only one month into my sixteenth year at the time that people would understand but I am innocent. When I return from Sweden I will seek a qualified polygraph examiner to put to rest...

Earlier this week, the former Runaways bassist Jackie Fox (née Jackie Fuchs) devastated the music community when she said the band’s producer, Kim Fowley, had raped her in front of her bandmates when she was 16 years old. Now one of those bandmates, rock legend Joan Jett, has issued a statement in response to Fox’s story, via Yahoo:Anyone who truly knows me understands that if I was aware of a friend or bandmate being violated, I would not stand by while it happened. For a group of young teenagers thrust into '70s rock stardom there were relationships that were bizarre, but I was not aware of this incident. Obviously Jackie’s story is extremely upsetting and although we haven’t spoken in decades, I wish her peace and healing. Lest anyone twist or manipulate Jett’s statement, she’s neither confirming nor denying the story, only saying she...

If you woke up this morning thinking, I'd like to read a powerful piece of journalism and then feel nauseated for the rest of the day, here you go: In a new Huffington Post longform, former Runaways bassist Jackie Fox (née Jackie Fuchs) reveals that the band's producer, Kim Fowley, drugged and raped her in front of a large group that included band members Joan Jett and Cherie Currie 40 years ago. Fuchs, who was 16 at the time, says she had only recently joined the band when Fowley raped her on New Year's Eve 1975, following a performance in Orange County. After the show, Fuchs says that Fowley, who'd specifically sought out a group of teenage girls to form the Runways, brought the band to a motel to celebrate. As others in attendance told HuffPost's Jason Cherkis, Fuchs was given quaaludes at the party before Fowley's sexual assault. Cherkis...

Word of caution… many will consider the following article disturbing and/or tasteless. That being said… who are we to stand in the way of music maven Kim Fowley’s dying wish? Read on at your own risk. We told you a… Continue Reading →

The post Kim Fowley’s Corpse Defiled for Girls and Corpses Magazine! See the Images! appeared first on Dread Central.

Back in 2012, Kim Fowley (record producing prodigy of “The Runaways”), and a massive fan of Girls and Corpses Magazine, who had attended and hosted dozens of events for the newsstand magazine, decided what he wanted to do after he died. He wished to, “Have his freshly dead body photographed for the cover of Girls and Corpses Magazine with a couple hot fetish models.” The photoshoot was planned to take place upon his death and … Continue reading →

Horrornews.net...

Here it is, Dreadies, the weirdest story you’re likely to read today. Music maven Kim Fowley, who scored big on the Billboard charts with songs like “Alley Oop” in the Sixties and many more, has passed; and you’re not gonna… Continue Reading →

The post Rock Icon Kim Fowley Passes; Wants His Corpse Defiled on Girls and Corpses Magazine appeared first on Dread Central.

Famed music producer Kim Fowley, who died last Thursday, had a last wish ... he wanted to be abused and mutilated by fetish models.Fowley -- who worked with The Runaways, Kiss and Alice Cooper -- made plans in 2012 with the publisher of "Girls and Corpses" Magazine to feature his dead body on the cover.According to emails Kim sent the publisher, a photog, and his then-girlfriend -- the singer/songwriter wanted a full spread featuring...

In this week's edition of 10 Stories You Might Have Missed: Jennifer Lawrence will play real-life diver Audrey Mestre for upcoming film "Dive," teaming again with "Catching Fire"/"Mockingjay" director Francis Lawrence. James Cameron will produce.  Plus read stories on Dolly Parton's NBC movies deal, Bjork announces another new album, "Red Band Society" disbands, "Avatar" sequels are pushed back, "MasterChef Junior" is renewed, music mainstay Kim Fowley died, "Ghost in the Shell" gets a release date, "The Jungle Book" is pushed back, Richard Armitage joins "Red Dragon," and Fka twigs releases a new music video. What caught your eye in this week of entertainment?...

Here’s a good question: Has Michael Shannon ever played a normal guy? You know, just your average, every day, run-of-the-mill sort?

There’s just something about Shannon that makes Hollywood think "nut job," to the point that it was probably inevitable that he was cast as the villainous General Zod in "Man of Steel." It's hard to pick the nine craziest roles of a man known for almost always bringing the crazy, but if we had to choose ...

