Despite having a title that reminds us of that George Burns-Charlie Schlatter role-reversal movie from the ‘80s, 17 Again is not in fact part of the body swap genre. Rather, it’s more like Peggy Sue Got Married without the time travel. It’s also like a backwards Big, a movie many people mistakenly assign to the genre, which more technically includes such classics as The Hot Chick, Dream a Little Dream and Like Father Like Son. Of course, age-swapping films like Big, 13 Going on 30 and now 17 Again share many conventions and clichés with body swapping movies, so aligning them with that genre’s films is not entirely a film classification no-no.

Most familiar body swap movies owe their basic plot structure to F. Anstey’s 1882 novel Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers, which is, yes, the source material behind the 1988 movie starring Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold, as well as the basis for four other, prior film adaptations and a short-lived TV series. Even the three movie versions of Freaky Friday are more akin to Anstey’s story than the Mary Rodgers’ novel on which they’re based. In a way, because of the lesson learned in 17 Again, this new movie is also reminiscent of Anstey’s novel, even if not in a walking-in-someone-else’s-shoes sort of method.

But are there any other similarities to the body swap genre? You decide. While watching 17 Again this weekend, be on the look out for any of the clichés of the body swap movie, which we illustrate below, in order to determine its closeness to the classification.
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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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• In yet another sign that 2008 is the new 1928, Hollywood, impressed by the massive first-weekend success of High School Musical 3, is rushing a number of music-based projects into production. Paramount is bumping their Zac Efron-starring, Kenny Ortega-directed remake of Footloose up the calendar; Nick and Norah director Peter Sollett has been asked to punch up the script before a spring shoot. Meanwhile, Fox is setting up their own big-screen musical around a passel of Disney Channel stars: this time, it’s the Jonas Brothers, and the project is the first film in a hoped-for franchise based on the “Walter the Farting Dog” books. Yes, there are apparently childrens books about farting dogs. Maybe it’s not The Great Depression 2 — maybe it’s Idiocracy 0.5.
• Perhaps surprisingly, Dan Glickman says that although “there’s no fundamental difference between Obama or McCain on intellectual property issues,” an Obama administration might be slightly more favorable for the MPAA’s fight against piracy, as Obama be expected to connect to “newer, younger White House staffers and appointees about the value and importance of IP.” But the studios’ lobbying board would clash sharply with a Democrat administration over net neutrality, which Obama strongly supports, and Glickman … doesn’t.
• DETAILS Magazine has invited their readers to submit film pitches. In partnership with Larry Meistrich of Shooting Gallery and Film Movement, the mag will seek a winning idea targeted at “intelligent, modern, metropolitan men,” they’ll then actually produce.

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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I saw the new Hairspray yesterday. I don’t want to blow my wad just yet, as I’ll be talking about it with Stu VanAirsdale next week on ReelerTV, but here are a few preliminary thoughts:

1) The John Waters original version of Hairspray appears to be up on YouTube in its entirety, and I’ve embedded one of my favorite chunks above. Penny and Tracy are making out with their new boyfriends in a rat-infested alley. A drunken hobo ambles by, and that’s romantic; Tracy’s mom drives down the alley looking for her daughter, and it’s time to run. Seeking shelter, the kids stumble into a beatnik lair, and stumble right out again when shit gets too weird. It’s the perfect encapsulation of Waters’ nuanced vision of the young vs. old/class vs. race/culture vs. subculture paradigm, and it’s miles beyond anything this new version has up its sleeve. Spoiler alert: the new Hairspray doesn’t even have beatniks.

2) That Zac Efron kid is amazing. He’s the new Gene Kelly. I can’t wait for him to get old and play the dashing American in a postmodern French homage to his earlier successes. At least then maybe my creepy old lady crush will seem a little bit more age appropriate.

3) Not once, in a hundred years of cinema, has a fat suit actually been funny. Prove me wrong and I’ll give you $100.***

***Reward only realizable if you can get me to admit defeat.