― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:09 (eighteen years ago) link
His best? I dunno. Discuss.
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:17 (eighteen years ago) link
I bet he did say that. I love the romance angle of The Fly as well.
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:18 (eighteen years ago) link
shiversvideodromescannersfast companydead ringers
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:22 (eighteen years ago) link
ExistenzNaked LunchThe FlyScanners/Brood (tied)SpiderDead ZoneRabidShiversDead RingersCrash
Never seen Fast Company so that's excluded. Crash is the only actual real bad movie of the lot, but he's also never made a truly great film either.
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:27 (eighteen years ago) link
Thank you. Not to mention the storyline is just a re-hash of Videodrome.
Scanners is his best, and Crash is underrated. Okay, so it's not a great film, but I can't think of any better way for the translation from the book.
― Sasha (sgh), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sasha (sgh), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:37 (eighteen years ago) link
Dead Ringers -- has its probnlems, sure, but also has Jeremy Irons.Naked Lunch -- it's a rare horror/sci-fi director that gets the kind of performances from his actors that he gets out of Peter Weller in this. Spot-on, funny, and... just fuckin' great.The Fly -- See above.The Dead Zone -- Walken!Spider -- I loved this movie. Also had the pleasure of seeing it in a theater with a fussy five-year-old, upon which others in the theater started shouting at the mother. "This is not a movie for kids!" Beautiful.
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:37 (eighteen years ago) link
Agreed. You know what would make a great movie? War Fever.
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sasha (sgh), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sasha (sgh), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― franken-vader, Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:51 (eighteen years ago) link
i think it is the best film formally he has made
― anthony, Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 03:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― Just Kidding (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― anthony, Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:08 (eighteen years ago) link
So, yes. Ebert liked it way more than I did, though.
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:12 (eighteen years ago) link
POV:Dead RingersDead ZoneScannersVideodromeThe Fly
I really want to see Shivers.
― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 04:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sasha (sgh), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:09 (eighteen years ago) link
Not that I find his style starchy -- more like gooey (ha) -- but as the Star Wars threads (and esp. movies) have reminded me, it doesn't just take a good actor to be a good actor. It takes a relatively decent filmmaker as well. Th fact that Cronenberg consistently gets such good actors and such good stuff out of them is a testament to his ability to work with actors, and that's a laudable talent. Makes the movies better for all of us. A round of applause, please, for Goldblum in The Fly and Irons in Dead Ringers and even Jude Law in eXistenZ. Cronenberg doesn't always give these guys top-shelf material to work with, I won't argue that, but he apparently gives them the room to actually *act* in movies that are not perfect, and that's good direction.
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:47 (eighteen years ago) link
It COULD be, depending on many, many things. At least the very thought doesn't make me want to die like pretty much any other director on this shit would.
― box of socks, Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:50 (eighteen years ago) link
I always feel compelled to compare Cronenberg to David Lynch and as much as I admire Lynch, I think Cronenberg is much more successful at doing the same types of things Lynch attempts. For example while Lynch flirts with bad acting, camp, b-movie conventions, and general awkwardness, Cronenberg seems to operate in that territory quite naturally. He kind of skirts a thin line between the arthouse and schlocky failure that I find very exciting. Where other directors working in a similar vein might come across as too clever and knowing, Cronenberg manages to make movies that can be truly confounding and get the most intense reactions out of people.
So anyway, I think he's very underrated. Crash and Naked Lunch in particular are quite underrated. Total classic.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:56 (eighteen years ago) link
Really? Unintentionally?
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 05:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 06:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 06:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 06:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 06:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 07:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 07:40 (eighteen years ago) link
ShiversNaked LunchVideodromeExistenZDead Ringers
I like Crash and The Fly, too, and Scanners (although I was anticipating the head-blowing-up scene too much to really appreciate much else of the film).
― emil.y (emil.y), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 10:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan I. (Dan I.), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 10:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 14:51 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm not the biggest fan of Crash, but I think a lot of that has to do w/ the subject matter (and the portrayal of it) (the fierce unyielding atavistic obsession the characters have re: the fetish), so I'm thinking the movie worked really well. I'm thinking "atavistic obsession" could summarize DC's career succinctly.
― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 14:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 16:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― slightly more subdued (kenan), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 16:07 (eighteen years ago) link
the only other director who can finesse some of the same essence out of a scenario the way that he can is nicolas roeg. they're working in two different arenas, in general, but both are adept at channeling the anxiety of being an awkward fleshy thing with a brittle skeleton beneath, and i very much like the endings in their films. and the beginnings middles and rests too.
ok, strike the only out of that sentence. i hate that kinda talk.
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 16:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer: B Minus Time Traveler (latebloomer), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 16:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer: B Minus Time Traveler (latebloomer), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 16:53 (eighteen years ago) link
* Commentary by Jeremy Irons * Behind-the-scenes featurette * Cast/filmmaker interviews and filmographies * Dead Ringers Psychological Profiler (menu-based quiz) * Theatrical trailer
ok, i see. still im not gonna need to buy this. the criterion edition from a few years back has much better features.
― latebloomer: B Minus Time Traveler (latebloomer), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 17:01 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm going to shock everyone by saying that Existenz is probably the one I enjoy the most.
I adore eXistenZ, it's incredibly funny! Poor Jude Law's excessive uptightness really makes it.
I like just about everything Cronenberg's ever done, including Crash. When I lived in Paris the Cahiers du Cinema people did a big retrospective, they screened all his films and brought Cronenberg there to give a few talks & such. He is super nice and seemed rather surprised by all the attention from that realm, i.e. the film scholar/auteur worshipping contingent instead of, you know, Fangoria. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
As part of the retrospective they had an exhibition of various props and plans and things from his films.. This turned out to be extremely hilarious, because on the ground floor of the same building there happened to be an exhibition of a century's worth of advertising art for Lu, the dessert company. So you'd walk in and it was all bright sunlight and cheery vintage Art Nouveau posters and candy and cookies, and then you got to go downstairs to this gloomy, dark basement (really!) and look at tools for operating on mutant women. I wonder if Cronenberg ever made it over there to see what they'd done, I think he would have been amused.
xpostHoly shit, "psychological profiler"? That's messed up. Awesome.
― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 17:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― robertw, Tuesday, 24 May 2005 18:52 (eighteen years ago) link
Personally, I think I like Crash and The Dead Zone the best.
― L'Histoire d'Eric H. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 18:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 19:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 19:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 21:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 21:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 21:35 (eighteen years ago) link
Dead Ringers, the Dead Zone, Scanners, videodrome: all great. I LOVE his Naked Lunch adaptation; again, adapting this was a thankless job and he got a lot of flak for not doing the book (like he could really film the book) and instead focusing on Burroughs biography, but I think he made a real masterpiece here, his best and most emotional film.
I liked the fish gun in Existenz and that was all.
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 21:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 21:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 22:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 24 May 2005 22:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― daria g (daria g), Wednesday, 25 May 2005 00:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― miccio (miccio), Wednesday, 25 May 2005 01:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Friday, 23 September 2005 08:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 23 September 2005 08:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― N_RQ, Friday, 23 September 2005 08:33 (eighteen years ago) link
i think anyway, i switched over in protest at this botch up.
― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 23 September 2005 08:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― N_RQ, Friday, 23 September 2005 08:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― ken c (ken c), Friday, 23 September 2005 08:52 (eighteen years ago) link
what made you say that? it was howard shore, btw.
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 23 September 2005 08:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― N_RQ, Friday, 23 September 2005 08:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― chris j (chris j), Friday, 23 September 2005 09:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:18 (eighteen years ago) link
The Crash score is by Howard Shore and it's really, really great.
― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:30 (eighteen years ago) link
yeah i know it was howard shore, but i was surprised by the running guitar motifs - i thought he was famous for/usually employed to provide orchestral scores?
― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Friday, 23 September 2005 16:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 23 September 2005 16:45 (eighteen years ago) link
Also, he's fun as an actor, like in Last Night and Nightbreed.
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 23 September 2005 16:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 23 September 2005 17:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 23 September 2005 17:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Friday, 23 September 2005 17:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 23 September 2005 17:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 23 September 2005 17:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Milkmaid (of Human Kindness) (The Milkmaid), Friday, 23 September 2005 17:58 (eighteen years ago) link
And I discovered the Brood around the same time I first saw Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's The Devils.
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 23 September 2005 18:05 (eighteen years ago) link
god i love existenz!!
― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 23 September 2005 18:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― recovering optimist (Royal Bed Bouncer), Friday, 23 September 2005 19:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 23 September 2005 20:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 23 September 2005 22:56 (eighteen years ago) link
Or you'll actually watch the film and enjoy it.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:07 (eighteen years ago) link
please destroy
― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Saturday, 24 September 2005 02:45 (eighteen years ago) link
Also I don't think Crash was trying to be that, Alex - shocking people just isn't interesting.
― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 24 September 2005 03:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Saturday, 24 September 2005 04:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 24 September 2005 04:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 24 September 2005 15:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 15:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― adam (adam), Saturday, 24 September 2005 16:31 (eighteen years ago) link
My faves:
Dead RingersThe FlyNaked LunchVideodrome
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 24 September 2005 19:01 (eighteen years ago) link
so are you sure that's your dad?
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 21:12 (eighteen years ago) link
Well, that was something. The beginning was really really frosty and weird. Interesting sort of uh.. comic timing toward the end, the audience would laugh and then sort of recoil like OMGWTF.
― dar1a g (daria g), Sunday, 25 September 2005 03:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:11 (eighteen years ago) link
Re: Violence, the Boston Globe critic seems to get it.
David Edelstein at Slate writes an incredibly stupid review that seems to have little to do with the film and a lot to do with his own issues.
― dar1a g (daria g), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Sunday, 25 September 2005 05:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― adam (adam), Sunday, 25 September 2005 11:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mädchen (Madchen), Sunday, 25 September 2005 15:02 (eighteen years ago) link
-- dar1a g (dar1a_...), September 25th, 2005.
I enjoyed his review. His enthusiasm makes me count down the days when it opens in South Florida.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Sunday, 25 September 2005 16:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Sunday, 25 September 2005 19:38 (eighteen years ago) link
The sudden bloody discharges are lightning-fast and deliciously satisfying—orgasmic, even. But they also leave you sickened, because Cronenberg cuts briefly—in an extra frame, like a comic book's (sorry, graphic novel's)—to men with heads shattered and faces beaten, literally, to bloody pulps. But here's the thing: Those extra frames don't sicken us morally. Even though A History of Violence is suffused with loss—[..]—the right people are always on the right end of the (righteous) violence.
No, no, no..
― dar1a g (daria g), Monday, 26 September 2005 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― huell howser (chaki), Monday, 26 September 2005 07:37 (eighteen years ago) link
Edelstein, fwiw, has been grappling with violence and vigilantism in film for a while now. See, for example, his reviews of In the Bedroom and Kill Bill. He worries about the bloodiness in History of Violence, but I never thought it was overdone. I agree with Rosenbaum, who said (in a review that apparently isn't online yet) that the shots of bloody faces don't dwell on the gore in a fetishistic way but linger on them just long enough to convey the real-life consequences of shooting someone in the head.
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 30 September 2005 15:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 03:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 1 October 2005 03:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 04:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 04:46 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.moviepublicity.com/image_assets/history_of_violence_DF_00511.jpg
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 04:52 (eighteen years ago) link
Now, the score was intrusive and overwrought at the start, this was deliberate. Same for acting seemed to be v awkward and wooden in the opening scenes as well. I guess what I am saying is, do you think this stuff wasn't deliberate & therefore that is why the film wasn't good, or that regardless, even if it was meant to come across that way, it was just a bad idea that didn't work?
― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 1 October 2005 05:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― mike h. (mike h.), Saturday, 1 October 2005 05:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Saturday, 1 October 2005 06:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Saturday, 1 October 2005 06:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 07:15 (eighteen years ago) link
Everything was so telegraphed and cliched, moments like when Maria Bello says "because we were never teenagers together" (or whatever) were so awkward and incongruous and screamed ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?
To me, this was like an Oliver Stone movie gone emo. It's like, if you're going to have a good pulp scenario, fucking work it! Don't give your movie a title like "The History of Violence" and act like it's some sort of treatise on identity and the universal human condition! Don't have stupid teenage bully revenge scenarios and boring gangsters in dark cars with SCARY eyes! John Dahl used to be really good at this kind of thing. Or yeah, make everything really stupid and overblown, make U-TURN, at least it would be fun. But instead with Cronenberg all we get is the weak, wibbly middle-ground that tries to sell itself as "complex". Ugh.
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 14:54 (eighteen years ago) link
I still love and respect all of you and your opinions, though!
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 14:55 (eighteen years ago) link
not very. The sex scenes actually had both of us laughing out loud!
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 14:57 (eighteen years ago) link
I loved the film. The acting is certainly not wooden: in the case of Viggo Mortenson, he makes the transitions between cornfed Midwesterner and gangsta like a pro I never expected him to be. Maria Bello quivers and rages with an intensity she's never quite shown before (her greatest moment: the look of disgust she gives Mortenson after their tryst on the stairs). As for William Hurt - well. Talk about a pro. If this had been a play, I would have given him a standing ovation. His ham-on-rye performance summons the pity, terror, and comedy that the film's schematic, over-explicit script (its weakest element) wants us to understand.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 1 October 2005 19:45 (eighteen years ago) link
Cronenberg's work with sex and gore are pretty consistent. This film doesn't try too hard to shock or make a bold statement, but places it right in the middle of the completely ordinary. I don't see it as some sort of artistic contrast or shocking "My god, there is weird shit among this normal town," it's just kind of... there. And people have to deal with it. Seriously, if the film was filled with "You must deal with these things you've been through! You're tearing this family apart!"-style arguments filled with a rising in the score, it'd be every other schlocky film.
― mike h. (mike h.), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:44 (eighteen years ago) link
He was marvelous. I especially loved the scene in which he blasted Ed Harris with the double-barrelled shotgun. He looks at his father with the creepiest mixture of contempt, love, and fear.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Sunday, 2 October 2005 02:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Sunday, 2 October 2005 02:14 (eighteen years ago) link
The teenage son was great, by the way.
the pastiche of hunky dory domesticity was so over-the-top hollow that it was tough for me to take (so many lines in the early going -- the script was horrible)
Sure. Very true, and interesting that it got less hollow and wooden as it progressed. I suppose Cronenberg could have tried to find a way to not play it this way at the beginning, but didn't do so. I read that it was a work for hire so he probably looked at this kinda awful and generic Hollywood script and thought, now what can be done with this?
― dar1a g (daria g), Sunday, 2 October 2005 17:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― dave k, Sunday, 2 October 2005 18:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Sunday, 2 October 2005 22:18 (eighteen years ago) link
as for the sex scenes, i thought they were handled very well... i actually thought they were totally erotic. some douchebag in front of me was taking camera phone pix though and after putting up with it for about 15 seconds i leaned forward in my chair and said in his ear quite loudly, "Put your phone down." apart from that distraction, which well and truly took me out of the movie, i thought the sex scenes were great. maria bello and viggo mortensen are both very sexy, sexual seeming people. i thought that when maria bello said 'we never got a chance to be teenagers together', she didn't mean it to be serious. she meant it as an enigmatic setup to a fantasy that she had always wanted to live out. the sex scene on the stairway is a surprisingly common fantasy among a lot of women. to be raped safely by someone who loves you. this was obviously a little bit removed from that, but it did have the added notion of just being another role playing exercise. i don't know how to get into the mechanics of explaining it, but i've been with girls who have fantasized about that. danger/thrills are sexy to most people.
the scene with william hurt was hilarious... for some reason, the setup actually reminded me a little bit of the cremaster thing in the guggenheim... sort of similarly videogame-esque.
and to end it the way this ended, knowing that a happy ending would probably come eventually, but not feeling the need to go on any longer showing it happen, left it feeling very real and honest.
and other thoughts....
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Sunday, 2 October 2005 22:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― ----------, Sunday, 2 October 2005 22:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Sunday, 2 October 2005 22:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Sunday, 2 October 2005 23:51 (eighteen years ago) link
― melton mowbray (adr), Sunday, 2 October 2005 23:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 3 October 2005 00:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Monday, 3 October 2005 00:19 (eighteen years ago) link
I've seen every movie of note he's made in the last 20 years, except for M. Butterfly.
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 01:19 (eighteen years ago) link
Did I mention I also hated Sin City?
Magnum Force is a'ight.
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 01:29 (eighteen years ago) link
...
― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 01:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 3 October 2005 01:36 (eighteen years ago) link
I sure am! Both Dirty Work and the Cronenberg film are agreeably superficial examinations of violence.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 3 October 2005 10:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 12:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― sfxxx, Tuesday, 4 October 2005 12:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 12:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 12:49 (eighteen years ago) link
Also, they should have just tried to hire Adam Brody as the son rather than getting someone with the same mannerisms and the same hair.
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 15:02 (eighteen years ago) link
This is true.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 15:12 (eighteen years ago) link
2) How the fuck did this POSSIBLY get an R rating?? Surely that's some of the most graphic violence ever seen onscreen (I lean towards the notion that the gore is dwelled on to emphasize the range of emotions that can be conjured by such extreme violence - horror, disgust, shock - then awed laughter - then back to disgust). I mean, "Ichi the Killer" is one thing, but I thought this was much more intense.
3) I was also sort of surprised by the first sex scene - is there another instance of two lead characters in a flagrant, fairly graphic 69 in a mainstream movie ever?
― Stuck to a Seat in the New Beverly (Bent Over at the Arclight), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 18:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 18:04 (eighteen years ago) link
hardly
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 18:05 (eighteen years ago) link
xp
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 18:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 20:20 (eighteen years ago) link
HOTT
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 20:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 20:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― dan (dan), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 20:49 (eighteen years ago) link
Ach, I was using a bit of poetic licence here. With some hindsight, I think the main problem is the family dynamic. I do think there is something in the use the use of a "smalltown America" construct. It is supposed to imply universality, even if the majority of the audience for this film will be childless people who live in major urban centers. There is nothing exceptional about these characters at the beginning of the film, and we're supposed to identify with them, but we're also asked to laugh at them as well as fear for them.. It's totally flawed.
On top of that, all of the characters who make up the family seem totally disparate, their reactions to each other follow no discernible pattern of emotional logic and our understanding/enjoyment of the film is key to seeing them as a family unit, even before we can see them as compromised or fragmented or in danger.
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:05 (eighteen years ago) link
Sometimes a tear is just a tear!
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:17 (eighteen years ago) link
the last scene reminded me of something but I can't remember what.
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:20 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think I really get Cronenberg as a director. Though I did love Spider. There's some kind of deliberate thinness or something to his style. In my head I think it's a Canadian thing.
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:24 (eighteen years ago) link
but that doesn't explain Rush.
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:25 (eighteen years ago) link
yes I know Egoyan is a vastly superior director; they get compared only because of their candian-ness.
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:28 (eighteen years ago) link
OK, so let's say it was a "genre exercise" on Cronenberg's part. Something to be appreciated for its formal aspects. Well OK, thought that's never going to make for a very satisfying thriller. It makes it neither one thing nor the other. I dunno. I'm rambling now. I just know that my friend at work thught it was appalling and I realised that I'd have a hard time defending it by any criteria I am comfortable arguing for the use of.
Ha ha - x-post with all this Canadian talk.
― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:30 (eighteen years ago) link
This is only true until his last two movies which are just okay.
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:32 (eighteen years ago) link
Although the bloody faces were cool.
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:34 (eighteen years ago) link
All my Canadian friends on ILX r gonna hate me now. but I called it, didn't I?-- @d@ml (nordicskilla@hotmail.com), April 1st, 2004.
-- @d@ml (nordi
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:36 (eighteen years ago) link
I think we were stoned, though.
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:37 (eighteen years ago) link
and Sarah Polley is! I think. Anyway I like that movie as well.
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:38 (eighteen years ago) link
YOU LIKE EXISTENZ
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:45 (eighteen years ago) link
If it had been eaxctly the same actors, set pieces, shots, etc then YES!
The only exceptions to this rule for me are Woody Allen and David Lynch, but I think I have a limit on how much I can watch ANY cinemtaic idea or concern recycled over and over by the same person.
I'M not arguing this for Existenz though.
Jude Law vs. James Woods!
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:49 (eighteen years ago) link
I've seen Fast Company. It's okay. Some interesting shots, but the plot is a joke.
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:50 (eighteen years ago) link
No, not at all. I was arguing the need for SOME diversity in a filmmaker's body of work. Non-specific.
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 21:55 (eighteen years ago) link
IN WHAT FUCKED UP WORLD DOES THE FORMER TRUMP THE LATTER?
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:30 (eighteen years ago) link
yeah Calendar just kills me.
― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:26 (eighteen years ago) link
hardly -- kyle (akmonda...), October 4th, 2005."
Kyle, name another mainstream film that has such unrepentantly gory, generally unstylized (a'la not "Sin City") violence. I'm genuinely curious - "Irreversible" had that vicious fire-extinguisher-to-the-face scene, but I can't think of anything else that had me that truly shocked.
Also, why was Viggo's ass so shiny in the stairs scene? It seemed almost buffed and waxed. I was prepared to notify the Gaffe Squad if I caught a glimpse of Cronenberg in the reflection somewhere.
― Stuck to a Seat in the New Beverly (Bent Over at the Arclight), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:45 (eighteen years ago) link
yeah the rest of the film was just a daisy-strewn waltz through the fucking park
― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:51 (eighteen years ago) link
I thought of one - the "American History X" curbing scene... that was tough to watch.
(x-post: Of course "Irreversible" is brutal non-stop - and it fits the criteria being discussed, in that it is definitely about brutal violence with real consequences - but it's definitely arthouse fare. "A History of Violence" is out in wide-release.)
― Stuck to a Seat in the New Beverly (Bent Over at the Arclight), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:56 (eighteen years ago) link
Something.. the construct was intensely weird, and I can't put my finger on exactly what was off about it. Right away it was this feeling about that family, "you're not from around here, are you.." I don't know, the pulp genre elements and sort of uncomfortable interaction were obvious but in a way, it make sense because.. if there's this underlying tension or unresolved problem, people still tend to act as if everything is A-OK. Especially in small town America.
Funny about Egoyan, I was fascinated by his early stuff esp. Speaking Parts (Family Viewing is good too) but thought Sweet Hereafter and Exotica were unfortunately v obvious and not as good!
eXistenZ is a treat. It's kind of about Jude Law being a bad actor.. And there is nothing cyberpunk about it at all, which adds some extra comedy - the video game world is just gritty and run down, and all the weird gadgets and things are organic, and they end up going where in this crazy futuristic video game world? A Chinese restaurant and a trout farm. Willem Dafoe as Gas = totally classic. I don't know, maybe there's this issue one could have with the film pointing at Big Philosophical Problems and taking those problems quite seriously, but doing so in a way that's very funny and requires extra splattery props and effects. I don't mind this at all.
― dar1a g (daria g), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:27 (eighteen years ago) link
otm!
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:31 (eighteen years ago) link
These are the only two I've seen except for maybe some early short thing with some sort of video gimmick that I saw in school. So if I'm missing out on Egoyan's brilliance, so be it. I still say he can't touch Cronenberg.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:45 (eighteen years ago) link
Egoyan eats dinner with my friend sometimes because they are relatives. He got my friend to do a little graphic of some traditional armenian design thingy that was on a wall in the background of ararat somewhere.
― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― fratboy slim (latebloomer), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:01 (eighteen years ago) link
Alex, READ MY POSTS! I never said anything about Cronenberg not being diverse.
Anyway, I think Cronenberg and Egoyan and Lodge Kerrigan are all great. It's CANADA that's the problem!
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 02:07 (eighteen years ago) link
I read your post! I was just responding to a question which wasn't asked! The same way you did! ;)
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 02:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 02:20 (eighteen years ago) link
i think what cronenberg always tries to acheieve is an unsettled mood. he's not aiming to be naturalistic and criticising scenes for being cliched (esp the cheerleader scene) implies that they were played straight when they were riddled with discomfort.
the sex and violence shots linger too long on purpose - very self-referentially saying 'here's something you don't normally see which i'm going to show you'.
rambling, but i just think cronenbeg's expert at unsettling an audience in a way few other directors can. return to the form of dead ringers, for me.
― barbarian cities (jaybob3005), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 08:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 09:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― N_RQ, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 09:36 (eighteen years ago) link
DING DING!!
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 11:36 (eighteen years ago) link
Really though it's not as if anything in this film is even vaguely controversial. I mean every single man on the planet WISHES his secret, hidden problem that he tries to keep secret from his family was that he has an incredible knack for brutally sending evil gangsters to oblivion. "Baby, I have to tell you something about myself. It might be hard to understand and if you want to leave me after I tell you this I can't blame you. I spent my formative years as The Punisher." Oh yeah FACE THE MUSIC MOTHERFUCKER. YOU GANGSTER-MURDERING... JERKFACE, I can't BELIEVE you would just have this QUASI-SUPERNATURAL ABILITY to just y'know KILL BADGUYS with near impunity and not TELL YOUR FAMILY?!?!?
During the vaguely unnecessary staircase fuck, I actually thought for a minute "She smells the killer gene!" etc. etc. obv badguy slayers give off a pheromone which is irresistable to ladies who never wash their hair.
Actually I think a lot of things in this movie could be described as "vaguely unnecessary" but you could say that about Kung-Fu Hustle, too, and that's the best film I've seen this year.
― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 11:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 12:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 12:17 (eighteen years ago) link
Haha, it's strange, everyone in Canada I've spoken to loves Cronenberg, but tend to think Egoyan's movies are overrated and sucky.
But History of Violence: it's not very good, is it? If it's a Dahl-type genre thriller, it's not really exciting enough; if it's a Hitchcockian identity movie, there's no real mystery; and if it's an examination of suburban mores (yawn), it has absolutely nothing to say that wasn't said (better) in the first series if Six Feet Under (and a MILLION other movies.)
As it is, it's this weird kind of halfway house, with a silly-as-hell noir copout ending. Hurt's performance is terrific, but it's wrong for the movie.
That said, "(adopts wiseguy voice)I shoulda killed yew in Philly" is my new catchphrase.
― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 12:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 12:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 12:59 (eighteen years ago) link
"Unbreakable" was honestly more interesting by a long shot, too. Except I much prefer the son shooting Ed Harris in the back with a double-barrelled shotgun than I do the son pointing a revolver at his own pops followed by painfully awful dialogue for five neverending minutes.
I'm glad I saw this movie and I thought it was entertaining, but not entertaining enough to excuse the lack of anything really gripping on offer. I will be purchasing "I, Robot" and "The Island" on DVD long before I ever think of purchasing this. But you all already knew that.
― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 13:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 13:43 (eighteen years ago) link
(I think Kung Fu Hustle was my favorite movie this year too!)
(Should I join the military and marry Ally?)
