Loosely basing his piece on the Megan Fox/Diablo Cody film Jennifer's Body, William Leith argues that teenage girls hold all the power in high school, as they mature faster than boys do (this is called puberty), moving on to "painted nails and cigarette lighters and high heels and make-up bags" and "boyfriends with cars and jobs and money," while "geeks" like Leith continue to play with frogs and build forts in the woods. "I remember this moment exactly," Leith pouts, "All the girls you know seem to have become ten years older; they hang around with boys who look like men, which makes you feel even more of a kid."

In a piece that reads like something the class geek who became a bitter multimillionaire would read in a film based on a high school reunion, Leith then describes how he and his immature friends continued building forts and catching frogs while the girls ignored them and, you know, had lives of their own and adventures of their own, and waxes poetic about his dumb bonding adventures with the lads and how they all came out of the summer as grown men—the type the girls would finally notice.

It was then, Leith concludes, that he realized that being older meant that he could have whatever he wanted. "Soon, you will be one of the older guys," he writes, "The girls will no longer be out of your league. In fact, as you get older, there won't be a woman shortage - there will be a man shortage. Yes, you'll be sitting pretty. As a man, you'll get paid more, you'll be able to have children at any age, and you won't even have to get pregnant. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? If only we'd known."

In other words, Leith hit puberty and his douche switch was flipped to "on." Apparently, in Leith's view, young women also maturing due to natural processes were just power hungry things out to make young men feel bad about themselves who had no idea of the comeuppance that awaited them: thousands of years of male privilege in action! What a revelation!

I honestly have no idea what the point of this article is supposed to be. Does Leith want sympathy for being a so-called "geek" who had really good friends and good memories and ended up realizing that he is always a step ahead due to the penis in his pants? Is he trying to shame the teenage girls he grew up with for not paying attention to him (gasp!) and daring to mature at their own pace and live their own lives, regardless of how it affected him? Or is this entire thing just another excuse to remind women that some men will always take pleasure in rubbing their misogynistic bullshit in their faces? I believe it's a combination of the three. I'm sure Leith thought this whole thing sounded pretty clever, as opposed to smug and misogynistic. Oh, dear. If only he'd known.

Seduced By Megan Fox? It's Too Good To Be True [DailyMail]

• More on this is Midweek Madness, but Star is reporting that Justin Timberlake and Rihanna are "on." Here's the deal:

They've been talking and texting "nonstop" since the VMAs; but Rihanna doesn't want to be "his lady on the side." A source says: "She asked him on the phone, ‘Are you still with Jessica?' And he hinted that things were cooling off between them." [Star]

• If you were at the Bourgeois Pig on East Seventh Street the other night, you would have seen Madonna eating with Jessica Seinfeld and Jesus Luz… Then Anderson Cooper "rolled up on his bicycle and joined them." [Page Six]
• Rose McGowan has broken off her engagement to Robert Rodriguez. Does this mean no Red Sonja? But what about the awesome poster?!?! [Radar Online]
• Uh-oh! Bomb scare on the set of The Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogen! [TMZ]
• Hospitalized twice in two days? Get well soon, Tori Spelling. [Page Six, People]
• Chris Brown says he's trying to make as much music as possible — while doing community service at the same time. Multitasky. [TMZ]
• "How to fix Jon and Kate? Lose the Eight… Kate Gosselin is and has always been the show's central character. How she mothers, how she bosses her husband around, how she cuts her hair and tucks her tummy - that's what the show is really about." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Lamar Odom says his wedding to Khloe Kardashian was not fake: "It's crazy how perception works in America when you're looking at things from the outside… Anybody that was there will tell you that it was a beautiful event and it was real." [People]
• Some hairstylist claimed he did Khloe Kardashian's hair for her wedding — at a cost of $4500 — but KK didn't actually use him and actually never heard of him. [TMZ, NY Post]
• Michael Jackson's estate is suing the "Heal The World Foundation," which claims it is linked to MJ, but had no connection to the pop star and, in fact, "became dormant before he died." [CBS News]
• Rihanna is being sued by a neighbor who claims she had been allowing cars to drive on his lawn to get to her driveway; she denies causing any damage. [TMZ]
• Daniel Radcliffe: Taking driving lessons. [Telegraph]
• Jessica Alba is in talks to join the cast of Little Fockers, along side Ben Stiller and Bobby De Niro. According to this story, she'll play an "attractive" pharmaceutical rep "whose looks wreak havoc on male characters." In other words: They don't need her to act. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Uma Thurman will star in Ceremony, a flick directed by Max Winkler — Henry's son. Uma will play an older woman who is about to get married when a young man falls for her; the young man will be played by Michael Angarano, aka Kristen Stewart's (ex?) boyfriend. [Variety]
• One of the defendants in the John Travolta case claimed to have document suggesting Travolta wanted his son dead; it was actually just a form that released medical professionals in the Bahamas from liability if Travolta decided to fly his son to a hospital in Florida. [TMZ]
• "An ambulance driver believed he had John Travolta over a barrel and wanted big bucks to keep embarrassing medical records secret, a witness testified yesterday." [NY Post]
• Randy and Evi Quaid's home in Marfa, Texas now has a cease and desist sign out front, because the Quaids has started remodeling job without permits. [Radar Online]
• Remember Edward Furlong? Terminator, American History X? His estranged wife just filed a restraining order against him, claiming he threatened to hire people to beat her with chains and bats. And! She claims he "is smoking cocaine and doing other various drugs. He is very unpredictable." [TMZ]
• This columnist gives Joy Behar's new show three and a half stars and writes: "if there's one thing wrong with Joy's great new show it's her old-lady Aunt Carmela hairdo. Please Joy, call me — I'll pay for you to go to my hairdressers." [NY Post]
• The Tate Modern museum in London has decided to display a naked photograph of 10-year-old Brooke Shields; critics want it withdrawn from the exhibition, called "Pop Life: Art In A Material World." [Daily Mail]
• A Steady Rain stars Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman reportedly attracted the highest weekly gross for a nonmusical production on Broadway. But as far as I know, neither of them take their shirts off! Weird. [NY Post]
• Bono may be a superstar, but he knows how to wait patiently for a table in a crowded restaurant. [Page Six]
• Lady Gaga sang over the phone at a fundraiser and helped earn over $10 million for charities. [Page Six]
• "Sean 'Diddy' Combs has signed with Universal Music Group's Interscope Geffen A&M label in a deal which includes his future albums and creates a new joint venture with Combs' Bad Boy label." [Reuters]
• Interesting: Melissa Gilbert is playing "Ma" in Little House On The Prairie: The Musical. [USA Today]
• Jennifer Hudson says her newborn baby boy is "the cutest thing in the world" and he "seems like he's very interested in music already." [People]
• "Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's one-legged ex-wife, will appear on the British TV show Dancing on Ice, according to the London Sun." [NY Post]
• Roger Avary, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Pulp Fiction, has been sentenced to a year in jail for drunk driving and causing a fatal traffic crash in Southern California. [Breitbart]
• "A former teaching assistant who was employed by Wynonna Judd to home-school her two kids has been charged in Tennessee with distribution of child pornography." [E!]
• "Pink Floyd star leaves £24m to his children - but nothing to his three wives." [Daily Mail]
• "I had to think: 'What can I do with it? How can I make this fun?' I wanted him to be happy-go-lucky about the whole thing and not a conflicted, angry killer. More of the Hannibal Lecter school of killer: the killer you want at a party. I wasn't trying to banish Seth Cohen. I'm still me. He looks different and is morally corrupt. But I don't see it as a big departure." — Adam Brody, on his character in Jennifer's Body. [USA Today]
• "I went to Oregon to study permaculture and lived in an eco-village for a month outside Eugene. It's called Lost Valley. It was amazing and exactly what I needed, because there had been the Juno thing, where you're getting a lot of attention. You're learning how to live in a holistic way with the cycles of the Earth. At one point I was digging goat (manure) and putting it into a wheelbarrow, and while shoveling it, I just went, 'Oh, my God, this is exactly what I want to be doing right now.' "— Ellen Page on her life after Juno and before Whip It!. [USA Today]
• "I'm not a fancy person. I love small spaces. I like tiny cars. I don't buy things, aside from music and books." — Ellen Page. [USA Today]
• "She's really sexy. I did my wardrobe fittings with her where we would just take our clothes off and look at our own bodies. We both have insecurities or flaws, but we were both like, 'How do we get over this? How do we be the sexiest we can be in this movie?' We pushed each other. We challenged each other. We developed a love affair that was based on truth rather than niceties." — Drew Barrymore on Ellen Page. [USA Today]
• "It took me all my effort to watch The Wire. And I only watched it because I was directing an episode in the last season. Then I watched the whole lot in a very short time and suddenly realized what a great thing I was in." —Dominic West. More from him at the link. [Telegraph]
• "I want to apologize to everybody. I had no idea what it would turn into." — Kristin Cavallari, on introducing Spencer and Heidi to each other. [Hollywood Crush]
• "She is not a nice person… Madonna laid the law down to me before we went out. [She said] I am not going to Disneyland, OK? That's out. I said, 'I didn't ask to go to Disneyland.' She said, 'We are going to the restaurant. And afterwards, we are going to a strip bar. I said, 'I am not going to a strip bar, where they cross dress. ... I am not going to there. If that's how it is, forget this whole thing. ... Afterwards, she wrote some mean things about me in the press. And I wrote that she is a nasty witch, after I was so kind to her." — Michael Jackson, in that new book by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. [CNN]

