And I don’t see any reason to stop. In fact, I’d like to butt in and offer up my recommendations for future readings. You’re welcome.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Elliott: Elijah Wood
E.T.: The Rock
Michael: Andy Samberg
Gertie: Drew Barrymore
Elliott’s Mom: Julianne Moore
Keys: Dustin Hoffman

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Drew Barrymore nailed it as Gertie in the original film. There’s no reason she shouldn’t be allowed to take another crack at her best performance. Well, there is and it’s that the Fanning Sisters got too f***ing old. Why The Rock you’re probably wondering. Two reasons. A) It would be hilarious to see he and Elijah Wood getting drunk together via a psychic link. B) The E.T. puppet probably reeks really bad after all these years.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb

Dr. Strangelove: Martin Short
Everyone Else: The entire cast of Mad Men.

It has sent spasms of dread up my final column every time I hear rumors of Mike Myers remaking a classic Peter Sellers character. No offense to Myers as he’s talented at what he does. But what he does and what Sellers did are very different. I’m just not ready to see a “Birdy Num-Nums” shirt in the Busted Tees store. A comedian who is always overlooked when it comes to outrageously unhinged character work is Martin Short. For my money, he’s one of the few who can sell Dr. Strangelove. As for the rest of the cast, just use everyone from Mad Men. It would be highly watchable.

The common plight of the child star is a life marred by drugs and alcohol, so I went into this fearing the worst. For instance, what became of the little boy who described penises and vaginas? You’d think porn, right? Or the It-Might-Be-A-Tumor Kid. Is he in some back alley giving unlicensed medical diagnoses? Lord, I hope not.

But actually, I was happily surprised to find that very few are messed up, and the ones that are don’t seem to be in a dark place. I couldn’t find a liquor store robbery amongst the bunch. They must have learned from Edward Furlong’s mistakes.

At any rate, I scoured the Internet to find out more about these little kids. It’s cool though. They’re all legal now. Check it out.

Miko Hughes as Joseph

Miko Hughes is probably the most memorable kid from Kindergarten Cop given his proclamation that boys have penises and girls have vaginas (smart kid). He’s also well remembered for his roles in Pet Sematary, Full House, New Nightmare, Mercury Rising, and Apollo 13. He still acts, but also works as a DJ at night under the name D.J. Cubed.

Also, somebody who is not me went through the effort to make this:

It’s glorious.

Jason Reitman as Kissing Kid

Young Adult director Jason Reitman‘s dad threw him a bone when it came time for a cameo role. A creepy, creepy bone. During a scene toward the end of the film, Arnold is searching the school for Dominic in order to keep him safe from Crisp. What he stumbles upon are two middle-schoolers making out. This was actually Jason’s first kiss.

“The worst part was getting directions from my dad,” recalls Jason. Hey! That man also directed the kissing in Six Days Seven Nights. Show some damn respect.

6 photosCharlize Theron

Question for you, though. Say you’re chilling in your small Minnesota town and then your crazy ex returns with hopes of ruining your marriage and whisking you away. But, she looks like Charlize Theron. Do you go for it? In this instance I say no. That’s solely due to the fact that she has a little dog she carries around with her. I’m not picking up after that thing.

6 photosCharlize Theron

“Young Adult is actually a really cynical film,” she said. “It’s a drama and I’m interested to see how people would receive it because I don’t think it’s what people are expecting from me.”

As opposed to that whimsical film about teen pregnancy. But yeah, Juno had a happy ending, for all its sarcasm. Young Adult won’t be quite so, as Jeffrey Wells suggested when he asked Cody a question, congenial.

“Congenial I think is a good word to describe the Jason Reitman body of work and I think the characters tend to have these redemption arcs that are very satisfying. Jason’s a really nice guy and I feel like I’m really dragging him down into the depths of misery for this film. But it is definitely a more stark realistic story about a woman who’s having some serious personal issues and dealing with them in inappropriate ways.”

Young Adult may even be controversial. But hey, if you don’t like it, you’re just lime green Jello. “I hate to get all feministy on everybody like I always do, but I think particularly it’s going to be difficult for people to watch a woman behave in this manor. We see a lot of male curmudgeons in films and we’ve been trained to root for them but I don’t know if that’s going to be the case for this movie. I absolutely love Young Adult and I’m really excited for people to see it, but it’s definitely not super consistent with what Jason Reitman has done, and particularly what Jason and I have done together.”

Then Cody wrote a major Hollywood teen franchise. “I wrote Sweet Valley High, this amazing series of teen books from the ‘80s that really desperately needed to become a major movie in my opinion, so I wrote the script. I can’t really talk about it that much yet. However know, ladies, that it’s moving forward and I’m very excited about it.”