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 14:34 (eighteen years ago) link
Apparently the new Egoyan movie is TERRIBLE.
There's still time to delete this whole thread.
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 14:35 (eighteen years ago) link
I found AHOV kind of...ok. That's about it. It was kind of OK. I don't even remember it being gory or shockingly violent at all!! I mean I had to think pretty hard, when Tom said "destroyed faces," to remember that there was those scenes were people got punched and their noses disappeared. I don't really remember much of this movie.
― Allyzay knows a little German (allyzay), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 15:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 15:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 15:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 15:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― Allyzay knows a little German (allyzay), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 15:37 (eighteen years ago) link
my film geek red telephone ran in the middle of night.
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 15:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 October 2005 14:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 October 2005 14:37 (eighteen years ago) link
when william hurt's standing there in the door frame, a woman sitting up behind me starts going "kill him! KILL HIM!" -- and every time we wanted that, we got it .. with the kid in the high school .. with everyone who crosses viggo.. and every time, it's like YEAH!!! URK!!!!!!
i really like the things madchen noticed. they're things that i either didn't notice, or didn't noticed that i noticed.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 October 2005 15:12 (eighteen years ago) link
All references to Joey mention how he was crazy or angry. Tom's unsettlingly sane and calm! Even in sex, he shows some motivation but never agression. There are as many people like this as there are superhuman hyper-violent people like Joey. You've got this unbelievable character, with the approximation of a real person stuck somewhere in-between. There's this visual tic that showed up on Mortensen's face in the transitions. There's an outright denial that there's a multiple personality situation in play, which is kind of true: everything that constituted Joey dropped off the face of the planet when Tom came into being, and it's a conscious effort to bring Joey back. It's Joey that slaps her on the staircase, etc.
Videodrome/eXistenZ are about people who are "normal" but are pursuing something they think is deviant or subversive for sexual pleasure. Lately, Cronenberg is kind of on a roll lately with characters that deny part of their pasts. With Spider you ended up with a man who was insane, but with AHOV you end up with a walking caricature of all that's good and right that contrasts with the "evil" past...
― mike h. (mike h.), Thursday, 6 October 2005 15:39 (eighteen years ago) link
Weird audience reaction when I saw it as well. Some people walking out trying to puzzle out something about the plot, others going "OMG that was awful," others kind of stunned. Nervous laughter as well as laughter with the movie (more of that toward the end).
― dar1a g (daria g), Thursday, 6 October 2005 16:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 October 2005 17:17 (eighteen years ago) link
That was my favorite scene in the movie by as many miles as the drive to Philadelphia.
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:20 (eighteen years ago) link
I guess what amazes me about the critical reaction is that so many reviews are working angles of this - 'oh, he's undermining our societal attitude toward violence'/'violence comes back to haunt you'/etc. - like this message isn't just as much of a cliche as anything Hollywood produces.
And if I'm not enthralled by the concept (which I'm not), then all I've got are some relatively ungruesome fights/shootings, bad performances and weak humor.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:29 (eighteen years ago) link
That's what the Lord of the Rings movie was about?
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:42 (eighteen years ago) link
The son scenes work on basically the same level, but without anything quite as psychologically rewarding. Basically he seems to harbor latent Michael Corleone-ism. And whoever mentioned Adam Brody upthread OTM!
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:45 (eighteen years ago) link
I like how he always has some decompressed (omg am I some film auteur bullshit artist for using this word?) scenes in his films and they seem to go on a while, but Cronenberg usually barely breaks the 90 minute standard.
― mike h. (mike h.), Thursday, 6 October 2005 21:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:46 (eighteen years ago) link
The quality of the performances, the skillful editing, grounding the tale in a believable if overstated reality...I can go on. All these things redeem his "ideas"; I mean, who cares about IDEAS anyway? It's the execution. You think the film sucks, I think it's marvelous. If we can't disagree about movies, the world's in dire shape. Let's have a drink.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:54 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't want to sound like a dick, but I'd honestly like to know how it was effective as a thriller, jaymc. The end was never in doubt to me - there was no question that Viggo would settle his Philly business and wind up back on the farm.
I'm just referring to much of the commentary and praise surrounding the film, esp. from daily and mag critics, who seem to think that the 'violence comes back to bite you on the ass'/'never outrun your past'/etc. is something new and innovative. I wouldn't care if the film had been otherwise successful.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 6 October 2005 22:59 (eighteen years ago) link
If only, John.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 6 October 2005 23:02 (eighteen years ago) link
'violence comes back to bite you on the ass'/'never outrun your past'/etc.
I haven't seen the new one yet but now I don't have to thanks to this brilliantly succinct encapsulations!
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 6 October 2005 23:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 6 October 2005 23:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 October 2005 23:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 6 October 2005 23:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 7 October 2005 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Friday, 7 October 2005 02:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Friday, 7 October 2005 02:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 7 October 2005 02:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 7 October 2005 03:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― kurt broder (dr g), Friday, 7 October 2005 03:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― 400% Nice (nordicskilla), Friday, 7 October 2005 03:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Friday, 7 October 2005 03:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 16 October 2005 03:56 (eighteen years ago) link
http://nypress.com/18/38/film/seitz.cfm
Hate to think how arid it would've been without Ed Harris and William Hurt having a ball. As mysteriously overrated as "Spider was underappreciated.
I wonder what non-auteurist heartland multiplex audiences make of scenes like the staircase fuck. "Edna, this remind you o' Crash?"
>Cronenberg can hardly be accused of being a non-diverse filmmaker. This isn't John Ford or anything.<
Alex, you know he made non-westerns, yes? War films, comedies, "The Informer"? Try "The Sun Shines Bright," which on certain days I think is his best work. (And it's a remake of an early '30s Ford film with Will Rogers, "Judge Priest," which was quite good to begin with.)
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 13:08 (eighteen years ago) link
They go "Man I hate Dr Morbius, constantly making asinine comments on all the threads about films and sports and politics on that there I Love Everything web-enabled BBS. How come these movies never show any wang?"
― TOMBOT, Tuesday, 18 October 2005 13:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 13:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― William Paper Scissors (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 17:05 (eighteen years ago) link
He wrote some of it without WGA credit in collaboration with this Josh Olson guy; from a Salon interview:
I didn't know this script was based on a graphic novel for a long time, because nobody told me. When I found out, Josh and I had already done a couple of rewrites. I said, "What do you mean, graphic novel?" and he said, "Oh, didn't anybody tell you?" They found me a copy and I looked at it, and I thought, well, we've gone so far in a different direction that this is actually irrelevant. In fact, if someone had brought me the graphic novel and said, "Are you interested in adapting this?" I'm not sure I would have said yes...
Q. Did his screenplay include the two intensely physical erotic scenes we see in the film?
It did not. I added those scenes.
Jams Murphy OTM on the hideous early Viggo-Bello dialogue; when I read in that same interview DC says "no irony" was a rule -- shit, there goes his only out.
Not one of Howard Shore's better scores; my friend recognized one of the closing-credit themes as a short walk from Return to the Shire.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― dar1a g (daria g), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:26 (eighteen years ago) link
There's a lot going on, nearly all of it sledgehammer-obvious, even compared to "Unforgiven" as MZS mentions.
I though the peak was the shots wrapping up the stairs hatefuck -- Bello kicking VM away, her showering, the blue night-shot of the scrape on her back.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 18:51 (eighteen years ago) link
It struck me, and I just remembered, that some sense that all kinds of security are built on some kind of.. well, force and the willingness to use it. That's not so clear, but what I mean is, all the scenes with the local sheriff had this feel of playing up the effects of just straight up intimidation and potential for violence as the real forces keeping some sort of order in the community, the letter of the law being pretty much irrelevant.
― dar1a g (daria g), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 03:38 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't get this "violence underlying everyday life" theme. If your everyday life involves you desperately, schizophrenically hiding your bounty-killer past, then yes, it's about the violence the underlies everyday life. Otherwise it's about the violence underlying the life of a man desperately, schizophrenically hiding his bounty-killer past.
I agree with Dr. Morbius about the dialogue of the first 30 minutes or so. It really seemed over the top, and it's really hard to believe Cronenberg sees it playing straight down the middle.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 03:56 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm not saying it's done geniously (Blue Velvet does some of the same stuff, way more geniously), but I think it's all there.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 04:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 04:40 (eighteen years ago) link
As far as it being a metaphor for W's foreign policy, as Croney and Viggo are talking up in their interviews, I guarantee you that's not crossing the mind of viewers who aren't reading it beforehand. The quiet dinner finale brought Bill (compassionate bomber of Serbia / executioner of brain-damaged man / welfare abolitionist / serial postadolescent tomcat) Clinton to my mind.
"The Fly" is still his triumph to me; an accessible, disgusting romantic comedy/tragedy derived from a '50s B movie (and the peak of its two stars). It had the emotion and resonance this one only has in jolts.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 12:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 19 October 2005 13:21 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=780
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 20 October 2005 20:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 20 October 2005 20:47 (eighteen years ago) link
(I originally wanted the "overall" line to read "Better than A History of Violence," but that was just as a joke.)
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 20 October 2005 22:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 21 October 2005 08:23 (eighteen years ago) link
-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), October 18th, 2005.
otm. generally i think this movie sits well with the rest of cronenberg's ouevre, in that it's theme of 'violence underlies human behavior' is part of the greater theme in his work: that human beings are essentially fragile biological machines.
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 21 October 2005 08:32 (eighteen years ago) link
the way it veered between that (and of course the plunging into all sorts of cliché and massively obvious signposts with relish) and some really gripping intensity was unsettling: i was laughing pretty much throughout the last violent scene, when tom/joey escapes his bro's henchmen, because his knack for killing and not getting killed was somewhat ludicrous by that point (plus "how d'you fuck that one up?"), but that amusement was ruptured by the violence being just slightly more graphic than you expect, and viggo mortensen's amazing acting - his eyes switch-flicked between genial and psychotic so effectively.
also viggo mortensen was HOTT. um, as was the son. i couldn't quite decide which was hotter.
― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, 21 October 2005 09:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― TOMBOT, Friday, 21 October 2005 11:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― TOMBOT, Friday, 21 October 2005 11:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, 21 October 2005 12:11 (eighteen years ago) link
I like my DC films with new orifices (or uses for them) or detachable body parts.
Some critic brought up "dreamlike" mise-en-scene, and not so much charcterizations as "role-playing." Which was my defense of Eyes Wide Shut, but too many strings were showing in this film.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 October 2005 12:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― BARMS, Friday, 21 October 2005 13:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Friday, 21 October 2005 15:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, 21 October 2005 15:28 (eighteen years ago) link
I see the "lie" in History of Violence in the way the straight characters continue to deny the level to which they're invigorated by their own opportunity for debasement. The son's snitfit where he makes a crack to his dad "you gonna rub me out?!" is directed so that it's clear the son's gas tank (which was filled during the school hallway scene) just got topped off.
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 21 October 2005 15:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 21 October 2005 15:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Friday, 21 October 2005 17:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 21 October 2005 17:19 (eighteen years ago) link
If the thing had been executed (yuk yuk) with any sort of aesthetic *conviction*, I might've bought it, but it was like a schematic Brechtian thing with little verve.
And really, at no level of stylization is THAT kid kicking THOSE bullies' asses deserving of any response but WTF?!
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 October 2005 17:39 (eighteen years ago) link
The William Hurt scenes were so smashingly effective because Cronenberg and Hurt purposely went over the top; I was laughing as hysterically as you were, as was the audience.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Friday, 21 October 2005 17:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 21 October 2005 17:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― RJG (RJG), Friday, 21 October 2005 18:30 (eighteen years ago) link
A History of ViolenceWednesday, October 19th, 2005
I’m not sure how much I can add, belatedly, to what k-punk, girish twice, Chuck, Jodi — followed by k-punk’s reply and Jodi’s counter-reply — Jonathan Rosenbaum, and others have already said about A History of Violence. But I do think that it is David Cronenberg’s best film since at least Dead Ringers (1988). Quite some time ago, I wrote extensively about the body horror in Cronenberg’s early films: which meant a lot, and still means a lot, to me. I was a bit disappointed, however, about the way that Cronenberg’s distancing himself from genre, in order to embrace “art film,” got in the way of his adaptations of writers with whom he shared a sensibility (William Burroughs and J. G. Ballard). And I was still more disappointed, when, in his more recent films, even though sometimes with increased artistic power, Cronenberg moved away from that explosive sensibility altogether, and towards an implosive concern with the anguish of wounded white male interiority — a subject with which I have little sympathy, as I think that we (since I have to be included as part of that “we”) need to get over it, and go on to more important things than whining over our supposed (more fantasmatic than actually real) loss of privilege. (In fairness, I should note that my friend Bill Beard, in his excellent book on Cronenberg, not only gives a far less pejorative account of this progress, but also argues that such a process was in fact already the real concern of Cronenberg’s earlier films as well, despite all the posthuman exploration that I, among others, have read into them).
The editing of A History of Violence is very tight and powerful, like that of Spider. But the important thing is that A History of Violence for me is that the film is not psychological, not about interiority, in the way Spider definitely still was (and the way many of the Cronenberg films of the last fifteen years or so have been). By “not psychological”, I don’t mean not affective, but that the affect in some way is impersonal or transpersonal. In Spider, dread was tied in to the protagonist’s point of view: a POV that we know is distorted and fantasmatic, but which we cannot escape from, or get an independent perspective on, despite this knowledge. The epistemological deadlock — or better, prison — that is at the heart of that film was reinforced by the way in which the adult protagonist (Ralph Fiennes) appears in the frame as a silent observer of his own psychotically distorted childhood memories.
The editing and pacing of A History of Violence create a similar sense of dread, even when what is explicitly going on (the members of a picture-perfect nuclear family eating breakfast, pouring the dry cereal, etc.) is entirely “normal” and banal. But Viggo Mortensen, playing the protagonist, is so closed off and opaque that we can’t really read (or more accurately: feel) what he’s going through as subjective anguish. (I’m assuming anyone who has read this far has seen the movie, or at least knows the basic premise: Tom Stall, exemplary small-town family man, turns out to have a dark past as Joey Cusack, psychotic mob hit man). As Tom, Mortensen is simply too blank to “identify” with; as Joey, he doesn’t display any of the self-congratulatory feeling that even Clint Eastwood (wonderfully minimal in expression as he is) does ultimately allow himself when he is in vengeful mode. In an email exchange, Bill Beard suggested to me that Cronenberg and Mortensen are operating by subtraction: “A History of Violence produces something radical simply by subtracting standard conduits of viewer empathy from what is unmistakably a mainstream-movie framework.” So we get, for instance, generic small-town Americana such as is found in the paintings of Norman Rockwell, and in the films of Frank Capra and (more recently) Steven Spielberg; everything is literally as it is supposed to be, but some dimension of warmth (or smarminess) is unaccountably missing, and this makes it all rather creepy. I’d only add to Beard’s account that the greatness of Mortensen’s acting, in particular, lies in the way he switches from one to the other of his two ‘characters’ or personalities, so that ultimately he seems to be trapped in a no-man’s-land between them. He’s a man without qualities, which is why both of his personas seem unpsychological. The conventional way to tell this story would be to make one of the personas more basic, more in depth, revealing the other persona to be just a mask; but this is precisely what Cronenberg refuses to do.
All this is even more evident in the two extraordinary sex scenes between Mortensen’s character and his wife Edie (Maria Bello), which are at the heart of the movie. The first involves playacting, as Edie drags Mortensen-as-Tom off to a secret tryst in the course of which she dresses as a cheerleader, and they pretend to be making out while their (whose? hers, I think) parents are sleeping in the next room. The second is when Mortensen-as-Joey drags Edie down the stairs and brutally fucks her in what is at least a near-rape (she ultimately seems to consent, though it’s clear that she continues to feel loathing as much as desire). What unites these two opposed scenes is that they both seem similarly distanced and performative, except that there is no sense of any realer or truer self behind the mask of the performance. The first scene is a parody of what adolescence is supposed to be like; the second is a parody of what maturity or adulthood all too often turns out to be like. This is why I felt a bit queasy during the first scene, and found it almost as disturbing as the second one. Both scenes suggest a kind of void, and a failure of contact: the two people never really come together. (Is this what Lacan meant by declaring that “there is no sexual relation”?). It’s not a void that one can feel anguished about, however; for the selfhood, or sense of “thrownness” at least, that would allow one to feel anguish is precisely what is missing, what has been replaced by a void.
All this is to say that the split or doubling in A History of Violence is ontological, rather than existential or psychological. The split between Tom and Joey, and between the two sex scenes, of course corresponds to the two worlds of the film, both of which are themselves cinematic — and thereby social — fantasies: the wholesome, Capraesque or Spielbergesque small town (Ronald Reagan’s America, or George W. Bush’s red states) on the one hand, and the big-city-at-nighttime on the other. (I initially thought of film noir for these scenes; but on further reflection I’m reminded more of the big city in violent-revenge-fantasy films like Charles Bronson’s Death Wish, or, more recently, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City — it’s not irrelevant that A History of Violence, like Sin City, is an adaptation of material that first appeared in comic book form).
The result is that A History of Violence offers us a kind of spookily abstract modeling of cultural formations: of American fantasies about family, the good life, violence, empowerment, and self-reinvention: and in particular of how these participate in the construction of masculinity. This is very different from exploring the disintegration of masculinity — or of American culture, for that matter — from the inside. I call this ‘abstract modeling’ not just because Cronenberg’s presentation is so distanced and subtractive, but also because in a very real sense the abstraction is all that there is: the “inside” — something more personal and subjective, that would give the abstraction existential density and individual quirkiness and variability — simply doesn’t exist. This is Cronenberg’s version of postmodern flatness: the depths do not exist, everything is visible and apparent. This also explains the title of the film: this move really is a “history,” in the sense that it tracks the emergence of violence, and the different forms it takes at different times and in different circumstances. Violence is generated — almost as a autonomic effect — out of tiny rifts in the social fabric, or in the fabric of social myth (I mean, in the myth of noir as much as in the myth of wholesome “we take care of our own” Americana). This is why we get the story of Jack (Ashton Holmes), Tom’s teenage son, who erupts with violence in a parallel way to his father: as if what came back out of the past in the father’s case were generated as it were spontaneously, out of his very need to struggle, as an adolescent, with the (entirely stereotypical) problems of autonomy from the father and coming to terms with normative formations of masculinity. (I think that Jodi’s reading of the film as the son’s fantasy is valuable in the way it works out the son’s perspective; but I don’t accept it as an overall reading of the film, because it overly psychologizes the film and privileges the son’s perspective more than the film itself does, and thereby gives that perspective too much existential weight, ignoring how the film suggests it is just another social cliche, another purely superficial mode of articulating an otherwise blank subjectivity).
To say that A History of Violence is ontological and historical, rather than existential and psychological; and to say that it shows violence to be itself a surface or superficial effect of a structure or abstract model that is itself all surfaces (I’m calling it a “structure”, but the point of this is precisely that there is no underlying “deep structure” in any sense of the term): to say all this is also to say that the dichotomy or structural opposition that the film presents us with is false, and that the film ‘deconstructs’ the opposition, rather than affirming it. In other words, A History of Violence is like a Moebius strip. At any given point, it seems to have two sides; but the two sides are really the same side, each is continuous with the other, and slides imperceptibly into the other. There is no way to separate the Capra/Spielberg side from the noir/revenge nocturnal side. The common interpretive tendency in cases like this is to see the ‘dark’ side as the deep, hidden underside of the ‘bright’ side, the depths beneath the seemingly cheerful surface. But in A History of Violence, everything is what it seems. Both sides, both identities, are surfaces; both are ’superficial’; and they blends into one other almost without our noticing. The small town, with its overly ostentatious friendliness, is a vision of the good life; but brother Richie’s enormous mansion, furnished with a nouveau-riche vulgarity that almost recalls Donald Trump’s penthouse, is also a vision of the good life. In their odd vacancy, they are both quintessentially American (this could be, as Cronenberg has hinted, an allegory of America’s current cultural divide: blue states and red states, which actually are more continuous with one another than anyone on either side recognizes… this is something, perhaps, that only a Canadian could see, as it is invisible both to us Americans, who are too caught up in it, and to people from outside North America, who are too far away).
The Moebius strip would be Cronenberg’s version of the postmodern idea that there are no depths, only surfaces. Or (the same thing, to me) that there are affects, but not identities to be owners of those affects. And this two-sides-as-one would be why/how Cronenberg can be so unrelentingly grim, instead of having to resort to camp, in the ways that David Lynch and Guy Maddin both do (in the ways, I would say, that they are both forced to do, because of the extremities of their visions). K-Punk is right to assert that, for both Cronenberg and Lynch, it’s wrong to explain away the dualities and dichotomies of their films by saying that one side is the dream or fantasy or underside of the other. Rather, we have to grasp the total congruence of the film’s two halves (this comment would apply to Mulholland Drive as much as to A History of Violence. The difference is that where Lynch marks the two sides in the form of manic camp on the one hand and depressive bitterness and paranoia on the other, Cronenberg flattens both of them out, empties them both out. Lynch is thus a maximalist, Cronenberg a minimalist).
To say that Cronenberg’s vision in this film is ontological is also to say that he recognizes no hierarchy of levels. A History of Violence isn’t a film about existential male anguish, precisely because it works equally well, without privileging any one of these, as a study of the vacancy of the isolated inidividual, of the bourgeois nuclear family, of America as a fantasmatic formation or imaginary community, and of the “human condition” in the most general terms. But if it works most bitingly and corrosively on the level of family, this is because the Spielberg/revenge dichotomy-that-isn’t-one, which is Cronenberg’s largest cinematic reference point, tends to play out most overtly in terms of Family. The small town, of course, is grounded on the nuclear family, and its “family values”; Joey became Tom, in large part, by becoming a family man (which is why Edie worries, when she discovers the hidden identity, what the family really is, what their name is or could be). In Philadelphia, Richie makes a speech to Joey/Tom about why and how he never married & would never marry: it ties you down, makes difficulties, if you are married, then when you have a fling with somebody else (as you will inevitably want to do) you will have to do it with elaborate secrecy, etc. All this is a prelude to Richie’s trying to kill Joey, not in spite of, but precisely because of the fact that they are brothers (Richie never got as far in the mob as he wanted to, he says, because his family tie to his crazy brother held him back, just like getting married would). But by the end of the film — the last scene — being a married husband/father/family man is just as hollow as Richie’s life was — and retrospectively, it always was this hollow. Cronenberg rejects and undermines what is to me the one most absolutely offensive thing about all of Spielberg’s films (and about all of Spike Lee’s films too, for that matter): the absolute insistence on taking on the responsibilities of fatherhood, and thus restoration of a 1950s nuclear family, as an unquestionable and totally redemptive gesture. I hated that insistence before I had children; and now that I am a father, I hate it even more. The hollowness of the final scene of A History of Violence — the son getting out a setting for the place of the now-returned father at the dinner table — is devastating in its absolute oppressive rightness.
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 21 October 2005 18:35 (eighteen years ago) link
phew!
that'll take a while to process.
― dar1a g (daria g), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― Are You Nomar? (miloaukerman), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― fixed it for you, Friday, 21 October 2005 19:49 (eighteen years ago) link
Didn't buy Viggo as smalltown diner guy or Philly thug.
If "In the Bedroom" was a revenge flick for the NPR crowd, AHOV is one for _________?
btw, the grosses aren't all that great ($25 M or so), and this was supposed to be DC's first 'broad appeal' project in years. Can the masses tell his heart wasn't really in it, or do they just find it airless?
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:22 (eighteen years ago) link
I like the way people keep referring to Cronenberg's idea of small town life as "generic," when in fact it seemed quite real to me. People driving around blasting hip-hop. Kids smoking pot on the corner. Hardly Capra, very contemporary. That was my first real clue that I was in for something far deeper than the usual "darkness lurks beneath the surface of small town life" trope.
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Saturday, 22 October 2005 12:09 (eighteen years ago) link
On September 23, a great American movie opened in the US, and New Line, the distributor, revealed it at just 14 theatres. I am not complaining - I love and respect old-fashioned opening plans where just a few cities get a picture at first and then the word goes out. And New Line had their arguments: it wasn't that David Cronenberg was prepared to have this movie called Recoil! or The Last Day in Tom Stall's Life. No, this movie has a chilling edge of academic authority or analytic dread. It's called A History of Violence. And it's the first unmistakably great American film since Mulholland Dr., even if it is made by a Canadian.
Cronenberg is 62 now. Born and raised in Toronto, he still lives there, and his work is followed at an international level, but without the solid, financial reward that can change a man, or an artist. When he made Spider a few years ago, an uncompromisingly bleak study of schizophrenia in which Ralph Fiennes had hardly a word of dialogue, Cronenberg's determination to follow his own vision nearly destroyed the enterprise for lack of funds. And there will be some viewers now inclined to see A History of Violence as a sell-out, a desperate excursion into full-blooded film noir about the kind of things that happen - notoriously - not in Canada but in the United States.
Tom Stall is a gaunt-looking fellow with a dreamy smile on his face and an easy manner that fits in to the small Indiana town where he owns a diner called Stall's. He looks a lot like Viggo Mortensen. He has a wife, Maria Bello, and two decent kids. The teenage boy is mocked at school for not being as male as Indiana prefers. But Tom and his wife still have a wild, tender sex life of the kind that might not be owned up to in all towns in Indiana. But even though this is "sleepy" Indiana, the air is as taut as an old wire ready to snap. Something terrible is coming, and we know after just a few minutes that Cronenberg has devised and outfitted the terror in keeping with the "Let's do an experiment" tone of the title.
In the past, Cronenberg has been one of the world's most creative experimenters with the horror genre. I suspect that was because he felt able to push that genre towards his own necessary economy plus the quite startling dismemberment or parasitic possession of his vision. This was evident in They Came From Within, Rabid, The Brood, The Dead Zone and even The Fly, which was the first glorious blooming of his special sense of humour. But still, there was something very deliberate in Cronenberg that felt unable to get into what you might call popular genre. But like many ascetics, familiarity with his own medium has made his search for formal beauty more fundamental. And that is what is so American: for nearly always, I think, the most radical departures in American come with the telling of the old, old stories.
So this is a myth composed by a master that operates at the level of pulp fiction, or graphic novel - its actual source material. Ed Harris and later William Hurt take a huge exultant pleasure in knowing that they are playing stock figures from that tradition. And they know that we are loving hating them. But beyond that this is a superb story of a marriage, in which a great lie has been told, but guessed at? And even hoped for? The interaction of Mortensen and Maria Bello is actually the core to what the title is about, and their two love and sex scenes are the essence of this stunning movie. And when the family next sits down to dinner together the air is still taut with new discoveries and the affirmation of very old truths. By letting himself make a simpler kind of picture, Cronenberg has left us not so much with his glittering intelligence as a kind of question that the US has to ask itself.
