Everyone knows that talk is cheap. Yesterday, the chatter was so vociferous that the director of Sundance had to step in and defend the festival's decision to include two films starring Kristen Stewart.

Today, it's Team 411 (@KStew411) who has a thing or two to say about the matter.

Every January Hollywood descends on Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival and Hollywood and independent filmmaking rub elbows up and down Main Street for ten days. I love film festivals, especially ones like Sundance that are also markets for distributors to pick up films for release. Without festivals like this we would never see movies like Napoleon Dynamite or Frozen River. And Sundance is especially unique for its combination of genuine independent filmmaking (the festival being in a symbiotic relationship with Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute) and straight up Hollywood excess. Park City will be overrun with agents, studio reps, paparazzi, and celebrities. This year’s star roster includes James Franco, Ryan Gosling, the Affleck brothers, Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, James Gandolfini—you get the idea. Of course there are those who get bent out of shape over the “crass intrusion of Hollywood” in the form of these celebs and agents et al. I would argue without their influence Sundance would have died long ago. Sundance is what it is—both a celebration of independent filmmaking and Hollywood success.

This year everyone is picking on Kristen Stewart, who has rocketed to uber-fame courtesy the Twilight Saga franchise. There’s vocal protest over her having two films at Sundance 2010--Joan Jett biopic The Runaways and Welcome to the Rileys, in which she plays a teenage stripper/prostitute opposite James Gandolfini and fellow Sundance regular Melissa Leo as a grieving couple. In 2008, Kristen had two films at Sundance (The Yellow Handkerchief and What Just Happened) and no one said a word. No one cared about her screening a movie back in 2004 (Speak) or even last year when, already famous thanks to Twilight, she showed to support Adventureland. It happens every year—some celebrity is singled out as being “anti the Sundance ideal,” it’s just ironic that this year they’ve picked an actress who has made several previous trips to the festival and, in spite of her recent success, is still referred to as an indie actress.

Kristen makes an easy target. Ever since Sundance announced their lineup her two entries have been among the most anticipated films of the festival. Welcome to the Rileys is one of the most-screened movies of the whole festival. And The Runaways is causing all kinds of ruckus, largely thanks to Kristen’s--and costar Dakota Fanning’s--high profile, but also aided by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, who will be at the festival and playing a concert the night before the movie’s premiere at Harry O’s in Park City. The Runaways premiere will be a full-on media circus, with Welcome to the Rileys being almost just as mad. It is, after all, the “Bella stripper movie.”

Which brings us to the crux of the problem. They’re not rejecting Kristen Stewart as unworthy of Sundance--they’re rejecting Bella. The indie scenesters are holding Twilight against KStew. (Do they hold Blade Trinity against Parker Posey?) This is the eternal struggle of Sundance: indie vs. Hollywood. It’s the debate that will rage throughout Park City over the next ten days, how big of a role should the Hollywood machine play in a film festival dedicated to finding a nurturing outsider talent without “studio interference”. Many dedicated festival goers despise the machine’s presence at Sundance and bemoan what they perceive as the cheapening of the festival because of it. Right now, Kristen embodies that dichotomy. She’s an established indie actress who is also the face of a major Hollywood franchise.

What Kristen Stewart is doing this year is shining a light on the uneasy partnership between independent and mainstream filmmaking. People like to talk about this as an “us versus them” situation, but the reality is the line distinguishing the two is increasingly obscured. Director Christopher Nolan first broke out with the Sundance hit Memento in 2000 and today he is best known as the chief of the rebooted Batman franchise. More recently, the director of Sundance 2009 sleeper hit (500) Days of Summer, Mark Webb, just signed on to helm the Spider Man reboot. Actors cross over even more than directors. Also attending Sundance this year is James Franco, a veteran of the Spider Man films and he of the soap opera stint. He’s starring in another of the festival’s most-anticipated films, Howl. Ben Affleck, one of the most over-exposed celebrities in recent memory, will be at the festival with The Company Men. And Josh Radnor, star of the television show How I Met Your Mother, is making his directorial debut with happythankyoumoreplease, in which he also stars.