Wonderstone starring Steve Carell as an aging magician, was originally written by Chad Kultgen and then polished by Horrible Bosses scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. The addition of Reitman is exciting but also could speak to the tone of the film. Seems like this one might dip into heartfelt drama and go less in the direction of Steve Carell mistakenly puts on top hat with rabbit poop in it. (THR)

6 photosKate Winslet

Kate Winslet wants to take off her serious face and put on her not as serious face. The actress is in talks to star in Labor Day, Jason Reitman’s adaption of the Joyce Maynard novel that he’ll write and direct. Winslet will play “a single mother of a young son who takes in a stranger with a dangerous past. She falls in love with him over the course of Labor Day Weekend.” So no, it’s not a pregnancy comedy, if that’s what you were thinking. We all know Jason Reitman tackled that subject in Juno, and he can’t possibly come up with anymore quirky synonyms for “baby” or “woman with child.” (Deadline)

Sharp-eared readers might remember that Simmons also provided a small voice over appearance in last year’s True Grit, showing that he might be on his way to being one of “those voices,” like Morgan Freeman or Tim Allen. This also isn’t the first time he’s worked with Reitman and Young Adult‘s universally beloved screenwriter Diablo Cody, having appeared in their previous collaboration Juno.

Young Adult also stars Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, and Patton Oswalt, and “follows the story of a divorced 30-something young-adult fiction writer (Theron) who returns to her Minnesota home to chase after her now-married-with-kids ex-boyfriend (Wilson) with Oswalt playing a semi-crippled ol high school acquaintance who befriends the narcissistic and misguided female.” Now just imagine that being said by J.K. Simmons, and you’ll have a good idea of what the movie will be like. (The Playlist)

Reitman will be joined by critic Todd McCarthy, Kimberly Pierce, cinematographer Tim Orr, and Ugly Betty will oversee the U.S. Dramatic Jury. Groening is on the U.S. Documentary Jury with directors Jeffrey Blitz and Laura Poitras, producer Jess Search and editor Sloane Klevin. The Host direct Bong Joon-ho, Susanne Bier, and MOMA curator Rajendra Roy make up the World Dramatic Jury.

So, if your film is in competition at Sundance, you now know who to buy shots for. (Sundance)

Patton Oswalt has signed on to play Charlize Theron’s chubby best friend in Young Adult. Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, who last worked together on Juno, are teaming up again for the film about a woman who returns to he high school town to basically stalk her old boyfriend like she’s Marky Mark. The guy’s got a wife and kid now though, so he’s not interested in Charlize. Not interested? His Mrs. must do crazy sh*t in the sack.

Josh Brolin decided he couldn’t pretend Charlize isn’t worth leaving his wife for and now Patrick Wilson is in talks for the role. Seems like a missed opportunity to put Wilson in a fat suit and cast him as the best friend and Oswalt as the ex-boyfriend. I’d love to watch Charlize beg Oswalt to have sex with her and he looks up at her with stern eyes and proclaims, "No, Ugly!" (/Film)

^{"No funny stuff, lady."}

Josh Brolin is considering letting Charlize Theron ruin his life. I thought Jonah Hex already took care of that, but I guess not. Brolin is up for the role of Charlize’s ex-boyfriend in Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody‘s next collabo Young Adult. If he signs on, Brolin will play the forme high school sweetheart to Theron’s successful YA author, who she decides to stalk. I hate when statuesque model types try to break themselves off a piece o’ this.

The movie is said to have a few humorous moments, but for the most part it will be "pretty serious and f*cked up." Just like that E.T. porno that’s been making the rounds. No, I won’t link you. Look it up, perv. (Showbiz 411)

Jason Reitman has signed on to direct Diablo Cody‘s latest screenplay, Young Adult. Reitman, who also directed Cody’s teen-pregnancy film, Juno, will have Charlize Theron as a lead, playing an author who finds success writing under a pseudonym.

The film will be Reitman’s first since directing the Oscar winning Up in the Air, and will be Cody’s first since penning the box-office bomb, Jennifer’s Body. If you combine those two titles, you have Up in Jennifer’s Body, which I think sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than Young Adult, but that’s just me. (Cinema Blend)

Jason Reitman has optioned the movie rights to the book Elliot Allagash. The private school satire, written by "Saturday Night Live" writer Simon Rich, tells the tale of a boy named Seymour Herson who is picked on until Elliot Allagash decides to be his mentor. It’s unclear if Reitman will direct or just produce. Rich is on-board to pen the adaptation.

