Kusama-Cody's Post-"Carrie" Horror Feminism

A game Fox works beyond the call of duty for unworthy material and inept filmmakers

The Karyn Kusama-Diablo Cody collaboration, "Jennifer's Body" is a better idea than it is a movie. It's a decided disappointment.

But not in the usual way.

Going in, I really didn't have much faith in either Kusama (the director of the overrated "Girlfight") or Cody (media darling and screenwriter of the wildly overrated "Juno") - that either of them would have the stuff to pull off a teen-girl horror flick that updates/upends Brian DePalma's "Carrie" (1976). But at the very least, I expected the movie to be fun and that Cody (né Brook Busey) would deliver her patented snarkiness.

But the film is no fun at all, Cody's predicatably glib dialogue notwithstanding. And it isn't frightening - or intimidating, interesting, involving or any other "i" word. What it is - if you want an "i" word - is inept. It's inept on just about every level, despite a very game performance by Megan Fox who, as a teen man-eater (literally), works off her shapely behind for Kusama and Cody, and an especially grounded turn by Amanda Seyfried, who provides poor, unfortunate "Jennifer's Body" with its only touch of (dare I say it?) professionalism.

the unbeliever

At least, Jack could have said that he actually "slept" with MM and it wouldn't have been completely false

All hail John Timpane of The Philadelphia Inquirer who, in today's installement of the paper's lively Sideshow gossip column, had the cahones to challenge the delusions of grandeur of a former superstar.

The ever-entertaining Tony Curtis, who is offering pre-orders of autographed copies of his upcoming tome, "The Making of Some Like it Hot: My Memories of Marilyn Monroe and the Classic American Movie," now claims (apparently, in the book) that Marilyn, as Timpane so wittily puts it, "miscarried a pregnancy that he (Curtis) helped happen."

Say what? I clearly remember Curtis spending a good part of the past half century, dissing Monroe, with whom is co-starred in the aforementioned "Some Like It Hot" - and often tossing off the highly quotable remark that kissing her was "like kissing Adolf Hitler."

Curtis kissed Hitler?

"If you write a memoir, guess you got to say wild and outlandish things about the dead to sell copies," Timpane casually tosses off himself within the venerable Inky. Anyway, Curtis who likened MM to an alpha Nazi, now reveals he not only had an affair with her but fathered her miscarried child. I don't believe him. I'm not saying that he's, well, an exaggerator - just that I don't believe a single word he says on this particular matter.

I've had the same reaction to Ann-Margret's curiously belated admission that she and Elvis had a thing going and Shirley MacLaine's revelation that she and Robert Mitchum were once an item. I ... don't ... believe ... it.

Maybe I should start a rumor about me and, say, (fill in the blank here with the name of any deceased film actress, preferrably born after 1950).

cinema obscura: Daniel Mann's "Five Finger Exercise" (1962)

A very needy Maximilian Schell begs his employers Rosalind Russell and Jack Hawkins to give him a second chance in Daniel Mann's film version of Peter Shaffer's stage play, "Five Finger Exercise"

Yet another of the many black-&-white Columbia films from the 1950s and '60s ignored by Sony's home entertainment division for decades is Daniel Mann's 1962 film version of the Peter Shaffer play, "Five Finger Exercise," adapted for the screen by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett.

The backdrop for the film is America (instead of Great Britain, the locale in the play), but that's not the only change introduced here by Goodrich, Hackett and Mann, all of whom toned down the uncomfortable erotic undercurrent of Shaffer's play. Still, there's enough queasiness here to make the piece compelling and definitely worth another look.

Rosalind Russell and Jack Hawkins play a well-heeled couple who hire a German transplant (Maximilliam Shell, fresh off his Oscar win for "Judgment at Nuremberg") to tutor their teenage daugher (Annette Gorman, in her first and last film role), much to the chagrin of their son (Richard Beymer, fresh off "West Side Story") who has a thing for mom and resents the attention she lavishes on the handsome, rakish German.

The film - the material - never had a chance at being great as a film, given the concessions made to the censors at the time, but it's another example of a well-made movie version of a pedigreed play.

"Five Finger Excerise" is one of three consecutive films responsible for making Russell a pariah among New York's Broadway community. She was the theater's darling when she was on the boards in "Wonderful Town" and "Auntie Mame," but all that goodwill was lost when it was construed Russell was "stealing" roles that belonged to other actresses.

In 1961, she took on Gertrude Berg's role in Mervyn LeRoy's film of the Leonard Spigelgass comedy, "A Majority of One" (opposite Alec Guinness), followed in 1962 by "Five Finger Exercise," in which she played the role originated by Jessica Tandy, and by LeRoy's film of "Gypsy," in which she dared to do Ethel Merman's role.

Poster art for the Broadway production of "A Majority of One"

Much of the bad press surrounding "Gypsy" at the time of its release, reporedly orchestrated by the vitriolic New York gossip columnist Dorothy Killgalen, had nothing to do with the completed film and everything to do with Russell's participation in it - and her recent history.