Yet KStew is taking all the heat. She embodies the ultimate destruction of the “us-and-them” dichotomy. She proves that both independent and mainstream filmmaking can coexist in one career. And she does it with an unapologetic attitude that simultaneously tells Hollywood she won’t forsake her indie roots and tells the indie scene she won’t ignore or apologize for mainstream opportunities. Indie scenesters often resent Hollywood for seemingly taking away their top talent, and Hollywood has always kind of treated indies as second-class movie citizens. That sort of pigeonholing gets in the way of what’s most important: the quest for good movies. At the end of the day, it’s not how the movie got made, but whether or not it’s any good that matters.

Source: Team 411

TORONTO -- Canadian distributor E1 Entertainment is to release "The Runaways" from Bill Pohlad's production and financing company River Road Entertainment in Canada on March 19, simultaneous with the stateside release by Apparition.

E1 also acquired the Canadian rights to Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and was produced by Pohlad, Sarah Green, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, and Grant Hill.

Both River Road titles will be released in the U.S. Market by Apparition, which Pohlad and distribution veteran Bob Berney launched in August ahead of the Toronto International Film Festival.

"The Runaways," written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, stars "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning in a music-fueled portrait of an all-girl rock band of the same name that came of age in the mid-to-late 1970s.

"The Runaways" will bow on Jan. 24 at Sundance ahead of the spring release.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

U.S. indies of all stripes have a strong presence at the Panorama this year, with highlights including the world premiers of Trent Cooper's comedy "Reinventing Robert Axle" (aka "Father of Invention") starring Kevin Spacey, Virginia Madsen, Johnny Knoxville and Heather Graham and the drama "Welcome To The Rileys" from director Jake Scott featuring James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart.

PANORAMA SPECIAL
"Broder!" (Broder!), Jeferson De, Brazil
"Die Fremde" (When We Leave), Feo Aladag, Germany (WP)
"Mine vaganti" (Loose Cannons), Ferzan Ozpetek, Italy (WP)
"Monga," Doze, Niu Chen-Zer, Taiwan (WP)
"Open," Jake Yuzna, USA (WP)
"Paha perhe" (Bad Family), Aleksi Salmenpera, Finland
"Reinventing Robert Axle," Trent Cooper, USA (WP)
"Welcome To The Rileys," Jake Scott, USA (WP)

Source: Hollywood Reporter

The Sundance Film Festival will see the premiere on Sunday of the Joan Jett biopic The Runaways, starring “New Moon” mates Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.

There has been buzz that Stewart and Fanning will also attend Jett’s performance with The Blackhearts on Saturday night at Harry O’s in Park City, Utah. Gossip Cop can confirm that Stewart does plan to be there, as does Fanning.

But another rumor cropping up has Robert Pattinson hitting Sundance for the premiere of Stewart’s new film, and Gossip Cop can report that there is not truth to that speculation.

Source: Gossip Cop

EXCLUSIVE. Howard Shore is on board to compose the original score for the third film in the Twilight series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Temple Hill Entertainment today confirmed to MovieScore Magazine that the Lord of the Rings composer is going to write the music for the film, following in the footsteps of Carter Burwell (who scored the first film in 2008) and Alexandre Desplat (who wrote the music for the second, New Moon). Shore has begun work, spotting the movie, this week.

Howard Shore is, of course, best known for the Tolkien trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson, an epic work that is currently touring the world in concert form, performed live to projection. Shore also recently rescored the Mel Gibson action thriller Edge of Darkness for Warner Bros, replacing John Corigliano. This film is opening in the US next week.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is based on the third novel in the series of four books written by Stephenie Meyer. The film is directed by David Slade (30 Days of Night and Hard Candy), with returning cast members including Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene and Jackson Rathbone. Summit Entertainment will release the film on June 30.

Source: Movies Core Magazine

The article below may contain spoilers

LOS ANGELES -- Dakota Fanning's porcelain-doll features were swathed in exotic makeup and her blond hair coiffed into a feathery shag; she raised her umpteenth shot of sake and cast a knowing glance at Kristen Stewart. The "Twilight" star held Fanning's gaze briefly and toasted back, looking every inch the tough rocker chick, with her matching black shag hairdo, spiked bracelet and razor- blade charm necklace.

