Screenhead

Weak sauce, Movieline.  Weak. SAUCE.

So the folks out at Movieline were trying to figure out why Jennifer’s Body turned out to be a stink bomb that audiences could actually smell coming, and they’ve got plenty of blame to go around.  Lousy distro, lousy marketing–pretty much everything except a godawful and derivative script that heavily featured nonsense words.

And then they got to point five: the critics.  Dig the spectacularly pretentious word:

5. The critics. Horror and teen comedy are two genres proven time and again to be invulnerable to reviewers (when they’re even screened for reviewers). Put them together, though — especially in a semi-satirical fashion that turns the first genre’s sex-and-death conventions on their heads — and you get a whole lot of dickheads sniping that Body didn’t do enough to adhere to convention. “Jennifer’s Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre,” wrote the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr. Sigh.

First off, what drove you to actually WRITE “sigh” in there as if you were so deeply stricken with the ennui of the whole mess that you were about to collapse in a graceful heap on your fainting couch? Oh, Little Lord Fauntleroy can’t hang because we’re trashing his favorite movie so he’s just overwrought!

Man up or hang it up, jackass.  And you want to call me a dickhead?  Fine.  I reserve the right to call you jackass.  Of course, considering that this was written by one S.T. Vanairsdale, there’s no way to know whether I’m using the right gender or not, so we’re using the ROYAL he just in case.

Granted, S.T. did call a lot of the problems.  This really should’ve taken advantage of Halloween instead of gunning for last-gasp on summer.  But don’t blame the critics.  That’s just low.  We didn’t like it.  We thought it sucked.  I got sick of this derivative knockoff spewing gibberish every few minutes.

Critics didn’t kill it.  They just wrote the obituary.

Popularity: 1% [?]

By now you’re looking at that headline and wondering if I’ve a. had some kind of massive stroke while writing this or b. am really feeling my Star Control 2.  The answer to that is actually a lot more b than a, but it’s actually really appropriate because today, I’m talking about Diablo Cody’s foray into writing horror, Jennifer’s Body.

We’ve all been hearing about this one for months on end, the endless will-she-won’t-she that is a naked Megan Fox (she won’t) and the equally endless problems with the script (there were many), so it was actually a relief to finally be able to plunk down my money and see how it played out.  The answer: it was not the train wreck I expected, but rather a wreck of a whole different sort.

The plotline is fairly horror movie standard–a high school girl finds herself possessed by a demon who in turn drives her to feed on human blood and gives her incredible powers in exchange for doing so.  Her relatively mousy friend (who I actually thought was pretty hot herself) must stand in the gap and stop her friend from turning the male population of the local high school into a wandering buffet.

I found myself wondering, throughout most of the movie, if English is actually Diablo Cody’s first language, because at any given time,  parts of the movie are utterly incomprehensible.  This is where the headline kicks in–in the old PC game Star Control 2, there’s a race of pandimensional beings called the Orz.  The Orz language is so bizarre that it can only be partially translated by computer, and the rest is packaged into a series of “best-fits”, or words that closely approximate whatever the hell it is the Orz are talking about. They’re denoted by asterisks as seen above.  So while you’re talking to an Orz, they might well lapse off into talking about *silly* *campers* who are always *jumping in front*.  But the last time anyone made an Orz *frumple* they got shot at, so that’s not a word you want to hear.

This is the big problem with Jennifer’s Body as Diablo Cody’s script will frequently lapse into nonsense words that require explanation or subtitles, and still make no sense.  For instance, Jennifer refers to attractive men as *salty* *morsels*, which won’t be explained, and even then in rudimentary terms, until much later in the film.  The movie is literally scattered with lines that furrowed my brow in bafflement.  What the hell is she even talking about?  And considering that both Megan Fox AND director Karyn Kusama shared my frustration at this, it’s not just me, folks.

Yes, yes, I know “teenagers have their own language” and slang words and all that nonsense, but this is NOT Heathers.  This is a horror flick.  Nonsense words need not apply and haven’t applied yet.  In horror flicks, teenagers speak translatable, serviceable ENGLISH.