9. Bobby Monday, 'Premium Rush' (2012)

He's a cop with a severe gambling addiction, and he's chasing after Joseph Gordon-Levitt on a bicycle. Honestly, does it get much wackier than that? Well, when you're Michael Shannon it's hard to say, but that doesn't make his villainous turn in "Premium Rush" any less crazy. In fact, he's totally f***ing nuts in this as he tries to recover a high-stakes boat ticket...

Michael Shannon has explored a great deal of history in the past few years: he got rowdy as Kim Fowley in The Runaways; stern as hell for Boardwalk Empire; and, who could forgot, supplied comic relief for Michael Bay in Pearl Harbor. He once again plays period in The Iceman, based on family man contract killer Richard Kuklinski, a.k.a. “The Iceman.” Shannon can be seen donning old man sweaters, thick mustaches, and, best of all, dancing to a Blondie song. If there were any reason for a period piece to exist, it’s for Michael Shannon to groove to “Heart of Glass.” Besides showing off some moves on the dance floor, Shannon infuses a surprising amount of empathy into a man who takes lives for a living. The movie and performance never approve or sensationalize his actions, but, for a guy who killed over 100 people, Shannon’s portrayal paints a portrait of a guy who...

The 13th annual Melbourne Underground Film Festival, held back on Aug. 24 to Sept. 1, shined an especially bright spotlight on New Irish Low Budget Cinema, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the fest gave its top awards to a film from the land of Éire.

Terry McMahon’s crime thriller Charlie Casanova won for Best Film and Best Director, and star Emmet Scanlon tied for Best Actor with Shiver‘s John Jarrat.

Despite all the love given to Ireland, this year’s Muff didn’t ignore its home countrymen, either. Local filmmaker Chris Sun’s latest, Daddy’s Little Girl, also took home multiple awards, including Best SFX, Best Actress for Allira Jacques and tied for the Special Jury Prize with Donna McRae’s Johnny Ghost.

Also, as usual, Muff gave out a wide variety of awards to multiple films. Some of the other winners include Daryl Stoneage...

To celebrate their 13th anniversary this year, the Melbourne Underground Film Festival is going green!

No, they’re not out to save the kookaburra or anything. Instead, they’re hosting a special tribute to the New Irish Low Budget Cinema, featuring two films by acclaimed filmmaker Ivan Kavanagh, plus work by Colin Downey, Gary Kenneally and Gerard Lough.

Muff will host a repeat screening of Kavanagh’s celebrated thriller Tin Can Man — it previously screened at Muff in 2008 — as well as his latest film, The Fading Light. The three other Irish films screening all fall into the horror/thriller genres, from Downey’s The Looking Glass to Kenneally’s Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman and Lough’s trilogy-ending The Shaken 3. And, in addition, the entire fest kicks off with the opening night Irish thriller Charlie Casanova by Terry McMahon.

But don’t think Muff is all Irish all the time this year,...

With no Kim Fowley in sight, Cherri Bomb will have a shot to outlast the most groundbreaking girl rock group of all time, The Runaways. Yes, Fowley is a musical genius, but his outlandish behavior would not suffice in the music industry of the 21st Century. The Runaways’ similarities don’t end just with the gender and age of Cherri Bomb’s members, emphasis on the Cherri Bomb. If the band name sounds unfamiliar then Kim Fowley probably didn’t ring a bell either, but regardless, The Runaways had a hit song titled “Cherry Bomb”. The band comparisons will end here because Cherri Bomb is a part of an entirely different generation and [ Read More ]...

Legendary music producer, manager, songwriter and all-around L.A. character Kim Fowley, best known for having launched all-girl punk band The Runaways in 1975 (he was played by Michael Shannon in the 2010 movie co-starring Kristen Stewart), underwent bladder cancer surgery on Feb. 21 and in anticipation of the complex procedure, filmed a  YouTube video offering a final goodbye to loved ones, chief among them dominatrix, model and director Snow Mercy. "If you're a friend, thank you;  If you're an enemy, thank you for keeping me alert," says Fowley in the clip titled "Dancing with Death" and shot

read more...

"From Straight To Bizarre" : Zappa, Beefheart, Alice Cooper and La's Lunatic Fringe", will be released on DVD, February 21, 2012, including rare footage, archive interviews, location shoots, "...and the music that made it all worthwhile..." :

"...in 1968, musician Frank Zappa, desperate to remove himself from his original deal with Verve Records, set up the Bizarre and Straight labels with manager Herb Cohen.

