• Amanda Seyfried seems to have forgotten her Red Riding Hood for her Esquire photoshoot, and girlfriend is smoking in a black lace body suit, or a corset, or well, anything. To hell with Jennifer’s body!

• Robot Chicken has its sights set firmly on two genre targets this year for the full-episode treatment like they gave Star Wars. Both James Cameron’s Avatar and the Twilight series are going to get the Robot Chicken treatment, with Avatar getting spoofed with its own action figures. I expect teary Twihard YouTube protests in 3-2-1.

• There are 20 Phrases To Make You Sound Brainier. My favorite? “Avatar, on a contextual level, is an abomination. But when divorced from its own merits, the sensory experiences are ceaselessly winning.” Best part? You can replace “Avatar” with “Rachel” or “Ben” or any friend and get away with calling your friends pretty but stupid to their faces.

• I don’t have a specific fantasy angle on this clip, but I think anytime you can bring the sun to a town above the arctic circle in the middle of winter, you’ve performed a kind of magic, and from the looks on the kids faces, I think they’d agree. Oh – and it’s a commercial for orange juice.

• The Telegraph spent a lot of time hanging out with Matt Smith on the set of Doctor Who. In addition to talking to his improbably mini-skirted companion Amy Pond, they got to look (but not photograph) the interior of the new, multi-level TARDIS, complete with swing.

• Friday I mentioned that it was a good year for Browncoats, as nearly the entire cast of Firefly had gigs. Now comes word that Summer Glau is joining The Cape, the “everyman” super hero show that NBC is piloting. She’ll play a low rent (blogger) Lois Lane to the low rent Batman knock-off the show is about.

• This amused me to no end, and I’d like to know what goes through someone’s mind to have them do Hutts and Recreation as a mashup of Star Wars and Parks & Recreation. I suspect it’s large doses of a psychotropic substance.

• Despite losing its Mary Jane, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway is apparently moving forward according to the Green Goblin, Alan Cumming. Oddly, he says he has “flying rehearsal” two weeks before he has “rehearsal.”

• SyFy’s next dark fairy tale reimagining is Red, which like the Amanda Seyfried movie above, is about Little Red Riding Hood fighting werewolves. SyFy tweeted the first look at their own Red, Felicia Day. I think it’s fair to say they’re going for a contemporary look.

• There’s a rumor of a Dr. Who game for Nintendo Wii. The little game system that could is being targeted because it fits neatly into the same “family friendly” demographic that Dr. Who has always attempted to occupy. Plus I’m guessing a Wiimote is a very early-edition sonic screwdriver when you come right down to it.

• Entertainment Weekly tries to settle the debate of Batman vs. Superman that’s raged for so many decades, and comes down squarely in the Superman camp, because just like Spock in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizards-Spock, Superman beats everything.

• There is a new Shrek film, and it’s a rip off of It’s a Wonderful Life. Shrek Forever After is what they are promising us is the last in the series, and I intend to hold them to that, even if arson is involved.

• Does Wonder Woman deserve the Smallville treatment? There seems to be a decent case for bringing her youth to the small screen.

• Chris Weitz gives a long interview about Twilight: New Moon. I can’t think of anything nice to say, so I’ll stop.

• We still have no idea who is donning Captain America’s tights, but we do know that he’ll have to battle professional villain Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull.

• As we prepare for a new Nightmare on Elm Street, we get a new Freddie Kruger action figure, both pre-burn and post-burn Freddie.

• Finally, Robert Rodriguez showed up at SXSW with a sneak peek of Predators, his “fresh take” on the classic franchise, that he swears will make us forget the films that came before were connected.

Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Jennifer’s Body is the second film from Juno scribe Diablo Cody, who once again puts her ear for snappy dialogue to use and turns it into the unbilled third star of her film.

As for the plot? Not as great, but more on that later.

For starters, what can I say that hasn’t already been said about Megan Fox, who plays the titular Jennifer? We all know she’s smoking hot. Her PR people have been unrelenting in their determination to brand her as a man-eating sex goddess, and her character in Body is really just an extension of that brand, with the focus being more on the man-eating, less on the sex goddess.

Still, you have to applaud Fox for taking a role which requires her to be covered in blood and gore and be, frankly, unhot for much of the time, when I’m sure she’s been offered dozens of roles that allow for unblemished skin all the way through the script.

Amanda Seyfried, who seems to be mostly overlooked in favor of Fox (which is true for their characters as well), really shines as Needy, the reluctant hero of this film. Anyone who saw Mama Mia knows how radiantly beautiful she is, and yet she spends the entire film in mousy glasses and unkempt hair, and no one makes a peep. Maybe gentlemen really don’t prefer blondes.

The plot, as I mentioned before, is uninventive — anyone who’s seen the previews knows Jennifer gets possessed by a demon and starts killing her male classmates — but I almost wonder if it was run-of-the-mill on purpose. After all, what makes this film fun, more than anything, is seeing Megan Fox go all Baraka-from-Mortal-Kombat on poor, unfortunate teenage boys.

The other enjoyable factor is, of course, Cody’s dialogue. I found myself cracking a big smile when Jennifer is tired of Needy’s mourning over the death of dozens of their friends from a fire and tells her to “MoveOn.org.”

Another memorable moment is when, while having sex with her boyfriend, Needy somehow psychically witnesses Jennifer murdering a boy, and she begins to scream and sob. Worried, her boyfriend asks if he hurt her, and then, with hope in his eyes, asks “Am I too big?”

It is in these moments when you have to surrender to Cody’s clever vision — a horror movie that’s fun. Twisted and dark, yes, but it never goes too long without a laugh. While it’s my belief that Cody will never find a better actor to deliver her dialogue than Ellen Page, Seyfried and Fox do an admirable job.

There is one thing that bothered me, though. Written by a woman, directed by a woman, with the two lead roles being women, it struck me as surprisingly exploitative in one particular scene in which the two girls, both of whom are sexually active with boys, have a nice little makeout session, and this is after Needy knows Jennifer is an evil demon.

It makes no sense, and is extremely unnecessary. Hints of their sexual attraction to each other pop up every now and then, but never as a sympathetic, realistic plot point — merely, it seems, as a way to titillate male viewers. In my head I pictured Diablo Cody writing this and thinking, “Okay, if I want boys to come see a girl-made horror film, I should give ‘em what they want: two hot chicks making out.”

Believe me, I am in no way against hot chicks making out (or anyone making out for that matter), but it seems like that’s the one time the film forgot it was self-aware. It actually could have been milked for comedy and been really funny by playing on the exploitative nature of cheesy horror films, but no … just close-ups of lips and tongues for no reason. Then Needy remembers Jennifer’s a demon and jumps away, and the plot picks up right where it left off, as if the kissing never happened. Bizarre.

A note to Diablo Cody: Your work is really good, and you should trust in it. You don’t need to go this route just to sell tickets.

All in all, if you’re into horror films, this is certainly one of the most original I’ve seen in a while. I recommend it, and make sure you stay for the credits to catch a satisfying epilogue.

Final thought: While the film takes place in a town called Devil’s Kettle, we’re never told what state it’s in, though from the sizable occult section in their school library, I’m guessing it’s probably located somewhere near Sunnydale, California.