If you want proof that John Hughes has still not been succeeded as teen movie king, take a look at the 2001 spoof Not Another Teen Movie, which references Hughes’ films more than any other, despite the fact that it’d been 14 years since the filmmaker had last given us one of his signature entries into the genre. Also see the marketing of last year’s American Teen, a documentary that was sold as a non-fiction version of The Breakfast Club, 23 years later.

There will likely never be another John Hughes, at least not in the way he defined a type of movie. And at the same time, as much as nearly every teen movie since his seminal six recognize his influence, few of today’s teen movies can even get away with or accomplish things his films did. It would be appropriate if we could name sixteen of these things present in Hughes’ early works that are absent from modern teen movies, but we’ve got half that number, and we’re hoping it’s enough to establish that his films were, for better or worse, of a certain time, despite the fact that they’re so timeless.
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Fox Searchlight’s latest pop-indie festival pickup, (500) Days of Summer, is promotionally packaged, as is typical for the distributor, with a hip soundtrack featuring multiple songs from The Smiths and Regina Spektor, as well as tunes from Feist, The Doves and the obligatory Simon and Garfunkel. Though heavily dependent on music, the movie is not a musical, yet like other Searchlight releases it has that one moment where the line between non-musical and musical is just barely crossed.

In the past we’ve seen this moment restricted to diegetic circumstances, whether a dance performance or an in-scene duet of a Moldy Peaches song. But this year Searchlight’s titles have been venturing even further, first with the non-diegetic, Bollywood-influenced song and dance in Slumdog Millionaire and now with an equally fantastical sequence in (500) Days, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt struts about to Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams,” joined by a surplus of extras and an animated bluebird.

Musical numbers in non-musical movies can certainly work, as is evident in Citizen Kane and many David Lynch and Adam Sandler films, but there’s something very forced and cliché about the sequence in (500) Days. Never mind that it seems lifted out of Enchanted, a movie we very much despise, and never mind that we prefer our Zooey Deschanel movies to feature musical interludes performed by the singer-actress herself rather than lip-synced by her costars (director Marc Webb acknowledges the mistake of not including her in the scene); this number is just completely over-the-top and unoriginal.

In response to the scene, we’ve selected five of the worst musical numbers from non-musical films to show what kind of horrible company (500) Days of Summer is in.
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I guess if there’s room on Broadway for John Waters, there’s room on the stage for a movie that popularized the phrase “fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” That’s right, everyone’s favorite homicidal teen comedy, Heathers, is about to be musicalized, so get ready for a choreographed number set to “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It),” as well as new tunes potentially titled “It Will Be Very,” “Plain or BBQ,” and, obviously, “I Love My Dead Gay Son” (director Andy Fickman has already said that last oft-quoted line has inspired some lyrics).

Of course, there seems to be new announcements of movies-turning-musicals every day. Why is this one more worthy of a Bloggery roundup than others? Because not only is Heathers one of my favorite films of all time, it’s also possibly the most sacred film ever for my buddy Monika Bartyzel (of Cinematical), who I just knew would wake up and immediately Tweet something like this: “I want to burn down Broadway and break the knees of every musical-adapting jerk out there.”

For more on her response and other bloggers’ reactions, keep reading after the jump.

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Never mind all those Oscar predictions posts out there. If you really want to make some money in the office pool, look no further than a random blog created specifically to leak the winners of this year’s Academy Awards. Think it’s a hoax? I guess we just won’t know until Sunday, will we? And by then you’ll be out hundreds of dollars because you didn’t bet on The Reader for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Okay, so who cares if it’s real or not, particularly in this predictable a year, anyway? The real betting should be on who the telecast producers have wrangled to be those “top secret” presenters. Oh wait, it seems the big names, those that obviously should be revealed in order to attract their audiences, have also come out.

Ah, but what are they saying about either leak on the interweb, you ask? As usual, check out the quotes/links after the jump.

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Critics had every reason to object when Billy Bob Thornton remade The Bad News Bears a few years back. After all, Walter Matthau had already defined the role of foul-mouthed Coach Buttermaker, a cranky alcoholic who oversees a team of misfit little leaguers, in the perfectly serviceable 1976 original. Now we get yet another variation on the formula, this time starring Sam Rockwell as the last man you’d want coaching a varsity girls basketball team, in The Winning Season.

Strange that this second film from Grace Is Gone writer-director James C. Strouse could be so different from his debut (in which John Cusack played an emasculated widower who refuses to cope with the death of his wife in Iraq), and yet so similar to an entire subcategory of the underdog sports comedy. Some would argue that the girls basketball angle sets The Winning Season apart, but what little originality the film has going for it is the element it shares with the largely unseen (and widely unloved) Grace Is Gone –– namely, its observant yet underplayed attention to a fragile father figure.

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UPDATE, 10/18 8AM: Hudgens’ rep told Access Hollywood that her client still has a job; Disney says they’re “still negotiating” with the entire HSM cast.

Because this is a blog generally devoted to movies, and not to the naked exploits of barely-legal, barely-famous starlets, we’ve stayed out of Vanessa Hudgens topless photo non-scandal. But OK! is running a story that I just can’t not comment on, because if nothing else, it seems like a soon-to-be classic example of what old media companies are doing wrong when it comes to the web.

A bit of background for the uninitiated: Hudgens starred in two High School Musical movies for the Disney Channel, along fellow tween heartthrobs Ashley Tisdale and (Hudgens’ real-life boyfriend) Zac Efron. Both movies were such enormous successes on cable, iTunes and DVD that Disney decided to bring the entire cast back for a third film, this time aimed at a theatrical release. Then, in September, relatively tame images of a naked Hudgens, allegedly meant for a boyfriend’s eyes only, were leaked to the internet. Now, OK! is reporting that, over a month after issuing what seemed like a non-judgmental statement in regards to Hudgens’ internet nakedness, “Disney has made up its mind about what to do next and that the 18-year-old actress will not be asked to board the boat for the third HSM film.”

If this is true, then I think Disney is making a big mistake, for three reasons. Details after the jump.

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