Click to viewBoomp3.com At the 12th annual Hollywood Film Festival awards, popular culture impresario Diablo Cody decided to celebrate Halloween a few days earlier, doing her best zombie walk down the red carpet. Cody described herself as a fresh zombie, just a couple of hours old, but also felt she could go another way with her outfit. Cody said, “It’s a tad Stepfordy too. Like if Pris from Blade Runner was somebody’s wife.” [Photo Credit: Getty Images] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Teen pregnancy just isn't the Oscar-nominated, tabloid-cover romp Hollywood makes it out to be, according to a new report released today in Chicago. Amid the gloomy data noting 400,000 such births per year (at a public cost of $7.6 billion), experts cited increasing cultural influence among girls who look to Jamie-Lynn Spears, Bristol Palin and even Juno as models of upstanding teenage motherhood. Alas, as you probably could have guessed, the experts at a subsequent panel discussion begged to differ:

When Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol revealed her pregnancy earlier this year, all of America played the exciting game "This Thing Is Like That Thing," remarking, "Hail fellow! This young maiden with childe recalls the heroine of the moving picture Juno. For seriousballs!" And it was good. Sadly, Sarah Palin is not Allison Janney, and according to Juno scripter Diablo Cody, Bristol is no Sunny D-swigging Juno, either:

So that movie Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is out today, and look! It's getting very good and pretty good reviews! Well that's good for little Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, the fawn-faced stars of the emo-queercore-fake New York City romp film about two Stars-crossed lovers who enjoy a wild night on the LES in pursuit of good music, good lovin', and a drunk girl. Yeah. It's nice. I haven't seen it yet, but I already fucking hate it. Why do I hate it? How could I possibly hate a movie that features the lovable sameness of another Cera performance, a hip and faggy supporting cast (there's a dude from Spring Awakening in it!), and a whole senior year road trip to Six Flags' worth of jangly and twee pop rock thinkin' muziks? Well, actually, I hate it for those reasons and I hate it because it's all a big lie. And, also, I'm maybe getting older and no longer feel represented by movies about "young folks." It's like that movie Juno (also starring Cera!) which was so grating and cloying and icky-sticky about disaffected yoots and their homogenized, leafless, generic-brand environs—why am I watching an advertisement for something a sane person wouldn't want to buy? The banality of suburbia isn't relatable when it's stereotyped. It's only relatable when it's real, and in the real world, people don't put living room sets on people's front lawns. Plus, when at any point in high school did you want to hang out with the music kids? They were just as pretentious and stupid as anyone else—they didn't possess some wise, warm knowingness about the world that prompts adults to learn things about themselves. They were pimply and ugly and unwashed and gruff and annoying, just like the rest of us! They didn't drive charming little Yugo cars and say funny, stammery things. I mean, they said funny stammery things, but it was like only a joke to people three rings out of their circle. I guess I just wish that kids could still be kids, and not slinking, faux-riot grrl ciphers or minnowy virgin boys with soft mushy hearts. Seventeen-year-olds just aren't that complex. The funny thing about a rebellious, anti-establishment man movie like this is that it's actually the exact same thing as Gossip Girl—silly, aspirational garbage about grownups in kid suits—only funked up and dragged downtown to appeal to arty teenagers that will be saddened by the film (because they'll never have that, never ever! I promise!) and to people in their 20's and 30's who will falsely remember high school as being just like that when, in fact, they had three friends (their names were John, George, and Judy) and on Saturdays they went to the movies and on Sundays they did their homework and they got drunk at Cindy Mitzner's party that one time and man oh man it was wild. Y'know? It's all one big lie, this movie I haven't seen yet and only know a little about. Sure John Hughes lied and Richard Linklater lied and Amy Heckerling lied, but they did so with style and without that sort of savvy young hipshit wearing jeans and a skinny tie in a sprawling loft office on lower Broadway making a coy marketing pitch kind of thing. Do I make any sense here? Am I just pissing into the wind? Probably not and probably yes, respectively. Either way, I'm totes seeing it on Sunday.

As Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist approaches this weekend, everyone's clamoring to see if Michael Cera has what it takes to push past Ellen Page's preggo belly and Jonah Hill's girth to finally take center stage in a film. But things are looking tenuous for Cera and his "blank Pez-dispenser face," as he seems primed to reprise the dopey-but-endearing role in the new romcom. So will George Michael ever be a star?When Superbad was released, everyone was stoked on Cera and his skinny, off-beat quiet wit. He was ranked No. 1 on Entertainment Weekly's 30 Under 30 actors list. He had garnered comedic street cred from his stint on Arrested Development. And shucks, how could you forget those dimples? He was one of those cool, John Cusask-esque unlikely sex symbols! And yet now, film critic Jeffrey Wells says Cera is a mere "two or three steps from being over." His logic?

Diablo Cody—the hippest, be-boppingest, most linguistically dexterous screenwriter in Hollywood—has finally gotten mad. The woman responsible for the twee little indie sensation Juno has always presented a cool cucumber, just-like-you, Hollywood "outsider" vibe, to the delight of some and the annoyance of others. She's from Minnesota! She's a former stripper! She didn't go to no fancy film school. It all seems a bit synthetic, honestly, which is why it's funny/sad to see her snap. She's chosen to publicly rail against the myraid internet haters who apparently spend their days knitting her doom, and she's doing it on MySpace, of course. She even manages to throw an "I have an Oscar and you don't" brag in for good measure. Though heck I'd brag too if I pulled off such a spectacular heist, and been praised for a silly and indulgent acceptance speech to boot. Read the full rant, via SlashFilm, after the jump.

After taking two months off from her Myspace blog (but not her Twitter), Oscar-winning leopard print fan Diablo Cody returned to the medium yesterday — but this was not to be some simple homecoming. Cody had a bone to pick with fans who she sensed had begun to reject the cool, refreshing taste of Sunny D in favor of a nice, tall glass of Haterade, and the Juno screenwriter wasn't about to suffer their attacks in silence. Instead, in a post entitled "Hello Again! (Starring Shelly Long)," Cody decided to get something off her chest (and it wasn't whipped cream):

You knew it was bound to happen: Oliver Stone's gauntlet-throw to chronicle a sitting president by Election Day would be one-upped by an ambitious upstart determined to develop, produce and release a film about a campaigning candidate by the same time. And just like that, from a Defamer operative, comes Juneau, the untold story of Bristol Palin, her babydaddy and one Alaskan governor/vice-presidential hopeful to rule them all. Who knew the sleeper hit of the season would come out of the GOP Convention and not Toronto? Even Roger Ebert is into it! Let the bidding war begin.

Pregnant Juno star Jennifer Garner asked if the snappers surrounding her could take about ten big steps back before she entered a medical building. As a woman with child, Garner needs all the space that she can get. Garner added, "I'm showing, not like Minnie Driver showing, but us pregnant women can explode at any moment. And in the best interest of me, you, and your sneakers, let's take a couple of steps back and let move on by."

The soul-deadening imposition of commercial brands on your moviegoing experience got even more shameless this morning when the oft-overlooked ring of Hell know as "brandcameo" unveiled the winners of its fourth annual Product Placement Awards. You could probably guess at least most of the heavyweight competitors — your Apples, your Fords, your Manolos — from a glance at the last year's worth of releases, but that doesn't make the year's findings any less remarkable in context: The surveyors counted an average of 22.1 brands in each of the 20 films this year to have a No. 1 weekend at the box office. That number is down from 2007, when an average of nearly 25 brands were counted among the year's 32 top releases. The dollars aren't disclosed, but follow the jump for a depressing if fascinating array of blockbusters for sale, the brands that bought them and the ultimate recognition of their unholy unions:

Stop us if you think you've heard this one before, but we've repeatedly stumbled upon cocktail chatter lately in which the topic of Juno—the Oscar-winning 2007 teen pregnancy movie that ushered in a whole generation of pact babies—has come up. More specifically: that there exists a 2005 movie from Korea, called Jeni, Juno, about high school sweethearts who conceive and see their baby to term. According to the movie's Wikipedia entry, Juno screenwriter Diablo Clody was unaware of the other movie's existence when she wrote her screenplay. We've posted the trailer above, with some helpful translation courtesy of Molly McAleer. Beyond the title and basic premise, we think you'll agree the two films couldn't be more different.