Quite deliberately, I am not telling you the story of A History of Violence. That's because it employs a formula you've seen before, but gives it a radically new rhythm, one in which the atmosphere of the title is not just the energy that renews the country and which makes it safe and dangerous again. This film is a preparation for the uncertainty of the last few shots.
Just as with the close of The Deer Hunter, where survivors sing softly, "America the Beautiful", we are left to weight the balance of irony and forgiveness.
Those two films are ideal material to be shown to soldiers just returned from a war where the ordeal of survival eclipsed all thought of what the war was about.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 22 October 2005 12:25 (eighteen years ago) link
Thomson is OTM about the "new rhythm" of "AHOV."
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Saturday, 22 October 2005 12:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 22 October 2005 12:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 22 October 2005 13:46 (eighteen years ago) link
"radical new rhythm" -- just ridiculous!
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 22 October 2005 16:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Sunday, 23 October 2005 01:15 (eighteen years ago) link
It wasn't released as one (it got a slow roll-out, per usual for mainstreamish arthouse fare), every review focused on the Cronenberg connection, it wasn't advertised as standard action/vengeance flick.
You could make that statement for something like Starship Troopers - and the fact that wasn't a typical action/vengeance movie led to some bad feeling from the audience - but AHOV was released as an artsy Cronenberg film. If there was subversion attempted, it was a failure.
― Are You Nomar? (miloaukerman), Sunday, 23 October 2005 01:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 23 October 2005 07:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Are You Nomar? (miloaukerman), Sunday, 30 October 2005 06:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 30 October 2005 06:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 30 October 2005 15:36 (eighteen years ago) link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4426386.stm
― dar1a g (daria g), Friday, 11 November 2005 20:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 11 November 2005 20:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 11 November 2005 21:02 (eighteen years ago) link
THE HEAVENS WEEP :-(
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 11 November 2005 23:34 (eighteen years ago) link
I wonder if it'll be even better than Nip/Tuck..
― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 12 November 2005 17:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 12 November 2005 17:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Skelewhore, Saturday, 12 November 2005 18:00 (eighteen years ago) link
(Also, my main reaction was: that was the most violentest violence that was every violented. jeeeeezUS!)
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:55 (eighteen years ago) link
And the people in the houses all went to the universityWhere they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and business executivesAnd they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,And they all have pretty children and the children go to schoolAnd the children go to summer camp and then to the universityWhere they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a familyIn boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 March 2006 22:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― chaki (chaki), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:02 (eighteen years ago) link
I thought this guy nailed AHOV:
"Dear A History of Violence,
This is hard for me. I hardly know what to say. Maybe I should just shoot straight with you. You're a B-picture. Now, I don't mean this in a bad way. Lots of really cool movies fall into this category. But really, you and I had a good time and all, expecting some big twist that never came (good for you!) and having that steamy rendezvous on the stairs and oh yeah, William Hurt. He was awesome. But you're just not quite top ten material, and if that hurts you I'm sorry. I know lots of other viewers love you, but to me, it's like you just reflect back whatever anyone wants to see in you. Critique of violence in the Gulf War II era? Okay. Portrait of fractured masculinity? You got it. Subdued Cronenbergian treatise on the body in crisis? I'm your film. Etc. Etc. I mean, look, I enjoyed our time together but surely you didn't think this was serious, did you?"
http://www.geocities.com/michaelsicinski/2005notgoodenoughformyexactingtaste.htm
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― chaki (chaki), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:12 (eighteen years ago) link
It was #6 apparently.
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:38 (eighteen years ago) link
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a happy family man running a diner in idyllic small-town Indiana, with a lawyer wife (Maria Bello), a teenage son (Ashton Holmes), and a little girl (Heidi Hayes). One night he responds so deftly and definitively to the violent threats of two killers that he becomes a local hero. A Philadelphia mobster named Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) hears of the story and soon arrives in town claiming that Tom has another name and background -- that he was once a gangster himself who mutilated one of Fogarty's eyes with barbed wire.
Is A History of Violence a popular genre movie, soliciting visceral, unthinking responses to its violence while evoking westerns and noirs? Or is it an art film, reflecting on the meaning, implications, and effects of its violence, and getting us to do the same? David Cronenberg's genius here is the way he makes it impossible to settle this question.
You can't logically claim that it's both kinds of movie at once -- the devices and intentions of one interfere with those of the other. Yet Cronenberg is so adept at tinkering with our thoughts about violence that he comes very close to pulling off this feat. He provokes confused emotional responses -- laughter at serious moments and spontaneous applause at some of the violent ones -- that might embarrass us, but Cronenberg isn't engaging in parody or irony. Nor is he nihilistically pandering to our worst impulses: the filmmaking is too measured and too intelligent. He implicitly respects us and our responses, even when those responses are silly or disturbing.
There's hardly a shot, setting, character, line of dialogue, or piece of action in A History of Violence that can't be seen as some sort of cliche. Its fantasies about how American small towns are paradise and big cities are hell are genre standbys that Cronenberg milks at every turn. But none of this plays like cliche; Cronenberg is such an uncommon master of tone that we're in a state of denial about our familiarity with the material -- a kind of willed innocence that resembles Tom Stall's own disavowals. (Warning: what follows is full of spoilers.)
Cronenberg keeps his camera too close to Stall's violence to let us feel detached from it. He also takes care to show the immediate consequences of violence -- such as what a shotgun can do to someone's face -- without rubbing our noses in it. But our proximity never allows for any simple identification with Stall -- or if it does, we eventually feel penalized because we don't really know who he is. (His elected surname surely isn't irrelevant.) There's a similar ambiguity in that Cronenberg has spent most of his life and career in Toronto; you might call him a next-door neighbor to the American dream, which includes the cherished idea that we can start our lives over again with a clean slate. We seem to believe and doubt that idea with equal conviction, and the uneasy laughs the film draws out reflect this familiar brand of doublethink.
So do the two remarkable sex scenes between Tom and his wife before and after she learns about his violent past (reportedly Cronenberg's main contributions to Josh Olson's script). In the first, she starts out dominant, playfully dressed as a cheerleader ("because we never got to be teenagers together"), though he winds up on top; the second is spurred by his rough aggression, and she's turned on even though she no longer wants to share the same bed with him. Both scenes testify to the uncommon skills of Mortensen and Bello: they expose more layers of personality than we can possibly keep up with.
At Cannes last May Alexander Horwath -- director of the Austrian Film Museum and one of Europe's best film critics -- caused a minor scandal by loudly berating his colleagues for laughing during a screening of the film. It's easy to feel superior to this behavior, especially since Cronenberg himself has said he doesn't regard laughter as an inappropriate response to certain scenes. But I think Horwath's anger is in some ways a sensitive response. Cronenberg isn't a posthumanist cynic like Lars von Trier, whose nihilism we honor by jeering along with him. Cronenberg is a troubled moralist who doesn't succumb to political correctness about violence, and the meaning of our laughter, however "appropriate," is part of what bothers him.
I've seen the film twice, with very different audiences -- at a gala in Toronto with the filmmakers and cast present and at a local preview with a mainly younger crowd -- and it was uncanny to hear both the laughter and spontaneous applause occur at precisely the same places. The most memorable instances followed two scenes in which Tom's teenage son, Jack, is taunted, insulted, and provoked at school by a classmate.
The first time, in a locker room, Jack defuses the tension, lightly mocking the insults by accepting and even embroidering them. The second time, in a hallway, he again tries to remain cool, but when that doesn't work he beats both the bully and his friend to a bloody pulp. The audience all but cheered -- boorishness won out. Even after we learn that both boys have landed in the hospital, their families might sue, Jack has been suspended from school, and Tom is furious, Jack's stupidity and momentary loss of control are still being celebrated. (A moment later, a similar point gets made when Tom says to Jack, "In this family, we don't solve problems by hitting people." Jack snaps back, "No, we shoot them," and Tom slaps him in response, immediately disproving his point. This time no one applauded, at either screening.)
Jack's comebacks in the locker room got some laughs, but certainly not applause. I'd wager this has to do with our programmed responses to genre; thoughtful responses (which you might call "art-house" responses) are likely to come later and more slowly. But in either case Cronenberg sets up our reactions, both simple and complex, with equal care. Combined with the visceral responses he creates, our thoughts become more than theoretical -- we wind up experiencing them in our gut.
― gear (gear), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:41 (eighteen years ago) link
Oh, who needs logic! art doesn't need logic. seriously.
― dar1a g (daria g), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:47 (eighteen years ago) link
(most of my comments are Oct 18, Mo)
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 17 March 2006 23:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 18 March 2006 00:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 18 March 2006 00:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 18 March 2006 00:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Erick Dampier is better than Shaq (miloaukerman), Saturday, 18 March 2006 00:45 (eighteen years ago) link
This is so true. Most of Kings & Queen worked because of the vertigo it induced in me. The shift in tones in AHOV, sometimes within the same scene, were almost Hitchcockian, with Cronenberg's similarly clammy regard for people perversely warm and human this time around, thanks in no small part to Bello and Mortensen.
And I detected no self-importance in AHOV, for the same reason I don't view Blue Velvet as a Horrifying Critique of Reagan's America. AHOV is a B-movie purified. Whether you think B-movies need purifying is a whole other question.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 18 March 2006 03:32 (eighteen years ago) link
Sicinski is pretty much the smartest non-professional critic I know of. He could've put Crash in his top ten and I would've rushed to give it a second look.
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 18 March 2006 05:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 18 March 2006 05:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Saturday, 18 March 2006 05:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 22 February 2007 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link
trailer for DC's latest:
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809794102/video/3182401/
― Ward Fowler, Sunday, 1 July 2007 22:49 (sixteen years ago) link
no no no no no
― Eric H., Sunday, 1 July 2007 22:55 (sixteen years ago) link
ok, huh? Mafias and prisons? I want Cronenberg back.
― kenan, Sunday, 1 July 2007 22:57 (sixteen years ago) link
Looks like Viggo's playing Ed Harris from the last one here.
― Sparkle Motion, Sunday, 1 July 2007 23:19 (sixteen years ago) link
hm
― rrrobyn, Sunday, 1 July 2007 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link
it's sure to have some brutal violence though, i guess as long as it's got his brand of grime and grit and general uncontainable ooziness, even if not hyper-viscerally rendered, i'm fine
― rrrobyn, Sunday, 1 July 2007 23:29 (sixteen years ago) link
i feel a constant pain in my lower right abdomen, is that a warning sign for the Cronenberg disease?
― Heave Ho, Monday, 2 July 2007 01:49 (sixteen years ago) link
anybody ever seen this? worth going to...?
Crimes of the Future screening at the Castro with music by I Am Spoonbender
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 30 July 2007 19:01 (sixteen years ago) link
it's definately worth seeing, but not with added "live score." the long gaps of silence in that film are integral to its aesthetic.
― sexyDancer, Monday, 30 July 2007 19:04 (sixteen years ago) link
yeah I'm a little perplexed at their addition - as a band they're quite good and definitely attuned to Cronenberg's aesthetic and ideas but I don't see why they're necessary. Cronenberg's rumored to attend, maybe he'll shed some light on it.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 30 July 2007 19:07 (sixteen years ago) link
A phenomenology of tragedy: illness and body betrayal in The Fly by Havi Carel
Many interpretations... read [The Fly] as a film about monstrosity ...Illness is taken to be a metaphor for the changes in Seth, changes that continuously turn him away from the human and towards the monstrous. .
...I suggest an opposite interpretation: instead of seeing Seth’s illness as a metaphor for monstrosity, I suggest that monstrosity is a metaphor for illness. Seth’s physical corruption as he becomes more and more monstrous is, in fact, a depiction of illness, and elicits disgust in the viewer that is identical to the disgust elicited by physical corruption brought about by illness. The external deformation of Seth as he becomes more and more fly-like, shown so spectacularly in the film, is a representation of the internal destruction and physiological chaos caused by disease....
http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=95
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 18:43 (sixteen years ago) link
The Fly was a genuine Hollywood film, a love story, rich in morbid humour, and a metaphor for genius and for any and every disease mankind has faced. As never before, in the relationship between Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, Cronenberg's compassion was revealed. Indeed, The Fly is only incidentally a horror film; it is primarily a screwball romance, one of the great movies about the kinship of freaks and... the rest of us.
^^ david thomson w/ the only worthwhile analysis of this film
― r|t|c, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 19:36 (sixteen years ago) link
uhhhh...people (incl. I think Cronenberg himself) have been saying that about The Fly for years. xpost.
― jessie monster, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 19:51 (sixteen years ago) link
I love every Cronenberg movie I've seen but The Brood is my favorite. I made my girlfriend watch it and not only was she totally creeped out and disturbed but shortly after that she became pregnant.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
He has creepy gyno stuff in the Brood, the Fly, Shivers, and of course DEAD RINGERS...what is the deal with this man?
He played the gynecologist in The Fly.
― Abbott, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:24 (sixteen years ago) link
There's creepy gyno stuff, yes, but there's also a more general obsession with bodies in general, and how squicky they are, and how they break down.
― kenan, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link
Oh, see, I hadn't read the Morbs post. The Fly is a perfect example.
― kenan, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:27 (sixteen years ago) link
i thought i'd heard he said the fly was about how in a love affair one person always turns into a monster.
^^also this
― kenan, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:29 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm looking forward to the new Cronenberg about as much as I am the new Paul Haggis flick.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:35 (sixteen years ago) link
Hey, Haggis wrote the screenplay for Casino Royale, which I think is great. He's not all bad.
― kenan, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:38 (sixteen years ago) link
True, but it's worth noting that Cronenberg has never pushed specifically male sexual biology for grossness points.
― Bob Standard, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:39 (sixteen years ago) link
what about the armpit peepee
― da croupier, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:40 (sixteen years ago) link
i've seen the trailer for "eastern promises" . it was kinda lame, i hope the movie won't be.
http://emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=6811
― Zeno, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:43 (sixteen years ago) link
Man, yeah, he's got hella stuff about getting PREGGERS...I can't imagine him making a movie about twin proctologists.
Makes him all the scarier, me being a girl and all. UGH that birth scene in the Brood.
― Abbott, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:44 (sixteen years ago) link
It comes out of a armpit girl vagina that is attached to a actual girl. So "maleness" angle here is kinda secondary. Fact, it ranks kinda high on the girl-sex-grossness scale.
― Bob Standard, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:47 (sixteen years ago) link
Man, watch that Eastern Promises trailer. Naomi Watts plays a MIDWIFE...there's a scene of her in surgical scrubs. I can't wait to watch interror as a 14-year-old-girl dies in a puddle of her own leukorrhea or something.
Actually I think it looks like a good movie. The only problem I can foresee is the fake Russian accent. I'm afraid it'll remind me of that letter being read by Lisa's Russian pen pal in the Simpsons, which changes in the middle to being written by a man overthrowing their house. "SINCERELY, LITTLE GIRL."
― Abbott, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:49 (sixteen years ago) link
haha
― kenan, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:56 (sixteen years ago) link
Cronenberg movies suck.
― milo z, Tuesday, 28 August 2007 23:59 (sixteen years ago) link
"Cronenberg has modestly described himself as looking like a Beverly Hills gynaecologist"
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:04 (sixteen years ago) link
Apparently Scorsese said this about him!
But he was MORE THAN HAPPY to keep the title, apparently.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:06 (sixteen years ago) link
hmmmm
http://www.filmfestivals.com/berlin99/img/cronenberg.jpg
I don't see the problem.
― kenan, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:07 (sixteen years ago) link
more recently:
http://25frames.org/media/news/david_cronenberg.jpg
― kenan, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:08 (sixteen years ago) link
He looks like a guy.
No, he's fine-looking man, it's just like, "Hey, J.G. Ballard, describe me as looking like a gynecologist. Like I played in the fly. Not that I'm obsessed with gynecology, it's...bodies...in general."
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:09 (sixteen years ago) link
Are you accusing Cronenberg of being... creepy?
― kenan, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:12 (sixteen years ago) link
THIS IS NOT HERESY AND I SHALL NOT RECANT
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:16 (sixteen years ago) link
No, I know what you're saying, and you're acknowledging an undercurrent that's in most of his movies, which is a male protagonist dealing with women as if they are an "other." But I don't feel like he's dishonest or self-deluding about it. Almost the opposite. And I think the reckless abandon with which he goes about displaying this tendency is interesting and possibly admirable. In Dead Ringers, a gynecologist becomes convinced that women are mutants and designs special and in fact sadistic-looking tools for these women. I do not imagine that Cronenberg himself is that horrified by the female form, but he's taking a tendency, possibly one of his own, grabbing the ball and running as far and as fast as he can with it.
― kenan, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:21 (sixteen years ago) link
I know, I love that about him too. And I dig that he's so open about it. I just didn't entirely agree w/yr statement that there's "a more general obsession with bodies in general, and how squicky they are, and how they break down." I mean, there is for sure, but maybe the gyno thing hits home for me bcz, you know, sitting in those stirrups can be scary enough without fearing you're going to get experimental treatment with some silver Geiger pterodactyl leg or explode with sacs that grow clowns of creepy Canadian boys.
(It's something I've always noticed due to the "AAAGH!" factor rather than the gender politics.)
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:25 (sixteen years ago) link
He would be honored to hear you say that. :)
Ok, so he's creepy. Creepy R People Too.
― kenan, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:27 (sixteen years ago) link
I sure love that man.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:28 (sixteen years ago) link
Have you seen Shivers, kenan? It's my favorite one.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:29 (sixteen years ago) link
I finally did, just a few months ago.
I still like Naked Lunch better.
― kenan, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 00:32 (sixteen years ago) link
So. . . Eastern Promises.
I was simultaneously excited and uh oh about this one from the previews (excited cuz it's new Cronenberg and uh oh cuz it looks like it might suck) and apparently it's written by the guy who did the awesome Dirty Pretty Things and it's getting really good reviews.
I heard one review describe this as a less weird Inland Empire haha!
― Alex in SF, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:14 (sixteen years ago) link
Whoa, when is it released? WANT TO SEE.
I saw Videodrome for the first time the other night....holy wow.
― Abbott, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:21 (sixteen years ago) link
Oh, sorry, I can do my own homework. IT will be released two Fridays from now. I'll scribble that into my day planner or something.
― Abbott, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:24 (sixteen years ago) link
I see that it will be release this coming Friday, where do you see two?
― Alex in SF, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:26 (sixteen years ago) link
Oh wait SELECT THEATERS nevermind.
― Alex in SF, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:27 (sixteen years ago) link
My theater is far from select, but it is quite close to a Cik•Fil•A.
― Abbott, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:30 (sixteen years ago) link
the early revies says it's excellent. something in between the godfather and inland empire... sounds tasty..
― Zeno, Monday, 10 September 2007 07:18 (sixteen years ago) link
naked knife fight, hooray
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:08 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm pretty sure no amount of good reviews from people I trust will be enough to convince me this won't suck.
― Eric H., Monday, 10 September 2007 18:10 (sixteen years ago) link
I R EXCITED
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:19 (sixteen years ago) link
"I'm pretty sure no amount of good reviews from people I trust will be enough to convince me this won't suck."
Yeah I'm sure it won't be as good as Black Dahlia.
― Alex in SF, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:22 (sixteen years ago) link
hey, Eric didn't even like BD much.
At least this figures to be less pretentious than History of Violence. I hope.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:24 (sixteen years ago) link
Haha I thought he said it was the most exciting movie he saw last year. Maybe I'm misremembering.
― Alex in SF, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:27 (sixteen years ago) link
there was some good stuff in BD but I spent more time laughing at it than genuinely enjoying it
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:28 (sixteen years ago) link
(xp) Yes. I was underwhelmed with Dahlia.
― Eric H., Monday, 10 September 2007 18:29 (sixteen years ago) link
I might have said something about it being the not-worst movie I saw last year, which may have understandably led to confusions.
― Eric H., Monday, 10 September 2007 18:30 (sixteen years ago) link
(btw Redacted isn't out til December)
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 10 September 2007 18:30 (sixteen years ago) link
Ebert gives Eastern Promises four of four stars
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:02 (sixteen years ago) link
What was pretentious about A History of Violence? I'm not arguing that it wasn't, just asking.
― jaymc, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:08 (sixteen years ago) link
It didn't even start with the mesopotamians. Some history.
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:09 (sixteen years ago) link
j, we had a whole thread on it! My problem: B movie as a Grand Statement.
― Dr Morbius, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:19 (sixteen years ago) link
It's less pretentious, but the stakes are also much lower. It's the slightest (formally, narratively and idea-wise) Cronenberg I've seen.
― C0L1N B..., Friday, 14 September 2007 19:20 (sixteen years ago) link
Haha have you seen Fast Company?
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:20 (sixteen years ago) link
I couldn't finish the Hoberman review, it seems like the more he praises Cronenberg (he again calls him the best North American filmmaker of his generation), the fewer ideas he has about him.
― C0L1N B..., Friday, 14 September 2007 19:23 (sixteen years ago) link
Haha, no. Nothing older than The Brood, so I guess that could explain my response.
x-post
― C0L1N B..., Friday, 14 September 2007 19:24 (sixteen years ago) link
Yeah, it was more interesting back in the day, the reviews, when his movies were cold and schlubby and no one liked them.
I want to get the Criterion Videodrome, are the extras good?
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:25 (sixteen years ago) link
"him the best North American filmmaker of his generation"
thats easy: no competition,except david lynch
― Zeno, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:28 (sixteen years ago) link
See, no one said that after SCANNERS, at which point I think he'd made a half-dozen movies.
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:30 (sixteen years ago) link
Lol @ Lynch and Cronenberg as only major North American directors of the 80s and 90s.
― C0L1N B..., Friday, 14 September 2007 19:32 (sixteen years ago) link
I guess it's to read the Death of Cinema thread.
― C0L1N B..., Friday, 14 September 2007 19:33 (sixteen years ago) link
^time
My problem: B movie as a Grand Statement.
otm... he tried to squeeze way too much out of a pretty thin premise.
― kenan, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:34 (sixteen years ago) link
I still haven't seen that one.
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:34 (sixteen years ago) link
not the only one, but waaaay above all others
― Zeno, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:38 (sixteen years ago) link
"... he tried to squeeze way too much out of a pretty thin premise"
depends how you look at it. you can also enjoy it flat, as lots of people did
― Zeno, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:39 (sixteen years ago) link
I thought the movie totally worked on the level of Viggo KICKING ASS.
He showed up on Colbert last night, fwiw. Not as a guest, just as an odd cameo, in a LOTR costume. He gave Colbert a very big sword. I don't even remember the premise.
― kenan, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:44 (sixteen years ago) link
AWESOME
― Abbott, Friday, 14 September 2007 19:46 (sixteen years ago) link
This is true. The steam room scene is great.
― C0L1N B..., Friday, 14 September 2007 19:47 (sixteen years ago) link
slight? it can't be boringer than spider, can it?
― remy bean, Saturday, 15 September 2007 02:53 (sixteen years ago) link
-- Abbott, Friday, September 14, 2007 7:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link
YES
good commentary and packaging too.
― latebloomer, Saturday, 15 September 2007 02:59 (sixteen years ago) link
so what kind of "big statement" was Cronenberg trying to make with AHOV?
the film touches on some themes beyond the gangster stuff, maybe. but i don't see that making the film pretentious.
― latebloomer, Saturday, 15 September 2007 03:12 (sixteen years ago) link
what's wrong with a b-movie as a grand statement anyway. ffs.
― latebloomer, Saturday, 15 September 2007 03:14 (sixteen years ago) link
I liked Eastern Promises (although a little less that AHOV--which it is much cleaner than thematically--and a lot less than Dirty Pretty Things--which it's just not as good as.) Watt, Mueller-Stahl, Cassell are all good (if at times not entirely believable in their respective Roles), but it's really all Mortensen's movie. The bathhouse fight scene is great.
― Alex in SF, Saturday, 15 September 2007 03:31 (sixteen years ago) link
i thought this thread will be more popular,now when the movie is out...does it mean i can wait for the dvd?
― Zeno, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link
^Spielberg, trendies
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 15:10 (sixteen years ago) link
I saw it last night. Fabulous. See it now on the big screen—you'll be able to see the FOOD better.
― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 23:11 (sixteen years ago) link
this was an awesome movie. Hitch would have been proud of it. cronenberg is proving he is currently the best director on playing with genres,injecting deep subtext about modern society and psychology. and it's very enjoyeble as well.
― Zeno, Saturday, 22 September 2007 00:12 (sixteen years ago) link
Saw Eastern Promises a few hours ago: much thinner than AHOV (this one more obviously betrays B-movie origins), and not as satisfying, although Mortensen is quite excellent in a performance that shows with what grace and power he can move.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:11 (sixteen years ago) link
I found it totally satisfying and actually preferred it a tiny bit to AHOV. I liked AHOV a lot, I just wasn't all that interested in the guy's marriage/ family, blah blah.
― Beth Parker, Saturday, 22 September 2007 15:34 (sixteen years ago) link
an american friend who normally watches things like norbert just saw this and says it is freakin terrific
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 13:36 (sixteen years ago) link
viggo, naomi and vincent cassell - cronenberg is such a perv
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 13:45 (sixteen years ago) link
loved it. beth's right - this is like ahov with the fat removed.
i've read several capsule reviews that mention cassel being miscast and thus the weak link, but i didn't see it.
― lauren, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 13:49 (sixteen years ago) link
I just saw Eastern Promises - I thought it was fantastic.
― Hurting 2, Sunday, 30 September 2007 03:57 (sixteen years ago) link
Very much one of those films where you can spend the train ride home thinking of another and another detail whose significance didn't immediately occur to you. The bathhouse fight was incredibly gripping - although I could have done without the "Oh shit, fat dude is still alive!" moment.
― Hurting 2, Sunday, 30 September 2007 04:01 (sixteen years ago) link
I just got my copy of Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Vol 2, the first volume of which, when delivered into Cronenberg's hands, provoked a rewrite of the original script of Eastern Promises. It's quite beautiful; I mailed Fuel today asking whether vol 1 would come back into print. (Volume 1 goes for several hundred $, as best I can tell.)
― libcrypt, Sunday, 30 September 2007 04:21 (sixteen years ago) link
although I could have done without the "Oh shit, fat dude is still alive!" moment
fat dudes die hard
― latebloomer, Sunday, 30 September 2007 07:17 (sixteen years ago) link
i liked this, but then i ran into a girl from kiev who hated it, and now i'm not so sure. it was cool and entertaining. and the bathhouse scene was pretty amazing and it brought back old(er) cronenberg for me (not just because of the blood, but because of the staging.) but it was a little too contrived at the same time, a couple of lines peeked through that built-up noir world.
― strgn, Sunday, 30 September 2007 08:13 (sixteen years ago) link
I think the Hitch comparison was a good one - it was more of a tightly written thriller than a realistic crime story.
