I’m pretty impressed by the box office success of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, an unrecognizably loose adaptation of my favorite children’s book, which I had last month included in a list of movies that really ruined our childhood. Apparently I was completely wrong in that claim and the movie is supposedly “Pixar good.” Initially I had planned on boycotting the 3-D animated film, but I’m suddenly very much looking forward to seeing it sometime this week.

I’m also now kind of curious about Jennifer’s Body, which came in at an embarrassing fifth place and is now allegedly signaling the end of Megan Fox’s career. Never mind the fact that we film bloggers shouldn’t want this to happen because she’s been such great traffic-bait for us in the past (meaning she’s allowed some of us to get paid for this once in awhile). Is she really to blame for the bomb? Or, is it the Diablo Codyspeak? Or the marketing? Or, is this simply one of those films, like its ancestor, Heathers, that will take some time to find it’s cult audience — which will, by the looks of those rallying for the film, be primarily women?

Let’s see what the film blogs are saying about Jennifer’s Body’s seemed failure after the jump:

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One of my favorite screenplays of all time is Daniel Waters’ Heathers, mainly because of its clever, yet not necessarily realistic dialogue. However, I’m not that into the work of Diablo Cody, whose writing style is often compared to and admittedly influenced by that earlier black comedy. Waters’ line “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” could easily fit in a Cody-penned film, as could “No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games.” But most of the memorable, quotable Heathers lines are smarter. Aren’t they?

I often wonder if I would have had any appreciation for Heathers had I seen it as my older, more cynical self. Would I have dismissed the script the same way I now do the scripts for Juno and Jennifer’s Body? Or, is Codyspeak a lot more forced and cheesy than Waters’ writing? And is Waters more respectable for not following Heathers with continued attempts at similarly clever dialogue? Imagine Waters’ script for Batman Returns with lines like “I’ve gotta motor, Alfred, if I want to catch the Penguin” and “What’s your damage, Catwoman?”

Okay, so Waters’ later scripts weren’t very good anyway, and it’d probably be pretty interesting to see a Cody-penned superhero movie (just as I was curious about Kevin Smith’s Superman script). But reviews for Cody’s latest are nowhere near as good as Juno’s were (and she’s certainly not going to win another Oscar for it), and part of the reason may be that people are no longer giving her goofy Codyspeak (or “diablologue”) a pass. In reviews, interviews and other posts, film bloggers are criticizing Cody’s words more than ever.

Check out some of these criticisms after the jump:

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At film festivals, you usually have to make a choice between seeing about a quarter of the program and writing about everything you see, or seeing as much as you can and writing about very little of it. I usually opt for the former strategy, but at this year’s TIFF, I decided to switch it up. Tired of feeling like I miss all the good films at a given festival because I’m off seeing the important ones, I made it a point to spend my six days in Toronto seeing far more films than I could possibly write about within the temporal confines of the festival. As a result, I wrote about very little within the temporal confines of the festival. Whoops.

So, instead of rushing out a bunch of crap content just to do it, here’s a brief accounting of everything I did see, with links to things I did write about, and lazy letter grades for all! I’ll revisit a number of these films — including The Road, Hipsters, A Serious Man and Videocracy, when I have more time to do them justice.

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While most water cooler discussions today focused completely on the Kanye West VMA controversy, the playground likely had room for another topic related to MTV’s award show: the new trailer for The Twilight Saga: New Moon. But were the boys participating in that talk? Summit probably hopes so given that the spot seems to be trying harder to appeal to that young male demographic.

I don’t think the attempt will work, however. For the first Twilight film, after reaching out to the true, female-dominated fanbase, Summit released a trailer that admirably sold the thing as if it were a superhero movie. It came really close to getting me in the theater. This time they’ve got another more action-heavy trailer, which at times makes New Moon seem like The Matrix as directed by Stephen Sommers. Which I guess might seem cool to teenage boys. But there’s still enough obligatory beefcake shots and romantic fluff to overpower that idea.

Male moviegoers, feel free to prove me wrong. First, though, let’s see where the other film blogs stand on the issue after the jump:

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Day 2 at TIFF 2009 brought on the two films at this festival that could be thought of as Juno followups: the Jason Reitman-directed Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a traveling merchant of vocational death and Vera Farmiga as the woman who induces his midlife attack of consciousness; and Jennifer’s Body, starring Megan Fox as high school evil incarnate, directed by Karyn Kusama from a script by Diablo Cody. The former has emerged as near-unanimous favorite both here and at Telluride; the later has been largely derided as a disappointment. Whatever Juno seemed to be at the time of its release, two years later I imagine it would be hard for either its biggest fans to get it up enough to defend its Oscar-worthiness, or for its hardest haters to declaim it as a travesty. If anything, Up in the Air and Jennifer’s Body reveal the extent to which Juno could have only worked as a cultural phenomenon by committee: Cody’s instinct as an auteur is to drop a breadcrumb trail of code, while Reitman’s obsessive yen for polished explication is Academy all the way. Each needs their talent balanced by the opposite.
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Film blogs are sure to be a buzz-influencing force at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which opens tonight and runs through the 19th. And they better be, especially after the apparent runaround bloggers — including Spout’s own Karina Longworth — were getting from the TIFF press office last month regarding credentials. Alex Billington of FirstShowing even arrived in T.O. only to find that the festival had still not decided if he should be given a badge (he was eventually granted credentials).