Gutierrez has problems with Megan Fox's character, Jennifer, calling her "Hot, Flat and Empty." Gutierrez thinks the showdown between Jennifer and Amanda Seyfried's character, Needy, "plays out like a catfight over a boy."

Here's what I did think: (and obviously, spoilers abound) Jennifer and Needy's friendship rang true. Sometimes you're friends with someone and you don't even know why. I absolutely had a high school friendship in which I intensely loved — and was intensely annoyed by — my friend. There were relationships where I was jealous of the other girl, where I wanted to get close to her to prove I could, where my emotions were so complicated I didn't even understand them. And to me, that's what Jennifer's Body is about: What if your best friend — who already thinks she can get any guy she wants — became an actual man-eater?

While Jennifer was slightly under-developed as a character, it seemed like that was the point: She was a vain, slightly mean airhead before she turned into an evil creature, and, thanks to her indestrucitbility, became even more vain, cruel and drunk with power afterward.

As for fighting over a boy, that also seemed valid. Even though Jennifer seems like the popular girl with the hot body, something inside her — insecurity, malice, delusions of grandeur — made her want to destroy whatever Needy held dear. It's as though Jennifer wanted to be all Needy had. Since Needy felt a connection with the emo kid from poetry class, he had to go. Ditto Needy's boyfriend. And when Needy attempted to rescue her boyfriend, it didn't seem like a "catfight" to me as much as table-turning take on the usual damsel-in-distress cliché. Just like the Prince battles his way through overgrown brush in Sleeping Beauty, so must Needy scramble through vines in order to try and save her love.

An aside on the "Codyspeak": When I was a teenager, no one I knew said "neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie" before The Breakfast Club came out. No one I knew said "I gotta motor if I'm gonna hit that funeral" before Heathers. It sucks that, instead of being recognized for making the screenplay sparkle with fun language, Diablo Cody gets flogged for "Codyisms."

While Gutierrez didn't find Jennifer's Body scary enough, smart enough or feminist enough, and the film came in a disappointing fifth at the box office, with a meager $6.8 million, think about this: Heathers made $177,247 its opening weekend and was considered a total failure. These two movies are kissing cousins, in a sense: As Dana Stevens wrote for Slate, Jennifer is "less a teenage girl turned monster than an exploration of the monster that lurks inside every teenage girl." It's notable that a BFF charm is one of the images at the climax of the movie: All the blood, guts and Satanic rituals in the world could never hurt as much as betrayal of the "Best Friends Forever" promise — even if you have to break that promise to save your life.

Sister Hacked [The American Prospect]

Earlier: Critics Have Violently Different Views Of Jennifer's Body
6 Reasons To Love Jennifer's Body

• Courtney Love "went nuts" when a guest at a party opened an unlocked bathroom and saw her on the toilet with her skirt around her ankles.

Apparently she launched herself at the dude, and though people tried to calm her down, a security guy told the man: "It's best you get away as fast as possible." [Page Six]

