diablo cody Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While it seems like just a blink since we rang in the last New Year, 2009 is almost over. It was a speedy blur of 365 days, but it was also a year that boasted some pretty great moments for women in cinema.

I played with the idea of doing a Best Of for 2009 -- relishing in all of Hollywood's great moments for the female set -- but I tend to shy away from "Best." It's too subjective, too easy to forget something notable, and too hard to be definitive unless you rarely sleep and spend every waking moment watching all of the year's movies and reading film news.

Next, I flirted with the idea of sharing a handful of my favorite moments/aspects of 2009, but every bullet point I wrote would get edited and changed for another, and it kept evolving over and over again until I realized that trying to boil this year down to a slight list is an utter impossibility.

There's just too much to talk about, and too much that overlaps for anything but some stream-of-consciousness prose mixed with year-end love.

Though it really could mean anything, because people in Hollywood take meetings with other people in Hollywood every single day (it's what they do, and it keeps them alive), we found it rather interesting to learn that Diablo Cody met with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner yesterday to talk about that long-delayed Brian Grazer-produced Playboy flick that may or may not star either Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr. or someone else entirely, and may or may not be directed by Brett Ratner.

We know this because of Hefner's Twitter account, where yesterday afternoon he tweeted the following: "Meeting with Diablo Cody to talk about the Brian Grazer Playboy film today." Cody, however, kept hush hush about the meeting on Twitter, and Hefner never followed up to tell his followers how the meeting went. That said, knowing that he's meeting with writers means they're either looking for a brand new script or a rewrite of what already exists. Last time anything official hit regarding this project, it was back in 2007 when John Hoffman signed on to pen the script, with Ratner attached to direct.

Cody seems like an odd choice for a screenwriter, though, especially since she seems to dig projects that are chick-centric (then again, I guess any film about the life of Hugh Hefner would include plenty of female, um, parts). What could she possibly add to the project, other than a whole bunch of quirky, high school hipster-speak? Seems like an odd pairing ... what do you think this is all about?

The woman of funky phrasing -- Diablo Cody -- is gearing up to tackle the teen world's most infamous twins, the two girls many of us 20 and 30-somethings grew up with -- the Wakefields. The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog reports that Universal is currently vying for the rights of Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High series, which Cody will not only produce, but adapt.

For the uninitiated, there were a whole bunch of books in the Sweet Valley series (started in 1983), allowing young girls to follow blonde twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield through their formative years -- Sweet Valley Kids, Twins, Junior High, High, Senior Year, University... It was all covered, with stories that ranged from the battles between Jessica's wildness and Elizabeth's responsible ways, to side stories like my favorite where the jerky and rich Bruce Patman fell for the sweet, beautiful, and once-deaf Regina Morrow, who then up and died. There was the mundane teen fare intermingled with the ridiculously over-the-top installments when people were held hostage, vampires descended -- you name it. There was also a show from the mid to late '90s starring Brittany and Cynthia Daniel.

If Diablo reigns her Cody style into the story -- and doesn't go The Vampire Diaries route changing almost every part of the story but the names -- this is the perfect match that has my inner teen rejoicing. Hey, Diablo: Do Enid, Lila, Bruce, Caroline, et all proud, 'kay? And if you could dump Todd Wilkins and give Elizabeth Nicholas Morrow, that'd be great too.

I wonder ... will Universal try to steal back all the Twitter names?

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.

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.

Jennifer's Body is getting panned in some circles for the alleged tragic flaw of a horror movie not being particularly scary. They're mostly right -- Diablo Cody's genre follow-up to Juno doesn't really elevate the heart rate very often. But I think that's because it tips to the "high school" side of the "high school horror" balance; it's more of a teen drama with a bloody metaphorical twist than a full-on horror flick.

That may disappoint some fans, but it sort of gets at why high school horror movies work so well, so often. It's a cliche that "high school is scary," but movies that make a connection between the reasons high school is scary in real life and whatever monstrosity happens to be stalking or haunting the characters are the ones that tend to leave the biggest impression.

In honor of Jennifer's Body, which I think will be unjustly maligned in the weeks to come, here's a list of some high school horror movies that figured this out -- and a few that were just plain fun.

1. Ginger Snaps - The movie's IMDb plot summary helpfully begins: "This film uses werewolfism as a metaphor for puberty." Well, yeah -- though it is generally considered polite not to lead with something like that. (Sorry.) But it's not all allegorical navel-gazing. Ginger Snaps is an elegant, harsh piece of teen horror that brutally plays on teenage insecurities, and is a pretty good werewolf flick too. It's a shame that director John Fawcett largely disappeared into the (better-paying, I hear) abyss of television.

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.