Allagash is described as a “teen who regularly gets drunk and enjoys villainy.” What teen doesn’t enjoy getting drunk and commiting villianous acts? When I was a teen all I did was guzzle Red Dog and tie damsels to train tracks. In fact, our gang’s initiation required us to chug a quart of vodka and fasten our enemies to logs on the conveyor belt at the local saw mill. Now the big thing in drive by shootings. No imagination! (THR)

An extended trailer for Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air is now online and, sadly, it has nothing to do with Kevin Bacon scouting the Masai for kick-ass basketball players. But fear not, fans of slight racism, it does include George Clooney’s tips for traveling. For instance, you should never get in a security line behind old people due to their love for hidden metals. The Asians on the other hand are your best option because of their efficient packing methods and penchant for slip-on shoes. God love them indeed.

Click on these links. If you’re old, you’ll want to use the "mouse" device to do so. 

_{10 Best TV Neighbors (HolyTaco)}

_{Jenn Sterger is Getting Rid of Her Money-Makers (TotalProSports)}

_{Sooo, You Got Wasted (TheChive)}

_{No One Can tell Twilight Douches Apart (FilmDrunk)}

_{When a Parrot Loves a Bunny (SuperTremendous)}

_{5 Breakfast Cereals Meant for Adaptation (Pajiba)}

_{Lohan Was Dating Ledger When He Died (CelebJihad)}

_{When Patrick Stewart Invades Everything (Unreality)}

_{Does Maybe Really Mean No? (Asylum)}

_{7 Greatest Lingerie Football Photo Crops of 2009 (BustedCoverage)}

_{If Children Created Swine Flu Cures (RegretfulMorning)}

_{How to De-Stress at Work (MadeMan)}

_{Flowchart: Is NASCAR For You? (AllLeftTurns)}

Most of the presentations at this year’s Comic-Con were staged within the friendly confines of the San Diego Convention Center, and all the parties were held at various hotels downtown.  But Twentieth Century Fox picked San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt as the venue for an evening with JENNIFER’S BODY, which included a screening, Q&A with cast and crew, and afterparty at the hotel’s Kin Lounge.  Screen Junkies was lucky enough to get the invite for all of the above, and we have the scoop – including more foxy pics of Fox – after the jump…

The screening started at 8pm sharp on Thursday night, and I had just finished frantically uploading the James Cameron AVATAR interview in the hotel’s lobby, which explains in part why I was a little slow on the trigger to put this piece up on the site.  We were told by Fox PR that we’d be seeing the first 15 minutes of JENNIFER’S BODY, followed by a Q&A with star Megan Fox, writer Diablo Cody (JUNO), director Karyn Kusama (AEON FLUX, GIRLFIGHT) and producer Jason Reitman (JUNO, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING). 

The segment we saw was promising.  Without giving too much away that the trailer hasn’t already, Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and her friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) head out to a local bar in their podunk town, where Jennifer is eyed as a target by the satan-worshipping rock band led by (Adam Brody).  During the band’s set, the bar burns down in a freak electrical fire and everyone except Needy, Jennifer and the band perish.  Jennifer, still in shock, is led into the band’s van and Needy is left behind.  That night, Needy is home alone and gets an unexpected visitor: Jennifer, covered in blood, who then promptly devours a whole chicken, vomits black ooze that seems to have a life of its own on the kitchen floor, and then tosses Needy around a bit.  It’s all very brutal, and yet weirdly sexy… and for a horror flick still featured Cody’s patented pop culture witticisms inherent in her "Diablogue."

My first impressions were that JENNIFER’S BODY definitely felt like a throwback to fun ’80s horror flicks like LOST BOYS – movies that don’t take themselves too seriously – and the filmmakers who came out for the Q&A confirmed that that’s what they were going for. 

Here are a few tidbits from the sitdown:

MEGAN FOX ON JENNIFER’S BODY…

What I loved about the movie is that it’s so unapologetic as to how inappropriate it is, and that was my favorite part about the script and about the character and it’s fun to be able to say the sh*t that she says and get away with it and have people find it charming.

DIABLO CODY ON CREATING A NEW HORROR MYTHOLOGY…

For me, I was simultaneously trying to pay tribute to some of the conventions of horror and simultaneously turn them on their ear.  So it was truly kind of a postmodern thriller. on one hand, i grew up watching these amazing 80s genre movies, like LOST BOYS, and so I wanted to honor that, and at the same time, I had never really seen this particular sub-genre done with girls, and I tried to do a little bit of both.

ON CHICKS IN HORROR MOVIES…

It’s been pointed out that the last survivor standing is usually a woman.  SO I think that horror has always had a kind of feminist bent to it, and at the same time, it’s kind of delightfully exploitative.  My favorite thing about doing a horror movie is that it’s actually a little bit of both.

