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At the Washington DC premiere of The Secret Life Of Bees, a young male fan took a major step forward in his relationship with actress Dakota Fanning. After taking the photo, Billy Walsh asked Fanning if she would be okay with him changing his relationship status on his Facebook profile. Fanning said she wouldn’t mind, but didn’t understand why Walsh would seek her approval. Walsh took a deep breath and explained that Fanning and him have been internet dating for quite some time now and would like to their relationship to the next level. Walsh said, “I’m just started the seventh grade. It’s high time that I settle down with a good girl. A girl like you, Dakota. I can’t be spend all of my junior high years running wild with my bro dawgs looking for a cheap thrills at Stevie Gordon’s pool party. I need to settle down with somebody like you. So, would you mind if it says on Facebook, that ... we’re ... you know ... together?”

Fanning was unsure of how to answer Walsh’s question and wanted to think about it overnight. A feeling of dejection swept over Walsh’s young face. He was about to say something when Fanning interrupted him and said, “It’s not a no, but why ruin a good thing by putting a label on it?”

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

WHAT'S NEW: The first genuine Oscar-chasing release of the fall, The Duchess will likely split its viewership between pro- and anti-Keira Knightley factions before anyone bothers to acknowledge its broader, bodice-ripping appeal. So yes, Team Knightley: She deftly portrays Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the late-18th-century heroine with the bitterly controlling husband (Ralph Fiennes), the rabble-rousing side dish (Dominic Cooper) and a surfeit of corsted, pre-feminist longing. The star and the film are beautiful, the direction assured and the awards-season creds affirmed — particularly Fiennes', whose customary wretchedness as the Duke acquires a kind of fascinating tenderness with age. If anyone should be on the Oscar bubble (besides the art and costume crew, which are locks), it's him.

Still, in limited release, Duchess isn't competing for any box-office glory; that distinction belongs to Lakeview Terrace, the not-entirely-miserable Neil LaBute thriller featuring Samuel L. Jackson as a sociopathic cop out to get the hot interracial couple next door (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington). Against sturdy holdovers (Burn After Reading, The Family That Preys) and middling newbies (the Dane Cook slog My Best Friend's Girl, Ricky Gervais's leading-man debut Ghost Town), Lakeview will top out at $15.6 million. Cook will follow with $13.2 million; with half the screens and even less promotion, Ghost Town should still manage an even $6 million.

Also opening: Ed Harris's old-old-school Western Appaloosa; Chris Smith's tiny, acclaimed Indian excursion The Pool; the gay-conversion melodrama Save Me; the wrenching immigrant day-in-the-life tale Take Out; and the Duchess-correcting, misogynist fantasia The Pink Conspiracy.

THE BIG LOSER: You know, after we just predicted the Weinsteins would once again find their step in the multiplex, trust in Harvey to not only dump another subpar animated fairy tale on an unsuspecting public, but to essentially disown it. Such is Igor's lot, with its backers AWOL, its reviews tepid, and its voice talent (John Cusack, Molly Shannon, Steve Buscemi) trapped in a Straight-to-Flopz™ patchwork about a hunchback pursuing his dream of becoming a mad scientist. MGM is left to collect the grosses for this one, which won't break $5 million on 2,300 screens. Or, as they call it at Weinstein HQ, business as usual.

THE UNDERDOG: As members of the privileged few to have seen Hounddog in its spectacularly atrocious Sundance '07 cut ("It was unfinished!", the director screams), we long doubted not only the film's release potential, but also the redeemability of those souls who actually made it. But fair is fair, and while the reedited Hounddog remains the infamous Dakota Fanning Rape Movie — full of overripe Southern hokum comprising snakes, magical Negroes, Elvis worship and borderline inbreds — it has since obtained a sort of culty, gunpowder gloss embracing all of its wrecked potential. It's finally refined its badness enough to be good, even serviceable for at least an hour, with Fanning's vulnerability dynamically intact opposite the predatory, 'shine-swilling archetypes around her. Bonus points, however, to David Morse, whose full-retard debasement here must be seen to be believed.

FOR SHUT-INS: It's Celebrity Bomb Week among new DVD releases, including Mike Myers's stroppy folly The Love Guru; the Wachowski abortion Speed Racer; the Pacino pratfall 88 Minutes; Patrick Dempsey's rom-com Made of Honor; and at not-so-long last, the complete first season of Chuck. Aw, NBC — you shouldn't have! No, really. You shouldn't have.

So what's your Top 3? Is it a Keira weekend, or is Officer Sam pulling your ass over? And how's our math, anyway? Clear your calendars and call your shots — you're among friends here. Even you, Harvey!

[Hounddog] will appear in video stores and mass merchants beginning January 20, 2009, and will be supported with national television and radio ads, a consumer sweepstakes and in-store merchandising. ...

Based on media interest in the film, Empire is targeting $15-million in gross box office, which should be matched in video revenues, based on the January campaign. Empire plans to cross-promote Hounddog with two other theatrical titles opening in September and October, for a combined box office goal of $30-million and cumulative video shipments worth $25-million.