• Backstage at the Emmys, Paramedics were called for Kristin Chenoweth, who complained of a migraine headache and then said she couldn't open her eyes. [Access Hollywood]
• More backstage Emmys drama: A fight between Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff got "kind of loud." Apparently they were "screaming at each other"after he said she took too long in hair and makeup. [E!]
• Mad Men and 30 Rock were big winners at the Emmys last night. [NY Daily News]
• Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs won the weekend box office; Jennifer Aniston's Love Happens came in fourth — one of her worst openings in years — and Jennifer's Body placed fifth. [Ny Daily News]
• "Mr. T's Chance of Meatballs character fits him to a T." [USA Today]
• Kate Gosselin taped her Mom Logic TV show pilot over the weekend, and even though guests Mel B and Christie Brinkley were nixed, a source says the taping "went extremely well" and "Kate did great." [Radar]
• Congrats! Zooey Deschanel married Death Cab For Cutie singer Ben Gibbard Saturday night near Seattle. [People]
• Did you know that Susan Sarandon has been a member of a Ping-Pong society for years? [NY Magazine]
• From a profile on Madonna: "Scented Christian Dior candles fill the air in a space so dimly lit, it seems both slightly theatrical and quasi-religious. A huge telephone with multiple extensions bears labels such as M study, M dressing room, M bathroom, Laundry, Music Room, Kitchen, Mews." And: "A lot of people are just really confused by me… They don't know what to think of me, so they try to compartmentalize me or diminish me. Maybe they just feel unsafe. But any time you have an overtly emotional or irrational, negative reaction to something, you're fearing something that it's bringing up in you." [Times Of London]
• Paula Abdul almost refused to co-present with Kathy Griffin at the VH1 Divas concert because of all the insulting jokes Kathy had made. [Gatecrasher]
• Amy Winehouse was leaving a nightclub recently when a passerby shouted "Oi Amy, where's your crack pipe?" [The Sun]
• Heidi Klum and Seal can't decide on a name for the baby girl they are expecting. Seal says: "It has been the topic of debate for the last month. We can't quite figure it out. I'm a firm believer that she will pop out and will tell us what she wants to be called." [Mirror]
• Charlize Theron's nude scene in The Burning Plain — in which she smokes a cigarette while standing at a window in full view of passersby in Portland, OR — was shot at 6 a.m. to avoid paparazzi. [Page Six]
• Oprah had a block party in Chicago and paid more than $54,000 for city services. [Ny Post]
• Joy Behar would love to get Sarah Palin on her new show on HLN and talk to her about the "real America." "It's insulting to men like my father, who fought in World War II, whom she doesn't think are real Americans because we don't agree with her." Joy also says: "Look, it's not that I'm contentious; I'm uncompromising. I'm friendly, but I can't let things go unchallenged. And I intend to give my opinions quite profusely. I might even have to interrupt myself." [New York Magazine]
• New couple? Kid Cudi and Amanda Bynes??? [Gatecrasher]
• They're saying Mischa Barton's a mess in the morning and needs someone to "fix" her coffee, but who isn't and who doesn't? [Page Six]
• So what is up with that Taylor Momsen record contract that allows her singing on Gossip Girl and the "Runaways Project"? She's not in the Runaways movie! Was she was supposed to get Dakota Fanning's part? Or does she have a secret cameo? [TMZ]
• Beth Ditto has banned her girlfriend from touring with her: "[It's] not because I don't think she can handle it, but because that's my life. Say what you want about me. Say it to my face, say it behind my back, write it on the fucking bathroom mirror, I don't care. But do not talk about the people I love. I will lose my mind." [NME]
• An ambulance was called to David Hasselhoff's house yesterday; apparently his 17-year-old daughter, who was home with him, called her mother, saying that David was extremely drunk. A friend of Pamela's called 911. [TMZ, TMZ]
• January Jones, aka Mad Men's Betty Draper, has purchased a lovely home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A., and you can see the pix at the link. [The Real Estalker]
• The Guinness World Records board has refused to let the White Stripes into their record book for playing a one-note concert, due to insufficient interest. Twelve hundred people showed up to a gig in Canada where Jack White played an E. [Mirror]
• Stephen Moyer on his engagement to Anna Paquin: "It was very intimate and quite surprising for her, I think, and we were by ourselves at dinner in Hawaii and...I surprised her. But it was something that surprised me probably more than it surprised her." He also says: "She is very funny and very frank and very direct and beautiful… She doesn't take any of my nonsense." [E!]
• David Arquette and Ben Harper have a clothing line called Propr, and Arquette says: ""We love the idea of chivalry and going in an old-school barber… There's a quality that's in the finer details, like they really thought it out a step further." More from "A Night Out" with the duo at the link. [NY Times]
• Ryan O'Neal visited Farrah Fawcett's grave after their son, Redmond, was ordered to leave jail and go to rehab for a year. [Daily Mail, USA Today]
• Nicole's sister Antonia Kidman is engaged to Singapore-based banker Craig Marran. [News.com.au]
• Terry Gilliam got Johnny Depp to tango for The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus even though Johnny allegedly said "Men don't dance." [Mirror]
• Oy: Sacha Baron Cohen will play an Israeli tour guide on The Simpsons. [UPI]
• From a piece on John Malkovich's new film, Disgrace, set in post-apartheid South Africa: "[Malkovich's character] Lurie appears the virtual embodiment of white male arrogance, an English professor who views himself through the prism of Romantic poetry and who pursues an exploitive, obsessive affair with a much younger, mixed-race student. You can't say that he rapes her, but the issue of consent between an inexperienced young woman and a practiced seducer — one with direct power over her academic future — is complicated, to say the least." [Salon]
• Will Diddy switch record labels? [Page Six]
• Scott Weiland had a seizure on a plane while en route from Los Angeles to Florida, causing the plane to land in Dallas-Fort Worth; he is "doing great" now. [E!]
• Larry King hates frivolous lawsuits. [TMZ]
• John Travolta may be a witness at the trial for two people accused of trying to extort $25 million from him after his son died in the Bahamas. [AP]
• John Travolta says if he is called to testify, he will do so. [ET]
• Sources say John Travolta's testimony will be dramatic and emotional. [TMZ]
• Ozzy Osbourne's new memoir describes appearing on the MTV show The Osbournes as "terrifying" and like being "strapped to a rocket and being blasted through the stratosphere at warp factor ten." [Mirror]
• Leonard Cohen is recovering after collapsing on stage during a show in Spain; he reportedly had food poisoning. [UPI]
• James Blunt is accusing internet service providers of "handling stolen goods" by allowing file sharing and illegal downloads. [Telegraph]
• Anoushka Shankar, Ravi Shankar's daughter, had been the victim of a blackmail plot; an arrest has been made. [Independent]
• District 9 is not welcome in Nigeria. [NY Post]
• "Frustrated cops probing Jordan's claim to have been raped by a celebrity said yesterday they could do no more unless she co-operates." [The Sun]
• "You're not going to be successful. You're not going to be millionaires (with the exception of MAYBE Kris and Adam). No one will care about you. Those fans who've been asking for your autograph all tour long - 98 percent of them don't give a flying poo about you once next season of Idol starts. In other words, your days of being a star are over. But that's all right - so are mine… The music business, for the most part, will treat you like an outsider… You are just a game show contestant who still needs to prove why you should be here. Move to a music city. L.A., New York or Nashville Leave home and live WAY below your means." — Chris Sligh, former American Idol contestant, to other Idol singers, on his blog. [NY Post]
• "I was never in the high, high fashion industry. I was never one of those superskinny, supertall waif girls who goes from show to show. When you do more commercial things, your weight is allowed to fluctuate a bit. Not every inch counts. It's hard for the girls. How old are they? Fifteen, 16? Some girls are naturally thin and can eat whatever they want. When I was 15, 16, there was not one ounce of fat on me, but some other girls have to work hard to stay like that. But the rules are not made by the models. To be part of this, they have to be the size the designer wants them to be. I'm not that skinny, and I never was, but I can pretty much eat whatever I want." — Heidi Klum. [Page Six Magazine]
• "My dream was always to work in a candy store. It was because of my obsession with candy; I don't have it any more, now that my teeth are all rotten. I did go to a university for a year, as shocking as that might sound to people, and there was a candy shop that I used to go to all the time, an old-fashioned one where all the candy was in these big glass jars. I used to go in there and look at all the candy and think, ‘God, it would be really cool to work in here; I could have candy whenever I wanted.' So I did want the keys to the candy store, but I had different keys." —Madonna. [Times of London]
• "At first, I didn't know whether I'd be healthy enough to film a full season of an action-packed drama series. But soon I realized there was nothing I wanted to do more. We got in touch with the network to let them know about my diagnosis and I sent this message: 'Don't count me out. I can do this.' All I could think was: 'If I'm going out, I'd rather go out on a high note, doing quality work I believe in.'" — From Patrick Swayze's memoir, on doing The Beast with a cancer diagnosis. [Daily Mail]
• "We need to be the example of respect, of tolerance, and just how to be civil, can we do that? Even though I didn't win the crown that night I know that the Lord has so much of a bigger crown in heaven for me. I never asked to be thrown into politics… but you know what, I'm proud of the stance that I took and I'm glad that God upheld me for such a time as this." — Carrie Prejean. [NY Daily News]
• "Forget about playing Tony Blair. When I told her I was definitely playing vampire Aro in Twilight, she cried. She was so overwhelmed and annoyed that I muscled in on something that was hers. She's already told me she'll be my date for the premiere." — Michael Sheen's 10-year-old daughter, Lily is excited about his career for once. [Page Six]

Jennifer's Body, which opens today, is a comedic horror film about Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), the meanest, prettiest, most popular girl in Devil's Kettle, Minnesota, and Anita "Needy" Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried), her smart, sensible, and mousy best friend since childhood. Jennifer, who has always had a somewhat-abusive relationship with Needy, drags her to local roadhouse to see an obnoxious emo band called Low Shoulder. When a freak fire destroys the bar Jennifer and Needy manage to escape and the band's lead singer (Adam Brody) offers Jennifer a ride home. Needy never sees Jennifer alive again, as she's transformed into a succubus, a form of zombie/vampire, when the band's satanic virgin sacrifice goes awry. Jennifer returns to feast on innocent high school boys and Needy has to defend their male classmates, including her boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons).