"Records by Zappa with his 'Mothers of Invention' band would rub shoulders in the label's racks with releases by Wild Man Fischer, the all female 'GTOs', acapella gospel collective 'The Persuasions', the first clutch of 'Alice Cooper' records, Tim Buckley's 'Starsailor', live recordings by Lenny Bruce and 'Lord Buckley' and a whole lot more.

"But it would be a 1969 release by the Don Van Vliet aka 'Captain Beefheart', that would provide the 'art-statement' for which the Bizarre/Straight enterprise is remembered best, and which...

In what is probably the most inspired piece of casting to have occurred lately, intimidatingly intense actor Michael Shannon has been cast as megalomaniacal General Zod in Zack Snyder's upcoming Superman reboot, Man of Steel. I guess this means I won't see Lilo as Lex Luthor after all. Dammit!

Shannon is probably best known for his current work on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, but he's been giving deeply concentrated, off-the-wall performances since 1993, when he broke into movies with his appearance as Fred, the wedding groom, in Groundhog Day. What? You don't remember him from that? Okay, I don't either. But I do remember him from William Friedkin's startlingly dark Bug, in which Shannon gives one the most memorably disturbing performances I've ever seen. Ever. More recently, he played the intimidatingly intense Kim Fowley in the mediocre rock and roll biopic The Runaways.

Snyder seems to be doing...

Zack Snyder and Warner Brothers made a shrewd move in picking the ultra-talented Michael Shannon to be General Zod in the upcoming Superman movie, Man of Steel. After noteworthy turns in movies like Bug, Revolutionary Road, and as Kim Fowley in The Runaways, this will hopefully be the film that makes him a household name.  Speaking at the RiverRun International Film Festival where he was recently...

It was announced by Warner Brothers Pictures that Michael Shannon will be playing General Zod in the upcoming Superman re-boot Superman: Man of Steel, directed by visual mastermind Zac Snyder.

“Zod is not only one of Superman’s most formidable enemies, but one of the most significant because he has insights into Superman that others don’t,” Snyder states in the official release. “Michael is a powerful actor who can project both the intelligence and the malice of the character, making him perfect for the role.”

In a role previously portrayed by Terence Stamp in Superman: The Movie and Superman II, Michael Shannon will have quite the task ahead of him taking the role of Zod, mastered by Stamp, and making it his own. Shannon has always managed to put an interesting twist in whatever role he takes on, be it the colorful producer Kim Fowley in The Runaways, or...

Warner Bros. is obviously determined to make each Sunday a "Super" Sunday as once again they announce a major piece of casting for Zack Snyder's Superman.

Previously it was Amy Adams as Lois Lane and today the press release brings word Michael Shannon ("Boardwalk Empire") will play the villainous General Zod in what is now officially titled Man of Steel. As General Zod, Shannon will go toe-to-toe with Henry Cavill, who plays the new Clark Kent/Superman in the film. Along with Cavill, Shannon and Adams the film co-stars Diane Lane and Kevin Costner as Martha and Jonathan Kent.

Shannon was among other names including Viggo Mortensen and Edgar Ramirez ("Carlos") in contention for the role. Shannon, you may remember, played a particularly nasty character in Sam Mendes's Revolutionary Road as well as delivered the only notable performance in Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways as the eccentric producer Kim Fowley.

Eat Pray Love; Charlie St Cloud; The Runaways; I Spit on Your Grave; The Lovers' Guide 3D

"Learning to love yourself," sang Whitney Houston memorably, "is the greatest love of all." And there can surely be no love greater than that discovered by Julia Roberts in the glamorous all-about-me travelogue Eat Pray Love (2010, Sony, 15).

Whipped meringue-like from Elizabeth Gilbert's onanistic bestseller, Ryan Murphy's cinematic colonic irrigation sends Roberts/Gilbert running away from the horrendous misery of her healthy, wealthy, middle-class American existence to spend a year looking for herself in Italy, India and Bali. "It's a universal story that can apply to anybody," says Murphy, who's clearly never met anyone with pressing personal, professional or (heaven forbid) financial demands.

But hey, which one of us can really say that we haven't spent a year eating pizza, embracing our "muffin tops" and having sex on a beach with Javier Bardem?...