Karyn Kusama: I think also a lot of horror is about female-ness, whether it’s CARRIE or ROSEMARY’S BABY.  I think a lot of it is about the fear of the female or celbration about it in a weird way.  And this took the fear and the idea that it’s the female that ultimately survives and marry them in a way.

Diablo Cody: The funny thing is when I set out to write this, I wanted to make something very dark, very brooding.  A traditional slasher movie.  And I realized about a third of the way through, I realized I was incapable of doing that.  The humor kept kind of sneaking in.  I have a macabre sense of humor. So a lot of the horrifying stuff in the movie was funny to me.

I’ve always said that horror movies and comedies are kind of similar in the sense that you can witness the audience having a physical release, whether it’s laughing or screaming.  So I think they’re similar in that way.

MEGAN FOX ON ON-SCREEN VOMITING…

That day, I was actually throwing up chocolate syrup.  We did a few takes whee I would do the scream and then throw up Hershey’s Syrup or something.  Scratch the Hershey’s, cause I don’t want to endorse it or anything. And then SFX did a rig that clamps onto my ear, and you revisit it in the pool scene, which you haven’t seen yet.  But it basically clamps down onto my ear and then I bite down and it projectiles – it’s a tube and it projects whatever that material was.  I’m not sure.  It was pretty intense; I mean, I think it was worse for Amanda [Seyfried] because I think she was the one that got puked on.

JASON REITMAN ON HIS FIRST FORAY INTO HORROR…

JR: I found THANK YOU FOR SMOKING to be terrifying, personally. I love horror movies and I probably see them more than any other genre at the movie theater.  I saw SEE NO EVIL and I still haven’t seen THE 400 BLOWS.  I would love to.  I hope I’m as capable as Karyn was doing it.  It’s an intimidating genre, because there are people who do it very well.

MEGAN FOX ON ACTING IN THIS VERSUS TRANSFORMERS…

Obviously there’s not distractions… like there’s no giant robots to distract you from the performance so if it’s terrible you’re gonna know that it’s really f**kin’ terrible.  That of course is intimidating but the character was so much fun for me. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, and I just had fun with it, and I also just had fun playing with my image, or how people might perceive "Megan Fox" to be.  And I was just sort of flying freely.

MEGAN FOX ON THE SEXINESS LEVEL OF JENNIFER’S BODY…

This movie is so sexy.  You better put on your f**in’ sexy shoes for this movie. 

[crowd laughs]

There’s a relationship between my character and Amanda’s character and I guess depending on who you are and how you grew up, there’s a little bit of a lesbian relationship that happens.  There’s a girl-on-girl kiss.  It’s an homage to that.  But we also poke fun at that in horror movies.  But also, before every kill, there is a seduction that occurs, so these boys have to be seduced into getting close enough to this dead girl for her to devour them.  But I think I’m pretty sexy in it.

[crowd laughs again, some women in crowd scowl]

JASON REITMAN ON HORROR MOVIES:

I remember cracking open my father’s laserdisc of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and that being one of the coolest moments from my childhood.  And I can’t imagine having that experience with any other genre.  I can’t imagine dangerously opening a copy of a broad comedy in the middle of the night hoping I wouldn’t get caught.  And the idea that there’ll be a kid out there secretly opening a Blu-Ray of JENNIFER’S BODY is pretty exciting to all of us.

KK: This is totally gonna be that movie where the eleven-year old boy – and girl – do that. The first thing I thought after reading this script was, "Man, if I was seventeen.  If I was just a younger person right now, this is the movie I would see ten times in the theater. It’s just a pull… the movie speaks to me… it’s emotional, not intellectual.

MF: I don’t ever watch scary movies.  I have a very intense fear of the dark.  The last horror movie I saw was TOOTH FAIRY I think, and I slept with my mom for a month afterward.  So for me to play something I’d normally be frightened by was really intriguing for me. 

THE FILMMAKERS ON THEIR FAVORITE HORROR FLICKS…

KK: I’m a NEAR DARK junki.

DC: My all times favorites are ROSEMARY’S BABY and DON’T LOOK BACK.

JR: I’m a SHINING GUY.  My father told me ALIEN as a campfire story.  Only it’s continued.  The alien made it back down to earth.  And then I started watching ALIEN for real, and I was watching it and found I knew where it was going.  And I was young enough to have a moment where I thought… "Oh my god… they ripped my father off!"

[crowd laughs because that was an adorable story]

And with that, the Q&A came to an end.  As interested as I was in JENNIFER’S BODY, I couldn’t muster up the energy to hang out at the afterparty, but here are some pics from it.  Sucks.  I could have chatted up Mintz-Plasse about how Matthew Vaughn‘s little indie KICK-ASS was the sleeper hit of Comic-Con 2009.