Are you one of the many sci-fi and comic book geeks who’d be more interested in Push were it not for Dakota Fanning? Sure, the precocious child star is now a teen actress (she’s about to turn 15), yet that probably makes you even more worried about her appearance in the movie. But what can you do? She’s literally everywhere this week – voicing the title character in the animated Coraline and starring in two new video releases, Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees, both of which were released Tuesday. In the tradition of child actors continuing careers into adolescence, it’s only a matter of time before she ruins a movie that would have been better without her.

We’ll have to wait until this weekend to see if that time is now, with Push, but in the meantime let’s take a look at some of the past offenders in this tradition. Most of the following former child actors (our definition: actors that began their career below the age of 13) have done great things in their adulthood, but each has done at least one film that could have been better without him or her. You may disagree with some of these picks, and you may think we’ve forgotten some (was Christian Bale really the worst part of The Dark Knight? did Mary-Kate Olsen’s disturbing kiss with Ben Kingsley take away from The Wackness?), so do share your own thoughts on former child stars below. We just ask that you keep your comments somewhat tasteful and law-abiding.
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• Hellboy producer Mike Richardson is bringing the saga of Emily the Strange––the sad little black haired cat girl who you might remember from t-shirts and stickers with you were a teenager in the 90s––to the big screen. Terrible timing––this is the role Christina Ricci was born to play, but not only is she probably too old by now, but after Speed Racer she probably wouldn’t be able to get the job.
• David Gordon Green will direct Your Highness, a fantasy comedy written y Danny McBride and Ben Best, the stars/co-writers of The Foot Fist Way.
• “Best-case scenario would be for Sex and the City to wind up with same kind of numbers as The Devil Wears Prada, with $200 million internationally,” predicts Variety. The trade doesn’t mention that tracking currently has the film pegged at a $30 million opening weekend, far below the $50 million that Variety claims the Indiana Jones sequel could take in in its second week.
• Would a second place opening weekend dim SatC director Michael Patrick King’s confidence? Upon landing a first-lookdeal with Dreamworks on the eve of his directorial debut’s release, he coyly hinted at the possibility of a sequel. “The actresses are great, and if the gods smile and people are still interested, why not?” he told Variety. Sex, excess, and pantheism––it’s ancient Rome all over again.

• Erik Skillman, the Criterion designer who recently regaled us with tales of his process putting together the box image for Berlin Alexanderplatz, has applied some of the same techniques to a portrait of Barack Obama. “I’m not sure I quite captured him (there’s a little hint of Reinhold in there that’s kind of strange), but for a 20-minute sketch it’s not half bad…” [via Cinetrix]
• Mike Jones has already started blogging Berlin. We’ll be keeping an eye on Filmbrain, Twitch and of course Berlin-based David Hudson for updates over the next week or so.
• Jette Kernion on the magic trick of Quiet City: “You can’t watch a man and woman who become fast friends like this without wondering whether they’ll hook up, which provides a small amount of suspense. But you get so caught up watching these people and their friends that the romantic potential hardly seems to matter most of the time.”
• Kevin Kelly balks at Christina Ricci’s suggestion that there’s a “sad guy” thing in Speed Racer that will make the boys cry: “What’s a sad guy thing that’s not a sad girl thing? Does Speed lose his penis during one of the races and get told that he can’t have any Speed Juniors?”