The actresses clinked glasses and giggled.
With downtown Los Angeles' Kyoto Grand Hotel standing in for a bustling Tokyo sushi joint last summer, the teen stars were on the set of the coming-of-age drama "The Runaways" -- in character, with Fanning as Cherie Currie, the wild-child lead singer of the titular all-girl rock group, and Stewart portraying Joan Jett, its electric- guitar-wielding, 'tude-copping founder. Between the years 1975 and '79, the Runaways packed shows from coast to coast, toured the world and racked up hits before self-immolating in a blaze of drugs, jealousies and in-fighting.

"The Runaways" will premiere Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, arriving as one of the fest's most outrightly commercial offerings, thanks largely to Stewart's demonstrated "opening" power as a marquee draw. (Put out by independent distributor Apparition, the movie reaches theaters in March.) But "The Runaways" is also one of the most piquantly feminist films to touch down this year at America's preeminent independent film forum - - albeit a punk-infused genre pic with a pronounced generational viewpoint and no shortage of blood, drug abuse and bodily effluvia.

Written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, the acclaimed photographer and video director behind such foreboding, atmospheric clips as Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" and Christina Aguilera's "Fighter," the movie was less intended as a by-the-book musical biopic a la "The Doors" or "La Bamba" than an impressionistic character study illuminating a unique female predicament: What happens when teenage girls get handed too much, too soon via worldwide rock stardom?

No stranger to the rock 'n' roll life in her own right, the Italian-born first-time feature director -- a striking woman with a mane of raven-black hair who was clad in a vampire-chic, all-black ensemble on set last summer -- said she drew on personal experience to connect with the characters. "It's young girls getting swept up into a world they couldn't handle," Sigismondi said. "Feeding on those confusing feelings that develop from moving from girl to woman, I could reach deep into myself to find those things."

Sigismondi, who is married to Lillian Berlin, lead singer of the hard-rocking alt-quartet Living Things, continued: "I wanted to focus on Joan and Cherie. How different they are, how they were drawn together for this crazy experience. Joan is so focused, she really wanted to have this band. And Cherie wanted the rage of rock 'n' roll, the rebellion."

The film follows Currie at age 15 as she chafes against the San Fernando Valley's suburban torpor and her family's psychological abandonment en route to becoming the most forward female face in rock. On a parallel track, Jett is shown raging against the proverbial machine, defying all cultural expectation to stake out her place as a young woman in the boys' club of hard rock while still in her midteens.

One night in Hollywood, Jett approaches record impresario Kim Fowley (a scene-chewing Michael Shannon in campy glam drag) who introduces her to drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve) and becomes the band's Svengali. Fowley "discovers" Currie at a nightclub, installs her as frontwoman and even concocts the lyrics to one of the group's biggest hits, "Cherry Bomb," on the spot during Currie's audition. Scant character development is devoted to West and bandmate- guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton).

"Runaways" producer John Linson pointed out that even though the film is partially based on Currie's 1989 memoir "Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story," "The Runaways" is not a "band film" per se, because the filmmakers did not secure life story rights for Ford and bassist Jackie Fox (Sandy West died from a brain tumor in 2006; original bassist Micki Steele was fictionalized by Alia Shawkat's character "Robin").

Instead, the grander ambition was to faithfully capture "the youth ethic in film."

"It's about 15-year-old rock stars, the rise and fall of kids," Linson said. "We're trying hard not to let that get taken away."

Profligate prop sake consumption aside, Fanning, who turns 16 next month, and Stewart, 19, appear side by side in an overwhelming majority of the movie's scenes. The two are shown snorting cocaine in an airplane bathroom as well as getting very up close and personal in what is sure to become one of "The Runaways' " primary talking points: a make-out scene in a roller rink that takes place about two-thirds of the way through the movie.

The scene was inspired by a remark Currie made in the rockumentary "Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways," made by former band member Victory Tischler-Blue.

"In 'Edgeplay,' Cherie mentions that Joan is really good in bed," Sigismondi said. "I thought, 'I have to pry into this a bit. It will cause an explosion in the film. Why not go there?'"

