The 34th Toronto International Film Festival opened on Thursday with the women in charge.

Read full article in the New York Times

While still struggling to find their place in the movie industry at large — the number of directors at American studios remains well over 90 percent male — female filmmakers have managed to occupy some of this 10-day festival’s most valuable slots: those showcase screenings and press conferences in the first couple of days, when everyone is still paying attention.

Thursday’s most raucous event was almost certain to be the 11:59 p.m. red-carpet debut of 20th Century Fox’s “Jennifer’s Body,” directed by Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight”) from a script by Ms. Cody (“Juno”), in which Megan Fox plays a high school sex bomb who, quite literally, turns into a man-eater.

According to Natalie Johnson, a spokeswoman for Fox, tickets to the midnight show at the landmark Ryerson Theater, which seats more than 1,200, were gone within two hours of going on sale last week. (“Hell is a teenage girl,” runs a theme-setting line from the film.)

“Jennifer’s Body,” which opens in commercial theaters next Friday, got its first festival screening at noon on Thursday. Several hundred press and film industry types, normally a jaded bunch, were lined up for a look at the Kusama-Cody-Fox combination’s take on female vengeance.

Anyone who is looking can read the signs, including those ubiquitous photographs of Ms. Cody flashing her bicep tattoo of a bikini-clad beauty: Women have staked a claim on the season.

~ by mentalimaging on September 11, 2009.