Nothing against the gang at Empire, but they're totally fucking high if they think Hounddog has a shot $15 million in theaters and on DVD; said "media interest" comprises some of the worst reviews we've ever seen (ours is among them), and as another blogger notes, its ongoing MPAA rating problems won't help either. On the other hand, we shouldn't underestimate Empire's "consumer sweepstakes," which we hear will borrow a page from the Simpsons playbook by converting a dozen 7-11s across the country to wood-paneled "Hounddog Sex Shacks" — just like the one in the movie — and offering limited-time only giveaways including Raspberry Rape Slushees, No Means Nachos and Spicy All-Beef Penetrators with an all-you-can-eat fixins' bar. Either that or Ed McMahon may have lined up another gig after all.

• Empire Sets Plan for Video Release of Key Theatrical Titles [Street Insider via NYP]

"Rest assured, friends and fans," the voiceover strains. "Dakota is not retired!" In the mass get-well card equivalent that follows, her "competitor" Abigail Breslin thinks Fanning is nice. Jodie Foster gives her the Child-Star Survivor Stamp Of Approval. The disgrace of Hounddog accounted for, we learn she's also starring in a slate of movies this year including Winged Creatures and The Secret Life of Bees, whose co-star Jennifer Hudson proclaims: "This is not a child! I call her Mama Dakota, OK? And she's half my age." Mama Dakota? Really? Talk about burying the lede! [Via Spout]

• Who is the Next Dakota Fanning? [MTV]

This isn't quite the abomination we remember from Hounddog's misbegotten Sundance '07 premiere (the snake-scene outtake, for starters, does little justice to the sweaty, half-naked soft-core qualities of the original), but there's enough grindhouse appeal here to keep us in prurient thrall until the film's forthcoming July 18 opening. GASP! at Fanning's tree-humping prowess! REVEL! in the insight of the cliched Magical Negro! LAUGH! at David Morse's lighting-struck simpleton (donning a wig that makes Anton Chigurh look like John Edwards)! Fair warning: Robin Wright's plunge from grace may indeed provoke twinges of raw pity. Nevertheless, this is as close to a summer must-see as we're likely to recommend. [Via NY Post]

• Hounddog Trailer [NY Post]
• Hounddog Promo Reel [YouTube]

Fanning said that even if she hadn't been in the movie, she would want to see it. And Kampmeier said two mothers approached her after the screening to say they planned to bring their 13-year-old daughters when it is shown in wider release. So far, the film has not been purchased for distribution.

"I know my mom would take me to see it," said Fanning, who turns 13 in February. "You have to prepare your children for things that happen in the world. Everything isn't rosy."

Maybe now that the preternaturally poised Fanning has successfully reframed Hounddog as a molestation-preparedness film, her handlers can now focus their energy on something more important: the campaign for the 2008 Best Actress Oscar nomination, beginning with the drafting of a full-page For Your Consideration ad in the trades containing the slogan: "No minors were harmed in the making of this movie, but because of Dakota Fanning's incredibly powerful performance, you'll believe they were."

• Fanning speaks up on rape scene [USA Today]

"Exactly how I was going to film the rape scene was articulated quite specifically in the script, and her mother, her agent, and her teacher/child welfare worker were all present for the filming of the scene, which was carried out exactly as we discussed it. There was so much I had to hide [during filming]. I had to hid the fact that this girl is not naked. I had to hide the fact that there is not a boy on top of this girl having sex.

UPDATE: The movie may still be untitled. More after the jump.

One of the choices I made as a director is, I shot her face. I didn't shoot flesh against flesh, his leg touching her leg; I shot her face because I wanted to capture a soul going through this experience, not a body. The assumption that [Dakota] was violated in order to give this performance denies her talent."

Anyone who has seen Fanning's work in any of her breakthrough performances—from I Am Sam to War of the Worlds—knows that her talent is being able to convey boundless depth of mature emotion through the use of nothing more than her icy blue eyes. We're therefore confident that once word gets out that no actual actor-rapists were used in the sexual assault scenario, and that the convincing effect of the forceful taking of a minor was achieved with nothing more than Fanning's soul-deadened facial expressions paired with the repeated pressing of her own head sideways into a filthy pillowcase, that all of this controversy will give way to a cascade of accolades come next year's awards season.

UPDATE: An operative clears up the Hounddog title confusion (which the Premiere piece did mention wasn't yet secured):

The film was always called Hounddog. The script, the call sheets, everything was always labeled Hounddog, which is in reference to the main characters' obsession with Elvis. The name came into question and was changed to 'Untitled....' because the Producers never secured the rights to the Elvis music which is prominently featured in the script and the shoot. They might have resolved that issue since the shoot, but i've seen their budget and nowhere in it was money alotted for Elvis rights, which as im sure you know are helaciously expensive.

Of course, should the licensing rights to the Elvis material prove cost ineffective, last minute rewrites can always turn Fanning's character into a diehard Engelbert Humperdinck fan at a price that would fit well within their budgeting constraints.

• The Movie: Hounddog [OhNoTheyDidn't]
• Previously: Sundance Preview: The Untitled Dakota Fanning Rape Project [Defamer]