| The Runaways |  | Director: Floria Sigismondi
Actors: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning
Studio: Sony
Category: DVD
List Price: $27.96
Buy Used: $9.52
as of 9/9/2010 00:58 CDT details
You Save: $18.44 (66%)
New (45) Used (22) from $9.52
Seller: darththad
Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 419
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: COLD35345D
UPC: 043396353459
EAN: 0043396353459
ASIN: B0034G4P6W
Theatrical Release Date: March 19, 2010
Release Date: July 20, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A COMING-OF-AGE BIOPIC ABOUT '70S TEENAGE BAND THE RUNAWAYS.
Amazon.com
In adapting Cherie Currie's memoir, Neon Angel, Floria Sigismondi focuses on three figures. Sensing imminent stardom, Sunset Strip impresario Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) brings together blond Bowie fanatic Cherie (Dakota Fanning) with raven-haired rocker Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Manufactured bands weren't a novel phenomenon in the 1970s, but the Runaways wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, paving the way for the all-girl outfits to come. With a mother (Tatum O'Neal) in Singapore and a perpetually drunk father, Cherie and her sister, Marie (Riley Keough), must fend for themselves. When the group heads out on tour, there's no adult supervision, leading to drinking and drugging from California to Japan, where the crowds go wild, but just as they're taking off in public, they're falling apart in private. Cherie tires of Fowley's tough-love tactics, while her bandmates resent the focus on their sexpot singer. The best thing about Sigismondi's film is that her risky casting choices pay off: Fanning leaves her little-girl roles behind just as easily as Stewart breaks free from her Twilight shackles, so it's too bad Jett has no back story and that the other players, particularly Sandy West (Stella Maeve) and Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton), don't register more as distinct personalities. Shannon's Fowley, on the other hand, steals the show with his profane performance. For a film dedicated to female empowerment, that may not have been the director's intention, but as Fowley says, "This isn't about women's lib; this is about women's libido." --Kathleen C. Fennessy
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 77
 None of Them Really Cared About Their Bad Reputations September 8, 2010
Sky (New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As the credits rolled for The Runaways I found it odd that it was suggested that the movie was based upon Runaways' lead singer Cherie Currie's book, Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, because it seemed to me that during the course of the movie the focus was mainly on Joan Jett. Now I've not read Currie's memoir, but my guess is that it focuses more on Currie and less on Jett. However, the movie indeed was co-produced by Jett, so I guess that I really shouldn't have been too surprised.
Guitarist Lita Ford and Drummer Sandy West get little screen time, and even fewer lines. And any of the (I think it was three) real bass guitarists I don't think were even mentioned. The story focuses on Jett and Currie's relationship and personal lives more than it does the music, but don't get me wrong, music certainly is a major part of the movie.
The most interesting part of the music was watching the start up of the band and watching Record Producer Kim Fowley's major involvement. The biggest letdown of the movie was the omission of major parts of The Runaways touring days and tales of the road.
I happened to see The Runaways with The Ramones circa 1977 (at the Palladium in Passaic NJ I think it was). What a crazy show and I'm sure that most of the shows were just as crazy. Man, during The Runaways entire set I'll never forget the crowd chats, and let me tell you that the crowd was mostly chanting for crude favors versus more music. It would have been very interesting to see how the band dealt with that aspect of their career...and especially while out on the road with The Ramones.
Overall I was entertained by The Runaways movie, but felt it was largely incomplete...from a touring detail perspective and from the perspective of telling all of the band members' stories. Worth a watch if you were a fan or interested in their genre, but perhaps worth the wait for cable versus renting. No collector's item here.
 A Joan Jett hagiography masquerading as a Runaways biopic September 8, 2010
hyperbolium (Earth, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Perhaps its simply ironic justice that a group so thoroughly abused by their managers, the press and each other would, in the ostensible retelling of their story, be so thoroughly abused by their filmmaker and two of their members. The most obvious clue to the on-going animosity between the band members is that bassist Jackie Fox is spitefully renamed in film as the fictional "Robin." This follows latter-day bassist Victory Tischler Blue being denied the user of original Runaways studio recordings for her documentary Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways. Add to that the near complete absence of dialog for guitarist Lita Ford and drummer Sandy West in this "biopic," and you have a film that posits the Runaways as a springboard for Joan Jett's solo stardom. Even vocalist Cherie Currie, upon whose biography this script is ostensibly based, has her story short-changed in the telling.
The screenplay, credited to first-time feature director Floria Sigismondi, is a mess. The motivations and timeline are muddled, and the band's story isn't given any context. Was the band famous or only infamous? What led up to Cherie quitting the band? What happened to Lita and Sandy after The Runaways (or, for that matter, during their time in the Runaways)? The action and plot points often feel made up, rather than based on actual people and events. Worse, the characters' unending moroseness suggests there wasn't a moment of joy in the Runaways' career, and it remains unclear why any of the girls stayed involved in the band. The pacing is tortoise-like and the film's modern style fails to capture the mood of the times. The dialog and direction often reduce the `70s rock milieu to trite shorthand and communicate little feel for the period. The fictional Foxes, in which Currie was featured alongside Jodie Foster in 1980, is a better window into the hard partying hopelessness of late-70s Los Angeles.
