Jennifer Lawrence's simple-but-profound remark about today's Hollywood.

Unlike, say, TWILIGHT's Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence is eager to embrace being a star of a big young-adult series ("franchise") of movies based on a group of young-adult novels.

To show you how willing she is to be noncontroversial, here's Jennifer talking to SPIN's Phoebe Reilly in a column relating to Ms. Lawrence's tastes in music:
[PHOEBE REILLY]: What were you listening to the first time you smoked pot?
[JENNIFER LAWRENCE]: I so cannot answer that question.  I'm in a franchise.

Some Academy Award thoughts.

Re the just-concluded Oscar ceremony:

1. So happy for Kathryn Bigelow becoming Queen of the World--twice (director and picture).

2. Re Sandra Bullock's "nice to me when it wasn't fashionable"--it may be, once the snarksters in the entertainment media have their way, the new

"you really like me." Hoping Sandy uses her award to do something more challenging than just

raising her quote and making THE PROPOSAL 2 or MISS CONGENIALITY 3.

3. Speaking of the other Sandy--Ms. Powell's "I already have two of these" snottiness isn't

likely to be forgotten.

4. Best Na'Vi presenter of the night--Ben Stiller.

5. Steve and Alec not bad as tandem hosts. Voting for Steve Carell and Elizabeth Banks

to take the job next year.

6. Interpretive musical score dances--bad bad bad. Almost made me long for the excesses

of Debbie Allen.

7. Not letting nominated songs be performed--also bad-to-the-point-of-insanity.

8. Cutting away from Ric O'Barry's dolphin text banner during THE COVE'S Best Documentary Feature win--rather childish and stupid of the producers and Disney/ABC.

9. Nice guy finishing first--Jeff Bridges for CRAZY HEART (and, also, a long body of generally fine work).

10. Slightly surprised by THE WHITE RIBBON not winning Best Foreign Language film this year. Apparently Michael Haneke's lengthy mix of ambiguity and emotional sadism (with the physical variety kept pretty much off-camera) was too severe for the Academy.

11. Advice for the 2011 Oscars--no more dance sequences, bring back nominated songs, have at least two honorary winners (would have liked to have seen Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall accept awards tonight) to give awards to on-camera, and--most important, have celebs that genuinely want to be there as presenters. I'm getting awfully tired of Kristen Stewart's "I hate celebrity and all its' trappings" sullenness. She should have been aware of what she was signing on for when agreeing to play Bella in the TWILIGHT series.

12. Forgetting his exact name, but Michael G who won original score for UP, had the best speech of the night when he said that people should strive to be creative even if they're disparaged by others with phrases like "waste of time."

The Runaways band to be turned into THE RUNAWAYS movie.

Kristen Stewart (who was actually good in Greg Mottola's ADVENTURELAND) appears in photos displaying her Joan Jett look for the upcoming THE RUNAWAYS biopic: http://icydk.com/2009/06/11/kristen-stewart-is-joan-jett/

A news item about Dakota ("my stage mom wants me to grow up fast on film") Fanning's casting as Cherie Currie: http://pitchfork.com/news/34781-dakota-fanning-cherie-currie-in-runaways-movie/

And here's the IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1017451/fullcredits#cast

One item of interest from IMDB: Michael Shannon is rumored to be in the film; let's hope he's being cast as controversial manager Kim Fowley.
[UPDATE 6/23/09: Yes, Shannon IS playing Fowley. And here's some more information on the film: http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/06/joan-jett-helping-kristen-stewart.html]

When movie actors declare they're quitting movies.

From what I've been reading, Casey Affleck and allegedly-retiring-from-acting Joaquin Phoenix are filming a Sacha Baron Cohen/Andy Kaufman put-on documentary that includes, among other things, Phoenix' less-than-acclaimed Las Vegas debut as a hip-hop artist. And apparently towards that end, Phoenix appeared on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN last night to plug his allegedly-final film TWO LOVERS: http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/02/why_did_he_come.php

The appearance (or at least the clips I watched on THE VIEW this morning) contained a giant dollop of bored, monotonal "I hate doing talk shows" attitude a la Kristen Stewart's drop-by on LETTERMAN to plug TWILIGHT (which can be found here at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVjoXMJ7j3E).

And, since the media attention span is quite small, no one recalls Phoenix's discomfort on THE TONIGHT SHOW in 2000 around the release of GLADIATOR--and the peevish response from Jay Leno. No documentary film crew on the set then.

About a decade ago, Liam Neeson (suffering burnout from doing back-to-back escapist, CGI-dependent fare such as STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE and the now semi-forgotten remake of THE HAUNTING) made similar threats to retire from film acting.

Thankfully, Neeson changed his mind (and may be on the verge of giving a potential career-highpoint performance as Abraham Lincoln for Steven Spielberg). And maybe Phoenix, after a year or two away from the inanities of mainstream show business, will consider doing the same.