Looking for something to do tonight? Juno screenwriter/ unhealthy-Defamer -preoccupation topic Diablo Cody is curating the New Beverly schedule for the next two weeks, in a programme she calls MONDO DIABLO: Season of the Bitch!. "Call it a festival, a season, or just TWO SOLID WEEKS OF FUCKING RAD SHIT," she writes on her MySpace blog. The fun kicks off tonight with a Reitman family reunion, as both Ivan and Jason will be on hand to answer all your Stripes and Thank You for Smoking-related questions. To sweeten the pot—as if that fucking rad shit-filled pot needed sweetening—Cody has offered to sign your Juno DVDs and Blu-Rays, or your scrotum:

As he makes the rounds on his Hancock press tour, Jason Bateman has taken time out of plugging the Arrested Development movie to address whether his previous film, the teen pregnancy comedy Juno, was totally responsible for all those Gloucester teenagers who all got pregnant at the same time. Unsurprisingly, he answers in the negative:

After a long intro confirming both her stoner-film creds and her susceptibility to Mary-Kate Olsen's fashion influence, a new profile of actress Olivia Thirlby eventually got to the real news: Jack and Diane, Thirlby's long-gestating teen-lesbian-werewolf reunion with her Juno pal Ellen Page, will not be coming soon to a theater near you. We know, we know — a true shocker, but as Thirlby alludes, it's the kind of tough call that a young, sexually ambiguous Oscar-nominee just has to make:

It was relatively slim pickings at the festival Monday, especially after Guillermo del Toro's live-in-person monster-rhapsodizing was pushed to Thursday and alas, we missed our 4:30 screening about transsexuals in Colorado. Plan C seemed reasonable enough: Drop by the Geffen Playhouse to see a father-son chat between Ivan and Jason Reitman, in which we figured we might catch Dad's jealous flare-up over Juno's success or Son's symbolic shove of his old man into the shadows at stage right. We got neither, though Jason did come clean about that whole nepotism thing.

Welcome to Ellen Page Dump-and-Run Week, when even today's news that America's ambiguously-persuasioned sweetheart is attached to star in yet another adaptation of Jane Eyre is slightly overshadowed by the two "new" Page releases you may not have known to look for. Like An American Crime? You know this one? No? Page stars as Sylvia Likens, the Indianapolis teen who was beaten, tortured and murdered by her caretaker (played by Catherine Keener) in one of the most notorious homicides in American history. We saw it at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, when someone reportedly passed out at the premiere — probably the producer who realized his high-caliber drama (starring two Oscar nominees!) was headed straight to Showtime oblivion this Saturday at 10 p.m. We feel him, but that's not the half of it.

Just in time for Mother's Day, United Online — best known for cut-rate dial-up brands like NetZero and Juno — is purchasing FTD, the company best known for delivering flowers. Maybe United Online CEO Mark Goldston purchased the company as a gift for his mother? Because even after reading the press release, this deal makes no sense. [BusinessWire]

We're so confused. An extra day's digestion of the Miley Cyrus/Vanity Fair photo "scandal" hasn't cleared much up for us in the way of morals, betrayals, exploitations and career management of the young Hannah Montana star, but the public meltdown has alerted us to a more basic truth that is helping guide us through the fog of outrage. This isn't about Miley Cyrus without a shirt on or if she's been seen somewhere in her lingerie, or if her father dropped the ball.

For groupies for whom semi-regular MySpace blogspot postings offer not nearly a wide enough window inside the constantly churning, impossibly creative mind of Diablo Cody, exciting news indeed: the Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter and former Lady of the Pole™ has started a Twitter account! In just a little over a month, her follower fanbase has ballooned to 68 and counting, inspiring the most recent update, "Now that all these folks are following me, I'm tempted to be super obscene."

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]