Earlier, we presented a few reasons to love Jennifer's Body, but critics couldn't reach a consensus on anything about the film. While some saw it as a smart and funny commentary on the angst surrounding being a teen girl and the complicated nature of female friendships, others singled out the same points to argue that the film is a "spectacular disaster." There aren't as many Juno-esque quips like "honest to blog" in Diablo Cody's screenplay, which may be good or bad depending on your opinion of Diablo Cody. Some said Megan Fox's acting was horrible, but others found her bland affect appropriate for a demonic mean girl. Reviewers expecting a straight horror movie were disappointed by the film's lack of gore, but other reviews said the film doesn't really fit into either the horror or comedy genres. Many critics described the film as a feminist take on the horror movie, but another critic praised it for refusing "to be read as a feminist revenge story." Below, we take a look at what reviewers are saying about the film, but as it deals with several topics it seems no one can agree on, including Diablo Cody, Megan Fox, feminism, and the difficulties of being a young woman, you may have to judge Jennifer's Body for yourself.

Slate

To enter into the spirit of Jennifer's Body, you have to let go of your preconceived notions of Diablo Cody, whether for good or ill. If you're looking for the gentle indie spirit of Juno, you'll be disappointed-this isn't a world in which abortion protesters make their case with twee observations about baby fingernails, and getting pregnant at 15 is nothing a Moldy Peaches song can't cure. Life at Devil's Kettle High is nasty, brutish, and short, especially for Jennifer's male victims (who aren't necessarily sexist jerks-one of the movie's strengths is its refusal to be read as a straight-up feminist revenge story). If, on the other hand, Juno's preciousness made you gag, you shouldn't write off Jennifer's Body, either. True, Cody's mania for catchphrases hasn't faded-Needy and Jennifer greet each other with rhymed putdowns along the lines of "Where's it at, Monistat?"-but she's learning to channel the more egregious lingo into the mouths of characters who might actually talk that way. In Jennifer's Body, the principal perpetrator of Codyisms is Jennifer herself, which makes perfect sense. Proving one's social worth by spouting insider slang is a mark of insecurity, and for all her sexual bravado, Jennifer is nothing if not insecure. Megan Fox, whose previous roles called on little more than her ability to successfully straddle a motorcycle, nails this tricky role. She does more than look sensational-she shows us what it feels like to be a sensational-looking young woman and to wield that as your only power. Fox seems to understand the key gambit of Cody's script: Her character is less a teenage girl turned monster than an exploration of the monster that lurks inside every teenage girl.

The Chicago Sun-Times

It's easy to go on like this, but I'd be missing something. There is within Diablo Cody the soul of an artist, and her screenplay brings to this material a certain edge, a kind of gleeful relish, that's uncompromising. This isn't your assembly-line teen horror thriller. The portraits of Jennifer and Needy are a little too knowing, the dialogue is a little too off-center, the developments are a little too quirky. After you've seen enough teen thrillers, you begin to appreciate these distinctions. Let's put it this way: I'd rather see Jennifer's Body again than Twilight.

The New York Times

Jennifer's Body, a bloody high school demonic-possession serial-killer comedy written by Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama and starring Megan Fox in the title role, is an unholy mess. I mean that as a compliment. Yes, the movie's gory set pieces are executed with more carnivorous glee than formal discipline, and its story is as full of holes as some of its disemboweled victims. But coherence has never been a significant criterion for horror movies. If it were, we could forget about Dario Argento and Brian De Palma, half of Hitchcock and most of the entries in the Friday the 13th series. And though it is too soon to install Jennifer's Body in that blood-soaked pantheon, the movie deserves - and is likely to win - a devoted cult following, despite its flaws.

These are mitigated by a sensibility that mixes playful pop-culture ingenuity with a healthy shot of feminist anger. Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama take up a theme shared by slasher films and teenage comedies - that queasy, panicky fascination with female sexuality that we all know and sublimate - and turn it inside out. This is not a simple reversal of perspective; the girl's point of view has frequently been explored in both maniac-on-the-loose thrillers and homeroom-to-prom-night romantic comedies. Jennifer's Body goes further, taking the complication and confusion of being a young woman as its central problem and operating principle, the soil from which it harvests a tangle of unruly metaphors, mixed emotions, crazy jokes and ambivalent insights.

The Miami Herald

Jennifer's Body is also uncommonly fearless when it delves into the subject of teen sex. When the baby-faced Needy and the even younger-looking Chip get together for a stay-at-home date and start talking about condoms and lubrication, the conversation comes as a shock, because movies have traditionally taught us that only the "bad'' girls have sex when they're 16. The good ones — those who, like Needy, do their homework and are responsible — never slide past first base.

Jennifer's Bodyisn't particularly scary: Kusama feints at frightening her audience early on, but her heart just isn't in it, and she eventually loses interest. And the movie's humor is either too stale (Wikipedia gags were funny when we first heard them on The Office two seasons ago) or too dark and scalding for laughter. And some jokes, such as an ill-conceived riff on 9/11, stick out for their offensiveness.

The Hollywood Reporter

The film will most disappoint those who hoped Juno had introduced a writer with a fresh point of view about young people in today's world. Horror fans, however, will get a kick out of this absurd yarn of a high-school hottie-turned-psycho cannibal, who feasts on all those boys dying to get into her pants. And there is enough of those arch, self-conscious comic lines to remind us this is a Cody screenplay.

USA Today

Jennifer's Bodyis not as hot as you hope it would be. Written by the talented Diablo Cody, whose way with words - particularly teenspeak - was a revelation in Juno, Jennifer's Body tries hard to be cool, gross and nasty but feels forced and misses the mark... much of the humor and the scares fall short. Jennifer's Body generally follows the conventions of a teen horror tale, interspersed with some lackluster, wannabe edgy humor.

Variety

While not exactly lifeless, Jennifer's Body sure could be fresher. Even with Megan Fox ideally cast as a sharp-fanged succubus with a lusty appetite for young male (and sometimes female) flesh, this high school horror romp tackles its bad-girl-gone-really-bad premise with eye-rolling obviousness and, fatally, a near-total absence of real scares. Fox Atomic item will stir interest as a post-Juno outing for scribe Diablo Cody, whose whippersnapper sensibility can be heard in the occasional snatches of self-consciously clever dialogue. But even auds primed to see guts and other exposed body parts will be disappointed by a Body less bawdy than advertised.

The Boston Globe

The haters are already out in force for this one, storming the nation's multiplexes with torches if their blogs are to be believed. Honestly, the movie's not that terrible. That doesn't mean it's very good, though. 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.