Anyway, Karina will be reporting through the fest’s run, but I want to first share what some other bloggers are writing as the fest begins. Check it all out after the jump:

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The selections for this year’s Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness genre film section  has just been announced via Twitter. The lineup will close with a gala presentation of Jennifer’s Body, the hotly anticipated second feature scripted by Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama and starring Megan Fox. Other highlights: Cannes stop-motion animation hit A Town Called Panic; “a post-modern, thinking man’s throwback to the ‘B’ Movie/Exploitation films of the 1950s/70s as well as a loving, sly parody of the same” called Bitch Slap!; Symbol, Hitoshi Matsumoto’s follow-up to Big Man Japan, of which Todd Brown said based on the trailer, “Either Matsumoto has cooked up yet another slice of unorthodox genius or he has completely lost his grip and made something totally abstract and self indulgent”; and George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead. The full lineup is also on the TIFF website.

I understand that we were all watching the Michael Jackson memorial today, but did one of the most blogged about movie-related story have to involve Megan Fox? Again? Really? Wasn’t it enough that we devoted yesterday’s post to that derivative and divisive Jennifer’s Body movie? And that neither Fox nor Michael Bay nor their Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie needs anymore publicity?

Allegedly, Fox had to wash Bay’s Ferrari as part of her audition for the first Transformers. And he supposedly filmed the whole thing, though there’s no proof of this (online at least, which is where it’d be if it existed). Did it really happen? I guess it doesn’t matter, because it’s already in the consciousness of boys and men everywhere to help them sleep better tonight.

True or not, check out the responses to this non-news after the jump:
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Fox Searchlight has sent a cease and desist notice to CC2K, a fanboy-friendly pop culture site, demanding that they take down a review of recent WGA winner Diablo Cody’s script for the upcoming teen horror flick, Jennifer’s Body. A message from the site’s editors where the review used to be notes that the C & D was “very polite,” but the net result is, all the same, “no snarky review of Diablo Cody’s new script for you!”

Kate Coe is tracking some of the surrounding chatter at FishbowlLA, including a snarky comment from a Hollywood Elsewhere reader implying that the C & D’s are part of a wider conspiracy on the part of Fox Searchlight to “prevent anything or anyone from getting in the way of this processed fairytale.” We’re all for pointing fingers at Searchlight’s processing department, but what seems even more interesting are signs that, in this case, there might be a double standard. This can’t be a pure issue of copyright, because it seems that Searchlight has ordered the removal of one script review, whilst letting another’s site’s script review stand.
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• A number of soap opera writers have announced plans to go “financial core.” This WGA loophole will allow them to “give up full membership in the guild and withhold the dues spent on political activities in order to continue writing during the strike.” This is still, apparently, the exception to rule, as virtually all primetime series and late night talk shows remain inactive.
• Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody have a super-special bond that us mortals cannot hope to understand. The Juno director will produce the latter’s latest project, the aforementioned Jennifer’s Body.
• Paul Verhoeven has been hired to direct a sequel to the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, which may or may not still be titled The Topkapi Affair. Pierce Brosnan’s coming back, but Rene Russo is not; fanboys are whispering that Angelina Jolie is coming abord to play the love interest.
• The Weinstein Company has purchased the distribution rights to a parody of Kill Bill called Kill Buljo. The Norwegian-produced spoof cost about $250,000 to make; TWC will probably send it straight to DVD.

I don’t know how I missed this in this week’s trades, but I guess that’s what Pajiba is for: Diablo Cody has sold yet another screenplay, this time for a “comedic supernatural thriller” starring Transformers babe Megan Fox, titled Jennifer’s Body. Which is also the title of a Hole song, and I don’t think that’s an accident–an entire scene in the Cody-scripted Juno revolves around a song from the same album (I *think* it was “Doll Parts”, but I could be wrong). This puts Cody and I in an exclusive club: we’re possibly the only mid-90s Courtney Love apologists left.

Pajiba also spots a kinship between former stripper Cody and Fox, who “looks like she would be working the pole in some dive in Panorama City if not for the serendipitous intervention of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay.” For her part, on her blog Cody says Fox “is hotter than the earth’s core. And now–Hollywood’s tiresome profusion of ‘girlfriend roles’ be damned–she’s going to literally get out there AND DESTROY SOME FUCKING BOYS.”