Were the script and direction the only weak link, the film's leads might still have been entertaining, but they're out of their depth. Kristen Stewart shows little conviction as the firebrand Joan Jett. Dakota Fanning is no better, showing little charisma, sex appeal or rebel spirit, and often looks scared of her role rather than scared within it as an acted emotion. The real-life Currie is compelling and authoritative in the DVD's making-of documentary, showing Fanning's characterization to be docile and lost in comparison. The film would have been better cast without movie stars, so as to allow the actual band members' characters to take center stage. Michael Shannon provides a bravura performance as Kim Fowley, but Sigismondi gives him only one note to play, and his character quickly dissolves into repetition. The script fails to provide any of the characters dramatic arcs - no one is transformed, and when Currie declares that she wants her life back, the viewer is left to wonder why she wants to return to a life that was portrayed as being terrible to begin with.
The historical liberties and omissions are numerous, including the fictionalized introduction of Currie's infamous corset on the band's 1977 tour of Japan. Currie's been widely quoted as having purchased the item in Los Angeles and she can seen wearing it in a 1976 promotional video of "Cherry Bomb." More damaging to the film's credibility, the transformational sexual assault that Currie details in her autobiography is barely alluded to. Jackie Fox's departure is necessarily skipped, since the bassist was skipped altogether as a character in the film, and the film's end skips past the Runaways initial post-group activities, including Currie's solo album, her album (and hit single) with sister Marie, Joan Jett's trip to the UK, her work with Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones, the recording of her 1980 eponymous debut, and Lita Ford's emergence as a metal guitar goddess. Instead, the film rushes to Jett's canonization as a solo superstar.
The film's credit-roll bios of Currie, Jett and Fowley provides the final FU to the rest of the band, whose contributions and post-band lives were apparently insufficiently important to merit mention. One might excuse the mythologizing of the Runaways as the first all-girl rock band (discounting Goldie & The Gingerbreds, the Feminine Complex, Fanny, and numerous garage-rock bands cataloged on Girls With Guitars), but the notion that Joan Jett was the band's sole artiste serves only to propagate the petty jealousies that tore the group apart in the first place. Floria Sigismondi's deft work as a modern music video director fails to provide the eye needed to sympathetically capture the feel of the 1970s, and in doing so she fails to tell the Runaways story in a way that does the band justice. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]
Running away from life. September 2, 2010
ADRIENNE MILLER (TENNESSEE)
The Runaways is an incomplete real life story of the first Rock and Roll girl group. There is hardly any mention of Lita Ford's life in the film and she was just as popular as Joan Jett after the band broke-up. The film mainly focuses on the strange relationship between Jett and lead singer, Cherie Currie played beautifully by Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. Fanning is not a little girl anymore but she was always wise beyond her years, but in The Runaways she leaves no trace of her youth to be found. Fanning's seething performance holds this film from just being average. So-so drama but still worth watching - enjoy!
I was impressed September 2, 2010
adiadv (West Milton, OH USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this film. It's a good example of the exploitation many musicians and actors experience in their journey toward stardom. People often give up their lives to achieve their dreams or become a success, but there's often a big price to pay. The movie was produced by Joan Jett, based on a book by Cherie Currie, so I find it believable that it's (hopefully) a fairly accurate account of the quick rise and fall of the Runaways.
The fact that a group of high school aged girls experienced this is what is so amazing to me. Kim Fowley undoubtedly got them there, but if this story holds any truth then he was a total slimeball for blatantly exploiting them sexually and promoting them as "jail bait." As the saying goes, sex sells. And maybe "you gotta sell your soul for rock and roll," but these girls were just kids who were given an offer many people would not hesitate to refuse. Especially someone like Joan Jett, who was apparently just like me growing up: I lived and breathed music, and an opportunity like that would have been the moment I had been living for.
It bothered me that Lita Ford was given barely a shred of recognition. She deserves credit for being one of the small group of female rock guitarists who got noticed for their talent in a male-dominated industry. I was left with the impression that she was not liked by Jett or Currie, and they were simply thrown together by their producer and tried to tolerate each other. They could have at least given her a few lines at the end when they showed the brief synopses of what happened to the characters afterward. In the grand scheme of things this was a brief moment in the lives of Jett and Currie, so maybe they wanted to focus on their personal perspective of the events.
I knew ahead of time that Jett and Currie coached the lead actresses in their roles, so I went in with some confidence that they were going to do good character portrayals. I've never been a big fan of Kristen Stewart, but she nailed the performance and was convincing in the role of Joan Jett. Dakota Fanning is never disappoints me, and I think she outdid herself once again and proved that she can take on just about any character no matter how diverse. I suppose I can see why they created a fictional bassist - since they went through several of them during that short period of time - but it was disappointing for me to see a talented actress like Alia Shawkat in the role of a character that hardly uttered a word. I know ... it was her choice to do it.
If you appreciate the significant contributions that certain bands have made in the history of music - whether or not you're a fan - you will probably enjoy this movie.
 Vulgarity and Obscenity Rule August 31, 2010
Sexy Bachelor (Singapore)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
What on earth are Kristen Stewart and once-baby-face Dakota Fanning soiling themselves like whores in this movie? Is this what sick Hollywood producers do to actresses these days? Oh yes, maybe that's what today's twisted mass consumer "market" wants to see: the degradation of the young. You're just making another movie to capture market share, thinking that there are no consequence to your actions.
If you like watching girls turn really bad by swearing their mouths with endless expletives and behaving like cocaine-snorting whores, this is one classic example of the loose, evil culture that reigns in Hollywood and Gomorrah-city California. Guess the Rebellion hasn't ended in the Garden of Eden, in ancient Babylon or in the 1970s.
What you'll learn in this movie: Whore, swear, sing and Get Rich!
Are we supposed to pity those whoring junkies and have kids turn to them as role-models?!
This is one memorable Dakota Fanning classic:
I am Sam (New Line Platinum Series)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 77
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
| |