Two things keep Jennifer's Body from clicking: The script isn't nearly as wonderful as it thinks it is, and Fox has the personality of a lukewarm Thermos. (A third: Kusama's a solid director but not the wild-and-woolly stylist this project probably needs.) Cody tries to rocket her dialogue along at Juno pace, but sardonic glibness is hard to pull off when characters are going screaming to their deaths - she should have either eased up on the gas or revved through to the far side of bad taste. Worse, the writer's patented Cody-isms ("freaktarded,'' "move on-dot-org'') seem pushy and stale this time out.

The A.V. Club

Her second film script, for the excruciating teen horror-comedy Jennifer's Body, doubles down on the slangy Cody-isms, serving as a fresh reminder that the house of Juno wasn't built on a foundation of homeskillets and honest-to-blogs. It was at heart an affecting story about a pregnant teenager sorting through some very difficult decisions and trying to do the right thing; her colorfully sarcastic one-liners worked, in part, because she deployed them as a kind of defense mechanism. By contrast, Jennifer's Body is clever for its own sake, a showy piece of writing that doesn't have that all-important ballast of sincerity. This time, Cody will stop a scene cold for the chance to shoehorn "move on dot org" into a sentence. Another major problem: Neither Megan Fox nor Amanda Seyfried can handle the wordplay like Ellen Page did. As they play best friends on opposite sides of the popularity divide, Fox rips into her line-readings with lusty overconfidence, while Seyfried timidly pushes them across, as if they were written in a second language.

Reel Views

Jennifer's Body mixes, matches, and crosses three popular genres: horror, comedy, and teen angst. Unfortunately, it fails at all of them - and "fails" might be too kind a term. This movie is a spectacular disaster, the kind of thing a cat might bury in a litter box and still keep building the covering because the stench can't be smothered. There are so many things wrong with this motion picture that it might be easier to pinpoint the few elements that are right. The film is the product of the "girl power" team of director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) and writer Diablo Cody (Juno). Neither has previously dabbled in horror and, based on the evidence at hand in Jennifer's Body, neither should be allowed near it again. Kusama comes across as a filmmaker who is playing at making an exploitation flick without having a good understanding of what the elements are and how they mesh. The tone is off throughout, like a piece of music played in the wrong key. The notes are there but the sound is dissonant. Drinking massive amounts of coffee before seeing Jennifer's Body might make it more bearable since frequent trips to the bathroom will break up the monotony.

Salon

If Jennifer's Body were either entertaining or ultimately had a point, it would have a good enough reason for existing. Even if its star, the bodaciously built Megan Fox, were sexy in anything but a plastic way, you could make an argument for it as gore-fest eye candy. But Jennifer's Body — directed by Karyn Kusama, from a script by Diablo Cody — is so contemptuous toward its own characters, and its audience, that it chokes off any visceral thrills it might have offered. The movie substitutes calculation for brains, and the filmmakers seem to think we'll all be too stupid to notice. I can't remember the last time I saw such a naked display of opportunism and exploitation at the movies — and when I use the word "exploitation," I don't mean the good, old-fashioned grindhouse kind, but the "Let's make a buck by pretending to be transgressive" kind, the kind that reallymakes you feel dirty.

Watching two women kiss, when it's done right, is a glorious thing... But a kissing scene can also be a cheap attempt to titillate the audience, particularly when it has no real context or reason for being — it doesn't matter if there's a man or a woman behind the camera. Needy is certainly in thrall to Jennifer, possibly sexually. But Jennifer treats Needy so badly, it's impossible to understand how these two women could be friends, other than out of habit (they've been pals since childhood). And as Jennifer, Fox's mannequin eyes are lifeless; they betray an attraction to no one — there's no sex in her sexiness. The kiss comes from nowhere and leads to nothing. Its calculated eroticism is enough to make you long for the tyranny of the male gaze.

Earlier: 6 Reasons To Love Jennifer's Body

• Someone's been arrested in the Lindsay Lohan home burglary case — and it's not Lindsay Lohan!

Nicholas Prugo, 18, was arrested Thursday in connection with two break-ins: Lindsay's house and Audrina Patridge's house. Dina Lohan says: "Yes, we have found him, God is good." Man, we were sold on that In Touch story alleging that Lindsay robbed herself. [People, TMZ, TMZ]