― Hurting 2, Sunday, 30 September 2007 15:28 (sixteen years ago) link
Just saw a History of Violence. Holy shit it's intense and suspenseful and man, that guy's head sure gets shot open. Want to know what happens to his son.
― Abbott, Monday, 29 October 2007 19:52 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.hulu.com/watch/15520/naked-lunch
― and what, Friday, 30 May 2008 02:56 (fifteen years ago) link
two-disc edition of The Fly now at HMV for $4 (in toronto, at least). The second disc has a 2 1/2 documentary + the usual extras.
― negotiable, Sunday, 1 June 2008 22:12 (fifteen years ago) link
man ahov was great, finally saw it for the first time -- generic 'is dr. morbius wrong about everything' comment here -- i dont get why ppl think its 'pretentious' or whatever. it avoided camp i guess, in a way that made it seem really severe/stark. i also dont think it was at all about 'violence behind the scenes in small towns!', more about how the cost of peace is violence, and how violence exists in a lot of diff forms & whathaveyou throughout history ... nothing particularly pretentious about it tho, other than the discourse around it being 'ppl took this film seriously'
― choom gangsta (deej), Monday, 5 January 2009 09:09 (fifteen years ago) link
http://jaded4good.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/jameswoods.jpg http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/080408/Viggo-Mortenson_l.jpg http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/pv/Peter%20Weller-3.jpg
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:31 (fourteen years ago) link
Has anyone else noticed this?
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:33 (fourteen years ago) link
lol @ viggo's flag pin
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:35 (fourteen years ago) link
you left out Jeremy Irons
― girlish in the worst sense of that term (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:41 (fourteen years ago) link
but yeah he likes guys with pronounced cheekbones and penetrating stares
http://imstars.aufeminin.com/stars/fan/jeremy-irons/jeremy-irons-20060115-102615.jpg
His eyes are brown tho U SEE
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:42 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.jdmfilmreviews.com/images/existenz-teeth-gun.jpg
cherubic outlier
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:44 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.nbc.com/Raines/images/bios/jeff_goldblum.jpg
― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:49 (fourteen years ago) link
See he doesn't look like that in the Fly BUT Goldblum-in-the-Fly does look sort of like the-Fly-era-Cronenberg
http://www.northernstars.ca/NSCollection/cronenberg_videodrome.jpghttp://www.channel4.com/film/media/images/Channel4/film/F/fly_1986_xl_01--film-A.jpg
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:54 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00020/David_Cronenberg_Oct_20278t.jpghttp://www.erratica.us/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/easternpromises.jpg
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Monday, 27 July 2009 22:56 (fourteen years ago) link
stephen mchattie:
http://incrediblycool.ca/wp-content/uploads/stephen-mchattie-watchmen.jpg
― omar little, Monday, 27 July 2009 22:58 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00020/David_Cronenberg_Oct_20278t.jpghttp://www.moonbattery.com/archives/richard_belzer.jpg
― wax onleck, wax affleck (jjjusten), Monday, 27 July 2009 23:09 (fourteen years ago) link
Am I really going to have to be the first person to mention Cosmopolis on this thread?
― Telephone thing, Monday, 27 July 2009 23:43 (fourteen years ago) link
Yes, please do.
― bad-boy cartographer (Abbott), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 01:48 (fourteen years ago) link
but what about?
http://www.evilontwolegs.com/uploads/jon/jon10vamps/vampire7.jpg
― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 01:55 (fourteen years ago) link
He's making a movie of DeLillo's Cosmopolis.
I'm afraid that's all we know.
― Telephone thing, Tuesday, 28 July 2009 01:59 (fourteen years ago) link
That's... intriguing? I guess?
― never name anything coolpix (kenan), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 02:13 (fourteen years ago) link
Halfway through Cronenberg's screenplay Elias Koteas crashes into Packer's limousine and starts furiously humping the armrests.
― Telephone thing, Tuesday, 28 July 2009 02:49 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, no doubt whatever that turns out to be, it won't be Delillo. Maybe he liked the idea of it because it's one of those "plots" that you can hang anything off of, and of course Cronenberg shows up at every party with a big aged oak cask of his own neuroses.
― never name anything coolpix (kenan), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 02:51 (fourteen years ago) link
so are you saying it's gonna be a kegger?
― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 03:01 (fourteen years ago) link
You know it.
― never name anything coolpix (kenan), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 03:05 (fourteen years ago) link
He has mellowed out in his middle years, to be fair. He no longer holds your feet up and screams at you to chug.
― never name anything coolpix (kenan), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 03:07 (fourteen years ago) link
Am I forgetting something, or was Rabid the only film he made with a female lead?
― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Tuesday, 28 July 2009 03:12 (fourteen years ago) link
eXistenZ, kind of?
― Telephone thing, Tuesday, 28 July 2009 03:15 (fourteen years ago) link
I FINALLY watched A History of Violence. I've seen Eastern Promises three times but I have no excuse for not watching this like four years ago.
― fields of salmon, Tuesday, 28 July 2009 22:26 (fourteen years ago) link
I also finally watched A History of Violence last night! And then read through most of the comments about it that were posted or linked upthread, many of which are frustratingly wrong-headed -- "well jeeze david, of course violence is terrible and icky and doesn't solve anything, we all know that already! also just FYI you sort of accidentally showed violence solving some things in your movie, you might want to fix that before the DVD comes out."
also, I didn't see anyone comment on one of the elements I found most interesting: the fact that Tom/Joey almost never intimidates people. he doesn't use violence as a threat, he just remains calm as long as possible, then flips the switch and kills everyone as quickly and efficiently as possible (highly significant exception: when he slaps his son for talking back). this isn't necessarily a good thing, though, and it's not portrayed as one; there are good and bad people on both sides of the intimidation/violence divide (Tom/Joey, his son, and the serial killers vs. the mafia, the police, and the bullies). in some cases, the movie seems to suggest, a telegraphed show or threat of violence, unpleasant though it may be, can defuse a situation before it goes too far. the whole bullying subplot illustrates this pretty well -- the bully isn't really a violent guy, he's just a prick who gets a kick out of going through this bullshit macho posturing ritual with kids who are lower on the totem pole. the son's response is 'violent' in the sense that it breaks the rules of this game -- in fact, this is kinda the film's thesis: violence is something that always appears excessive and uncalled-for. even if it's not explicitly pro-intimidation, it certainly calls into question the morality of the archetypal "good man who's been pushed to the breaking point".
― Someone Still Loves You Dennis Kucinich's Hot Wife (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 29 July 2009 13:14 (fourteen years ago) link
basically I think this film is operating beyond the simplistic "hey guess what, there is VIOLENCE in the heart of EVERY MAN!!!" analysis that people are accusing it of; it takes that as a starting premise and asks, okay, now that we all agree on this, does that knowledge entail any moral obligations for us, either as individuals or as a society?
― Someone Still Loves You Dennis Kucinich's Hot Wife (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 29 July 2009 13:51 (fourteen years ago) link
Just saw Naked Lunch again. Has he ever used a supporting cast this well (Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider, Julian Sands, etc).
― Little starbursts of joy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 27 September 2009 03:13 (fourteen years ago) link
dont think i posted abt it, but 'shivers' is pretty great
― johnny crunch, Sunday, 27 September 2009 03:15 (fourteen years ago) link
xp - I think the supporting cast in Naked Lunch was probably the best of all of his, usually there are only one or two standouts.
― I ♠ my display name (sarahel), Sunday, 27 September 2009 03:33 (fourteen years ago) link
Eastern Promises is the first Cronenberg in a while that I've really loved. I think Viggo Mortensen gave one of the best performences I've ever seen.
― Dan S, Sunday, 27 September 2009 03:45 (fourteen years ago) link
So funny this got revived. We just finished watching Videodrome 10 minutes ago.
― Mordy, Sunday, 27 September 2009 03:47 (fourteen years ago) link
He is apparently re-remaking the Fly. After already adapting it into an Opera.
This is either depressing or Next Level Shit on the order of Herzog doing a Bad Lietennant movie with Nic Cage.
― deus ex lawnmower (latebloomer), Monday, 28 September 2009 04:05 (fourteen years ago) link
the fly is def one of those movies where there's no way the CGI fx are gonna be nearly as gruesome and effective as the old-school latex and karo syrup gore was.
― dan selzer, Monday, 28 September 2009 04:24 (fourteen years ago) link
for sure. though i doubt senor c-bergo would over-rely on cgi.
i don't know if it's gonna be a straight-up remake or some other new thing. a cinematic adaptation of the opera would be kind of hilarious.
― deus ex lawnmower (latebloomer), Monday, 28 September 2009 04:53 (fourteen years ago) link
Just like Michael Mann and Miami Vice, I guess.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 September 2009 05:08 (fourteen years ago) link
flyami vice
― deus ex lawnmower (latebloomer), Monday, 28 September 2009 05:12 (fourteen years ago) link
Where's that JBR names thread.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 September 2009 05:13 (fourteen years ago) link
Watching 'The Brood' now. Saw 'The Dead Zone' and 'eXistenZ' two days ago.
Thoughts?
Also, I didn't know Oliver Reed was in this.
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Long long time but I used to love The Brood. It feels like a big step towards his Dead Ringers mature ease-up-on-the-splatter phase. Which is not a wholly good thing but in the case of this movie it works big time. Thinking back on it now it occurs to me that he's quoting The Birds during that whole big lab full of babies bit?
― National Sockpuppet Helpline (Noodle Vague), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:19 (fourteen years ago) link
Had you seen The Dead Zone before? That is a great film, easily one of C'berg's best I reckon.
― Bill A, Friday, 26 February 2010 11:42 (fourteen years ago) link
I'd never actually seen it, except for the later SNL parody of it, and that I always remember early-80s Walken from seeing 'Brainstorm' too many times on HBO growing up.
It's been part of my recent effort to view every single Stephen King adaption I can find for my 'Stephen King's Cavalcade of Terribleness' movie night that I'm planning. So far, I only have Sleepwalkers & Pet Sematary, and I need one more...
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:46 (fourteen years ago) link
tommyknockers
― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:49 (fourteen years ago) link
Dead Zone is the second best King adaptation by a country mile, probly the best straight King adaptation.
― National Sockpuppet Helpline (Noodle Vague), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:50 (fourteen years ago) link
kingfish what did you think of existenz?
― bracken free ditch (Ste), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:52 (fourteen years ago) link
I liked it. I remember when it was playing on campus the same summer that the Matrix came out and plenty of reviewers drew explicit comparisons between the two.
It reminded me of Cronenberg's standard weird-shaped-flesh-fetish from the bits of Naked Lunch I'd seen, along with the Fly and Dead Ringers.
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 11:58 (fourteen years ago) link
xpost - Not Cronenberg but The Mist is the most surprisingly good King adaptation in a long long time. Maximum Overdrive and Creepshow are great too.
― Nate Carson, Friday, 26 February 2010 12:05 (fourteen years ago) link
Tommyknockers is way too long to watch with two other movies, and it's only kinda enh rather than outright hilariously horrid.
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:09 (fourteen years ago) link
Also, the melodramatic strings soundtrack to The Brood really does remind me of peak-era Hitchcock
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:15 (fourteen years ago) link
Hey, I didn't know this, from his wiki:
Since 1988's Dead Ringers, Cronenberg has worked with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky on each of his films (see List of noted film director and cinematographer collaborations). Suschitzky was the director of photography for The Empire Strikes Back, and Cronenberg has repeatedly said that Suschitzky's work in that film made it the most beautiful sci-fi film he had ever seen, which was a motivating factor to work with him on Dead Ringers.
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:28 (fourteen years ago) link
wow david crononberg don't watch much sci fi huh
― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:30 (fourteen years ago) link
Well, I'm trying to think of other 1980-or-before sci-fi flicks that the dude would find that striking. Kubrick's stuff? Solaris? Alien? Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind?
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:37 (fourteen years ago) link
Blade Runner
― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:41 (fourteen years ago) link
not pre-80 but certainly pre 88
― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:42 (fourteen years ago) link
Star Wars duh
― take me to your lemur (ledge), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:42 (fourteen years ago) link
i seem to make some connection btwn star wars and empire strikes back but i may be rong
― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah but SW isn't as visually striking as Empire can be.
And Blade Runner was the first thing I'd thought of, except the year's wrong
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:45 (fourteen years ago) link
SW can be pretty striking - the opening scene for one but imo every shot is a work of art. Does have more limited environments though, just desert or spaceships.
― take me to your lemur (ledge), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:48 (fourteen years ago) link
Also
shivers is great, like if romero directed an orgy flick
haaaaa I wish Blount was still around.
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 12:49 (fourteen years ago) link
I watched Empire again quite recently and was surprised by how well shot it is. Thinking especially of the stuff on Dagobah and almost everything on Bespin - the final battle between Luke and Vader is so atmospheric and powerful, esp the shadows, smoke and neon opening in the carbonite chamber.
― Bill A, Friday, 26 February 2010 13:09 (fourteen years ago) link
Apropos of nothing, the 1980 Oscar nominees for cinematography:
The Blue Lagoon (1980) - Néstor AlmendrosCoal Miner's Daughter (1980) - Ralf D. BodeThe Formula (1980) - James Crabe Raging Bull (1980) - Michael Chapman (I)Tess (1979) - Geoffrey Unsworth; Ghislain Cloquet
― queen frostine (Eric H.), Friday, 26 February 2010 13:16 (fourteen years ago) link
(Sort of retrospectively shocking that The Shining was snubbed in favor of those first three nods, but I guess the movie's stature wasn't particularly high back in 1980.)
― queen frostine (Eric H.), Friday, 26 February 2010 13:17 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah, seems amazing that it would miss out, especially to tat like The Blue Lagoon.
― Bill A, Friday, 26 February 2010 13:30 (fourteen years ago) link
Apparently, the cinematography branch in the '70s was possibly the most insular of all academy branches, hence repeated nominations for, say, Owen Roizman for generally ruddy-looking movies.
― queen frostine (Eric H.), Friday, 26 February 2010 13:49 (fourteen years ago) link
Ghislain Cloquet, btw, lensed Bresson films AND Woody Allen's Love and Death.
The Shining just utilized late Kubrick's usual, what is the word? Glare.
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 February 2010 13:53 (fourteen years ago) link
that's a challop for the ages...
― Bill A, Friday, 26 February 2010 13:59 (fourteen years ago) link
In fact, I think it was his first (and least) glare movie.The challops in 1980 was that The Shining didn't fucking suck.
so Croney doesn't have a new project ready to go?
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:04 (fourteen years ago) link
topic for the aged, perhaps.
eh except i agree with morbs totally there.
― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:06 (fourteen years ago) link
The challops in 1980 was that The Shining didn't fucking suck.
Yeah, I did say that already. Happily, time has been especially kind to that, Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut (i.e. Kubrick's three best films).
― queen frostine (Eric H.), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:07 (fourteen years ago) link
I think you mean Paths of Glory, 2001 and Barry Lyndon <3
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:09 (fourteen years ago) link
I think you should go to bed.
― queen frostine (Eric H.), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:11 (fourteen years ago) link
good idea! maybe i'll put that Hal Holbrook movie on again...
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:12 (fourteen years ago) link
Rituals, I hope?
― Shannon Whirry and the Bad Brains, Friday, 26 February 2010 14:47 (fourteen years ago) link
no, That Evening Sun to make me sleepy.
― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 February 2010 14:48 (fourteen years ago) link
Shining was marketed like a slasher so it wasn't taken all that seriously at the time? Probably wasn't seen by a lot of academy voters anyway...
― Nate Carson, Friday, 26 February 2010 19:30 (fourteen years ago) link
thought he was doing that Philip Roth adaptation
― mark roflr (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 February 2010 19:33 (fourteen years ago) link
He was working on an opera of "The Fly," no foolin'. Don't know if that's still in progress, done, abandoned, or what.
― blow it out your bad-taste hole (WmC), Friday, 26 February 2010 19:41 (fourteen years ago) link
thought that was over. Roth thing was posted here somewhere, something about a day-long cross-town journey of NY. I've never been able to stomach more than 10 pages of Roth so I dunno what book this was...
― mark roflr (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 February 2010 19:42 (fourteen years ago) link
daylong crosstown journey of ny sounds like delillo 'cosmopolis'
― johnny crunch, Friday, 26 February 2010 19:53 (fourteen years ago) link
^^^that's it. mixed up Roth and Delillo, my bad.
― mark roflr (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 26 February 2010 19:59 (fourteen years ago) link
Cronenberg is currently attached to direct an adaptation of The Talking Cure, set to star Keira Knightley, Christoph Waltz, and Michael Fassbender.[8]. He also plans to write and direct a film adaptation of Don Delillo's Cosmopolis.[9] He was also recently set to direct the film version of The Matarese Circle with Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise until Cruise backed out.
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 20:04 (fourteen years ago) link
Keira Fucking Knightley!
― Bill A, Friday, 26 February 2010 20:12 (fourteen years ago) link
May she be lucky enough to get one of the squishier body-mod roles
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2010 20:17 (fourteen years ago) link
Cronenberg + Fassbender, fuck yeah.
― Simon H., Friday, 26 February 2010 20:18 (fourteen years ago) link
She's just such a *nothing* in every role she plays, a charisma vacuum. Some balance might be achieved by Fassbender, who is ace and likely a perfect fit with C'berg's approach. I've only seen Waltz in IB, but he totally owned that.
ha! you beat me to it for the F/bender love Simon!
― Bill A, Friday, 26 February 2010 20:22 (fourteen years ago) link
I can't wait to see how he messes with Knightley - there's something Hitchcockian about the way he treats women in his movies.
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 26 February 2010 21:05 (fourteen years ago) link
The Talking Cure,
is this a freud biopic or something? wasn't somebody else working on a freud film? malick maybe?
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 26 February 2010 23:40 (fourteen years ago) link
btw cronenberg is really on a roll lately.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 26 February 2010 23:41 (fourteen years ago) link
tonight's flicks are Rabid and Naked Lunch
― Sex Sexual (kingfish), Saturday, 13 March 2010 07:21 (fourteen years ago) link
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2f4q1iYBR1qz7gtqo1_500.jpg
pretty amped for this
― just sayin, Friday, 14 May 2010 19:27 (thirteen years ago) link
i think i saw the fly as a little kid but just saw it again and HOLY SHIT IS IT A GOOD MOVIE
― johnny crunch, Friday, 14 May 2010 20:12 (thirteen years ago) link
Interesting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun/23/david-cronenberg-jonathan-lethem
― jaymc, Friday, 25 June 2010 02:59 (thirteen years ago) link
Oh and I had no idea he was filming Cosmopolis. Hope it's better than the book!
― jaymc, Friday, 25 June 2010 03:02 (thirteen years ago) link
All I know for sure is that the pic they chose for that article is awesome and a half.
― kenan, Friday, 25 June 2010 03:05 (thirteen years ago) link
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2010/6/23/1277301017096/Rome-Film-Festival-2008-D-006.jpg
I'd have desaturated it a bit, though. Sinister is good vibe for the pic, but evil Oompah-Loompah is... a different vibe. Like if the movie Elf was made by Cronenberg.
― kenan, Friday, 25 June 2010 03:08 (thirteen years ago) link
The family wakes up to find him eating a bowl of vaginas for breakfast.
― kenan, Friday, 25 June 2010 03:09 (thirteen years ago) link
not too jazzed about cosmopolis, but i am thrilled to hear that somebody's gonna take a shot at and she crawled across the table. fact that it's cronenberg is just icing.
― contenderizer, Friday, 25 June 2010 03:22 (thirteen years ago) link
and, as, whatever
I saw the trailer for A Dangerous Method tonight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ7JKmcLTsI
I haven't liked a Cronenberg film since Dead Ringers, but this one looks good. "From the director of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises," though--ouch. What next, "From the director of Shutter's Island and The Aviator"?
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 05:08 (twelve years ago) link
"From the director of his last two movies..."
― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 05:11 (twelve years ago) link
Nice!
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 05:12 (twelve years ago) link
stooooked for this
― thick-necked and hateful (latebloomer), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 05:21 (twelve years ago) link
This looks ace.
"From the director of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises,"
I really like them both, and coming after a long run of commercial failures it doesn't surprise me that this trailer plays on them. I suspect there's plenty of people who saw them that know next to nothing about Cronenberg's earlier stuff (except maybe The Fly), and in box-office terms there cannot be any harm in reminding people about his previous work with Viggo; I've a co-worker who I'd never have taken for a C'berg viewer who stans for both of these primarily because of "that lovely man"!
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 07:18 (twelve years ago) link
From a commercial standpoint, you're right. I'm just such a fan of his '80s work and so indifferent to the later films that it hit a discordant note. Maybe they could split the difference and at least mention The Fly, which was a big hit at the time and probably known to most everyone through TV or video.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:47 (twelve years ago) link
yeah saw this preview awhile ago - looks promising
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:48 (twelve years ago) link
I do kinda wish he would return to horror/sci-fi at some point tho
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:49 (twelve years ago) link
"from the director of shivers and videodrome" did not test well
― hello I love you but I've chosen darkness my old friend (Edward III), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:50 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think he needs the gross stuff anymore, though. For me, The Dead Zone and Dead Ringers are my ideal for a Cronenberg film (there's a bit of gore in each).
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:51 (twelve years ago) link
ugh Dead Ringers fuck that movie
Dead Zone is aces tho
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:52 (twelve years ago) link
and it's not the gross-out stuff I pine for (there's plenty of that in his last few!) it's the conceptual audacity, the ideas that go beyond the psychodramas of criminals and neurotics
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:54 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLhFIwkbtJI
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 20:59 (twelve years ago) link
I love The Dead Zone. I distinctly remember that a lot of Cronenberg fans at the time thought it was tepid, even a sell-out--those who loved Rabid and [i]Shivers and The Brood--but for me it's close to perfect, with Walken's performance the best found in any Cronenberg film. I'm surprised you're so down on Dead Ringers; if nothing else, I'd say it's conceptually audacious.
PTT just posted one of my favourite line readings in any film ever.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:02 (twelve years ago) link
better title: Hunks of Psychoanalysis
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:05 (twelve years ago) link
^^
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:07 (twelve years ago) link
lol
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:07 (twelve years ago) link
i am stoked for this but then i will watch anything he does at least once. (and many of them i will watch many, many times.)
there's a thread for it btw
A Dangerous Method -- David Cronenberg/Viggo Mortensen's latest
i can't see why they didn't go with something simple like spanking miss knightley
― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Tuesday, June 21, 2011
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
My post up there comes across as a bit more pro box-office than I really mean; I absolutely love his earlier stuff (esp. The Dead Zone and Videodrome), but also dig how he's maintained a lot of the weirdness yet managed to make money since he and Viggo's bromance took root. I remember the first time I saw AHoV and the rasping shot-away jawbone bit just felt like a *pure* Cronenberg moment.
I can see I already gave her both barrels way upthread, but it still seems a shame that he's bought into the Keira Knightley hype for this, when the male cast is so stellar in comparison. Again though, she will get tickets sold, despite what sounds like the best "russian" accent this side of Malkovich in Rounders.
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
I'm surprised you're so down on Dead Ringers; if nothing else, I'd say it's conceptually audacious.
I'm just don't find the central conceit - TWO Jeremy Irons'! - all that interesting. I can see how it must have been fun/challenging to make given the technology at the time, but I don't find anything particularly interesting about the symbiotic, self-destructive relationship of two twins, it kind of goes nowhere.
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
like I get it, they're different, but they're also THE SAME DO U SEE *snore*
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:11 (twelve years ago) link
would watch any movie where viggo plays freud tbh, cronenberg or no
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
is there a thread of missing contenderizer
― hello I love you but I've chosen darkness my old friend (Edward III), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
i think keira knightley's a good actress and also i'm excited to see her get spanked *old italian guy leer*
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:13 (twelve years ago) link
xposts: yeah i mean there were parts of eastern promises (which i loved) that coulda been any gangster drama but then there were the close-ups of viggo snipping a corpse's fingers off with a pair of garden shears. plus one of the most brutal and literally balls-out fight scenes of the last couple years, so it's not as if dude's gone all genteel on us.
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:14 (twelve years ago) link
he got the only diverting performance out of both JIs that i've ever seen, plus genevieve b is always watchable -- but DR's arc "story arc" is just \
― mark s, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:14 (twelve years ago) link
i kinda felt like the camera regarded the baby at the end of EP like some kind of special effects monster too
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:15 (twelve years ago) link
actually the fly and DR have the same story: "the flies"
― mark s, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:16 (twelve years ago) link
yeah I can kinda see that
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:17 (twelve years ago) link
re: The Dead Zone, am yearning for a blu-ray release of this. Totally agree with clemenza and others who are repping for it, prob my favourite Walken performance too. At least its relative lack of cred means I was able to pick up a lovely 1-sheet of the original poster for about £10, although to get it framed (in the UK) will cost 10x that.
And yeah, re: EP baby etc, no matter how much his style matures there's that very distinct looming-dread feeling in everything he does. Which is obviously a very good thing.
― that mustardless plate (Bill A), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:18 (twelve years ago) link
btw i dunno if this has been posted itt or not, but it's a pretty entertaining (and sometimes lolz-y) four-part tv doc from around the fly era (i'd guess). kind of a snapshot given how differently he's positioned (himself) for the last twenty years or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zCZMjWuNY0
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:23 (twelve years ago) link
another one from around the same time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2wk8ZI_8Co
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:24 (twelve years ago) link
^^ that one's definitely more interesting. though lol @ the squeamishness of almost everyone interviewed.
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:26 (twelve years ago) link
Dead Ringers is my favorite but I don't rewatch it often.
I like most of his work through 1991 in varying degrees, even Naked Lunch.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:49 (twelve years ago) link
every time i am reminded that this freud trailer exists its like being given a candy bar
― am/sand (Lamp), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:51 (twelve years ago) link
still too traumatized by Dead Ringers to ever revisit it.
― Gukbe, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:52 (twelve years ago) link
Naked Lunch doesn't totally work but I enjoy it, it nails a unique smacked-out sci-fi noir vibe. which is Burroughs in a nutshell really
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:52 (twelve years ago) link
even Eastern Promises, which was just okay, had such a lived-in texture: the smell of the upholstery in the restaurant, Armin Mueller-Stahl's face, the borscht, the hospital.
Viggo's Oscar nod was one of the few genuinely surprising moments the Academy's given us in recent years.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 21:54 (twelve years ago) link
Quite by accident, I found out a few days ago that a friend of mine worked on The Dead Zone. From a Facebook post: "Next time you see Christopher Walken's Volkswagen crash into that truck, think of me holding off traffic." Naked Lunch was where he started to lose me; never saw M. Butterfly or Eastern Promises (yes, I know, I should see the latter--that's how much I disliked A History of Violence).
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:00 (twelve years ago) link
I'm laughing looking at my last post--okay, "worked on" is a stretch.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:01 (twelve years ago) link
Eastern Promises is better than a History of Violence imho
never liked M Butterfly. or Crash for that matter.
