We've worried before that the upcoming rock grrl biopic The Runaways might have trouble wooing a young female audience, and now Movieline hears that from the very first shot, the film makes its decidedly R-rated sensibility clear. Will Twilight fans be ready for an opening moment that sees a drop of blood fall on the pavement, followed by a wide shot of menstrual blood trickling down Dakota Fanning's leg (an unexpected period that prompts the first of Fanning's expletives in the film)? Perhaps only if it provokes an inappropriate, New Moon-yanked lunge from Jackson Rathbone. [PREVIOUSLY: Can The Runaways Succeed Where Whip It and Jennifer's Body Failed?]
Time now for another Fave Five list, this time from one of TV's most original and prolific voices: Bryan Fuller. After the jump, the former Star Trek writer and creator of such critically acclaimed (and sometimes tragically short-lived) series as Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies shares the five pop culture moments that sent him into warp drive in 2009.
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· Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton go incognito in what's either a new photo from Prince of Persia, or an attempt to sneak out undetected with one of Tobey Maguire's Blu-rays.
· Dollhouse may be ending its run, but at least star Eliza Dushku will have real-life boyfriend Rick Fox on set to keep her company.
· Survivor host Jeff Probst thinks that Russell was robbed in this week's big finale, and I'm inclined to agree. Freakin' Natalie?
· E!'s Marc Malkin says that Entourage's real-life couple of Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jerry Ferrara has broken up.
· The man who inspired Rain Man has died. He was an excellent plot driver.
Carey Mulligan's other Sundance '09 competition entry The Greatest has finally landed at indie distributor Paladin, according to a statement just over the transom at Movieline. She plays a teenager pregnant with the child of a boyfriend killed in a car accident; his own parents (Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan) and brother (Johnny Simmons) reluctantly take her in despite their overwhelming grief. Sarandon and Brosnan overdo it, but writer-director Shana Feste draws some excellent work from Mulligan, Simmons and their co-star Zoe Kravitz. Ultimately though, in An Education's Oscar wake, The Greatest may be best remembered as the one where Carey Mulligan a) cuts her hair, b) does a great American accent, and c) briefly goes topless. It arrives in limited release at the end of March.
Our cornucopia of decade's end lists continues now with the Twist List: The best twist-endings and third-act mindf*cks from the last ten years. They're the cherries on your Manoj sundae, and they're after the jump.
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Several months ago, well before I'd seen Avatar, I argued that James Cameron was underrated as a dialogue writer. Sure, there were a few corny lines in Titanic, but there were plenty of justly famous ones, too -- in fact, Cameron's whole writing career is studded with now-iconic bits of dialogue, from "Hasta la vista, baby," to "Get away from her, you bitch!"
One thing I was surprised to find when I saw Avatar, then, is a lack of big money lines (and what few could have been are garbled by lead Sam Worthington). Worse, though, is the preponderance of truly dated slang that rings such a discordant note in the otherwise persuasively imagined future. I can believe James Cameron when he says this film took so many years to make, because I'm pretty sure he hasn't touched the screenplay since he wrote it while listening to Spin Doctors in the mall in 1995.
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Hard times like these call for diversification, and Bruce Willis is doing his part by locking down his place as the official face of Belvedere's Sobieski vodka. The four-year reupping promises Willis a 3.3 percent stake in the brand, currently valued around $122 million but having been plagued by "safeguard" status -- the French equivalent of Chapter 11 -- since July 2008. Belvedere reps now say they're expecting U.S. sales alone to double in '09, thanks in part to their celebrity spokesman. A beleaguered Hollywood, meanwhile, will closely observe the "paid-in-vodka" standard as a potential salary model for other stars in the years to come. [Reuters]
· It's official: Avatar's actual opening-weekend gross has been confirmed at $77 million, just $211,321 shy of I Am Legend's all-time best December debut. There can be no doubt now that Mother Nature herself is to blame for the slim shortfall, having reportedly dumped more than a foot of multiplex-crippling snow on the East Coast as payback for perceived sexual offenses against Pandora's peaceful banshee community. [Variety]
Up in the Air offers something for nothing, a pair of festival gems ready themselves for a theater (sort of) near you, and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.
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· Alyssa Milano may not want to watch the MTV show that is slowly guido-fying America, but she still did a little fist-pumping during her very own guidette-over. The last ten seconds of her Funny or Die video imply that she covered herself in a vat of bronzer for a larger anti-Jersey Shore message, but all we can think is, "Look at the size of that poof!" Kim Kardashian of Staten Island, beware: there's a new crazy, sexy Italian gahl in town. [Funny Or Die]
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The surprising progress made during this weekend's James Franco-hosted SNL will likely not stick,because the show has invited NBA retiree and admittedly out-of-shape sports commentator Charles Barkley to headline its first show after the winter break. His January 9 episode alongside Alicia Keys will mark the star's first time back in Studio 8H since 1993, when Barkley hosted with musical guest Nirvana. Will he poke fun at his friend Tiger Woods? Probably not. Will he suffer through Kenan Thompson's impersonation of him? Sure. Will SNL ever learn to not kick off the new year with a sports star host? Unlikely. [Associated Content]
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Susan Boyle, whose first album I Dreamed a Dream is the fastest-selling debut for a female artist in history, is a rumored front-runner to record the theme for the next James Bond entry in 2011. This would place her in a canon with Paul McCartney and Wings, Carly Simon, Gladys Knight, Duran Duran and Madonna. Unfortunately for Simon Cowell's plans, there is already a Bond anthem called "The World is Not Enough," and therefore it would seem untimely for Boyle to sing it in a sorcerer's cape while cackling in the wind. [Mirror]
Our outgoing decade largely earned its nickname as The Zeroes -- 10 long years of generally underachieving, unmemorable and/or distasteful popular culture. At the movies in particular, in the wide swath between the '00s' milestones and low ebbs, some pretty fantastic material wound up swept away in the cinematic tide: A few cycled in and out of the festival circuit before veering off to DVD, another wound up in international limbo, and yet others were imported to the US for all-too-brief theatrical runs. But all of them are among the most significant efforts of their years -- or any years this decade, for that matter. Here's hoping the '10s are kinder; it all starts with you.
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· "They All Start Somewhere," promises the new ad campaign for American Idol, using a tagline that narrowly beat out, "They All End on County Fair Marquees."
· Director Amy Heckerling looked back on Brittany Murphy's post-Clueless arc: "Maybe she felt like she was not the, like, skinny, pretty girl, you know? And then the next few movies she was, you know, thinner, blonde...and, you know, suddenly got more into that whole glamorous scene... I think she felt the pressure to become a different sort of commodity to survive in show business, and I think it was awful."
· Starz has already renewed its sex-and-sandals drama Spartacus for a second season, even though it won't debut until next month.
· One of Sigourney Weaver's proudest achievements was playing the Cheshire Cat in a third-grade adaptation of Alice in Wonderland: "I realize now that I played it as a screaming homosexual, but I certainly didn't know it at the time."
· Will Ferrell is taking his unbilled role in Wedding Crashers far too seriously.
As the year draws to a close, Movieline has asked an esteemed selection of Hollywood pros -- writers, actors, producers, etc. -- to compile their five favorite pop culture things from 2009, which we'll be running throughout the week. To kick things off, we have the Fave Five of Jesse Tyler Ferguson, hilarious star of ABC's breakout hit Modern Family (which just so happens to be one of our favorite things of 2009). Click on to find out what movies, TV shows and musical performances rocked Jesse's world in the year that was.
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