• Lisa Ling will return to The View as a guest host on October 5. [ONTD]
• Elton John, who was branded "unsuitable" to adopt a Ukranian toddler because he's gay and old, may be able to be the kid's "guardian," which means the mother retains parental rights. The child is not an orphan, though he lives in a children's home; his brother lives there, too. [Daily Mail]
• Michael Jackson's family thinks the This Is It movie is propaganda, to back AEG's claims that he was fit and healthy and ready to tour. [Page Six]
• Sad face: They're calling off the search for Jessica Simpson's dog, last seen in the jaws of a coyote. [TMZ]
• Halle Berry: Not pregnant, just full of burgers. [People]
• Although how Halle Berry could be full of burgers and get in to that dress is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, with special sauce, lettuce and cheese. [Daily Mail]
• BREAKING: Amy Winehouse had a lovely evening out with a "mystery man." [The Star, Mirror]
• Mystery solved: The dude Amy Winehouse was with is former flame Tyler James. A fan asked her for a kiss and she said, "Sorry, I'm with my boyfriend." [Daily Mail]
• While Chris Brown is doing his community service, he has three off-duty cops watching over him as a security team. [TMZ]
• Jennifer Garner is a prankster on movie sets. [Gatecrasher]
• Jennifer Lopez wore a dress by Victoria Beckham to the White House and it was… fitted. [Daily Mail]
• Avril Lavigne's marriage is really over. She posted a message on her blog which reads: "Deryck and I have been together for 6 and a half years. We have been friends since I was 17, started dating when I was 19, and married when I was 21. I am grateful for our time together… I admire Deryck and have a great amount of respect for him. Deryck and I are separating and moving forward on a positive note." [TMZ]
• Kanye West has been invited to the next Friars Club roast. [Page Six]
• Kanye West has been nominated for 9 BET awards. Will he show up? [NY Daily News]
• Kate Gosselin will be shooting the pilot for her new TV show with Paula Deen this weekend. The idea is to have several hosts, like The View, and comedian Sandra Bernhard and Tammy Lynn Michaels have both been considered for the job. [Radar]
• Paula Abdul told a radio DJ that she's going to be producing a show in Las Vegas and is also working on a project with the Laker Girls. [Eva Amurri, strip down for Californication, by all means, click the link. [Daily Mail]
• Samantha Burke, the lady impregnated by Jude Law, is possibly getting £120,000 from a magazine for pictures when the baby is born. [ Daily Mail]
• Someone showed the nuns at Sacred Heart girls school in New York video of Lady Gaga on stage bleeding; she is an alumna of the school. The nuns were not amused. [Page Six]
• Khloe Kardashian and NBA star Lamar Odom: Getting married. They've been "talking about rings." [E!]
• Is Anna Kournikova pregnant? Rumor has it she's carrying the spawn of Enrique Iglesias. [Gatecrasher]
• Ivanka Trump is keeping it classy and not selling wedding pictures, just releasing a single one. [Page Six]
• A man has been arrested for assaulting a security guard who tried to stop him from getting in a car with Ryan Seacrest. [AP]
• Clint Eastwood and Matt Damon just worked together on Invictus, and they will team up again for Hereafter, a thriller from Peter Morgan, who wrote Frost/Nixon and The Queen. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• A journalist asked Spike Lee if Do The Right Thing would get made today. "It would be very hard to make a film like this today," Lee said. "Not because the subject is irrelevant. I don't think the studios would do this. I have to thank Tom Pollock who was running Universal Pictures at the time. He put the weight of the studio behind me for this film and supported me, even when people wanted to waver and divorce themselves from the film." [Independent]
• "Of The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer, the opera about the prostitute-mauling Jack Unterweger, that opened this year in Vienna and will tour in Europe and Canada next summer, John Malkovich says: 'It's actually a comedy.'" [The Daily Beast]
• Anna Nicole Smith is no longer with us, but she owes the State of California $43,280.66 in back taxes. [TMZ]
• The battle at the box office this weekend will be family-friendly Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs versus horror send-up Jennifer's Body versus the crappy-looking Love Happens with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart. Odds are, Meatballs will win. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Joe Perry is pissed that Aerosmith had to cancel their summer tour because of Steven Tyler's injuries. "I haven't talked to him in over five weeks. I don't know what's going on with him," Perry says. "All I know is he's got to get his act together. I mean, he and I haven't written a song together alone in the same room in over ten years, so there's been some changes in paradigm of what Aerosmith is." [AP]
• The director of The Cove, an award-winning documentary about Japan's dolphin slaughter, plans to attend a screening at the Tokyo film festival even though he could be arrested. [AP]
• "Miley Cyrus, Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks lack power to carry 'Divas' label at VH1 concert… No matter the age, it seems, all one needs to be a diva in the land of VH1 is to miss a Y chromosome." [NY Daily News]
• RIP Guiding Light. [NY Post]
• Katie "Jordan" Price has been questioned by cops over her claims that she was raped by a celebrity. [Daily Mail, The Sun, The Sun ]
• Blind items! "With their partners away, celebs have been using Fashion Week as an opportunity to play! Which two pop stars made sweet music on Sunday night after the gal gave the guy a private lap dance? Hope his longtime girlfriend doesn't find out ... Which supermodel mended her recently broken heart over the weekend with the very-engaged bassist of a hot rock band?" [Gatecrasher]
• Q: When you auditioned for The Late Late Show, the producers told you that they loved the way you actually held conversations with the guests. A: "Yeah, apparently no one does that anymore. Instead, publicists work out what we'll say and who's gonna ask what. I'll ask you, 'Oh you bought a house?' And you say, 'Yeah I just moved and I got a dog.' And I'll say 'Tell me about the dog, is it named Spunky?' And you'll say 'Yeah, Spunky!' I don't do that." — Craig Ferguson. [Time]
• "It's pretty sad. She should have watched it more closely, though. She should have been more careful." — Martha Stewart, on Jessica Simpson's coyote-snatched dog. [Page Six]
• "Have you been in a Kmart lately? It is not the nicest place to shop." — Martha Stewart, whose products were sold at Kmart but will now be at Macy's and Home Depot. [ONTD via Daily Finance]
• "They took a beautiful man and put poison in his body. Why couldn't they have built him up nutritionally and got ten rid of the toxins? …I hate to be this controversial … but I have to speak out." — Suzanne Somers on Patrick Swayze. [Page Six]
• "I think that the music itself is very, very fun for the most part. I have a few more ballady, emotional songs. But lyrically, it's a little more docile - the music is very fun. I guess it's dance music - it's electro-driven but it's still soft." — Leighton Meester, on her new album. [ONTD]
• "When I read the pilot script, I thought, 'What a fun part this would be to play. How fun would this be?' But then all of these people said, 'It's perfect! You're perfect for it!' [My character] Jeff is a liar and a jerk. What am I supposed to say to that? 'Yeah, I guess so! Awesome!' It really makes me go, 'Wait, what do you mean?'" — Joel McHale on new show Community. [LA Times]
• "It's really, really awkward - any time you do a kissing scene or a love scene it's awkward but especially with this one. Neither one of us wanted to do it and we were both terrified but when you do scenes like that it's not at all sensual or sexy. You're in a room and it's full of these middle-aged crew guys who are like eating their sunflower seeds waiting for you to get it right so they can go home to their kids. They just don't want to be there." — Megan Fox on her kiss with Amanda Seyfried in Jennifer's Body. [Mirror]
• "The Office is not one of those things you move away from. I don't want it to go away." — John Krasinski. [Guardian]

6. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried's Kiss Isn't That Exploitative

By the time I saw a screening of Jennifer's Body last week, the "lesbian kiss" clip was already partially online, and seemed just as eye-rollingly marketing department-mandated as one would expect. But it actually fits nicely into the plot — in the full scene, Needy (Amanda Seyfried) is suspicious of Jennifer (Megan Fox), and Jennifer is trying to win her back the only way she knows how — with her overpowering sexuality. Besides, it's played for laughs when Needy suddenly realizes they're kissing and pushes Jennifer away and is all like "Wait, what?" about it.

5. The Diablo Cody-isms Aren't As Distracting As They Were In Juno

Jennifer's Body probably could have done without "Moveon, Dot Org!", but generally, the weird Diablo Cody alien teenspeak is limited to one character — Jennifer — which makes it seem like it's her tic, not the entire movie's. And when I'm watching a horror movie, I like knowing there's always another pop culture allusion just around the corner. This movie isn't trying to be Citizen Kane. I might even start calling my best friends Monistat and Vagisil...well...or not. But teenagers do tend to have their own language, and if it was okay in Heathers, it's okay here.

4. Adam Brody's Dead-On Brandon Flowers Impression

Adam plays the eyelinered lead singer of the indie band Low Shoulder, whose single "Through The Trees" goes platinum after it becomes the official song of the Devil's Kettle Tragedy. Though Adam claims in interviews that he based his character on several famous lead singers, come on, it's Brandon Flowers from The Killers all the way. He even grows a Flowers-esque mustache after he gets famous. It adds another layer to think of his ruthless evil famewhore character being based on Flowers the goodie two-shoes Mormon.

3. J.K. Simmons As the Wig-Wearing Science Teacher With A Hook For A Hand

Because J.K. Simmons is always funny, and because the hook is never explained or even mentioned.

2. Megan Fox....Can...Actually...Like...Act?

Bad news for Megan Fox's legions of haters: she may have dumb tattoos, say silly things in interviews, and possess exactly one mouth-agape red-carpet facial expression, but in this movie at least, Megan Fox's ability to play the full range of her ditzy-yet-utterly-enthralling high school alpha-female character is undeniable. (Amanda Seyfriend is also terrific, but we already knew that.) You just can't stop watching Megan, and after this mesmerizing performance, her sudden massive fame seems a little bit more understandable. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone. It's just true. Bitch can act, and we need to accept it and move on (dot org).

1. It's An Empowerment Movie For Former Wallflower Sidekicks Everywhere

Most of us have, at some point in our lives, found ourselves playing sidekick to an underminer-y, narcissistic, "best friend." (This is based on anecdotal, not scientific, research, but it's totally true.) We tend to grow out of it by our late '20s unless we're characters on Sex and the City, but if the low-self-in-relation-to-Miss-Superstar-esteem memories still linger, Jennifer's Body is THE movie to see to permanently exorcise your inner nerdy sidekick forever. It's a horror movie about toxic friendships! Why didn't anyone think of that before? The last two scenes of Jennifer's Body will make any former wallflower feel like a badass, giving us more than we ever expected from a cheap horror movie: an hour and a half of therapy. See it with a friend you (actually, really) love!

