Karyn Kusama Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We know she has breasts, though the unveiling of their full bared glory remains, teasingly, for the future. We know she likes to kiss boys and girls. We know she has a face to die for, as several unlucky victims discovered this weekend in Jennifer's Body. But can Megan Fox act?

Cast in her first lead role as iconic small-town cheerleader Jennifer, Fox certainly sashays well. As directed by Karyn Kusama, Fox looks terrific in slow motion, walking down a high school hallway like it was a catwalk, or emerging from a refreshing skinny dip, smiling secretly because she knows all eyes are upon her. Her lips and tongue look very kissable in extreme close-up. Even when she looks "bad," it's still better than most could hope for, as her ostensible BFF Needy (Amanda Seyfried) observes. When called upon to emote, however, Fox says lines -- scripted by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody -- without any deep conviction or sincerity, as though she were a TV spokesperson introducing a commercial break: "We'll be right back after these important messages!" Even when her character is involved in life-and-death struggles, she comes across as breathy and vapid, drawing less upon her soul and more upon presenting her best angle to the camera. I think her co-star Amanda Seyfried blows her off the screen.

But that's just my opinion. (Cinematical's Jenni Miller has a different opinion of the movie, while our reviewer Todd Gilchrist called her "fanboy catnip," which seems about right.) What do you think? Can Megan Fox act her way out of a paper bag? Or has she just gotten an unfair rap because of her beauty and outspoken behavior? Vote in our poll and sound off in the comments!

A few weeks ago, I asked "Will Chicks Dig Jennifer's Body?" and the responses were mixed. Unfortunately for fans of the movie (like myself), its opening weekend box office results were equally mixed, with JB bringing in $6.8M, putting it in fifth place, right behind the execrable and boring Love Happens.

Plenty of people have immediately written off the movie because they loathe Diablo Cody or Megan Fox. Fox is an especially contentious figure among women because she's young, she's hot, and she's as eager to be "exploited" by the Hollywood machine as she is to give it the middle finger. And Diablo Cody, well... As the talented and smart Karyn Kusama, director of Jennifer's Body said in an interview with Cinematical's Todd Gilchrist, "I feel like the issue of [Cody's] voice being strong and people having a problem with it is very interesting to me because I think there are plenty of writers whose work generates that discussion. I have just never heard Quentin Tarantino or David Mamet or Shane Black be called a whore in people's blogs; I am shocked sometimes by the vitriol."

The cycle of slavering adoration and vicious backlash Cody has been the subject of since she was the Next Big Thing with her book Candy Girl makes my head spin, and if I were her, I'd have hocked my Oscar and headed for the hills long ago. But she hasn't, and thank goodness for that because Jennifer's Body is the coolest, weirdest thing to happen to women in horror (and the women who love horror) in a long time.

Just by virtue of her gender, Karyn Kusama is considered a feminist director; while the subject matter of her three films has certainly revolved around strong and interesting women, however, their stories certainly transcend the condescending and reductive designation of being called "women's movies." This is especially true of her latest, Jennifer's Body, which is an examination of teenage female sexuality that should certainly have considerable mainstream (i.e. male) appeal thanks to the person playing the body in question, Megan Fox.

Cinematical recently sat down with Kusama to talk about her career, the themes that have run recurrent in her movies, the impact of studio politics and feedback on her films, and how much she thinks her gender plays a role in career and the creative choices she makes. (Make sure to check out Part One of this interview, where she discusses her collaborations with Megan Fox and Diablo Cody, and gives fans a first-person account of the film's infamous make-out session between Fox and co-star Amanda Seyfried.)

Cinematical: Were there any specific elements of the different relationships, both personally and socially, in the film that you knew you wanted to explore or examine? There's the interaction of the two girls with one another, and Jennifer with her victims, but there's also the idea of this being a sort of monstrous version of teenage girls exploring their sexuality.

There's a sort of amazing nexus of visibility that Jennifer's Body is enjoying as it moves towards its opening day: men and women alike are obsessed with any- and everything Megan Fox does, and critics and audiences are curious to see how successfully Diablo Cody will follow-up her Oscar-winning script for Juno. Meanwhile, director Karyn Kusama bears the burden not only of shepherding the result of their efforts and the test for those expectations into theaters, but is in herself in search of a project that can both fulfill and overcome the preconceptions of viewers familiar with her two previous films, the acclaimed independent film Girlfight and the decidedly less-acclaimed studio opus Aeon Flux.

Cinematical recently sat down with Kusama for an epic conversation about her latest film, Jennifer's Body. In addition to discussing the project's origins and inspirations, she talked about tapping into expectations without acquiescing to them, examined the high-profile careers of her collaborators, and offered a few insights into her own creative process. (Check back tomorrow for part two, which further delves into her own feelings about the film's themes and her execution of its ideas.)

Cinematical: How did you process Diablo's writing style when you were directing and maybe even editing? Because she was kind of an unknown quantity when you started working on this but now she obviously has a style that polarizes audiences.

What is Jennifer's Body, and what is it supposed to be about? I don't know, and the film doesn't seem to, either: It's not really a horror movie, because those are usually scary. Nor is it smart or self-aware enough to be a treatise on teenage girls or male fears of female sexuality. And it's not even a swing-for-the-fences, spectacular enough failure to be a death knell or even deconstruction of the severely limited appeal of either its star, Megan Fox, or its screenwriter, Diablo Cody. Jennifer's Body substitutes hipster credibility for emotional currency, confuses pop-psychology insight with substantive social commentary, and measures terror on a scale that ranges from the word boo to a dead spider; in short, Jennifer's Body just does not work.