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:02 (twelve years ago) link
Those two are awful. Crash generated more walkouts than any movie I've attended.
Any movie named "Crash" is doomed to ignominy.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:05 (twelve years ago) link
gtfo
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:06 (twelve years ago) link
Cronenberg's awful Crash better then Haggis' even more awful Crash.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:08 (twelve years ago) link
I've lived my whole live waiting for a sex scene between Holly Hunter and an Oldsmobile.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:08 (twelve years ago) link
I hated Crash too; at the time, I tried envisioning an SCTV parody with Edith Prickley in the Holly Hunter role..
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:10 (twelve years ago) link
Anyway I like most of Cronenberg's films and his recent track record is fine by me as both HoV and EP are well worth watching (as is Spider.)
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:11 (twelve years ago) link
i seriously loved ahov, and liked ep a good deal - i think with the latter it was a much livelier movie than maybe it had any right to be. kinda like inside man, which was undoubtedly garbage on the page but had all these spike lee moments stuffed into the margins that kept you watching.
i dont love crash, but i appreciate some scenes in it. i dont really 'get' whatever he was doing with that movie, but i dig how detached and minimalist it is. but it makes for a pretty dry viewing experience
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:20 (twelve years ago) link
I liked Inside Man too.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:24 (twelve years ago) link
Inside Man is like the best movie Spike Lee has made in 20 years or so
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:26 (twelve years ago) link
its not better than malcom x mate...
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:28 (twelve years ago) link
somehow I watched HOV without realising it was Cronenberg. I liked it but then when the penny dropped I felt a little disappointed. Think I should probably see it again to make an informed decision but I feel like it can be grouped in with EP in the films Cronenberg has made that don't drill his hallmarks home quite so aggressively. Apologies if this has been said elsewhere as I think it's a pretty obvious point.
― owenf, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:45 (twelve years ago) link
Crash > Crash
― Gus Van Sant's Gerry Blank (Eric H.), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
have you seen Malcolm X lately? doesn't hold up imho
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:02 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, Malcolm X is tepid. Summer of Sam is the last good non-for-hire Spike joint.
― Gus Van Sant's Gerry Blank (Eric H.), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:04 (twelve years ago) link
25th Hour
― Gukbe, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:08 (twelve years ago) link
Summer of Sam over Malcolm X? That's quite a leap for me.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:10 (twelve years ago) link
Summer of Sam is quite good except for the punk club scenes which are just silly.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:11 (twelve years ago) link
Guess I'm in the minority there--it was the first Spike Lee film I really hated. I even liked some things about Girl 6 and Crooklyn.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:14 (twelve years ago) link
Clockers is better than 25th Hour.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:14 (twelve years ago) link
I don't remember anything about Girl 6. Crooklyn is good though.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:15 (twelve years ago) link
It's been a while, but Girl 6 had "Erotic City," Spike brandishing a Ken Griffey rookie card, and Theresa Randle. Good enough for me.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:17 (twelve years ago) link
clockers is a p rad movie imo and i liked crooklyn too
eastern promises was just enjoyable to watch, i think, if not a 'great' movie. its also the sort of movie where i could get engrossed w/o really caring about action on screen or anticipating the action, like it was pleasurable just to watch the screen as it happened
― am/sand (Lamp), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:18 (twelve years ago) link
It is but there's some strong emotional undercurrents in the latter. I watched it again with a friend a couple years ago who was far less forgiving of its absurdities (I couldn't bear to watch the Anna Paquin-Hoffman scenes again, or endure Edward Norton's besty's obsession with being prison bait).
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:19 (twelve years ago) link
i'd be curious to know what clemenza hated about ahov - it really feels to me like something by the same guy who did the Dead Zone, really confident and scary and funny. makes for an interesting comparison w/road to perdition, the other paradox press funnybook turned 'serious' movie. neither flick cares much about the comics they're based on, but cronenberg is much more comfortable working with the pulpiness of the material. mendes clearly looks down on it, and he has a very primitive point of view and a very ponderous and self-serious way of expressing it. the result is one of the crappier movies ive seen in the last decade.
have you seen Malcolm X lately? doesn't hold up imho― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, August 31, 2011 7:02 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, August 31, 2011 7:02 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark
yeah, i actually havent seen it in quite a while. still feel like i'd take most of the 90s stuff over inside man though (which i think is good, dont get me wrong!). inside man's story is such gimmicky bullshit, but the movie comes to life whenever spike finds time for his little asides - clive owen sitting down with the kid playin a video game, denzel's interactions with white cops, the sikh in the restaurant. but i wouldn't take it over clockers or crooklyn. those movies didnt have to smuggle in those cool little moments.
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:41 (twelve years ago) link
okay so maybe I should have said in 15 years. now are you happy
― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 31 August 2011 23:44 (twelve years ago) link
One specific thing I hated about History was something many people liked: William Hurt. I do understand that he gave the kind of florid performance that divides reaction--there are similar performances in other movies I like a lot. Speaking just generally--I haven't given the film a second thought since it was released, and I don't remember a lot--I found it very dull. All through the '80s, Cronenberg's films were really interesting to me, like nobody else's. I felt at the time that History was drained of all that, and could have been made by any skilled technician.
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:00 (twelve years ago) link
The Bello-Viggo scenes are as good as Irons-Bujold's.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:02 (twelve years ago) link
William Hurt only has a few minutes at the end, so you're lucky.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:03 (twelve years ago) link
I've got it on the shelf, so I'm going to take another look. I often set myself up for disappointment with favourite (or at least one-time favourite) directors.
― clemenza, Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:17 (twelve years ago) link
Disappointment is more edifying than fandom, thankfully.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:19 (twelve years ago) link
the bello-viggo stuff IS great, and led to me being disappointed that bello hasnt appeared in anything substantial since then...
william hurt's one of those guys who i think is a considerable actor within a certain range, but if you get him in the wrong role it's usually a disaster. i would've expected this to be one of those wrong roles, but i loved him in it
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
He's unusual, isn't he? When cast to project plodding WASP intelligence, he can be affecting.
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:29 (twelve years ago) link
Crash was funny, you dingalings
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:54 (twelve years ago) link
like jizz on vinyl
― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:57 (twelve years ago) link
agreeing with morbs omg
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Thursday, 1 September 2011 00:59 (twelve years ago) link
i feel dirtier than anything j.g. ballard ever cooked up
"Crash" is awesome if only for the pull-quote emblazoned on the DVD: " ...sex and car crashes ..." I chalk the movie up as a failed attempt at filming the unfilmable, a la "Naked Lunch," but like that one is has a lot going for it.
I've pretty much found something to like or love in all his films, save "Spider," which I never finished, and "M. Butterfly," which I've never seen. I think his somewhat overlooked masterpiece may be the short "Camera."
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 September 2011 01:21 (twelve years ago) link
Hey, look!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQlQgzRyBfY
I've never seen History, for exactly the criticism Clemenza levels at it –– it seems technically skilled, elegant, and dull. I'll take unskilled, ugly, and interesting any day; somebody like Araki or Korine, even if I end up hating the film.
― notorious ilx wet noodle (remy bean), Thursday, 1 September 2011 02:21 (twelve years ago) link
"technically skilled, elegant, and dull"
are yo usaying the first 2 ensure the 3rd?
I don't much like it, but it springs to life occasionally (eg, on the stairs).
I've avoided Eastern Promises, for the violence.
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 September 2011 02:31 (twelve years ago) link
Well, I'd hold out for the hat trick (skilled, elegant, and exciting) but ... I wouldn't be watching a lot of movies. What I mean is that if I'm deciding between two films, and one of them is technically skilled and classically beautiful and looks a little inert, it would be a trailing second choice behind a movie that appears ugly, amateur, and exciting. I guess my main film-selecting rubric (especially given my background in LA) weighs dramatically/narratively interesting films more heavily than technically sparkling and well-composed ones.
― notorious ilx wet noodle (remy bean), Thursday, 1 September 2011 02:37 (twelve years ago) link
I also hate being "shocked" or "moved" by watching people doing new iterations of old terrible things to each other. My taste doesn't see it as enlightening, just as shit-wallowing. I love Cronenberg's early career, but he lost me with Spider, and History of Violence didn't seem to be the film to bring me back into the fold.
― notorious ilx wet noodle (remy bean), Thursday, 1 September 2011 02:40 (twelve years ago) link
US prime suspect! cautiously optimistic over here.
aaaand 'the cooler' heh
― goole, Thursday, 1 September 2011 02:42 (twelve years ago) link
"The Cooler" was 2 years earlier, even.
― Halal Spaceboy (WmC), Thursday, 1 September 2011 02:55 (twelve years ago) link
Remember Hello in Towelhead? No? You're lucky then.
― Status Update...in my Seether? (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 1 September 2011 03:09 (twelve years ago) link
Bello. Stupid phone.
"Cosmopolis is an upcoming drama film starring Robert Pattinson and directed by David Cronenberg"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolis_%28film%29
― owenf, Thursday, 17 November 2011 01:45 (twelve years ago) link
"do the worm on acropolis. slamdance cosmopolis."
― encarta it (Gukbe), Thursday, 17 November 2011 01:51 (twelve years ago) link
on Freud, Jung etc:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-11-16/film/freudian-trip-in-dialogue-with-david-cronenberg/
has anyone seen that Last Jew in the World short that's mentioned?
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 17 November 2011 03:25 (twelve years ago) link
I can guiltily say I enjoyed Cosmopolis as a book and await Cronenberg's treatment
― mh, Thursday, 17 November 2011 14:51 (twelve years ago) link
NYC retro in a few weeks kicks off w/ appearance by the man himself:
http://www.movingimage.us/films/2012/01/21/detail/david-cronenberg/
― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 3 January 2012 21:44 (twelve years ago) link
I'm really bummed that we're heading to a city big enough to show his new one, but two weeks before it opens. ;_;
― Steamtable Willie (WmC), Wednesday, 4 January 2012 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
i watched rabid p recently -- was impressed @ how many set ups, etc there were, it seemed v v professional for an "early" work. think i like shivers more though
also cronenberg talks abt marilyn chambers boyfriend being around the set @ carrying a gun -- i think this is artie mitchell right? idk i thought that was interesting
― johnny crunch, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 01:21 (twelve years ago) link
Rewatched Eastern Promises over the festive season and liked it as much as the first time round. Going to rewatch A History Of Violence before the Freud/Jung one reaches here in February.
― only NWOFHM! is real (krakow), Wednesday, 4 January 2012 09:02 (twelve years ago) link
There was definitely money behind Rabid. Even the choice of Chambers...I remember reading that the producers or whomever really thought it was going to be a big smash. Cronenberg wanted Sissy Spacek for the role.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 15:29 (twelve years ago) link
yeah Shivers is better
― The Silent Extreme (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 4 January 2012 17:49 (twelve years ago) link
finally seeing A Dangerous Method on Tuesday
― max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 10 February 2012 00:12 (twelve years ago) link
On the differing "impossible adaptations" of Naked Lunch and Crash
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/migrating-forms-20120203
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, 10 February 2012 01:34 (twelve years ago) link
I should rewatch Crash. I really like Cronenberg's Naked Lunch!
― valleys of your mind (mh), Friday, 10 February 2012 01:42 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DCFB-WPe9Ic
― just sayin, Thursday, 22 March 2012 07:50 (twelve years ago) link
HAahah .... ok but guys what was that fucking dinosaur was doing there.....hats off 2 u robbiiiee love uRafarish1 26 minutes ago
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, 22 March 2012 09:05 (twelve years ago) link
holly freaking molly!!! is this R-rated or what?? .. It'd be so awkward to watch this with my buddies. They will think that I am sexually addict...lol!!jpattzlovevampz 2 hours ago
*HYPERVENTILATES* ROBERT! ooh I am so dead just looking at him in this teaser trailer! gshivy123 2 hours ago
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, 22 March 2012 09:07 (twelve years ago) link
Well I'm sad now I'm only eleven can't see it :( get the trenchcoatMissBethanyCullen 1 minute ago
― Number None, Thursday, 22 March 2012 11:09 (twelve years ago) link
Back on track.
― Eric H., Thursday, 22 March 2012 11:20 (twelve years ago) link
nah, I don't see many boring horror tropes there
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 22 March 2012 11:40 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2193-notes-from-a-videodrome-test-screening
― Michael B Higgins (Michael B), Thursday, 22 March 2012 11:59 (twelve years ago) link
^3rd time this has been posted
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 22 March 2012 12:09 (twelve years ago) link
Is it just me or has David Cronenberg, in an inversion of the Soderbergh formula, been making intellectually-minded critical favorites in order to gain the room in his career to produce what he REALLY loves, schlock exploitation flicks
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 22 March 2012 12:17 (twelve years ago) link
'cause those are what brings in bank
― Eric H., Thursday, 22 March 2012 12:19 (twelve years ago) link
man this looks sick as hell. i dont even like the book and had no expectations for this, but now...
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, 22 March 2012 12:42 (twelve years ago) link
for real
― just sayin, Thursday, 22 March 2012 13:29 (twelve years ago) link
daaaaaaamn
― original bgm, Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:04 (twelve years ago) link
what are the "schlock exploitation flicks"?
― Number None, Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:05 (twelve years ago) link
I like the book! This teaser video makes it look like it's going to be a lot less sedate than Delillo's prose.
― mh, Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:10 (twelve years ago) link
I finally saw A Dangerous Method and it was ok but not as great as I hoped? Really low-key for Cronenberg.
― mh, Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:11 (twelve years ago) link
but see, Spelrein's head never exploded nor did Jung ever stomp anyone's eye out.
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:13 (twelve years ago) link
was hoping for more messed-up sex or sexual tension I guess
― mh, Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:20 (twelve years ago) link
my fan edit has ten minutes of Videodrome edited into the middle for no particular reason
NN - Shivers? Videodrome? Dead Ringers? Crash? OK maybe "schlock exploitation" was the wrong phrase but more like.... sensationalist genre films are what he "gets" to do after making critically lauded mainstream movies, which is like the reverse of the normal directorial jujitsu
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:45 (twelve years ago) link
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, March 22, 2012 8:42 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Thursday, 22 March 2012 14:51 (twelve years ago) link
What?
― Walter Galt, Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:01 (twelve years ago) link
<3 & lol @ DON DELILLO flashing in neon
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:03 (twelve years ago) link
^^^^
looks way more exciting than Delillo's boring books
― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 22 March 2012 15:24 (twelve years ago) link
Paul Giamatti as the nemesis is a little too easy, but I'll wait n' see
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 13 April 2012 21:29 (twelve years ago) link
http://io9.com/5903396/robert-pattinson-searches-for-sex-and-a-haircut-in-the-future-hell-of-david-cronenbergs-cosmopolis-trailer
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 19 April 2012 17:26 (twelve years ago) link
that gunshot thru the palm is kinda almost a spoiler
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 19 April 2012 17:38 (twelve years ago) link
#occupythenewflesh
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Thursday, 19 April 2012 17:45 (twelve years ago) link
never read the book (which a trusted friend said is one of the author's worst), but this could be great if Cronenberg's feeling up to it (based on trailer I'm hopeful).
― stay in school if you want to kiw (Gukbe), Thursday, 19 April 2012 18:05 (twelve years ago) link
Pattz goes all Croney in a photo shoot:
http://www.movies.com/movie-news/look-robert-pattinson-recreates-39videodrome39-39dead-ringers39-39scanners39-for-freaky-cronenberg-esque-photo-shoot/7874?wssac=164&wssaffid=news
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 11 May 2012 11:18 (eleven years ago) link
in other news, virus-laden apple does not fall far from tree
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/first-pictures-from-brandon-cronenbergs-cannes-entry-antiviral/
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Friday, 11 May 2012 14:31 (eleven years ago) link
I'm reading the book now. It's basically a piss-take on Ulysses, and it doesn't really add up to much, but DeLillo can always put a sentence together. Anyway, I don't think it matters -- remember, Cronenberg made a movie of Naked Lunch, which can only be called a book because it's available in a bound and printed format. I think he could do something brilliant with this material.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Friday, 11 May 2012 15:13 (eleven years ago) link
can only be called a book because it's available in a bound and printed format
excessively challopsy
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 11 May 2012 15:15 (eleven years ago) link
Well, it's certainly not filmable as-is, you have to give me that.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Friday, 11 May 2012 15:20 (eleven years ago) link
I am one of the few people who really liked Cosmopolis and if this lives up to the potential of the book/director pairing I will be thrilled
― mh, Friday, 11 May 2012 15:43 (eleven years ago) link
Few books are filmable as is, and the only one I can think of that works brilliantly as virtual Cliff Notes is The Maltese Falcon.
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 11 May 2012 16:08 (eleven years ago) link
First Cosmopolis clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbhW4U9dGFA
― The Painter of Blight™ (Sanpaku), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:57 (eleven years ago) link
i feel like cronenberg has this masterpiece theatre/white elephant mode that kind of lurks around some of his films and that intruded a little too uncomfortably on dangerous method. i worry that it'll come to the fore here.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 21 May 2012 19:03 (eleven years ago) link
otm. I feel like those moments really only work when they're juxtaposed against scenes that render them somewhat unreal. A Dangerous Method never really had that and it ended up very much masterpiece theatrey
― mh, Monday, 21 May 2012 19:35 (eleven years ago) link
the spanking scene was pure pbs
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Monday, 21 May 2012 20:45 (eleven years ago) link
I didn't feel like it was that edgy, compared to other Cronenberg films! May as well have been PBS
― mh, Monday, 21 May 2012 21:05 (eleven years ago) link
public bondage system
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:06 (eleven years ago) link
never been crazy about Farbert's taxnomoy tbh
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:08 (eleven years ago) link
*Farber
^yeah every time i hear "white elephant" used to describe a movie i just kind of tune out
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:09 (eleven years ago) link
unless the movie is literally about elephants that are white
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:10 (eleven years ago) link
would watch a movie made by termites, though
not crazy abt Farber's taxidermy on white elephants
u ppl just don't like PERIOD CUSTUMES
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:12 (eleven years ago) link
i like them!
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:13 (eleven years ago) link
is this about that photo shoot in vice magazine
― mh, Monday, 21 May 2012 21:14 (eleven years ago) link
I liked the movie's courage in reproducing how two prodigies wrote and spoke to each other; it assumed the audience would Get It.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:16 (eleven years ago) link
exactly
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:17 (eleven years ago) link
oh i liked the movie fine i just feel like there was some airless fussiness hovering around.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 02:17 (eleven years ago) link
for me, dangerous method was cronenberg's least interesting - and entertaining - film to date (not seen m. butterfly, or fast company come to that), and am afraid i'll agree w/ this cosmopolis review, in time:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/25/cosmopolis-review?newsfeed=true
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 25 May 2012 13:20 (eleven years ago) link
Simon Abrams strongly disagrees
Kohn a little more tepid
― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Friday, 25 May 2012 16:19 (eleven years ago) link
cronenbergesque typo
trades barbs with his scowling body guard (Kevin Durand), while making vein attempts to ignore the Occupy-like protestors
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Friday, 25 May 2012 17:14 (eleven years ago) link
I find the sum of these reactions encouraging
http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-cannes-2012-david-cronenbergs-cosmopolis/
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 25 May 2012 17:28 (eleven years ago) link
As do I. Aren't we all getting tired of Cronenberg movies that everybody likes by now?
(Not sarcasm, in case that was unclear.)
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Friday, 25 May 2012 17:31 (eleven years ago) link
No. I will never be tired of The Fly. It's sort of got that "gets better with age" thing built in that way.
― Count-Dracula-Down (Eric H.), Friday, 25 May 2012 17:34 (eleven years ago) link
Ok, ok... I have to give you that one. The more time I see The Fly, the more I'm convinced that it's almost perfect. The first 15 minutes alone, with twitchy Goldblum hitting on silky Gena, are worth the whole movie.
― cue "White Rabbit" (kenan), Friday, 25 May 2012 17:37 (eleven years ago) link
coming in 2013/14, a TIFF-created touring exhibition, plus a "multi-platform augmented reality game."
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2012/05/david-cronenberg-to-infect-toronto-in-new-travelling-exhibition.php
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:22 (eleven years ago) link
watched the brood last night. almost barfed at the demon womb sac.
― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:27 (eleven years ago) link
so 1997
xpost
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:39 (eleven years ago) link
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, May 29, 2012 10:22 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the conservative gov't here slashed film production massively and put a shit ton of money into this video game
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:39 (eleven years ago) link
Through the presentation of artifacts, props, documentation and audio-visual interviews, as well as reconstructed set-pieces from Cronenberg's films, the exhibition parallels his growth as a filmmaker with his ongoing examination and interpretation of human evolutionary possibilities, tracing his work from a focus on biological change towards examinations of shifting psychological states. A parallel art project based on the same themes will be announced at a later date.
this all sounds very excessive, self-regarding, and absurd.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:47 (eleven years ago) link
tbh i have no problem with them doing a cronie exhibit (makes way more sense than the tim burton one they launched the lightbox with) but this is getting ridic
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:49 (eleven years ago) link
tracing his work from a focus on biological change towards examinations of shifting psychological states
somehow framing it this systematically/schematic and making it the linchpin of a museum exhibit is just kind of embarrassing.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:55 (eleven years ago) link
could just be the way the exhibit was written up, these kinds of things usually sound terrible
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:57 (eleven years ago) link
Ah, I get it now.
being young = being afraid of your body deterioratingbeing old = being afraid of your mind deteriorating
― Björk lied (Eric H.), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:58 (eleven years ago) link
actually both of those are really "being old"
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:59 (eleven years ago) link
I revise:
being young = loving movies about being afraid of your body deterioratingbeing old = loving movies about being afraid of your mind deteriorating
― Björk lied (Eric H.), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:05 (eleven years ago) link
being somewhere in between = writing program notes for museum exhibitions
― Björk lied (Eric H.), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:06 (eleven years ago) link
press releases ain't program notes (we hope).
DC is as much about mutation as deterioration, no?
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:22 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, long live the new flesh and all that
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:43 (eleven years ago) link
I do often think of him when a smartphone with a selfish asshole attached is blocking the subway stairs.
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:47 (eleven years ago) link
iirc 'the smartphone with a selfish asshole' was one of the skits cut from naked lunch
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:58 (eleven years ago) link
watched cosmopolis at the w/end - never seen so many people walk out of a film, seriously. it is exceptionally boring, but somehow more Cronenbergian than the pallid heritage cinema of 'Dangerous Method'
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 08:20 (eleven years ago) link
hah
― Black_vegeta (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 09:23 (eleven years ago) link
nooooooo
― mh, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 12:21 (eleven years ago) link
lol @ "exceptionally boring"
That's become my baseline expectation of new Cronenberg movies
― old people are made of poop (Eric H.), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 12:25 (eleven years ago) link
I liked aspects of it, but it's probably his least accessible movie ever, and yes, *many* walkouts. Also, he doesn't handle digital very well.
― Simon H., Tuesday, 19 June 2012 13:12 (eleven years ago) link
what did he drop the camera or something?
― brony ver (s1ocki), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:18 (eleven years ago) link
From the never tedious IMDB message board:
"I haven't had this less fun since I watched Synecdoche New York!"
In other words, I'm sold!
― to welcome jer.fairall, pie is served. (jer.fairall), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:21 (eleven years ago) link
Fowler and Eric, go sit in the corner
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:26 (eleven years ago) link
Synecdoche was great!
― a dense custard of infinity (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:45 (eleven years ago) link
Synecdoche might still be the best film of the last 5 years.
― to welcome jer.fairall, pie is served. (jer.fairall), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:49 (eleven years ago) link
lot of good stuff in it, but crazee talk
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:50 (eleven years ago) link
It's that or The Tree of Life, according to Ebert.
― old people are made of poop (Eric H.), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:51 (eleven years ago) link
or prometheus
― brony ver (s1ocki), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:51 (eleven years ago) link
maybe Juno
― old people are made of poop (Eric H.), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:52 (eleven years ago) link
what a guy.
― brony ver (s1ocki), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:53 (eleven years ago) link
half the time I love and appreciate Ebert, and then I just wonder what the hell he is thinking the other part
― mh, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:54 (eleven years ago) link
Gotta admit I was bummed when Ebert chose Tree of Life over Synecdoche for his S&S list, but if I'd been through what he'd been through lately perhaps new age hokum would be more appealing to me than something as beautifully miserable as Synecdoche.
― to welcome jer.fairall, pie is served. (jer.fairall), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:56 (eleven years ago) link
Synechdoche kind of falls down in the last third (agree w Morbz, in general)
― a dense custard of infinity (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:58 (eleven years ago) link
kind of want to punch anyone that refers to Tree of Life as "new age hokum" a hundred thousand times in the face.
― circa1916, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:59 (eleven years ago) link
BUT, different thread.
― circa1916, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:00 (eleven years ago) link
Take yr best shot :-)
― to welcome jer.fairall, pie is served. (jer.fairall), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:00 (eleven years ago) link
In fairness, I *like* TOL on balance...I just woulda liked it better if it were just the 50's coming of age stuff without an introductory half hour of pretty screen-savers and the last half hour of dead people walking on a beach.
― to welcome jer.fairall, pie is served. (jer.fairall), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:01 (eleven years ago) link
creation sequence is awes fuiud. more ambivalent about the ending, but interesting stuff there and hey it's only 15 or so minutes iirc.
even more psyched for Cosmopolis now tbh.
― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:06 (eleven years ago) link
me tooi just expect to feel a certain kind of bored-but-not-bored feeling when watching cronenberg films, and i like it
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:15 (eleven years ago) link
i think most Canadian filmmakers are dealing in how to dramatize boredom/the boring on one level or another
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:18 (eleven years ago) link
but interesting stuff there and hey it's only 15 or so minutes iirc.
6 or 7 tops.
― old people are made of poop (Eric H.), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:28 (eleven years ago) link
6 or 7 tops
Oooh. What are their names?
― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:50 (eleven years ago) link
Chaz, Bo, Dunk, Tad, Bluto, Swain, and Tia
― old people are made of poop (Eric H.), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:56 (eleven years ago) link
MY GOD this was tedious
― Number None, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:56 (eleven years ago) link
Agonizing. A running stream of babble we're supposed to find profound, Twilight looks like he's struggling to remember his lines. JBinoche still hot, though.
― SongOfSam, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 19:00 (eleven years ago) link
I'm scared that Cronenberg's ability to slow burn has exceeded his film length. I'm sure there's tons of crazy action and violence in the 110th minute of A Dangerous Method but the movie was over by then.