• Russell Brand on the Kanye West incident at the VMAs:

"You don't like to see people upset. But I think it just gets exciting, live television, live events. People get worked up and things happen." [AP]

• "However rude Kanye West's intrusion may have been, it suited the controversy the VMAs openly crave." [NY Times]
• Philippe van den Bossche, the boss of Madonna's Raising Malawi charity, has quit after falling in love with Madonna's trainer, Tracy Anderson — also famous for sculpting Gwyneth Paltrow's physique. [Page Six]
• Is Oprah in trouble? This report notes: "Winfrey is still the queen of daytime television, but the aura of invincibility is gone. The average viewership for The Oprah Winfrey Show slipped under 7 million last season, down 7 percent from the year before, according to Nielsen Media Research. One week during the July rerun season, the show had its lowest ratings since its 1985 debut." [AP]
• Colin Farrell: Having another baby. He and girlfriend Alicja Bachleda are expecting their first child. Colin has a 5-year-old son James from a previous relationship with model Kim Bordenave. [Us Magazine]
• At a red carpet event, a photographer asked Colin Farrell's sister to step away to Colin could be photographed alone. Colin got mad and confronted the snapper, who says: "I was just saying, 'Please can everyone clear the carpet, move on.' He took it personal. He said, 'Do not shout at my sister like that, do not ever speak to my sister like that ever.'' [Daily Express]
• Deepak Chopra knew Michael Jackson for 20 years, and he says of Michael's death: "It was caused not by the drugs he had been taking for years — He was a very controlled addict. But by him being given a particular drug that is so powerful that I have never heard of it being used anywhere but in an operating theater with breathing tubes and a ventilator… This is something bigger and is happening all the time – and not just in Hollywood. The number one cause of drug addiction in America right now is medical prescriptions. We have to wake up to that." [Telegraph]
• Elton John would like to adopt a Ukrainian boy named Lev, but the country bans gay couples from adopting children. In addition, Elton and partner David Furnish are considered too old to be adoptive parents. But click the links to see adorable pix of the tot. [The Sun, NY Daily News]
• Ugh, some of the comments on this Elton John story are vile. [Page Six]
• Gisele Bundchen hates when her personal real estate business is in the paper. [Page Six]
• Lionel Richie says now that daughter Nicole has given birth to son Sparrow, "She is the happiest woman ever. She is just in total control. I'm the one that's nervous!" He also jokes: "Harlow right now is enjoying the baby until she finds out it's staying." And: "[Sparrow] looks just like Harlow." [People]
• John Mayer was at a bar in NYC when someone got stabbed; Mayer and other patrons were "seen fleeing." [Page Six]
• Susan Boyle's first single has been revealed: It's a cover of The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses." [Mirror]
• Tila Tequila has apparently been mentioning Chris Brown in her Tweets; Chris Brown has responded: "NOT TRYNA BE RUDE but i keep hearing tila bringing my name up. ur 15 seconds of fame has ended. dont try to gain fans by dissing me.godbless." [TMZ]
• Mischa Barton is working on her new show The Beautiful Life, but while doing so, she has been ordered to stay away from booze, boys and bad behavior. She complained to cast members: "All I can do is smoke cigarettes." [Page Six]
• Lost is scheduled to end on Wednesday, May 19, 2010. Mark your calendars. [ONTD via LostBlog]
• Ugh. Here's a "joke" an NFL announcer made during a Detroit Lions game: "Going from two Super Bowls in Pittsburgh to the winless Detroit team — that's like going from dating Beyoncé to Whoopi Goldberg." [TMZ]
• "Russell Brand romanced model Christy Peterson for three months without seeing another girl. Then he told her to go shopping with his mum and had sex with a fan and a stripper." [News.com.au]
• "Prince Harry leaves nightclub ten minutes after Chelsy Davy... as he misses Lord Freddie Windsor's wedding." [Daily Mail]
• Interested in a Hollywood Hills 5,334 square foot 1929 Spanish-style house or a 4,062 square foot three-story contemporary Mediterranean home with a guesthouse? Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor are selling, and you only need around $12.5 million [UPI]
• Jay Leno's new show is related to NBC's decision to split football drama Friday Night Lights between DirecTV and NBC. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Dancing With The Stars' Maksim Chmerkovskiy is "still nursing a broken heart but doing okay" after his breakup with Karina Smirnoff. [People]
• Chandra Wilson has been nominated four consecutive years for her portrayal of Miranda Bailey, the no-nonsense chief resident on ABC's Grey's Anatomy, but is still looking for her first win. She says: "The thing that always impresses me whenever I go on the website each year to cast my little vote for myself, there are like 400 women there! So to even get in the top five, narrowed down from all those women, that's already amazing. I'm a huge fan of Sandra's work on this show. So the fact that we keep coming in together, I'm highly complimented by that. I also think it's a big testament to the show remaining as current as it is, six years in." [NY Times]
• Harrison Ford was honored with a tribute to his career at the 35th Deauville American Film Festival in Normandy, France, and got all choked up. Han Solo doesn't cry! [Daily Mail]
• Director Niki Caro and actress Keisha Castle-Hughes paired up in 2002's divine Whale Rider, and have reteamed for new film The Vinter's Luck. [USA Today]
• Couple alert: Chace Crawford and Bar Refaeli. [NY Daily News]
• Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has dumped girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls, telling her he is not ready for marriage and children. But she was quoted as saying: "My dream is to do my own music one day, to have an unbelievable tour, to have done some musical theatre and some film and maybe to have opened up a performing arts school for special needs kids. That is my ultimate dream — not marriage." [Mirror]
• Even though they broke up 22 years ago, The Smiths are gaining new fans, thanks to 500 Days Of Summer. [Independent]
• ABBA's Benny Anderson on rumors that the group will create music for a sequel to Mamma Mia!: "it's not going to happen. There will not be another, quote unquote, Abba musical." [UPI]
• "Sir Michael Caine described his latest vigilante film as a 'warning' of the way British society is heading." [Mirror]
• Kirk Douglas, 92, Is the oldest person on MySpace. He recently sent son Michael Douglas a message which read: "I've got 800 new friends, what should I do?" [Mirror]
• I Can Do Bad All By Myself opened at the top of the weekend box office with more than $24 million in ticket sales. [NY Daily News]
• Blind items! "Which has-been action hero has knocked up his comely assistant? When his longtime girlfriend learned of the impending birth, she angrily split… Which world-famous actor has fallen out with his equally A-list director? They have weeks to go on their upcoming block buster, but the actor thinks the director is arrogant and dismissive of his ideas, while the director considers his leading man to be a spoiled, over rated punk." [Page Six]
• "I'm not that motivated nor do I see that many good projects that make me want to take me away from my family. So much so, that his young children see mummy as the film star in the family. All they know was daddy makes pancakes because I did not have a movie to show them." — Michael Douglas. [Mirror]
• "It feels like we have been away for a long time. The four of us were feeling really nervous about coming back home." — Chris Martin, on Coldplay playing its first UK gig this year. [BBC News]
• "I am comfortable singing in a context like that. I am least comfortable singing karaoke, and less comfortable singing in cabarets. I really only like singing when you understand the context, so an awards show is fine." — Neil Patrick Harris on the Emmys, which he'll be hosting Sunday. [USA Today]
• "You're surrounded by cameras, you're surrounded by film crews, you're surrounded by equipment. It's, like, the most empty, unromantic experience ever." — Penn Badgley on kissing scenes on Gossip Girl. [USA Today]
• "I'm not a great actor. I don't fool myself to think that I am. Most of the work that I get is through having really good relationships with people and being dependable… We all have to put each other in check. Otherwise, people start to become delusional about who they are and what they are and what they're contributing to the world." — Ashton Kutcher. [New York Magazine]
• "Popular music has an emotional-intelligence quotient that's geared much toward younger people. It's all about [he flattens his voice to a disaffected teen monotone] 'You left me. Why did you leave me? I still love you. I tried so hard to stop loving you.' And it's like, well, I relate to that, I just don't want to think about that. When you're younger, you want to wallow in it. When you get older, you still love the person, and wonder why they don't love you. You just have other things to do." — Alec Baldwin. [New York Magazine]
• "At one of the orgies there was this bunny - there was a rabbit, who was just sitting there staring at us. We all kept saying, 'Look that bunny's still there.' And after about 45 minutes, I thought, 'Maybe he's hurt,' and I started to walk over to it and it took two hops and I was like, 'Nope, he's just a pervert.' … He was pervy Peter Rabbit!" — Michelle Forbes, aka Maryann from True Blood. [People]
• "I'm happy to be a representative for curvier women, but I don't really want to be known as 'the fat one.' I don't really mind what people want to say about me, but it's just that I have two daughters and I don't want them growing up to believe that flesh is something to be ashamed of, particularly at their age. They need to understand not to take any notice. I'm happy with my shape." — Nigella Lawson. [Telegraph]
• "It's just a working relationship. We all have our different things that we're doing. We're not friends, but we are cordial." — Sheree Whitfield, on fellow Real Housewives Of Atlanta castmates NeNe, Kim, Lisa and Kandi, whom Sheree says she doesn't really hang out with. [E!]
• "It doesn't really matter, those are Michael's kids. He raised those kids. They were in his arms when they were born." — La Toya Jackson, when asked about the biological father of Michael Jackson's children. [NY Daily News]
• "I recognized myself in that character and most of all, I recognized that I have seen the Precious girls of the world and they have been invisible to me. None of us who see the movie can walk through the world and allow the Preciouses to be invisible again." —Oprah, on the lead character in Precious, the film for which she is the co-executive producer. [AFP]
• "[Director] Karyn Kusama and I are both outspoken feminists. We wanted to subvert the classic horror model of women being terrorized. I want to write roles that service women. I want to tell stories from a female perspective. I want to create good parts for actresses where they're not just accessories to men… The friendships that I had as an adolescent had this unparalleled intensity. I wanted to show how almost horrific that devotion can be. It's almost parasitic." — Diablo Cody on Jennifer's Body. [Reuters]