The Runaways

DVD, Entertainment One

It's virtually impossible for a rock biopic to completely replicate all the trappings of the time in which it's set. For the story of the Runaways, the first major all-female rock band of the 1970s, there wasn't a great deal of money or time to fuss over every little detail. While it does get plenty correct, it completely nails the spirit of the story almost from the get-go – when Dakota Fanning as singer Cherie Currie (complete with Aladdin Sane lightning bolt painted across her face) lip synchs to David Bowie's Lady Grinning Soul to waves of derision from her classmates. From then on it's a colourful, fast-paced tale of a band that burned brightly before dramatically imploding after a few short years. Existing in the netherworld between glam and punk, the band were treated at best like a novelty, at worst like a freak show.

Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning can't quite capture the onstage verve of the 70s teenage girl band who blazed a trail and then imploded in a haze of drug-taking and jealousy

The basics

The Runaways is the feisty, underwritten tale of the all-girl teenage rock band who changed the face of rock history in the late 1970s before imploding in a haze of drug-taking, jealousy and inter-band recrimination. Written and shot by Italian-Canadian music video director Floria Sigismondi, here making her feature debut, the film features Twilight's Kristen Stewart as singer-guitarist Joan Jett, who would go on to international fame with her own band, the Blackhearts, and Dakota Fanning as lead singer Cherie Currie, whose eventual departure led to the group's split.

The stakes

If Sigismondi is hoping to ape film-makers such as Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Zack Snyder by making the jump from music videos to film, The Runaways...

This in-your-face look at teenage life and the rock scene in mid-1970s Los Angeles begins with menstrual blood dripping from a 15-year-old, who's having her first period on the way to an outing with her elder sister. The movie is a sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll biopic of the first big rock girl band, the Runaways, a collection of social misfits brought together and manipulated into becoming a provocative quintet by the grotesque, foul-mouthed promoter Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon).

It's an unedifying story given a certain sheen by Floria Sigismondi, an experienced director of pop videos, whose first feature this is. Kristen Stewart from the Twilight series plays the group's driving force, Joan Jett, who still performs and is credited as co-producer. Former child star Dakota Fanning plays the band's star attraction, Cherie Currie, disturbed daughter of a broken marriage who became the lead singer.

Cherie was chosen by Fowley for her resemblance...

Kristen Stewart stars in a lively 1970s biopic about the all-girl American band. By Peter Bradshaw

The time passes; the seasons turn, summer turns to autumn and now Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart are playing rock chicks. And doing it pretty convincingly, what's more – Stewart, anyway. This is the intriguingly low-key, unhappy story of the Runaways, the 1970s all-girl band fronted by singer Cherie Currie (Fanning), with Joan Jett (Stewart) providing guitar and rock'n'roll attitude. With a clump of black hair, leather jacket and high-waisted blue denims, Stewart has an eerie resemblance to Jett, and when in one scene she takes her top off facing away from the camera, her back looks as broad and muscular as a weightlifter's.

In 1975, Jett finds herself hanging out at Rodney's English Disco in Los Angeles, where the kids are getting into David Bowie and glam rock, getting off on Do You Wanna Touch Me.

Kristen Stewart stars in a lively 1970s biopic about the all-girl American band. By Peter Bradshaw

The time passes; the seasons turn, summer turns to autumn and now Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart are playing rock chicks. And doing it pretty convincingly, what's more – Stewart, at any rate. This is the interestingly low-key, unhappy story of the Runaways, the 70s all-girl band led by blonde singer Cherie Currie (Fanning), with Joan Jett (Stewart) providing lead guitar and rock'n'roll attitude. With her clump of black hair, leather jacket and high-waisted, flat-fronted blue denims, Kirsten Stewart has an eerie resemblance to Jett and when, in one scene, she takes her top off facing away from the camera, her back looks as broad and muscular as a weightlifter's.

In 1975, Jett finds herself hanging out at the English Disco in Los Angeles, where the kids are getting into David Bowie and glam rock and...

The appeal of The Runaways story is undeniable; four cute, jailbait girls with sass, playing ballsy pop rock at a time when there was no one else staking a claim to rockin’ bad girrrl turf.

Their turbulent career also compactly showcases all the now de rigeur (and turgid) rock bio-pic tropes; disaffected teenage entropy (check), substance abuse (check), good tunes (check), internal and external tensions (check), and a brief, Warholian 15 minutes in the spotlight before burn out (double check).