Stewart and Fanning first shared screen time in "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" and became fast friends. "You can probably tell we get along really well," Fanning said in between takes. "For the characters, it's really important that bond is portrayed. And we have that in real life."

Rather than talk up the more sensational aspects of filming -- like, say, the scenes in which Fanning writhes and vamps onstage dressed in fishnet stockings and a revealing bodice -- the actress chose to explain how she and Stewart (with castmates Taylor- Compton, Maeve and Shawkat) rehearsed the Runaways' music together for a month before filming began. Stewart and Fanning then re- recorded the vocals for several of the songs heard in the film.

"When you're up there and you hear yourself singing the songs and feel yourself performing the dance moves that are so iconic -- when you're up there having the time of your life -- you feel like you are those girls for a few minutes," Fanning said. "It's really fun!"

Asked if the role was an attempt to shatter the conception of her as the child star of such kid flicks as "The Cat in the Hat" and "Charlotte's Web," the actress demurred, explaining it was simply part of her natural career evolution.

"I'm just portraying what was going on with (Cherie) when she was my age," Fanning said. "I want to continue to act for my whole life. Eventually, everyone will have to let me grow up, somehow, some way. I'm just trying to let that happen as naturally as I can."

During production, the real Joan Jett was a semi-constant presence on-set. At the Kyoto Grand location, the rock icon huddled with Stewart conspiratorially in between takes, their closeness highlighting a remarkable physical similarity. In the film, Stewart convincingly channels something of Jett's androgynous, take-no-guff demeanor and rock star swagger. (Stewart declined comment for this story.)

"She has completely embodied the character of Joan," Sigismondi said. "Her body language, her face, her walk. It's amazing how she has just become her."

Production designer Eugenio Caballero was even more blunt. "Kristen is Joan," he said in between scenes. "You talk with her and you think it's Joan Jett."

The notoriously private rocker, whose post-Runaways project Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'N Roll" famously hit No. 1 and has sold more than 10 million copies, did not want to be interviewed. But she admitted feeling a strange satisfaction while watching the actresses perform the Runaways' music.

"It's surreal, that's all I can say," Jett said. "But I have a smile on my face."

Source: LA Times

The Runaways will finally debut at Sundance next week, so we're slowly but surely getting some more details on the film and its writer/director Floria Sigismondi. The Italian-born music video creator (Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People," Christina Aguilera's "Fighter") talked with the L.A. Times about the film and what she hopes to accomplish with telling the story of the first popular all-girl band.
"It's young girls getting swept up into a world they couldn't handle," Sigismondi told the paper. "Feeding on those confusing feelings that develop from moving from girl to woman, I could reach deep into myself to find those things."
Sigismodni said the film focuses mostly on Joan Jett and Cherie Curie, played, of course, by Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning to illustrate, "How different they are, how they were drawn together for this crazy experience. Joan is so focused, she really wanted to have this band. And Cherie wanted the rage of rock 'n' roll, the rebellion.

And what else happens between them? "A make-out scene in a roller rink that takes place about two-thirds of the way through the movie." The L.A. Times writes:

The scene was inspired by a remark Currie made in the rockumentary Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways, made by former band member Victory Tischler-Blue.
"In Edgeplay,'"Cherie mentions that Joan is really good in bed," Sigismondi said. "I thought, 'I have to pry into this a bit. It will cause an explosion in the film. Why not go there?'

We salute you, Floria Sigismondi. But not for the make out alone — the film has an overall feminist theme, following young women from adolsence into adulthood, but with the address pressure of misogyny, drugs and sex in the world of rock and roll.
There's also the fact that Kristen Stewart is portraying a musical icon who happens to also be gay. The Times writes that she does so very convincingly.

In the film, Stewart convincingly channels something of Jett's androgynous, take-no-guff demeanor and rock star swagger. "She has completely embodied the character of Joan," Sigismondi said. "Her body language, her face, her walk. It's amazing how she has just become her." Production designer Eugenio Caballero was even more blunt. "Kristen is Joan," he said in between scenes. "You talk with her and you think it's Joan Jett."

The Runaways will open in 1400 theaters nationwide in mid-March. Do you think the kissing scene between Joan and Cherie will take away from the message of the film in the mainstream media?

Source: AfterEllen