Jennifer's Body is written by a woman (Diablo Cody), directed by a woman (Karyn Kusama, of Girlfight fame) and stars a woman: Megan Fox.

But women are often the victims in horror flicks: As Michelle Orange writes for the Times:

Long before the first big-screen vivisection of a female breast, the novelist H. P. Lovecraft wrote that horror was "supposed to be against the world, against life, against civilization." But the delight that the genre's filmmakers, especially those behind the Saw franchise and its torture porn kin, take in depicting a steady stream of starlets being strung up, nailed down or splayed open, makes it clear that modern horror is against some more than others.

And the fact is: Research shows that women love horror movies. Debbie Liebling, the former president for production at Fox Atomic, a studio for low-budget, teen-oriented genre films like Turistas, doesn't get it: "I'm not sure what the attraction is, psychologically, for females," she says. "I would love to know why girls are going to see Saw, because I have no idea." Diablo Cody has an answer: "Some of us just like that stuff," she explains. "We like suspense, we like to be scared, we like to have visceral reaction in the theater. Maybe I'm starved for adrenaline, but for me watching a horror movie is very pleasurable. So making one was kind of a dream."

As a woman who digs a good horror flick, I'll agree it's about the thrill. You go for the same reason you ride a roller coaster: It's a rush, to jump in your seat, to be scared, to feel your heart pound. And if the flicks don't exploit women? Even better. Orange points out that Cody and Kusama attempt to keep everyone happy:

Jennifer's Body was designed with both feminists and 15-year-old boys in mind, a seemingly eccentric blueprint that, as Ms. Kusama points out, is in line with the best movies of the slasher tradition. "It may be one of the best ways for a young male audience to experience a female story without feeling like they have been limited by a female perspective," she said. […] Between Needy's cautious yearning and Jennifer's pure, trampling id, the film presents a portrait of female identity in flux.

It was an effort that often bedeviled Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama, who tried to balance brute violence and lesbian kisses with the film's more substantial metaphors. "The tricky thing is if you're going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there," said Ms. Cody, whose script is a self-described "crazy, chaotic homage" to the horror films of her youth. "We were constantly bobbing and weaving. Karyn and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that's appealing to a mainstream audience."

Women are a big part of the fan base, so it makes sense to make movies with strong female characters. Instead of screaming chicks a la Janet Leigh in Psycho: we need more of the "final girl," the one who makes it, or uses her strength and wits to survive. (Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween?)

As Diablo Cody expains about her love of horror: "When I watched movies like The Goonies and E.T., it was boys having adventures. When I watched Nightmare on Elm Street, it was Nancy beating" up Freddy. "It was that simple."

Taking Back The Knife: Girls Gone Gory [NY Times]

Exclusive! The Red Band Trailer for Jennifer's Body! [Shock Till You Drop]

Jennifer’s Body will hit theaters on September 18th, 2009. As previously noted, the film will star Amanda Seyfried as the nerdy girl who is forced to kill her possessed best friend when she starts feeding off the boys in their small town. Maxim-favorite Megan Fox is set to play the man-eater. The buzz surrounding the horror-comedy has generally been good, and with this cast, we can hope for a strong opening weekend for Cody. [Cinema Blend]

Oh and PS: Here's an old photo of Angelina Jolie:

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

Hilary Swank, Amelia: Swank stars as the daring avatrix in this Mira Nair-directed biopic. Verdict: Amelia Earhart + Mira Nair = A-OK.

Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer's Body: In this Diablo Cody-penned horror movie, Amanda will play Neely, the "bookish" best friend of cheerleader Jennifer. After Jennifer becomes possessed and starts eating dudes, Neely eventually saves the day. Verdict: ass-kickingly ok!

Mary Steenburgen, Open Road: Mary plays the ailing mother of Justin Timberlake, who is struggling to reconnect with his estranged star athlete father. Verdict: sounds like a victim. Steenburgen's character is only in the movie because she's frail and shit.

Uma Thurman, Eloise in Paris: Adapted from Kay Thompson's popular children's book of the same title, Uma is playing Nanny, who has the tedious job of corralling feisty Eloise. Verdict: even though Eloise exhausts her, the Nanny is mainly a cool British bird. She's okay in our book.

The Geena Davis Institute On Gender In Media Releases New Findings: Males Outnumber Females Almost 3 To 1 In Films [PR Newswire]
Seyfried In 'Body' Cast [Hollywood Reporter]
Trio Will Hit 'Open Road' [Variety]
Hilary Swank To Play Amelia Earhart [Variety]
Uma Thurman Joins 'Eloise In Paris' [Variety]