VIDEO: The Runaways' Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning Are the New Queens of Noise

The Runaways tore through Sundance on Saturday night, and I'm pleased to report veteran music video director Floria Sigismondi's feature debut did anything but ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb. (Sorry.) Skating just along the candy-colored edge of retro kitsch without ever crossing the line into self-parody, Sigismondi is incapable of framing an unattractive shot.

An all-girl hard rock group with real musical chops but little respect among the male-dominated industry of the time, The Runaways was the brainchild of '70s music impresario and Sunset Strip fixture Kim Fowley, inhabited here with cross-eyed, demented glee by Michael Shannon. He paired a brooding, budding rhythm guitarist named Joan Jett -- a part Kristen Stewart slips into as easily as a well-worn leather jacket -- with Cherie Currie, a trickier fit for Dakota Fanning, who struggles in the underwritten part to find the mojo of the band's jailbait front-kitten. But who really cares. It's feathered, fun, and lightly lesbionic -- everything you'd expect from a movie about the trailblazing twatrockers that made the world safe for Avril Lavigne.

Here's some video of Sigismondi, Stewart and Fanning taking audience questions after the show.

And here's their inspiration:

[Photo Credit: Reuters]