"Five Finger Exercise," incidentally, tried out at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. before debuting in New York on December 2nd, 1959 at the Music Box Theatre, running for 337 performances. Aside from Tandy, the play starred Roland Culver (in the Hawkins role), Brian Bedford, Michael Bryant and Juliet Mills (as the ingénue). Sir John Guilgud directed. The play was produced by The Playwrights' Company, headed by Frederick Brisson - the husband, of course, of Rosalind Russell.

Was there any doubt she'd play the role in the film?

façade: Aaron Eckhart

Aaron Eckhart is a throwback - a real Movie Star

Last summer, I stood by dumbfounded and helpless as everyone else predictably rushed to praise Heath Ledger's compelling posthumous performance in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight."

I liked Ledger, too, but frankly, Aaron Eckhart was much more impressive as Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face). In fact, I thought it was his film. Still do. It certainly wasn't Christian Bale's film. Oddly enough.

Eckhart has been in movies in full force for about a dozen years now. Following a couple roles in TV movies and one in something called "Slaughter of Innocents," he had his first starring role in mentor Neil LaBute's lacerating 1997 film, "In the Company of Men," playing a business cad who might have been the inspiration for AMC's hit series, "Mad Men."

He followed that a year later in LaBute's wonderful ensemble drama, "Your Friends and Neighbors," taking on heft for his role as a conflicted husband - one of the few times that the gain (or loss) of an incredible amount of weight served the film, not just the actor-in-question's PR ploys.

Other roles came - one with Thomas Jane and Paula Marshall in Skip Woods' little-seen "Thursday," another in John Duigan's studio-compromised "Molly," starring Elisabeth Shue in the title role (and Jane again). He also worked for Oliver Stone on "Any Given Sunday."

And then came Steven Soderbergh's "Erin Brockovich," opposite Julia Roberts. Blockbuster! Career-maker. This is it!


Well, it wasn't exactly a breakthrough role, but it made Eckhart bankable by association and, after doing two more titles for LaBute ("Nurse Betty," with Renée Zellweger, and "Posession," with Gwyneth Paltrow), he's worked steadily and reliably in a pleasing selection of films. I love his post-"Erin Brockovich" filmography.

Here goes:

Sean Penn's "The Pledge" with Jack Nicholson; Ron Howard's "The Missing" with Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones; John Woo's "Paycheck" with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman; Hans Canosa's "Conversations with Other Women" with Helena Bonham Carter; Jason Reitman's "Thank You for Smoking" with Maria Bello; Brian DePalma's "The Black Dahlia" with Josh Harnett and Scarlett Johansson; Scott Hicks' "Mostly Martha" remake, "No Reservations" with Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Brandon Camp's current "Love Happens."

Meanwhile, Joshua Michael Stern's "Never Was," is a lost film from 2005, also toplined by Ian McKellen, Jessica Lange, Nick Nolte, William Hurt, Michael Moriarty, Brittany Murphy, Vera Farmiga, Alan Cumming and Cynthia Stevenson. I won't burden you with a synopsis because, with that list of players, who cares? It's available on DVD.

Upcoming is John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole," based on the David Lindsay-Abaire play about a couple whose young son dies in an accident, upending their lives and marriage. The material - which reads like prime Oscar bait - pairs Eckhart with Nicole Kidman (in the role played on stage to great acclaim by Cynthia Nixon); that's them in the still below.

Who knows. "Rabbit Hole" may be Eckhart's "Heath Ledger moment."

"Love Happens," seriously

For reasons of commerce exclusively, Brandon Camp's debut film, Love Happens," is being sold as a Jennifer Aniston romcom.

Far from it. It's an Aaron Eckhart dramedy.

Jennifer Aniston may be the most generous screen performer today, something her callous detractors willfully refuse to acknowledge. She was a team player in "He's Just Not That Into You," she indulged a dog (actually many of them) and the dog-eyed Owen Wilson in "Marley and Me" and she stepped back and let the incorrigible Steve Zahn, at long last, have his moment in the spotlight in "Management."

And in each film, she was terrific herself, her role in "Management" possibly being the most fascinating woman's part this year, bar none.

As for "Love Happens," she hands the material - about a self-help guru, newly widowed, who has to learn to help himself - over to Eckhart. Aniston is essentially playing a part that's in support to his star turn here.

It's a serious film. There's nothing romantic or comedic about it. And it works because Eckhart is so commanding as a deeply flawed man. His scenes with Martin Sheen, playing his character's grieving father-in-law, incited my imagination.

I could just see these two as father and son in a remake of "I Never Sang for My Father," played nearly 40 years ago by Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman for director Gilbert Cates. And, come to think of it, Aniston would be great in the sister role originally played by Estelle Parsons. I can dream, can't I?

Note in Passing: Kim Morgan defends Jennifer Aniston. Bravo!