The main problem with director Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways is that it does little more than tick the rock flick boxes. Based as it is on Cherie Curie’s autobiography ‘Neon Angel,’ the focal point of the film is thus Cherie, and on Dakota Fanning’s portrayal of the troubled teenager. There is a scene early on in which Cherie wins a talent contest at her high school lip syncing to David Bowie,...

DVD Playhouse—August 2010

By

Allen Gardner

Black Orpheus (Criterion) Winner of the 1959 Best Foreign Film Oscar and that same year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, Black Orpheus is a modern-day update of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice reset in 20th century Brazil during Carnival in Rio. Director Marcel Camus offers up a visual feast with some of the decade’s most ravishing color cinematography. A classic. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Archival interviews with Camus and actress Marpessa Dawn; Interviews with Brazilian cinema scholar Robert Stam, jazz historian Gary Giddins, and Brazilian author Ruy Castro; Documentary on the film; Trailer. Full screen. Dolby 1.0 mono.

The Last Song (Touchstone) Sentimental adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ (by Sparks and Jeff Van Wie) sentimental novel about a father and daughter attempting to repair their damaged relationship. Greg Kinnear, as the dad in question, comes off best, while tween sensation Miley Cyrus...

Joan Jett may have loved rock'n'roll but it almost killed her former band, the Runaways. John Patterson thinks it's time we faced the music

There are some rock'n'roll movies, like Floyd Mutrux's American Hot Wax and Bob Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold Your Hand, that manage to convey the palpable sense – palpable, that is, to a hormone-wracked teenager – that rock'n'roll can literally save your life. A particularly wrenching scene in the former has its lead character, a teenage Brill Building songwriter, sobbing with gratitude backstage at one of DJ Alan Freed's early Moondog Matinee rock'n'roll revues in 1955, as she gratefully acknowledges that this music came along for her at exactly the right moment in her life, and that said life would be empty and pointless for her without it. That scene always destroys me.

The Runaways has a little of this feeling, but given the already ruined lives of...

Directed BYFloria SigismondiSTARRINGKristen Stewart - Joan Jett Dakota Fanning - Cherie Currie Michael Shannon - Kim Fowley Scout-Taylor Compton - Lita FordStella Maeve - Sandy West Alia Shawkat - Robin Riley Keough - Marie CurrieJohnny Lewis - ScottieGenre - Drama/Music/BiopicRunning Time - 107 MinutesScore - 3 Howls Outta 4For a long time, rock 'n' roll music was a male dominated genre led by...

The first image an audience seated for a screening of The Runaways, the new movie about the rise and fall of Joan Jett’s first band, sees is the bloodied leg of a young girl who has just hit womanhood. As she and her sister scamper across a fast food parking lot to clean up and change from school girl clothes to more sexy fare, the viewer gets a clear picture. This is a movie about the early twinges of girl power, about the girls that came before 'The Bad Girls Club', about girls that know how to get down and dirty. But mostly, it’s a movie we’ve probably seen many times before.

The Runaways is the story of two very different girls—rocker-from-birth Joan Jett (mulleted Kristen Stewart) and David Bowie-loving sex kitten Cherie Currie (Farrah Fawcetted Dakota Fanning). While Joan dreams of breaking...

Chicago – There’s a great moment early on in “The Runaways” where fifteen-year-old Cherie Currie lip-syncs to Davie Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul” at a high school talent show. Her hardened baby face defiantly stares into the crowd, as her peers accompany the performance with catcalls. Yet instead of dissolving into a puddle of girlish tears, Currie flips off the surrounding student body. She clearly doesn’t give a d—n about her bad reputation.

It’s this spirit of raucous conviction that provides the fuel behind first-time feature director Floria Sigismondi’s biopic on the titular all-girl rock band that ultimately launched the career of Joan Jett. The film centers on two transformative performances from “Twilight” co-stars Kristen Stewart (as Jett, the group’s founding member and rhythm guitarist) and Dakota Fanning (as lead singer Currie), who share a palpable onscreen chemistry even as the film fails to adequately develop their relationship.