― mh, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 21:20 (eleven years ago) link
Big shrug of the shoulders for Cosmopolis. Fun spotting Toronto locations, and that was about it. I was sort of with it for the first half, Giamatti's scene was interminable. Maybe the philosophizing on capitalism and greed might have seemed more immediate three years ago, but after so many documentaries on the subject, it was like a weak echo. (I should mention I haven't read the book.) My biggest problem was simply the lifelessness of just about everyone, the lead especially. I know, he's supposed to be lifeless. he's dead inside...which is rarely a good strategy. James Woods in Videodrome, Walken in The Dead Zone, Goldblum and Davis in The Fly, even Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers to a lesser degree--these are all engaging characters. When Cronenberg drifts way over to his clinical, austere side, he loses me.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 11 July 2012 04:55 (eleven years ago) link
I assume you're counting Crash as 'clinical, austere', which works fine for me.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 11 July 2012 11:41 (eleven years ago) link
I would, yeah...At the time, I was really proud of something I tacked onto my year-end music ballot, which was Crash reimagined as an SCTV parody. Edith Prickley got the Holly Hunter role, I think. Being a Canadian publication, they used it.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 11 July 2012 11:58 (eleven years ago) link
from NYT feature:
“I don’t think Rob’s face has ever been examined in such excruciating detail, from so many angles,” Mr. Cronenberg said. “That was part of the casting. You want a face that can take that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/movies/cosmopolis-cronenbergs-take-on-don-delillo.html?ref=movies
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 August 2012 12:00 (eleven years ago) link
Croney, Pattz ring NYSE opening bell. Thank God for meta-marketing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/robert-pattinson-makes-sure-stocks-can-be-traded-today-by-ringing-bell/2012/08/14/56991bfe-e61d-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_blog.html
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:45 (eleven years ago) link
That's ... kinda perfect.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:48 (eleven years ago) link
is this movie as bad as everyone said? I always get excited about cronenberg movies, then get depressed by bad reviews, then eventually watch them on demand or whatever and end up loving them.
― dan selzer, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:52 (eleven years ago) link
I kinda liked this one, or at least admired its arrogance.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:55 (eleven years ago) link
Ending will make a lot of people want to hurt someone, tho.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:56 (eleven years ago) link
trailer for new (brandon) cronenberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcJTd69dMyQ
― just sayin, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 19:59 (eleven years ago) link
Glenn Kenny gave it five stars. I haven't looked at a lot of reviews, but my general impression from festival-time was people were at best muted and at worst severely disappointed. GK isn't at all credible though because he's a pretty hardcore Cronenberg stan, but I sort-of am as well so I'm still pumped.
― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
This is a pretentious Cronenberg stylez I can get behind.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:03 (eleven years ago) link
A Dangerous Method was the only Cronenberg film where I've felt unenthused, but I think that was a glitch.
― your native bacon (mh), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:04 (eleven years ago) link
Agree with crix that call Giamatti's segment (or, rather, his performance) a miscalculation, but it was still kind of riveting after all that android pseudo-conversation.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:08 (eleven years ago) link
Haven't bought the issue yet, but Amy Taubin has Cosmopolis on her S&S list. She always has a Cronenberg film on there. I think she may second-guess that one.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:25 (eleven years ago) link
?!
I guess that's no stranger than putting Spider on her '02 list, tho I still haven't managed to sit through that one.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:30 (eleven years ago) link
wonder if this means Cronenberg will get *another* Film Comment cover
― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 20:31 (eleven years ago) link
― clemenza, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 21:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i read her repping for it somewhere - film comment's cannes review i think - & it made me really want to see it. i like taubz & i think it's probably in some ways as honourable to include something super current as to just co-sign potemkin or w/e.
― , Blogger (schlump), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 22:00 (eleven years ago) link
spider sucks iirc
― WheatusVEVO (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:06 (eleven years ago) link
^^^
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:12 (eleven years ago) link
Spider's pretty good, cert'ly tons better than A History of Graphic Novel Violence.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:28 (eleven years ago) link
you're replacing one graphic-novel-level approach with another?
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:37 (eleven years ago) link
still love HoV, but I guess it did come from that inferior art form
― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:38 (eleven years ago) link
M. Butterfly, Crash, existenZ, and Spider are the duds of the last twenty years, although I'd watch the last one again. Funny how no one has ever made a case for the first on this list. I saw in the theatre after loving Naked Lunch -- one of my first disappointments as an Adult Film Watcher.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:39 (eleven years ago) link
lol, art form. i liked it cuz it was fun to think about, appealingly heightened and quite strange. spider was just a drag.
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:40 (eleven years ago) link
alfred otm, except that i genuinely love about 90% of existenz. falls apart towards the end cuz the dreamlike oddity is much more interesting than the espionage plotting behind it, but up to that point, i've got no complaints.
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:42 (eleven years ago) link
"cuz"
alfred OTM about all those EXCEPT eXistenZ imho, which is awesome
― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:43 (eleven years ago) link
on the other hand I don't like them all but he went from strength to strength in the Videodrome-The Fly-Dead Ringers-Naked Lunch sequence.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:45 (eleven years ago) link
Alfred all wet cept for M Butterfly
Naked Lunch is an interesting failure, and I bet we've all said these fucking things upthread.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:53 (eleven years ago) link
we're improving as we age, appearances to the contrary
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:53 (eleven years ago) link
no, I still look good but have otherwise gone to shit.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:55 (eleven years ago) link
Another existenz lover here.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 01:56 (eleven years ago) link
"new ports are tight"
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 02:00 (eleven years ago) link
so is Jude Law in that fillum
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 02:01 (eleven years ago) link
I thought M Butterfly a bit of a damp squib but Existenz and Spider were both good.
― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 02:16 (eleven years ago) link
Crash is his last great movie, among the ones I've seen.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 02:31 (eleven years ago) link
it's good but not the last great, sheesh
― your native bacon (mh), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 03:05 (eleven years ago) link
When I first saw it Spider was one of the most depressing things I'd ever seen, being forced into such intimacy with a guy who writes an illegible diary and barely utters anything coherent. It was a genuinely uncomfortable, despairing psychological space to occupy. Admittedly the film didn't impress me quite as much when I saw it again a few years later, but I'd still probably it's still my favorite Cronenberg since, oh, Videodrome. I'm not quite sure on what level it's deemed a failure, what it should offer that it doesn't.
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 03:17 (eleven years ago) link
i wasn't terribly interested in the film's surface, well detailed though it was. it seemed to depend for tension on the unraveling of a mystery whose solution seemed fairly obvious from early on, and on the similarly predictable parallel disintegration of the protagonist's mental health.
i've never read the mcgrath novel on which the film is based, but others have suggested that it was a risky choice to begin with, given how much the original story depends on the protagonist's subjectivity. despite cronenberg's attempts to depict interior states visually, i felt as though i were observing only the shell of a narrative inside which something potentially interesting was happening.
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 03:32 (eleven years ago) link
The book is better than the film, but Spider is as good a film as one could make from it and have it still be watchable.
― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 03:36 (eleven years ago) link
existenz is one of his best, but you may need to be steeped in canadian content to really get it i think
― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 04:35 (eleven years ago) link
I don't know--I know lots about The Trouble with Tracy and the Poppy Family and Joey McLaughlin, and it didn't really help.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 04:40 (eleven years ago) link
Well, here's one rave anyway:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/cosmopolis/6446
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:38 (eleven years ago) link
that doesn't really say much
― Number None, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:43 (eleven years ago) link
'rizer, that novel's style has a certain amount in common with the one he adapted here, so bevare perhaps.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:43 (eleven years ago) link
"darkly comic" is a phrase i'm always wary of seeing in reviews. It basically means "not funny"
― Number None, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:50 (eleven years ago) link
To me it usually means I'll be one of the only ones laughing.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:52 (eleven years ago) link
There was actually a lot of laughing at the press screening I went to, but probably of a few different varieties. There was also some yelling at the screen.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:53 (eleven years ago) link
i may have emitted an anguished moan at some point
― Number None, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:54 (eleven years ago) link
I may have launched an ironic belch.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:54 (eleven years ago) link
Prostate exam was a crowd pleaser.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:55 (eleven years ago) link
^when aint it
I did laugh a fair bit at the funny bits in Crash when I saw again a few months ago, as I did at much of Viggo's Freud in ADM.
However, the only great film I've seen from DC is The Fly.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:55 (eleven years ago) link
I can settle on that as his best. (That or The Brood.)
― Eric H., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 17:56 (eleven years ago) link
I tried reading the novel several years ago.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 18:04 (eleven years ago) link
can't decide between The Fly and Dead Ringers.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 18:05 (eleven years ago) link
I'm also usually one of the only ones laughing at some moments.
Apparently a few friends are still wondering why I was giggling throughout a lot of Barry Lyndon
― your native bacon (mh), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 18:12 (eleven years ago) link
I like Dead Zone too
― Fiendish Doctor Wu (kingfish), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 18:43 (eleven years ago) link
Dead Zone, the one time I saw it, was super.
A superhero movie, by definition, you know, it's comic book. It's for kids. It's adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying Dark Knight Rises is 'supreme cinema art,' I don't think they know what the fuck they're talking about.
http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/robert-pattinson-david-cronenberg-cosmopolis-interview/
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 16 August 2012 00:22 (eleven years ago) link
As an actor, I would play Batman.
― Number None, Thursday, 16 August 2012 00:41 (eleven years ago) link
hell, who wouldn't? but with Adam West's rhythms.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 16 August 2012 00:47 (eleven years ago) link
with Heath Ledger's rhythms
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 16 August 2012 00:49 (eleven years ago) link
^also adolescent in its core
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 16 August 2012 01:01 (eleven years ago) link
checked Cosmopolis out of the library; it reads like a script.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 16 August 2012 01:13 (eleven years ago) link
Some dick is remaking Videodrome.
http://twitchfilm.com/news/2012/08/videodrome-remake-cronenberg-berg.php
― pun lovin criminal (polyphonic), Wednesday, 22 August 2012 20:35 (eleven years ago) link
script by the guy who wrote the Transformers movies.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 20:54 (eleven years ago) link
They are the new flesh.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 22 August 2012 20:55 (eleven years ago) link
it's not even just that semi-talented people are remaking once-untouchable movies now, it's also that they're remaking movies to look more like video games, yet we can't even play our way through the emotionally bereft slickness, so, seriously, they should just fuck off with this
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Wednesday, 22 August 2012 21:09 (eleven years ago) link
if there's no market for a Total Recall remake and I don't see why anyone would think there would be one for Videodrome.
Still: Who is today's Debbie Harry equivalent that they should cast for the role?
― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Wednesday, 22 August 2012 21:12 (eleven years ago) link
I would play a Videodrome point and click adventure
― Number None, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 21:12 (eleven years ago) link
point and squick
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 21:19 (eleven years ago) link
― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:12 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark
there sort of is a market for a total recall remake... just not a $200 million one.
― WheatusVEVO (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 22 August 2012 21:48 (eleven years ago) link
They'd probably swap Debbie Harry for Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj or other misc pop singer that likes to give crazy wide eyes in front of fish eye lenses.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 24 August 2012 21:35 (eleven years ago) link
saw Cosmopolis today, and may have been too tired and distracted to really get into it, but it was certainly compelling at points. I felt like the claustrophobic style was obviously motivated but it sure was exhausting and even a little boring. I was even spacing off during the final bit before the credits! (again that's probably my fault)
I did like the sense that it was about a guy having a total mental/life breakdown and keeping this odd composure through it all. I liked the dialogues...i liked how they portrayed how people talk when they are over-consuming information. they sorta talk AT each other.
― ryan, Friday, 24 August 2012 23:25 (eleven years ago) link
i was sorta hoping for a movie of impending doom and dread and pessimism, but for all that certainly being there i didn't feel it much. maybe that makes it that much more despairing?
― ryan, Friday, 24 August 2012 23:27 (eleven years ago) link
― Eric H., Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:31 PM (1 week ago)
yah, up until crash I had seen all his films save m butterfly, and crash felt like the logical end to what he was doing - science fiction made not with technology but with actual human behavior. one of my favorite directors, and I practically ignored him after that, have only seen a history of violence. I'm glad he's been able to build a successful career making movies that would end the careers of others, tho.
― vincent black shadow giallo (Edward III), Monday, 27 August 2012 18:45 (eleven years ago) link
You're in a good spot, though, now. You're in the Woody Allen zone – you keep your budgets low, you get enough dough back in Europe, the people in the US that dig it dig it and then you make the next one.
That's true, and every time I've tried to play with the studios it's never worked out. I don't blame them or me, it's the mix of sensibilities is not there, we don't fit. Listen, I see some big movies and I think “Oh, it would be fun to make that, challenging.” Then reality sets in and it's not going to happen. Your estimation of where I'm at with filmmaking is pretty accurate....
I'm usually reluctant to include deleted scenes. They're deleted for a reason....
Have you seen the new High Frame Rate that Peter Jackson used for The Hobbit?
No, though you see it on television all the time. Sports shows are 60 frames. Those flawless slo-mo playbacks with no smearing. I haven't seen The Hobbit yet, but I do believe it would be nice to get away from 24 frames per second — even just to 30 frames per second. I don't have a nostalgic longing to stick with the smearing or strobing you get when you pan with a film camera. It's not nice. It comes from ancient technology that we don't need anymore. Even upping to 30 might get rid of that, I don't know why 48 as opposed to 50 or 60, frankly. In a weird way, 48, as double of 24, is still clinging to the old technology.
http://movieline.com/2012/12/31/david-cronenberg-talks-cosmopolis-high-frame-rates-and-bullshit-oscars/
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 16:53 (eleven years ago) link
OW! Oh, crap, the cat just jumped on me.
I like cats.
Yeah, he's adorable, but very heavy.
quality journalism here
― If I was a carpenter, and you were a douchebag (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 18:52 (eleven years ago) link
I like cats too
― CGI fridays (Edward III), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:15 (eleven years ago) link
it's so strange how journalism keeps getting worse as journalists' paychecks and job prospects keep getting smaller
― Poliopolice, Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:19 (eleven years ago) link
oh no... 3 senteneces about cats... journalisms dead... stfu
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:27 (eleven years ago) link
no... please DON'T stfu. i'm talkin to you, Poliopolice!
― Tome Cruise (Matt P), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:29 (eleven years ago) link
tell me more about the state of journalism in 2013, damn it!
― Tome Cruise (Matt P), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 21:30 (eleven years ago) link
so I hafta quit film threads for the year too, huh
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 2 January 2013 23:00 (eleven years ago) link
can't believe you guys hate cats like that
― CGI fridays (Edward III), Thursday, 3 January 2013 01:54 (eleven years ago) link
next one w/ Weisz, Viggo, Pattinson
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rachel-weisz-joins-david-cronenbergs-maps-to-the-stars-with-robert-pattinson-viggo-mortensen-20121107
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 3 January 2013 16:05 (eleven years ago) link
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 2, 2013 6:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
Don't get us excited if you don't mean really it
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Friday, 4 January 2013 04:27 (eleven years ago) link
try to get shakey to do it
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Friday, 4 January 2013 04:28 (eleven years ago) link
Thanks to the Red Sox, I was able to see Dead Ringers last night. Cronenberg was there to introduce it (with Jeremy Irons), and Irons stayed for a Q&A afterwards--very funny. (First comment: "That's a strange film, isn't it?")
I've always thought it a masterful film--I checked upthread, and I named it as one of my two or three favourites--and I still do. Very sad, too--I was really struck by the sadness of the opening credits this time. I will say, though, that it's the beginning of a certain hollowness that made so many of the Cronenberg films that came after a disappointment for me. I prefer The Dead Zone and The Fly. I'd have to take some time to find the right words to explain that, because the tone of Dead Ringers is perfect throughout.
― clemenza, Friday, 1 November 2013 12:22 (ten years ago) link
I am ashamed it took me so long, but I watched Dead Ringers for the first time last night.
― mh, Friday, 1 November 2013 18:02 (ten years ago) link
Any Toronto people going to the Cronenberg exhibit at TIFF? http://tiff.net/cronenberg
― Dan I., Friday, 1 November 2013 19:31 (ten years ago) link
I am not a Toronto person but that looks really tempting
― mh, Friday, 1 November 2013 19:39 (ten years ago) link
Man, would I love to smoke some crack with Rob Ford and go to that.
― Ian from Etobicoke (Phil D.), Friday, 1 November 2013 19:43 (ten years ago) link
A friend came across this Twitter photo (not sure if it will embed):
http://twitter.com/PhilNobileJr/status/409872028406018048/photo/1/large
Kid on the left is great.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 11 December 2013 00:42 (ten years ago) link
No, it will not embed--here's the link:
twitter.com/PhilNobileJr/status/409872028406018048/photo/1/large
― clemenza, Wednesday, 11 December 2013 00:43 (ten years ago) link
has anyone been to that exhibit at TIFF that Dan mentioned?
― mh, Wednesday, 11 December 2013 01:27 (ten years ago) link
faces on those children: excellent
Hadn't seen Scanners in eons (not right when it came out, but no more than a few years later). I remembered some of the gross stuff, so I wasn't expecting to like it much; there's actually wasn't all that much gore, though, and it's impressive in other ways. Probably a key film for him--here, The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers, Spider, others, Cronenberg would have fit comfortably into that Robert Kolker book A Cinema of Loneliness. Had completely forgotten about Jennifer O'Neill--think it's the only film of hers I've ever seen other than Summer of '42.
― clemenza, Monday, 23 December 2013 02:48 (ten years ago) link
did you go to the exhibit clemenza? just went last week
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 23 December 2013 15:54 (ten years ago) link
HOW WAS IT
also, if anyone in toronto wants to get me one of those coffee mugs I am willing to send a cash bounty
― mh, Monday, 23 December 2013 15:55 (ten years ago) link
what mug?
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Monday, 23 December 2013 16:12 (ten years ago) link
(xxpost) Didn't go to the exhibit, no (think it's still on). I don't usually go to those--I saw the one when they opened for their 100 greatest films, and also the Chris Marker one upstairs. That was it.
― clemenza, Monday, 23 December 2013 16:20 (ten years ago) link
Is this a Cronenberg mug in the gift shop, mh (and if you're not in Toronto, how did you know about it)? If that's what you mean, I'll be there next week and could put one in the mail for you.
― clemenza, Monday, 23 December 2013 16:36 (ten years ago) link
http://tiff.net/tiffshop
Long Live the New Flesh
btw the baby onesie is amazing but I don't think any of my child-having friends would love it as much
― mh, Monday, 23 December 2013 16:41 (ten years ago) link
oh shit would totally put my baby boy in that
― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 23 December 2013 16:47 (ten years ago) link
Okay--I looked at the gift shop page, but didn't get that far. If you do want something specific, click on my user name, follow the link, and we'll make arrangements.
― clemenza, Monday, 23 December 2013 16:49 (ten years ago) link
the mug was pretty nice i was thinking about it but it didnt have a price on it which is annoying
anyway—the exhibit was great but i wished it wasnt $15
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 23 December 2013 17:13 (ten years ago) link
well, good thing I didn't book a flight to Toronto mostly for the exhibit :D
clemenza, I'll hit you up later today, thanks!
― mh, Monday, 23 December 2013 17:34 (ten years ago) link
The Brood's quite something--conceptually, it's got to be one of the grimmest and most well thought out horror films ever. The performances are better than I remembered--Reed's a little portentous at times, but he's not bad--and the climactic scene is gross, but not unwatchably so (and I have a low threshold nowadays). I believe Robin Wood hated Cronenberg's work then because it didn't fit into his theory of what horror films should do--lay waste to patriarchy, the nuclear family, sexual repression, etc. Wood wrote some great stuff on the genre, but I don't think you should ever put a theory before the work itself. The final shot of The Brood leaves all those considerations behind. (I've argued before, especially as applied to Vertigo, that a film's autobiographical content is of limited interest to me. Inconsistent, but for The Brood's backstory--Cronenberg's Kramer vs. Kramer, as he would always say--does make it feel that much more audacious.)
― clemenza, Friday, 3 January 2014 05:50 (ten years ago) link
oh geez, I completely spaced on my last message. thanks again for the offer, clemenza, but I'm good.
keep it up with the movie write-ups, though
― mh, Friday, 3 January 2014 14:54 (ten years ago) link
Wise decision. I suspect postage would be more than the cost of the mug itself.
― clemenza, Friday, 3 January 2014 15:21 (ten years ago) link
Can't find the shot I have in mind, but I think this is specifically meant to echo Night of the Living Dead (also a year before Nicholson punches his way through the wall in The Shining):
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mrMyvYI7S5E/TnkMcA9KNZI/AAAAAAAAAtY/buIU-jIGcoA/s640/brood.PNG
My recollection of Don't Look Now is very dim, but I was wondering if the visual conception of the brood was tied in with Roeg's film.
― clemenza, Friday, 3 January 2014 15:34 (ten years ago) link
those are two of my favorite horror movies! i love the creepy gnome/human concept
― mambo jumbo (La Lechera), Friday, 3 January 2014 15:35 (ten years ago) link
Actually thought of Sybil last night also, LL, for obvious reasons--it's like Cronenberg took everything there and, three years later, moved it wholly into the realm of horror.
― clemenza, Friday, 3 January 2014 15:49 (ten years ago) link
Sisters is splashier, but fits in too imo.
― mambo jumbo (La Lechera), Friday, 3 January 2014 15:57 (ten years ago) link
The Brood has long been one of my favorites, if not my favorite Cronenberg film. Always loved that character actor, the one on the stationary bike. He was in Existenz too. Robert A. Silverman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Silverman
― dan selzer, Friday, 3 January 2014 16:20 (ten years ago) link
I recognized him from Scanners. He's funny in The Brood.
― clemenza, Friday, 3 January 2014 16:26 (ten years ago) link
I was just watching Naked Lunch the other night - he's funny/weird/off-putting in that, too.
― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Friday, 3 January 2014 16:28 (ten years ago) link
Well this looks weird. And not the good kind of weird
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAWi6i4cmpE
― Number None, Monday, 14 April 2014 20:31 (ten years ago) link
that just looks like a shitty thrown-together trailer
many of the simple shots in it seem very cronenbergian
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 15:17 (ten years ago) link
he really has such a specific way of framing one-shots
i mean recognizable
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 15:18 (ten years ago) link
not gonna watch it if it's that thrown-together
― a strange man (mh), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 15:24 (ten years ago) link
never saw Cosmopolis cuz of all the haterade (also not a DeLillo fan in general)
wish he would dip back into sci-fi or horror. Freud film was an acceptable detour, tho it felt like small stakes.
― How dare you tarnish the reputation of Turturro's yodel (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 21:34 (ten years ago) link
I can't get the page to load, but apparently Criterion's announced at least Scanners (hopefully The Brood as well) as part of their July lineup.
― CAROUSEL! CAROUSEL! (Telephone thing), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 22:39 (ten years ago) link
Just Scanners from what I saw.
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 22:40 (ten years ago) link
It does include his first film, Stereo, though.
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 22:42 (ten years ago) link
Oh, neat. Maybe Crimes of the Future is being saved for the Brood disc? Those two are available on the R1 blu-ray of Fast Company, but if Criterion have managed to get commentaries for them I'll be ecstatic. Cronenberg is one of the all-time commentary track champions IMO.
― CAROUSEL! CAROUSEL! (Telephone thing), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 22:44 (ten years ago) link
here are the extras:
The “Scanners” Way, a new documentary on the film’s special effectsNew interview with actor Michael IronsideThe Ephemerol Diaries, a 2012 interview with actor and artist Stephen LackExcerpt from a 1981 interview with Cronenberg on the CBC’s The Bob McLean ShowStereo (1969), Cronenberg’s first feature filmTrailerPLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kim Newman
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 22:47 (ten years ago) link
Oh wow. That cover design!
http://www.diabolikdvd.com/imgproduct/dab365c12bf05e22e0eb5df3b75b2212.jpg
― CAROUSEL! CAROUSEL! (Telephone thing), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 22:48 (ten years ago) link
cover is better than the movie lol
― How dare you tarnish the reputation of Turturro's yodel (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 23:05 (ten years ago) link
brood is hilarious, would make a great double bill with possesion.
― nauru, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 23:13 (ten years ago) link
Les Carlson, who played Barry Convex, the evil head of the Spectacular Optical Corp., in David Cronenberg’s hallucinatory sci-fi classic Videodrome, died May 3 at his home in Toronto.... Carlson also appeared in three other Cronenberg projects—as an intimidated newspaper editor in The Dead Zone (1983); as a doctor in the Jeff Goldblum starrer The Fly (1986); and as an aging actor in Camera (2000), one of a series of short films produced for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Toronto International Film Festival.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/videodrome-actor-les-carlson-dies-703127
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:41 (nine years ago) link
:(
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:45 (nine years ago) link
camera was great.
RIP
super-creepy in Videodrome
― Οὖτις, Monday, 12 May 2014 15:46 (nine years ago) link
he really has such a specific way of framing one-shots― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, April 15, 2014 10:17 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, April 15, 2014 10:17 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
and lighting them, i think
― espring (amateurist), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:48 (nine years ago) link
for sure
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:49 (nine years ago) link
His death scene in Videodrome ranks near the top of Cronenberg's most horrifying visions.
― Diddley Hollyberry (Phil D.), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:53 (nine years ago) link
so far the major dissenter on Maps to the Stars is the guy who wrote the 'Showgirls is great' book ... I'm seeing it tom'w.
http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-nyff-2014-david-cronenbergs-maps-to-the-stars
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 September 2014 15:58 (nine years ago) link
He is definitely NOT the only dissenter.
― Eric H., Friday, 26 September 2014 16:00 (nine years ago) link
uh, yeah.
i actually didn't like the book as much as i was hoping, but it is interesting and thoughtful. and adam nayman is very smart.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 16:01 (nine years ago) link
and the film does look terrible. but who knows?
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 16:02 (nine years ago) link
yeah E i just meant in that roundup so far
im fine if everyone who likes Showgirls hates it
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 September 2014 16:05 (nine years ago) link
his last short was probably better than this
― Οὖτις, Friday, 26 September 2014 16:11 (nine years ago) link
Anyone else read Cronenberg's new novel, Consumed? It is great -- and so, so classic Cronenberg -- and if the internet is to be believed, being filmed.
― The Thnig, Friday, 26 September 2014 16:37 (nine years ago) link
he wrote a novel?
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 18:29 (nine years ago) link
yes; most reviews haven't been as kind as The Thnig's.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 September 2014 18:34 (nine years ago) link
I tried to read a sample chapter online; it came off like a really up-its-own-ass airport thriller.
― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Friday, 26 September 2014 18:51 (nine years ago) link
i have no idea whether i'll like this new film, but i am kind of glad that someone punctured the idea of latter-day cronenberg as artistically infallible, which i think has become dogma in some quarters. i think history of violence and to a slightly lesser extent eastern promises are masterpieces, but the delillo film just felt unforgivably smug somehow... the new one looks like it could go in the same direction, what with all the blasts at hollywood etc. but who knows! sometimes the saving grace of a film that would otherwise be heavy-handed is its strangeness. maybe cronenberg will come through on that score.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 18:59 (nine years ago) link
btw morbs adam nayman's take on showgirls is rather sophisticated and complex, by no means does he think it's without serious problems. his book is as ,much a reflection on what produced the varying reactions to the film as a defense of the film itself.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:00 (nine years ago) link
i still think the book reads like a first draft, though, and it needed more research as opposed to opinion. it was a disappointment, frankly, but his thoughts on the film are still worth taking srsly.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
I found the car movie pretty unsmug and quite adventurous (tho it loses a lot once the ride is over;, AhoV just seemed too obvious in its thesis/themes to me. Still haven't seen Eastern Promises.
Not sure I've read much of Nayman, i haven't listened to his Cinephiliacs episode yet either. Just damn, of all the films to write a whole book about...
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:09 (nine years ago) link
(I see he really liked All Is Lost tho, so kudos)
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:11 (nine years ago) link
Shut up.
― Eric H., Friday, 26 September 2014 19:14 (nine years ago) link
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m38x2qep7N1r2u9p7.gif
― Eric H., Friday, 26 September 2014 19:15 (nine years ago) link
what the fuck is your problem lately, btw?
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:17 (nine years ago) link
Um, I'm Nomi Malone?
― Eric H., Friday, 26 September 2014 19:23 (nine years ago) link
of all the films to write a whole book about...
well, again, keep in mind that he's writing as much about the film's reception as the film itself. whatever you think of showgirls, the almost universal disgust that greeted its debut, followed by several waves of differently-styled reconsiderations, etc. -- that's an interesting story, i think.
i am not particularly high on the film myself but it does have some real virtues.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:27 (nine years ago) link
i mean honestly "showgirls" is at least as interesting a film to write about as something more obviously packaged for critical exegesis like "safe" (to name a film that i think came out in the same year!)
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 26 September 2014 19:28 (nine years ago) link
Also, btw Morbs, the market is ready, ripe and set for a blistering un-revisionist take on the 'girls.
― Eric H., Friday, 26 September 2014 19:39 (nine years ago) link
I haven't read any reviews of Consumed, but I thought it was pretty damn good. If it hadn't been written by Cronenberg, I think it would've gotten a lot of positive "hang on now what is THIS?" from the folks-who-like-disturbing-books crowds. As it is, though, it does run through his obsessions in a rather checklist-type fashion.
― The Thnig, Friday, 26 September 2014 19:43 (nine years ago) link
well, Maps is not a date movie. The Loved One turned up to 11.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 03:45 (nine years ago) link
About a third of the sick jokes land (which is a lot, actually) but by the last half-hour it just feels like a shock pileup, and you can see several of the final transgressions coming five miles away. JuMoore is very funny, and Mia Wasikwhatzki and the kid, Evan Bird, who plays the jaded rehabbed 13-yo child star are both very good too. I feel very much about it the way I did A History of Violence; brilliantly made but just too overdetermined and cartoonish.
and to get really Hollywood about it, omg Carrie Fisher's face.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 15:27 (nine years ago) link
I can probably handle it if it's someone like Moore acting batshit, and not William Hurt.
― Eric H., Monday, 29 September 2014 15:35 (nine years ago) link
well her role's a lot bigger than Hurt's.
Pattinson glum aspirational actor-chauffeur is subsidiary, seems almost like he did it as a favor to Croney.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 15:55 (nine years ago) link
dangerous method is the real nadir of latter-day cronenberg, imho - so lifeless and cheap-looking
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Monday, 29 September 2014 18:41 (nine years ago) link
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 4:20 AM
no idea what heritage cinema is, but your opinion has been noted and thanx
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 18:44 (nine years ago) link
no prob morbs, i take it you'll want notifying too when you next repeat an opinion
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Monday, 29 September 2014 18:46 (nine years ago) link
anything to keep me in the news of this hotpot of regurgitation
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 18:51 (nine years ago) link
if you can't regurgitate on a cronenberg thread, etc
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Monday, 29 September 2014 18:54 (nine years ago) link
so Mortensen and Rachel Weisz were sposed to do this originally? I didn't recognize Olivia Williams at all.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 18:58 (nine years ago) link
this was the first time i heard applause for a deadly assault from (one member of) a Lincoln Center audience, so there's that.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 19:37 (nine years ago) link
Deadly assault is homicide, no?
― Eric H., Monday, 29 September 2014 19:48 (nine years ago) link
i don't want to be specific
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 19:50 (nine years ago) link
the body count in this, on and off screen, is fairly impressive
w/out cuts this also appears to be "unrated" or NC-17 to me, and even aside from that i don't see any industry awards for Moore w/out a level of disconnect that... belongs in this movie.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 19:51 (nine years ago) link
I've seen Olivia Williams in all kinds of stuff but the majority is probably television, so...
― ⌘-B (mh), Monday, 29 September 2014 19:55 (nine years ago) link
The awards bloggers have shifted onto a different Moore perf this year. The amount of relief they've displayed not having to pretend she had a shot with Maps is impressive.
― Eric H., Monday, 29 September 2014 19:57 (nine years ago) link
I'd like to see a movie this hateful about awards bloggers.
My favorite line in Maps might be "Everything's stunt casting!"
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Monday, 29 September 2014 20:04 (nine years ago) link
For Your Consideration was a step in the right direction.
― Eric H., Monday, 29 September 2014 20:07 (nine years ago) link
a better ending for maps to the stars would be if after the final scene the limo driver drives up, shakes his head, chuckles and says "only in 'Hollyweird'!"
― Onan Pullett (wins), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 19:41 (nine years ago) link
"that's 'La-La Land' for ya!"
― Onan Pullett (wins), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 19:42 (nine years ago) link
Something bout those little pills...
― Eric H., Tuesday, 30 September 2014 20:00 (nine years ago) link
hopefully during next awards season, Mia Wasikowska grabs someone's trophy and proceeds to...
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 20:00 (nine years ago) link
thank the Academy.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 30 September 2014 20:14 (nine years ago) link
I liked it, it was much stranger than I expected. The boy being competitive with the younger kid was funny.
Is it just me or was the burning woman struggling with a ghost made of fire? Probably not but I kept thinking there was some extra figure in the scene.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 12:10 (nine years ago) link
no it was just the worst CGI ever put on film
― Number None, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 12:11 (nine years ago) link
That they bothered using cgi instead of a stunt person with real fire was part of what made me wonder. That is part of the annoyance of so many bad cgi scenes, that they easily could have been avoided.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 12:16 (nine years ago) link
That had to have been deliberate
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 12:26 (nine years ago) link
Not going to entirely dismiss the notion that it's a "commentary" on something but it's pretty jarring considering the rest of the film (including the ghosts/hallucinations) is presented in such a flat, realistic manner
― Number None, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 13:14 (nine years ago) link
I vaguely recall reading something about Croney getting pissed off when questioned about it at Cannes but I can't seem to find it
― Number None, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 13:24 (nine years ago) link
idk
"I really love CGI in the sense that it's another tool," he said. "When I made Naked Lunch, there was no such thing as computer generated graphics. Even in Maps to the Stars, which is relatively naturalistic, there's a lot of CG that's wonderful. It was set in Hollywood, but it was mostly shot in Toronto. We just shot five days in Hollywood. And yet I could put the Hollywood Hills in the background easily because of computer graphics. That's a fantastic tool for a director, and that's why I love digital. But because it's exciting, it does get overused, of course."
― Number None, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 13:52 (nine years ago) link
the freud-jung movie wasn't great but there were a few interesting stylistic choices. but yeah for a movie with that subject matter it was pretty uninvolving
there are one or two moments of flagrantly shoody CGI in moonrise kingdom, i sort of like it
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 14:26 (nine years ago) link
I always wondered why in Naked Lunch when you see that big thing Julian Sands was stuck in, they created a fake Julian Sands instead of putting the real actor in it. Another case of what seems to me unnecessary effects. That Giger looking humping thing looked pretty rough too but otherwise I thought the special effects were brilliant. I can only guess what he would have replaced with cgi if he could.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:12 (nine years ago) link
w/out cuts this also appears to be "unrated" or NC-17 to me
Surely this is because of the guy wanking and not any of the violence. Brightly lit full-on penis shots are begging for an MPAA panic attack.
This is really Bruce Wagner's movie - it's got bits and pieces from Force Majeure and I'm Losing You - and so much autobiographical stuff (he was a limo driver at the Beverly Hills Hotel; he is heavily involved in new age mysticism but is a raging cynic, etc. etc.)
Cronenberg had never filmed a single shot in Hollywood before this movie!
― Your Ribs are My Ladder, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:19 (nine years ago) link
hoew in the world do you clowns suspend your disbelief over rear projection in old movies?
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:42 (nine years ago) link
Brightly lit full-on penis shots are begging for an MPAA panic attack.
Wolf of Wall Street was rated R and featured a brightly lit full-on penis shot of Jonah Hill wanking it in a crowded party
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:48 (nine years ago) link
heh Existenz features some of the worst - or most obvious - back projection ever (in the driving scenes) and I've always wondered if it was a deliberate stylistic choice
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:50 (nine years ago) link
it is in Far from Heaven and prob a few Coen joints I am forgetting.
anyway i have a number complaints about this movie and the fire is nowhere close to the top 20.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:57 (nine years ago) link
figure all the fake-looking stuff in eXistenZ is v intentional
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 15:57 (nine years ago) link
It could just be that Cronenberg makes sure effects look great when they're integral to the story but doesn't really care when they're not
― ⌘-B (mh), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:11 (nine years ago) link
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 1, 2014 10:48 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
did it? man, I must have blocked that out
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:15 (nine years ago) link
election features an amusing rear projection as a kind of fellini pastiche; film is chock full of intentionally crickety analog effects
although that's not a coen joint
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:16 (nine years ago) link
i was watching some 1960s richard fleischer movie (which one? I forget) and it had a rather amazingly seamless instance of rear projection in a car-ride scene
really; i wonder if Sophocles thought Jocasta's suicide was "non-integral." xxxxp
WotW cock scene was v different than this; also the MPAA cuts a break to bad big-budget comedies. (also this one is clearly not a fake johnson, but it is flaccid)
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:17 (nine years ago) link
True, I haven't seen this one yet so I have no idea what's important
― ⌘-B (mh), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:19 (nine years ago) link
in general, or w/r/t this movie?
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:19 (nine years ago) link
I always wondered why in Naked Lunch when you see that big thing Julian Sands was stuck in, they created a fake Julian Sands instead of putting the real actor in it. Another case of what seems to me unnecessary effects.
― Robert Adam Gilmour,
because it emphasizes the illusory nature of what Bill sees? It's the actor playing Kiki who's obv fake. Sands and Kiki are having sex; instead, he imagines a mugwump eviscerating Kiki.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:23 (nine years ago) link
I should probably watch it again, I barely understood the film but I enjoyed quite a lot of it. Not that I think I'll understand it the second or third time.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:29 (nine years ago) link
nice one, amateurist B)
― ⌘-B (mh), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 16:47 (nine years ago) link
Should have clarified - full-on bright penii played for a laugh (see also: Walk Hard) generally treated differently than dramatic and sexualized full-on bright penii (in Maps (genital spoilers) the guy is tugging on it watching Julianne Moore make out with another woman).
― Your Ribs are My Ladder, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 17:15 (nine years ago) link
genital spoilers
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 17:16 (nine years ago) link
Jonah Hill's genitals are spoiled.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 17:18 (nine years ago) link
Cronenberg is a man with eyes who has seen what fire looks like and seems to put a fair amount of thought into how he films things so I don't find it difficult to credit him with making these decisions for a reason
The alienation effect or whatever of the fake-looking fire worked for me cause I found the (self?) immolation of the woman to be one of the odder things to happen in the film, it seemed to come out of nowhere (I may have missed something tbh)
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:15 (nine years ago) link
Having now seen Maps to the Stars, I can confirm that a) the penis tugging scene is far more explicit than the one in Wolf of Wall Street and that b)it is possible to read the shoddiness of the fire SFX as either the unfortunate consequence of a limited technical budget OR a deliberately artificial moment of extinction in a film that blurs the boundaries between what's real and what's unreal.
xpost to winsYes, I was going to say that SPOILERS the fire/suicide scene is probably the most difficult one to read at a simple narrative level in the whole film
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:20 (nine years ago) link
Does stuntpeople + actual fire cost that much? (Genuine q I know nothing)
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:23 (nine years ago) link
I guess bad cgi is really really cheap
Perhaps it is simply health and safety gone mad, and we can no longer freely douse stuntppl in petrol now that shoddy sfx are available
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:25 (nine years ago) link
Best stuntman-set-on-fire scene is in Carpenter's Thing, imho
I'm a scientist and tbh it will never not be amazing to me that they can safely set people on fire
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:29 (nine years ago) link
I'm amazed at the sizable pockets of contempt that exist here and among under-40s in general for Method/'naturalistic' acting, but damn let 20 seconds of CG that doesn't look like a NASA doc in IMAX outtake come along and the film is ruined.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:33 (nine years ago) link
Whereas your ability to make fictive leaps stretches to imagining up some posts nobody made
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:37 (nine years ago) link
the olivia williams on fire bit really freaked me out, to extent that I didn't even notice the crappy cgi that was apparently obvious to everyone else, I used to have a recurring nightmare in which someone I knew was consumed by fire and I was trying to pull them out/put the fire out, but terrified that they were already dead/would not recognisably be 'themselves' any more if I did and trying to fight the urge to run away and leave them because of this, I don't know if this is what was supposed to be communicated. I kind of have the idea that this nightmare was first inspired by something I saw/read in a piece of fiction but I don't remember what
― Angel Brain (soref), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:43 (nine years ago) link
Think he was more scared of getting burned than anything else
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:45 (nine years ago) link
character-specific spoiler for a film that may not get a US release til next year; i knew we could get there.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:49 (nine years ago) link
that's probably right, but something about the way it was done, that she did not look like an identifiable human being while he was trying to save here was so close to this nightmare, like this abject thing, of this transition between a living body and a corpse was really effective for me, even if it was just a side-effect of crap cgi
― Angel Brain (soref), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:51 (nine years ago) link
xp sorry, I didn't realise we were not spoiling, apologies Dr Morbius
― Angel Brain (soref), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:52 (nine years ago) link
Yeah I didn't realise this wasn't out yet over there although I wonder (I don't) how that works when it's the other way round
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 21:54 (nine years ago) link
well DC's films haven't been American-financed in years (at least not substantially) and this one will prob barely be released due to content that can't be viewed by 12-year-olds.
no big deal, spoilers gen don't spoil me even when im victimized
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 22:10 (nine years ago) link
with you there. What sort of release something will get is happily a mystery to me tbh, there is a cinema in my town that will show things and beyond that I don't really care
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 22:17 (nine years ago) link
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, October 1, 2014 4:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
there is no limit to how cheap cheaply-made CGI can be!
this movie looks like it's really whiny and crabby about hollywood! I have limited patience with such movies but as i wrote earlier if it's genuinely weird that could be its redeeming feature
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 1 October 2014 23:11 (nine years ago) link
I was unsure if this film was targeting many people in particular. The boy is a bit like Beiber but I don't think it was really attacking him specifically. I don't remember any references to actors or directors being damning.
A large part of the humour is how horrible and cynical the people are but I don't think satire is the main point.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 23:24 (nine years ago) link
I think satire has to have an implicit belief in the virtue in the world that opposes the forces being satirized. This shows a hermetic world of the unredeemable or unsalvageable.
really nev thought of Bieber, the pubescent grossout comedy Benjie appears to be making suggests any of those kid actors who are usually washed up by 20 (looks like Wagner wrote the script somewhere around 2006).
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 October 2014 02:36 (nine years ago) link
actually i guess he wrote the first go around '93?
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/17/maps-to-the-stars-my-film-about-the-dark-side-of-hollywood
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 October 2014 03:34 (nine years ago) link
that makes sense, because I can't really think of any present day analogues to Benji's franchise. It seemed like more of a Home Alone/Problem Child thing
― Number None, Thursday, 2 October 2014 07:53 (nine years ago) link
yeah, surely some of those kids' moms were their agents
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 October 2014 11:20 (nine years ago) link
Cronenberg made a movie about Problem Child? Sold!
― Eric H., Thursday, 2 October 2014 12:11 (nine years ago) link
dangerous method is the real nadir of latter-day cronenberg, imho - so lifeless and cheap-looking― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Monday, 29 September 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Monday, 29 September 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I liked the film: how it put what he is interested in highly conventional ways.
Freud's office didn't look bad at all to me. Thought there was care to how the film looked.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 2 October 2014 12:12 (nine years ago) link
i loved freud's office in ADM
i think it is a lot more interesting movie than anyone gives it credit for, i think weirdly people dismiss it just because it's a period piece and thus not what they expect from croney
― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, 2 October 2014 23:38 (nine years ago) link
i like when directors not known for period pieces (altman, mike leigh, cronenberg) do them, they always bring something interesting and weird
Kubrick, arguably.
― Eric H., Friday, 3 October 2014 05:08 (nine years ago) link
paul w.s. anderson
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 3 October 2014 06:38 (nine years ago) link
Just to expand on this a bit. Its not that I don't like what Cronenberg does that I'd suddenly want something fairly conventional/BBC drama-esque from him. Dramatizing Freud and the scene of people around him in that way somehow felt appropriate. Some of those characters were so out of left-field that you just give them the space for their weirdness to take over.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 3 October 2014 08:33 (nine years ago) link
― Eric H., Friday, October 3, 2014 1:08 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
you might say 2001 is a sci-fi period piece Ô_o
― socki (s1ocki), Friday, 3 October 2014 12:19 (nine years ago) link
You might say Kubrick brought apes to the period piece.
― Eric H., Friday, 3 October 2014 12:20 (nine years ago) link
you might say 2001 was the original "planet" of the "apes" movie
― socki (s1ocki), Friday, 3 October 2014 12:21 (nine years ago) link
"you" might "say"
― I dunno. (amateurist), Monday, 6 October 2014 20:30 (nine years ago) link
Vadim Rizov not wild about DC's year
There’s a moment when Olivia Williams is exiting her bathroom; she turns and stares before gasping in shock at an unexpected intruder. The camera waits in the hallway the whole time like a stalker, cuing us to expect a jolt, but the amount of space and attenuated time it takes to get there is what generates a frisson beyond the expected. Still, I can’t get around the fact that this is a terrible script, and I’m not sure Cronenberg grasps that that’s an insurmountable problem. A salute, though, to Mia Wasikowska, in the year’s most thankless great performance.
I should also say a few words about Cronenberg’s debut novel, Consumed. Reviews of this have been good so far, which makes me wonder if I’m just functionally illiterate and haven’t learned anything in my life so far....
http://filmmakermagazine.com/87812-nyff-14-david-cronenbergs-maps-to-the-stars-and-consumed/#.VDQWr_ldVyw
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 7 October 2014 16:45 (nine years ago) link
One thing about this film is that it may teach ilxors the correct way to say imago
― lool at the herrlich (wins), Thursday, 9 October 2014 17:57 (nine years ago) link
imago ahead and say it
― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, 9 October 2014 19:48 (nine years ago) link
i think it is a lot more interesting movie than anyone gives it credit for
I remember seeing ADM at Telluride and being literally its only defender among the dozens of people I knew there who'd seen it.
― Simon H., Thursday, 9 October 2014 19:57 (nine years ago) link
yeah i think that criticism has so oriented itself around auteur critique that it's hard for some people to just say, "here's a talented director who has a shitty script, and the resulting film isn't that good." that explains most of scorsese's career for the past 20 years, anyhow.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Thursday, 9 October 2014 23:15 (nine years ago) link
Spider is my second favourite after Dead Ringers. I think Spider is seriously neglected.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 10 October 2014 17:21 (nine years ago) link
I interviewed Cronenberg once about Spider and he told me how he'd cut out all sorts of special effects from the film. The one that sticks out is some meal that had eyeballs and bled when the guy cut into it. I admit, it's a fuzzy memory.
― The Thnig, Friday, 10 October 2014 17:57 (nine years ago) link
one of only a few Cronenberg movies I've never bothered to watch since it sounds so deeply unpleasant and pointless
― Οὖτις, Friday, 10 October 2014 17:58 (nine years ago) link
haven't watched Cosmopolis for similar reaseon
― Οὖτις, Friday, 10 October 2014 17:59 (nine years ago) link
It's very very quiet. Some themes that may be troubling to some but in the context of sheer unpleasantness it's light weight Cronenberg.
In an odd way I found some of it soothing. Miranda Richardson is really great and beautiful in it.
I highly recommend it.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 10 October 2014 18:19 (nine years ago) link
Just looking through his filmography and never knew he did adverts (including Nike) or a Friday The 13th episode.
I don't think I've ever heard him talk about his favourite films or directors. He seems to talk about writers more.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 10 October 2014 18:37 (nine years ago) link
Cosmopolis is really, really funny.
― Eric H., Friday, 10 October 2014 18:44 (nine years ago) link
I have never heard that opinion expressed
― Οὖτις, Friday, 10 October 2014 19:17 (nine years ago) link
spider was good, and i should revisit it, but i remember feeling like the resolution/revelation was kind of pat in a very mid-century pop-freudian way.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 10 October 2014 19:21 (nine years ago) link
in general I'm not v interested in films with twists about unreliable narrators
― Οὖτις, Friday, 10 October 2014 19:24 (nine years ago) link
that wasn't my problem -- my problem was just after building the mystery so carefully the revelation felt rather predictable and pat. which doesn't mean the film is any worse than one of those 1940s freudian potboilers by siodmak or fritz lang, just that it's not much more than that, either.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, 10 October 2014 19:25 (nine years ago) link
so is this worth seeing or not?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 22 October 2014 18:46 (nine years ago) link
http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/book-compost-heap-interview-david-cronenberg
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 18 November 2014 22:48 (nine years ago) link
― please delete outrageous tanuki crappyposter (wins), Wednesday, October 1, 2014 5:23 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
for an auteur type like cronenberg i figure part of it is gaining much more control over your shoot/finished film-if you fully CGI the flames then you can just deal with your actor and don't have to deal with stuntpeople and various effects people+you can be more flexible with how you shoot it and how many takes you shoot+you don't have to edit around the stuntperson. this was presumably why all of the gun deaths in the departed were CGI instead of squibs too.
― slam dunk, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 00:30 (nine years ago) link
did the cronenberg augmented reality game ever happen?
― slam dunk, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 00:32 (nine years ago) link
you're...playing it right now
― Number None, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 00:40 (nine years ago) link
In the interview he says many of his films aren't on DVD, but which? I know Shivers taken a long time to get an American DVD release but I thought that was the final feature length thing.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 00:52 (nine years ago) link
I had shivers on DVD years ago.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 01:11 (nine years ago) link
I am thinking of watching The Brood tonight... never seen it before, hope it's good!
― I can just, like, YOLO with Uber (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 19 November 2014 02:37 (nine years ago) link
It's great.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 05:12 (nine years ago) link
yeah that was really something
kind of wanted to go for the Brood/ADM psychotherapy double-feature but I got too tired & chickened out
― I can just, like, YOLO with Uber (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 19 November 2014 15:31 (nine years ago) link
i really want someone to shop one of those brood children onto a picture of me so i can use it as my global profile pic
― La Lechera, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 15:34 (nine years ago) link
you don't need to see ADM after you've seen the Brood
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 19 November 2014 16:14 (nine years ago) link
Duly noted ... maybe i'll just rewatch The Brood
― I can just, like, YOLO with Uber (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 19 November 2014 18:41 (nine years ago) link
Ward is rong.
― things lose meaning over time (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 November 2014 18:43 (nine years ago) link
ADM is a totally different, albeit minor and enjoyable, film
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 19 November 2014 18:47 (nine years ago) link
it has one really good joke in it
surveying, ranking the oeuvre
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/the-films-of-david-cronenberg-ranked
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:00 (nine years ago) link
survey is good, rankings are ridic
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:07 (nine years ago) link
Top 5 is accurate (in a different order, but still).
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:09 (nine years ago) link
Crash is so bad
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:16 (nine years ago) link
Eric possibly otm
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:18 (nine years ago) link
Crash is much funnier than Maps to the Stars.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:22 (nine years ago) link
I loathed Crash in '97 (my first experience with crowds exiting a theatre) but it's due for a "rescreen."
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:24 (nine years ago) link
A Dangerous Method has to be the worst, I forgot that was Cronenberg.
― lil urbane (Jordan), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:26 (nine years ago) link
careful w morbz trigger-word there Alfred
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:27 (nine years ago) link
I knew it was from how the precision of those images and how Freud and Jung are set up as umbilically connected as the Mantle twins.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:27 (nine years ago) link
how
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:28 (nine years ago) link
Dangerous Method has at least one good joke in it, which is more than you can say for Crash which is just tedious
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:28 (nine years ago) link
― Οὖτις,
"I"?
funnier?
Naked Lunch left me cold once Judy Davis exited, bn meaning to try again
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:29 (nine years ago) link
the pacing of Naked Lunch is v strange and it drags for a bit in the last third but is redeemed by the ending. score is great, typewriters are great, should've been more overtly homoerotic imo if it wanted to be at all true to the source material but eh it's its own thing
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:33 (nine years ago) link
the thing that's stuck with me from last year's r*scr**n of Dead Ringers is the sob of "I want some ice cream."
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 19:41 (nine years ago) link
I feel like those rankings were picked out of a hat
― mh, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 20:44 (nine years ago) link
every fetishist has his reasons
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 20:51 (nine years ago) link
the write-ups aren't bad at all
i really, really like history of violence, which in its own way is perfect
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 20:53 (nine years ago) link
it's really interesting to watch older cronenberg movies, esp. those from the mid-80s and earlier. he doesn't quite have his style mastered, and there are awkward moments and scenes that don't come off even as you admire what they are trying to do. but in some of the recent films you have a sense that he knows /exactly/ where to put the camera, /exactly/ when to cut, etc. there's a classical precision that's almost breathtaking.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 20:56 (nine years ago) link
The way Viggo Mortensen seems to change the very structure of his face through a change in expression when he acknowledges his past identity in AHOV is still one of my favorite scenes
― mh, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:00 (nine years ago) link
some of his recent films remind me of the moment when a lot of people felt hal hartley went off the rails.... (ca. no such thing and later). there's a sense that having achieved a summit of critical favor, the director wants to tackle projects of an appropriate sociological heft. and what results is satire that's somehow both extremely idiosyncratic and kind of obvious (in a way that seems unbecoming of such smart directors).
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:00 (nine years ago) link
xxxp Almost boring.