Fox plays Jennifer, a sexpot alpha female who mercilessly presides over the boys in her high school, but only has affection for her childhood friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried). After the two of them narrowly escape a fire while attending the concert of an up-and-coming band, Jennifer takes off to parts unknown in the lead singer's tour van, only to turn up later that night ravenously hungry in Needy's kitchen, covered in blood and God knows what else. It turns out that Jennifer has been mysteriously turned into a literal man-eater, and subsequently decides that her male classmates will serve as a more than suitable smorgasbord for her feasting pleasure. But when the homicidal homecoming queen decides that Needy's boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) is next on the menu, her mousy friend musters all of her own inner strength and decides to take Jennifer down a peg or two, even if it comes at the expense of their friendship, or even their lives.

Whether September marks a return to the books, or a return of the school-age hellions, there's something else to look forward to -- Jennifer's Body. Box Office Mojo has posted that the horror comedy, which stars the heartbreaking Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried (the Mormon dead girl with a penchant for Abba), will hit screens on Friday, September 18, 2009. In case you don't remember -- this is the flick where a sexy cheerleader (Fox) gets possessed and taps into her inner cannibal, while her best friend (Seyfried) tries to protect the populace.

By then, we shouldn't be wondering whether writer Diablo Cody is a one-hit Juno wonder, since her television show The United States of Tara will air next month. However, it will be a chance to see how the women-led film does -- there's Cody behind the script, Karyn Kusama in the director's chair, and two female stars. (Plus the likes of Amy Sedaris, Allison Janney, Cynthia Stevenson...)

But perhaps more appropriately: It'll be interesting to note who sees this, and why. There are the fans of Cody's warped dialog, the drooling fanboys that follow Fox, the horror fans... Will you delight in Jennifer's Body come September, and if so, why?

For the longest time -- until earlier this week, in fact -- I was convinced that Jason Reitman's next directing project was Diablo Cody's horror flick Jennifer's Body. Maybe that's because at a Team Juno roundtable interview last year, the two of them talked about it like it was their project (which it is, sort of -- Reitman's producing). Anyway, it's actually Karyn "Aeon Flux" Kusama who is directing Cody's follow-up, while Reitman is moving on to helm an adaptation of Walter Kirn's Up in the Air.

I strongly recommend the novel, which is a terrific satire about a perpetually transitory businessman obsessed with collecting a million frequent flyer miles. I liked it better than Kirn's more popular Thumbsucker which was already adapted into a film. The movie could be very funny in the hands of a guy like Reitman -- sharp and insightful. It should be closer in tone to Thank You for Smoking than to Juno.

Reitman has already shifted the project into a higher gear by setting his sights on George Clooney, who's in talks to star as the narcissistic protagonist. While I'm pretty sure the character is quite a bit younger than the actor, Clooney has precisely the effortless comic chops this project needs. His profile won't hurt, either.

Now that the girls are all lined up to star in Jennifer's Body, it's time to bring in some of those hottie boys to populate the flick. The Hollywood Reporter tells us Adam Brody has hopped onboard the dark comedy/horror (written by everyone's favorite stripper-turned-Oscar winner, Diablo Cody), where he'll play Nikolai, "a hot lead singer of an up-and-coming band with a penchant for evil." Jeepers! Also joining the cast is Juno's dad, J.K. Simmons, who'll play Mr. Wroblewski, a high school science teacher.

Jennifer's Body marks a reunion for Juno's Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, the former of which will produce, not direct. That job has gone to Karyn Kusama. Already starring in the film is Transformer's Megan Fox; she'll play a cheerleader who becomes possessed by a demon and starts feeding off the boys in her town ... while still finding time to shovel out a good amount of pop culture references, one imagines. Amanda Seyfried will play Jennifer's best friend, and the one who's placed in charge of protecting the community. I'm looking forward to a badass teen horror/comedy with females in the lead. It's about damn time we get a female-centric scary movie that doesn't involve half-nekked females being tortured (though with Megan Fox in the lead, I wouldn't mind one scene ... or several ... but I didn't just say that). Jennifer's Body is due out next year.

It's no secret that screenwriter (and probable Oscar nominee) Diablo Cody is a horror nut -- she told me last month that her career ambition is to become a horror movie director -- and we'll know soon enough if she has the chops for that. A source for Latino Review has sent in a detailed script review of Jennifer's Body, the next Diablo project that's ramping up for a March start. Megan Fox of Transformers fame will be the star, and it was recently announced that Girlfight director Karyn Kusama is helming. (I'm surprised Cody didn't take advantage of her huge exposure to demand the director's chair -- if Tarantino could force that transition, she certainly can.) Anyway, for those of you who prefer not to know anything about a movie before it's even filmed, consider the rest of this post a spoiler warning and avert your eyes from what lies beneath!

According to the scooper, the film will largely focus on the relationship between the titular Jennifer, a high-school sex bomb and all around homecoming queen type who is also possessed by satanic forces -- there's a real 80s vibe, apparently -- and her best friend, called Needy. Needy slowly starts to realize that something is seriously wrong with Jennifer, since the boys she goes out with don't come back. But enough about the story -- what's the critique? According to the source, the script is an "oddly-paced, slightly incoherent horror comedy. This is trying too hard to be some genre-smashing cult hit like Donnie Darko..." The reviewer mentions that there is plenty of R-rated gore, but says the whole thing plays more like "an ambitious writing sample than an actual roadmap to a decent film. While Juno had the heart and wide appeal to meet a mass audience, Jennifer's Body does not -- and on top of that, it lacks a well-paced plot and consistent tone." I guess we'll see.