Meanwhile, the horror movie aspect of things is fairly well done if a little on the pedestrian side–we’ve seen pretty much all of this back in the nineties, folks, and Jennifer’s Body basically just feels like Scream repackaged with a succubus and Megan Fox.

I expected this to be a lot worse.  And in the case of the dialogue it was indeed the worst case, but the rest of the movie managed to pull it together to at least manage to be a fairly well built retread of several older, better movies.  This is Diablo Cody’s version of dress-up in which her little horror script puts on Mommy Scream’s shoes and Auntie Friday the 13th’s eyeliner and declares that it too is a big girl now.

The Screenhead Ten Scale won’t *frumple* but instead hands this *silly* *camper* of a film a fair-enough six out of ten.  A rewrite in English would have fixed so many problems here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Megan Fox shows it all in this film clip and I am not talking about her body. She tells it like it is and what audiences will see when Jennifer’s Body opens in a little less than two weeks, September 18th.  

I am not much into horror films, but I can tell, if the movie is anything like this film clip, Jennifer’s Body will open to a massive audience and she will rule the box office.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Okay, this one is for the boys. You’ll love this featurette because if offers all the details about the characters in Jennifer’s Body. You’ll even meet the writer, Diablo Cody, who talks about how she really is excited to have Megan Fox in her movie.  Amanda Seyfried is perfect as Needy Lesnicky, who is Jennifer’sbest friend. Lesnicky is so analytical and logical. Blah, blah, blah. Hello?! Are you paying attention to the featurette?!

I am sure that you do not care one iota about the horror movie. Once you see Megan Fox, your mind will go off to the land of milk and honey. You’ll be thinking about Megan Fox and well…need I say more.

Popularity: 1% [?]

You might be surprised–oh, who am I kidding?  Chances are you’re going to be REALLY surprised–by who’s rumored to be slated to play Catwoman in the next installment of The Dark Knight series.

None other than Transformer vixen Megan Fox, that’s who.

Both the movie buff in me and the cynic in me say that this is a really, REALLY good idea that deserves a note of praise.  Taking advantage of Megan Fox’s steadily climbing career from both the Transformers series and other stuff like her upcoming Jennifer’s Body is just a really good move.  But it’s shaky at best–Fox all but laughed off the idea of playing Wonder Woman.  Why would she go for a different DC property?

But then, I end up wondering why.  Considering how well the other two installments of the Dark Knight series have done–for crying out loud, The Dark Knight managed to win a guy a posthumous Oscar, and that’s almost never done!–does it really matter who plays what at this point?  Isn’t it a foregone conclusion that it’ll do well as long as any competent actor takes the available parts?  Does the Batman series really NEED star power?

But this is all just sort of whistling in the dark anyway–star power never hurt anything–and it’s likely to GET star power whether it needs it or not.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Megan Fox is a looker, but this film is way out of this world.

Popularity: 1% [?]

So far Megan Fox has played mostly damsel-in-distress type roles, but all that is about to change when she becomes a demon and eats boys at the local high-school in Jennifer’s Body.

A couple of new grainy pictures from the film have popped up online courtesy of Empire and Film School Rejects. They show Fox and her co-star Amanda Seyfried in bloody dresses, looking quite disturbing.

Written by Diablo Cody, the film follows Fox, a mean cheerleader-type, possessed by a demon who starts eating boys at the school. She is to be saved by her best friend (played by Seyfried) who must first escape a correctional facility and go after Nikolai (Adam Brody) and his Satan-worshipping band who are responsible for the demonic transformation.

The film is set for release this Septemer.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Here is the poster for Jennifer’s Body.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) wrote the screenplay. The story focuses on an impish high-school student (Amanda Seyfried) who has to protect her town against her best friend, Jennifer (Megan Fox). Jennifer was bedeviled by an evil rock band, develops a taste for human flesh. Girlfight’s Karyn Kusama directs the rather dark-comedy.

Popularity: 1% [?]