Sadly, before we even get to any other merits Floria Sigismondi's unorthodox coming-of-age drama may or may not have, there is one issue we simply must address right off the bat. The sound mixing on this blu-ray edition of The Runaways is appalling. Simply shocking, which for a music industry biopic is really unforgivable. Even with a moderately priced receiver system and speakers you will spend more time adjusting your audio set-up, as the mix careers back-and-forth between the husky whisper of barely audible dialogue and the ear-splitting crunch of punk-rock guitar, than you will enjoying the movie.

It's a crying shame because that infuriating aspect aside there is much to admire about the photographer and longtime music video helmer' feature debut. Charting the meteoric rise to prominence of the pioneering all-girl teenage rock band, this harrowing portrait of impressionable, abused youth sees these tender young things crash headfirst...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: HollywoodNews.com stays on top of the latest DVD and Blu-ray releases so you know which films are worth your time and money. This week, we review:

“The Runaways”

Strangely polished considering its grungy subject matter, Floria Sigismondi’s “The Runaways” sticks to the established rules of music-biopic moviemaking as it records the rise and fall of The Runaways, an unpolished, rule-breaking, female punk band that helped launch eventual rock superstars Joan Jett and Lita Ford into the stratosphere. The movie makes its way to DVD this week.

The music is almost secondary in “Runaways,” however, save for the band’s most recognizable hit, “Cherry Bomb.” (Which, according to Sigismondi, took 5 minutes to write, robbing the song of any mystique it might have enjoyed.) The movie’s far more interested in the amorous, taboo relationship shared between Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Runaways lead singer...

Cop Out: "If there's one thing that Cop Out has in common with other Kevin Smith movies, it's that it's not about the plot. It's about the exchanges, here between Willis and Morgan's characters. Unfortunately, the chemistry is flat, and the humor is non-existent. It's a series of the sort of jokes you'd expect to hear in a Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer movie -- dick and fart jokes without an ounce of subtext to them. At one point, Tracy Morgan goes on a four-minute ad-libbed diatribe about his bowel movements, which ranks as one of the most painful scenes I've ever had to suffer through." -- Dustin Rowles

The Runaways: "About as rock and roll as those late-night infomercials pitching metal compilations featuring Winger and Queensryche, The Runaways offers little insight into the influential all-girl rock band, but rather an excuse for the leads to try to shimmy off their Twilight bonds.

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Bristling with all-girl attitude and spandex, The Runaways were one of the great glam rock groups of the 1970s. Whether the “Cherry Bomb” hit-makers have one of the great stories to tell is another stack of vinyl. This biopic follows a familiar path, albeit one dressed up in plastic fashion and simpering with sunken-cheek cool. Guitarist Joan Jett (Twilight’s Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) are brought together in an unholy marriage by unhinged Svengali Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon). From there it’s initial success, drug problems and disintegration–with a few same-sex smooches on the way. Aspiring riot grrl rockers will dig the big time’s adrenaline rush; everyone else will shake their heads knowingly when it all goes up in angel dust.

Extras: KStew, DFann and the real Joan Jett all contribute to the commentary track ‘n...

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon

Director: Floria Sigismondi

1975. Rock is a male-dominated genre, but young wannabe guitarist Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) has other ideas. She wants to start an all girl rock band called ‘The Runaways’. And that basically is the set-up of this conventional, yet hugely entertaining music biopic of the real life rebellious rock ensemble.

With their band, The Runaways kicked started the term ‘Girl Power’, i.e. youth female liberation, which was resurrected in the 1990s by the Spice Girls. Throughout this story we are reminded that women weren’t given the freedom afforded men in the music business. They were treated like sex objects, not musicians. This gives The Runaways an inspirational quality, as the girls want desperately to succeed and prove their sexist, male-dominated industry wrong.

Director Floria Sigismondi creates a believable seventies vibe, using retro credits and garish colours to capture the...

Whenever I see Michael Shannon is in something, I sit up and take notice. You should too. He's delightfully bizarre, and he channels that aspect of his personality very well in all of his roles. You probably remember him most recently from "The Runaways," in which he played band manager Kim Fowley.

The news today is that Shannon will star as the villain in "Premium Rush," opposite star Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The story follows Gordon-Levitt as a dirty cop (Shannon) pursues him through New York City, set on recovering some mysterious envelope that has come into the kid's possession. Jamie Chung, who appears in this Friday's "Grown Ups," is also in talks to star. Head over to The Hollywood Reporter for the full story.