Give me the shagginess of his early stuff and the emerging thematic clumsiness of his most recent few any day.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:00 (nine years ago) link
the big confrontation in front of the house in "history of violence" (where viggo first shows his "true colors" to his family) is incredible. it's really kuleshovian, too -- it's not until over halfway through the scene, i think, that you get a shot that actually shows ed harris and his goons in the same frame as viggo and his family.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:01 (nine years ago) link
also really striking (and i guess derived from the graphic novel?) that history of violence begins with the bad guys, kind of like a lot of westerns.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:02 (nine years ago) link
Am willing to give History of Violence another shot, but I found it more uninvolving than clinical.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:04 (nine years ago) link
the obviousness is in "spider," too. the big climactic reveal is beautifully engineered as visual storytelling, but it's also, disappointingly, exactly what you might have feared/expected. cronenberg is much smarter than i am, so i probably shouldn't second-guess why he's sometimes drawn to material like that.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:04 (nine years ago) link
and, for the most part, give me the meat in the middle.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:05 (nine years ago) link
you guys are being really glib
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:06 (nine years ago) link
I love "milking cows and shit" from Hurt in History Of Violence.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:06 (nine years ago) link
hurt in "history of violence" is definitely a take-or-leave thing. when i first saw the film i thought he was playing too broadly, too cartoonishly. but each time i've seen it since (probably a dozen times) i figure there's really no other way to play it, and he's pretty perfect.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:07 (nine years ago) link
well it's all been said, and gets resaid (starting w/ Shakey) with every goddamn bump
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:08 (nine years ago) link
i mean doing an al pacino brooding intensity thing just wouldn't have been appropriate... it would have been too close to viggo's performance.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:08 (nine years ago) link
of his six post-2000 features (haven't seen Eastern Promises) what i really plug into is a pessimistic old-man vibe -- the world of the film is either revealed as a fraud or illusion, or is littered with multiple deaths, or both. Sure this is true of earlier work too, but seems upfront and obsessive now.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:13 (nine years ago) link
Essential: Videodrome, Stereo, Crimes of The Future.
I haven't seen anything recent by him though.
― Dave fischer, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:13 (nine years ago) link
oh now *I'm* the broken record? physician heal thyself etc
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:15 (nine years ago) link
i think we shd do a podcast/commentary where Eric and I watch Crash and Cosmopolis with you and point out the funny parts.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:20 (nine years ago) link
Whatever gains Cronenberg has made w. the 'classical precision' of his recent(ish) films - and I'm w/ Eric, give me the rough edges of his first and best movies over the Merchant Ivory mise-en-scene of Dangerous Method - its been accompanied by a fatal loss of that energy given off by the wild ideas zinging round Shivers, Brood etc
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:20 (nine years ago) link
the Merchant Ivory mise-en-scene of Dangerous Method
gahhh, this is such a misunderstanding of ADM. 19th-c furniture does not equal stodgy. also Merchant-Ivory made *some* pretty good films.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:22 (nine years ago) link
I haven't watched Cosmopolis (or Maps to the Stars yet), I'm a bit wary with all the bad reviews
xxp
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:22 (nine years ago) link
One thing's for sure, we'd never be talking at the same time.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:26 (nine years ago) link
xp my take on latter-day Cronenberg seems to be very much inverse to the general levels of critical enthusiasm
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:27 (nine years ago) link
So I don't really know if it's a "recommendation" to say I loved Cosmopolis and really liked Maps.
well it's not like those two received the critical enthusiasm of the previous three
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:36 (nine years ago) link
Cosmopolis is pretty bad.
I agree with Morbs about A Dangerous Method--it's excellent and not at all "stodgy". Aside from the setting it's very much of a piece with the rest of his ourvre. Also Viggo Mortenson is a lot of fun as Freud.
― Punny Names (latebloomer), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:36 (nine years ago) link
Cronenberg features ranked:
VideodromeDead RingersThe BroodeXistenZThe FlyThey Came From WithinA History of ViolenceNaked LunchScannersRabidThe Dead ZoneA Dangerous MethodMaps to the StarsSpiderEastern PromisesCrashCosmopolis
Have yet to see M. Butterfly.
― describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner (contenderizer), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:39 (nine years ago) link
the blurb in Morbz link about M. Butterfly is v otm - it's totally inert
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:44 (nine years ago) link
The BroodThe FlyVideodromeCrashThe Dead ZoneCosmopolisDead RingersMaps to the StarsScannersThey Came From WithinSpiderA History of ViolenceRabid
Haven't seen or haven't seen recently enough to accurately judge: Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Fast Company, Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:44 (nine years ago) link
it's strange that after a century+ of film and Freud, the two best portrayals are probably Viggo and Alan Arkin.
Shakes, don't call me physician, i'm a philologist as my movie clearly states.
Eric, always exaggerating our differences, u tease
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:45 (nine years ago) link
eg Crash car salesman: "This is very bad."
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:47 (nine years ago) link
Can you locate any common ground between us in this thread?
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:56 (nine years ago) link
My ranking:
The BroodVideodromeThe FlyNaked LunchEastern PromisesA History of ViolenceDead RingersScannersThe Dead ZoneeXistenZRabidThey Came From Within
The bottom 5 are all kind of tied:
A Dangerous MethodM. ButterflySpider (hated this)Crash (walked out of the theater, but finished it years later)eXistenZ (one of the worst movies I've ever seen by anybody)
Haven't seen Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Fast Company or Cosmopolis.
― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 21:58 (nine years ago) link
Morbs/Eric/Shakey rifftrax-style comment podcast would be hysterical, at least for an episode or two.
― you make me feel like danzig (WilliamC), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:02 (nine years ago) link
top 5 on Slant list, i think. (haven't seen The Brood in long time)
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:04 (nine years ago) link
I mean aside from that!
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:08 (nine years ago) link
take what you can get, Brundlefly.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:10 (nine years ago) link
誤訳侮辱 - how did eXistenZ end up in the first list too if it's one of the worst films by anybody?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:12 (nine years ago) link
You guys! Merchant-Ivory don't have "mise en scene": they have a camera, in front of which actors walk or get posed. No way on hell did Cronenberg aspire to their level of third-rate craft.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:17 (nine years ago) link
Some other funny bits that stick out.
Eastern Promises, "he looks like a fucking icecream".
I enjoyed Maps To The Stars but it didn't linger enough in my head, though the one thing I thought was really funny was how the boy was so threatened by the younger boy and said he was "chewing up scenery".
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:19 (nine years ago) link
Dead RingersThe FlyNaked LunchVideodromeThe BroodAHOFEastern PromisesThe Dead Zone
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:19 (nine years ago) link
I enjoyed A History Of Violence more after reading J.G Ballard's review of it : http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/23/jgballard
― めんどくさかった (Matt #2), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:21 (nine years ago) link
The 1983-1991 run is unfuckwithable.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:23 (nine years ago) link
you could stretch that back to '79 imo altho Scanners would be the weakest of the lot
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:25 (nine years ago) link
Naked Lunch, the first I saw in the theater, is my favorite cinematic gloss on a novel. He wrote good dry-as-sand dialogue that I can imagine Benway and Joan saying, Peter Weller and Roy Scheider are quite well cast, etc.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:28 (nine years ago) link
I keep coming back to Scanners remembering that cold, beige, terminally '70s look it has, but then getting disappointed it doesn't do as much with the material as the two films on either side of it.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:31 (nine years ago) link
v true
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:31 (nine years ago) link
it includes these rote action movie gestures (a car chase!) that just seem awkward
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:32 (nine years ago) link
Howard Shore saves large chunks of it by really clearing his throat.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:33 (nine years ago) link
NL also my intro to Ornette Coleman.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:34 (nine years ago) link
the brood does so much more with "cold, beige, terminally 70s".
― describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner (contenderizer), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:34 (nine years ago) link
I'm gonna have to re-watch the Brood when the wife is out of town or something, cuz last time she made me turn it off cuz the murderous kids were "too disturbing"
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:35 (nine years ago) link
so do pics of Jimmy Carter
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:37 (nine years ago) link
I agree and disagree with that list in about equal measure. And I hated their #1 (found it the wrong kind of campy) at the time, although I've never taken a second look.
1. The Dead Zone2. The Fly3. Dead Ringers4. Videodrome5. The Brood
Haven't seen Fast Company, M. Butterfly, Eastern Promises, or the new one. I've seen at least one of Rabid and/or Shivers, possibly both--if only one, I'm not 100% sure which.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:38 (nine years ago) link
you guys mean the films of the era when u say "70s," right, cuz i was dere, Cholly.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:40 (nine years ago) link
did you get a senior citizen discount when watching Hopscotch?
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:41 (nine years ago) link
cold, beige, terminally '70s look it has
Yes! Especially love the shopping mall at the start of Scanners - a Canadian cousin to the mall in Dawn of the Dead.
I think my overwhelming preference for the early, gory ones - and my disappointment with pretty much everything after Dead Ringers - is tied up with seeing them for the first time as VHS 'video nasties' in the early 1980s, at just the right teenaged frame of mind. The visual dirt of degraded VHS rental tapes gave those films an ugly energy and illicit attraction; so something like Dangerous Method can't help but seem pallid in comparison.
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:45 (nine years ago) link
optometrists' convention in videodrome nails that same, dreary vibe
― describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner (contenderizer), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:46 (nine years ago) link
one of my first solo R-rateds was a doublebill of Animal House/Putney Swope in my hometown, and i was even younger than some of your recent tricks! xxp
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:48 (nine years ago) link
one of the many things i like about the brood is how effectively it situates a cluster of dated-seeming 70s design artifacts (ferns, white wrought iron furniture, wood paneling, turtlenecks, geometrical desk accents, deep pile) as forward-thinking chic
― describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner (contenderizer), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:49 (nine years ago) link
nothing dates like the future
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:50 (nine years ago) link
all serious films set in the future are about the present.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:52 (nine years ago) link
well yeah
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 22:54 (nine years ago) link
all serious films set in the past are about vietnam
― describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner (contenderizer), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 23:00 (nine years ago) link
Cut 'n' pasted the list from an earlier poster, then reshuffled - forgot to delete eXistenZ after moving it.
― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 23:43 (nine years ago) link
all serious films set in the present are about the internet
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 23:45 (nine years ago) link
All serious films set in the internet are about me.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 23:50 (nine years ago) link
eXistenZ Is great and not just because it's about Eric
― mh, Thursday, 26 February 2015 01:10 (nine years ago) link
Sometimes my fave Cronenberg is his "Camera" short. Like a modern sideways sequel to "Videodrome."
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 26 February 2015 02:24 (nine years ago) link
and my disappointment with pretty much everything after Dead Ringers - is tied up with seeing them for the first time as VHS 'video nasties' in the early 1980s, at just the right teenaged frame of mind.
My like of Crash might be tied up w/seeing stories of it being 'banned' in Westminster. Shit was hilarious.
Even so Crash is top five for me, although I need a retrospective to catch more of the earlier work.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 26 February 2015 11:01 (nine years ago) link
I saw Camera several years ago and couldn't make sense of it, I'd like to hear your interpretation Josh. I wondered if he would make that type of film more often if he could.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 26 February 2015 16:51 (nine years ago) link
Well, let's jog the ol' memory. I recall it as a monologue from Cronenberg regular Leslie Carlson, about the scary power of film, the way film essentially kills things as it preserves them. But of course, the monologue is filmed in conspicuous digital, as children rush around, setting up for an actual film shoot. Then the monologue stops and the movie suddenly shifts to actual startling film, and the monologue begins again. Only this time Carlson freaks out and it suddenly cuts, because he has been trapped in film and is therefore now ... dead? I dunno. It's on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cnenqvMEaI
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 26 February 2015 20:24 (nine years ago) link
'maps to the stars' is avail streaming/ondemand fyi
p good i thought, seems so obvious it would be written by bruce wagner once i saw his name come up @ the end, def does the satire of hollywood better than the family tragedy & weighty elements; juilianne moores part is a great role, and one that most actresses could prob not pull off
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 28 February 2015 15:53 (nine years ago) link
Showing all 131 plot keywordshollywood2 of 2 found this relevantmale frontal nudity3 of 4 found this relevantactress1 of 1 found this relevantfire1 of 1 found this relevantaspiring actor1 of 1 found this relevantchild star1 of 1 found this relevantpersonal assistant1 of 1 found this relevantghost1 of 1 found this relevanthollywood walk of fame1 of 1 found this relevantabusive father1 of 1 found this relevantemployer employee relationship1 of 1 found this relevantfilm within a film1 of 1 found this relevanthollywood sign1 of 1 found this relevantdysfunctional family1 of 1 found this relevantsheepdog1 of 1 found this relevantprescription drug abuse1 of 1 found this relevantenergy drink1 of 1 found this relevantring1 of 1 found this relevantbrother sister relationship1 of 1 found this relevantlimousine1 of 1 found this relevantmental illness1 of 1 found this relevantdrug abuse1 of 1 found this relevantfilm making1 of 1 found this relevantburn victim1 of 1 found this relevantmother daughter incest1 of 2 found this relevantmale nudity1 of 2 found this relevantmale full frontal nudity1 of 2 found this relevantreference to chuck lorreIs this relevant?drowned childIs this relevant?strangulationIs this relevant?massageIs this relevant?confrontationIs this relevant?shoutingIs this relevant?argumentIs this relevant?humiliationIs this relevant?reference to ryan seacrestIs this relevant?reference to drew barrymoreIs this relevant?reference to bernardo bertolucciIs this relevant?reference to anne hathawayIs this relevant?reference to tatum o'nealIs this relevant?reference to harvey weinsteinIs this relevant?reference to demi lovatoIs this relevant?reference to robert downey jr.Is this relevant?reference to ryan goslingIs this relevant?apparitionIs this relevant?walk of fameIs this relevant?beverly hills californiaIs this relevant?kicked in the stomachIs this relevant?woman cryingIs this relevant?crying womanIs this relevant?blood on faceIs this relevant?interrupted sexIs this relevant?scientologyIs this relevant?stage motherIs this relevant?shallowIs this relevant?name droppingIs this relevant?tragic endingIs this relevant?suicide pactIs this relevant?cowardiceIs this relevant?reference to oprah winfreyIs this relevant?reference to lance armstrongIs this relevant?escaped mental patientIs this relevant?head bashed inIs this relevant?reference to nicole kidmanIs this relevant?reference to halle berryIs this relevant?sex with clientIs this relevant?spontaneous sexIs this relevant?erectionIs this relevant?overbearing fatherIs this relevant?doting motherIs this relevant?answering machine messageIs this relevant?reference to ebayIs this relevant?brother sister incestIs this relevant?flatulenceIs this relevant?child ghostIs this relevant?wet dressIs this relevant?black dressIs this relevant?white dressIs this relevant?abusive stepfatherIs this relevant?vomit sceneIs this relevant?woman sitting on a toiletIs this relevant?dog killedIs this relevant?holocaust jokeIs this relevant?arsonIs this relevant?restraining orderIs this relevant?schadenfreudeIs this relevant?reference to jim carreyIs this relevant?red pantiesIs this relevant?incest overtoneIs this relevant?reference to the dalai lamaIs this relevant?reference to mother teresaIs this relevant?anti semitic slurIs this relevant?homophobic slurIs this relevant?male divaIs this relevant?vicodinIs this relevant?reference to david cassidyIs this relevant?reference to al goreIs this relevant?constipationIs this relevant?reference to shirley templeIs this relevant?menage a troisIs this relevant?three someIs this relevant?burnt faceIs this relevant?bloodIs this relevant?menstruationIs this relevant?hollywood californiaIs this relevant?suicideIs this relevant?child murderIs this relevant?murderIs this relevant?wedding ringIs this relevant?burning bodyIs this relevant?swimming poolIs this relevant?reference to googleIs this relevant?toiletIs this relevant?13 year oldIs this relevant?poemIs this relevant?reference to imdbIs this relevant?threesomeIs this relevant?sex in a carIs this relevant?incestIs this relevant?chauffeurIs this relevant?applying for a jobIs this relevant?haunted by the pastIs this relevant?shirtless boy0 of 1 found this relevantone male two females threesome0 of 1 found this relevantmale rear nudity0 of 1 found this relevantdoggystyle sex0 of 1 found this relevantgreen panties0 of 1 found this relevantred bra and panties0 of 1 found this relevantred bra0 of 1 found this relevantfemale nudity0 of 1 found this relevantlesbian sex
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 28 February 2015 16:03 (nine years ago) link
Power Play: Tim Cook Just Installed The Only iPhone 7 Headphone Jack Into His Abdomen
http://www.clickhole.com/r/4865fsd
http://images.onionstatic.com/clickhole/3305/7/16x9/800.jpg
― Sentient animated cat gif (kingfish), Friday, 9 September 2016 20:54 (seven years ago) link
Maps To The Stars was great. Can anyone recommend any other good movies that satirize Hollywood or at least laser in on the industry? (Clouds of Sils Maria is another recent one I liked).
― Everything Moves Towards The Sun (Ross), Thursday, 19 January 2017 20:59 (seven years ago) link
well there's some real obvious ones - The Player, Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:03 (seven years ago) link
The Bad and the BeautifulSingin' in the RainIrma Vep
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:12 (seven years ago) link
Singin in the Rain is one of the greatest movies ever made
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:16 (seven years ago) link
The Day of the LocustFedoraS.O.B.
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:35 (seven years ago) link
huh didn't know about S.O.B., that sounds p nutty
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:39 (seven years ago) link
^Topless Julie Andrews shocker, iirc.
Swimming with Sharks
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:41 (seven years ago) link
Star Is Born '37 (funnier than the other versions, tho '54 too)
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:42 (seven years ago) link
Barton Fink?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:49 (seven years ago) link
Sullivan's Travels?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:50 (seven years ago) link
or the much better original version, The Big Knife
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 19 January 2017 21:50 (seven years ago) link
Thanks for the suggestions so far...I've seen Mulholland, Sunset and Barton. Lots of new suggestions :-)
― Everything Moves Towards The Sun (Ross), Thursday, 19 January 2017 22:30 (seven years ago) link
In a Lonely Place?
― dan selzer, Thursday, 19 January 2017 23:26 (seven years ago) link
Sullivan's Travels
x2
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Thursday, 19 January 2017 23:31 (seven years ago) link
If you're not hung up on good, there's Alex in Wonderland.
― clemenza, Friday, 20 January 2017 01:16 (seven years ago) link
The Loved One
― his eye is on despair-o (Jon not Jon), Friday, 20 January 2017 01:19 (seven years ago) link
there are a couple films that are more about celebrity than hollywood that come to mind but everyone's contributions so far have been excellent
― mh 😏, Friday, 20 January 2017 01:57 (seven years ago) link
Went to an Inauguration-themed screening of The Dead Zone tonight. I've always loved this film so much. I think of that Robert Kolker book, A Cinema of Loneliness, which I know includes Taxi Driver, The Conversation, and Night Moves. Strictly as a film about loneliness, I'd say The Dead Zone is sadder than any of them. Some of things that people laugh at nowadays baffle me. There's a moment, after Walken is caught off guard by Brooke Adams and her husband out campaigning, where Walken starts to cry and waves the young boy away with a beautiful hand gesture. Ninety percent of a full house thought this was hilarious. Don't get that at all.
― clemenza, Saturday, 21 January 2017 04:50 (seven years ago) link
Saw limos smashed up today and just thought of Cosmopolis
― Gukbe, Saturday, 21 January 2017 04:59 (seven years ago) link
My dozen favorites.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 13 August 2017 04:55 (six years ago) link
Was traumatized by Dead Ringers as a teenager. Haven't seen it since.
― Gukbe, Sunday, 13 August 2017 06:50 (six years ago) link
I'm a huge Cronenberg fan, and yet: 1) I've yet to see his last three (the Freud movie, Cosmopolis or Maps to the Stars) and, more egregiously 2) until last night I had never seen Scanners! Which is very ironic, given it is literally his most iconic movie. I mean, I've seen the explosion scene dozens of times! Anyway, it was good. Haven't seen Dead Ringers or Crash in ages, should watch them again one of these days.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:04 (six years ago) link
Freud movie is good, maps of the stars is laughable and seems to have been made for the sole purpose of a single iconic shot
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
Which shot?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:23 (six years ago) link
"the end"
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:28 (six years ago) link
Don't remember that.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:31 (six years ago) link
It comes at the end.
Just goofing. I've never seen it, remember?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:36 (six years ago) link
First thing that springs to mind is Julliane Moore shitting but I don't think it became iconic.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:43 (six years ago) link
I wonder if he's still planning on making his Lethem adaptation.
― the general theme of STUFF (cryptosicko), Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:47 (six years ago) link
*SPOILIDAD*
murder-of-viewer-by-Oscar
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:51 (six years ago) link
The Freud/Jung movie is one of his best.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 13 August 2017 16:49 (six years ago) link
No Existenz no credibility.
― Fetchboy, Sunday, 13 August 2017 17:10 (six years ago) link
No Crash no credibility
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Sunday, 13 August 2017 17:13 (six years ago) link
"A very protestant remark"
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 13 August 2017 17:36 (six years ago) link
Existenz is sort of an apotheosis of his body horror stuff, redone as sorta farce. One of my favorite twists in any movie came from watching that. All sorts of bad accents bouncing around, and then you realize it's been on purpose ...
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 18:39 (six years ago) link
Speaking of Scanners, I didn't think it was particularly good, to be honest. Bad acting, dumb plot, but not very deep (unlike the similarly shaky Rabid/Shivers) when it comes to theme/metaphoric worth, etc. In Alfred's list I would at least swap its place with Dead Zone.
Also, McGoohan - there should be a thread for pipe-smoking portentous/pretentious psychiatrists in horror movies.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 13:51 (six years ago) link
I've always thought it was pretty weird that Shivers and Ballard's High-Rise came out in the same year. Must have been something in the air
― Number None, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 21:37 (six years ago) link
Scanners is def lower-tier Cronenberg. Outside of the iconic scene and some of McGoohan's scenery chewing it's really pretty slow and stupid.
I love Existenz, a much better film in every way.
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:16 (six years ago) link
I found eXistenZ rather slow, almost leaden at time. I'm rewatching this weekend.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:22 (six years ago) link
idk maybe I'm just overly fond of the game framework ("GAS" etc.)
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:23 (six years ago) link
it also plays like a loose sequel to videodrome.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:24 (six years ago) link
I need to buy the Criterion Blu-Ray of The Brood. Love that movie. I suspect any child of divorce whose custodial parent relentlessly shit-talked the non-custodial parent for years would probably feel the same. Scanners is a lot of fun, Videodrome is a masterpiece, and eXistenZ is a bad Videodrome knockoff.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:29 (six years ago) link
eXistenZ is a good Videodrome tribute!
The Brood is my favorite.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 16 August 2017 00:58 (six years ago) link
i haven't seen the freud movie or maps to the stars either! cosmopolis was really dull, mostly, except for binoche
prob saw existenz ten years ago but i liked it & thought it was hilarious at the time
― comey did deflategate (daria-g), Wednesday, 16 August 2017 01:29 (six years ago) link
Didn't think it possible, but I went to a rep screening of Crash tonight and hated it even more than I did when it came out. Its lumbering eagerness to shock is embarrassing. This is not a comment on the novel, which I haven't read.
― clemenza, Sunday, 20 August 2017 04:07 (six years ago) link
the only thing i remember about crash is when deborah kara unger says "anus"
for me that is enough
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 20 August 2017 12:01 (six years ago) link
Unger and Elias Koteas speak every line in this breathy, ominous whisper that's as wearing as it is self-parodying.
I should say that I was semi-diverted throughout by trying to name specific roads. I took one of them home after the film, although I was going in the opposite direction--just me i the car, both hands on the wheel, trying not to crash.
― clemenza, Sunday, 20 August 2017 13:47 (six years ago) link
Haven't seen Crash since it came out, but my memory of it is as a deliberately 'cool' version of the Ballard book.
The desire to shock seems to me a noble aim for any filmmaker (as a cinemagoer, I would rather be shocked than comforted) - god forbid we have a cinema deprived of the vulgar and voyeuristic. The erosion of the strong shock impulse in Cronenberg's work has made him a lesser, duller filmmaker imho (eg the bland heritage nothingness of that wretched Freud movie). Besides, Ballard's linking of vehicles with the death impulse, and with orgasmic oblivion, seems very prescient right now - shockingly so.
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 08:41 (six years ago) link
I'm at the opposite end with Cronenberg, which I know is unusual--the more he erodes his strong shock impulse, the more I like him. His Dead Zone/The Fly/Dead Ringers run is far and away his peak for me. Not that the shock impulse is absent in those films--obviously it isn't, especially in The Fly--but I find his focus is almost entirely on the sadness of the stories there. Maybe the sadness is just a more conventional kind that I can relate to; you could say that Crash is very sad, too, I guess. I wouldn't.
― clemenza, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:07 (six years ago) link
I don't remember anything really being 'cool' about the film adaptation of Crash? If anything, it's a little too literal. Ballard's expository prose is really hard to convey on screen, so a lot of the subtext is lost. So the film gives you the narrative of one man's journey through these sex/car/death fetishists, but doesn't quite drive home the point that it's about society's near-erotic fixation with these machines that regularly kill people.
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:15 (six years ago) link
the bland heritage nothingness of that wretched Freud movie
The staging, lighting, and script ideas were as clammy as ever. I suggest another look.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:18 (six years ago) link
I need to rewatch it, but I had to admit it's the most disinterested I've been in a Cronenberg film! Sounds great on paper, though
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:21 (six years ago) link
and I've even seen that racing movie he directed when he was starting out
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:22 (six years ago) link
FWIW, Kim Newman also claimed that the Freud flick was DC's worst (and I'm guessing he's seen M. Butterfly, whereas I haven't) - so perhaps it's especially disliked by long-term genre dudes who miss the vulgar brilliance of Shivers?
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:33 (six years ago) link
I wouldn't expect genre dude to make allowances for experiments outside genre though.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:41 (six years ago) link
*dudes
I haven't seen it since it came out, but I remember Crash as being sort of abstractly sad. Like, these people only want this one dangerous thing, like addicts, and it ends more or less as it begins, iirc, in a state of semi-desperation.
I think Crash might have been better (again, from faded memory) if it was *more* shocking. It was sort of lopped in with mainstream NC-17/pseudo-X movies like Showgirls, but that kind of stuff, with explicit sex/nudity, has come a long way in relatively mainstream cinema. Naked Lunch, too, was sort of limited by the times, both n terms of what could be depicted but especially with FX. Crash was hampered less by practical stuff, iirc, but still felt a bit like a challenge (as in dare) to pull off, as when anyone films a transgressive "unfilmable" book, which Cronenberg clearly had on the mind with the streak of Dead Ringers/Naked Lunch/Crash.
I'll have to watch it again, but I recall Crash as sort of perversely, intentionally boring/cold. Like he tried to make a movie that is literally about sex and crash crashes as unsexy and unexciting as possible.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:45 (six years ago) link
Like, I hate Lars Von Trier, but he might have made a good Crash.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:46 (six years ago) link
I think Cronenberg and his 70s horror contemporaries - Craven, Romero, Carpenter - were all desperate not to be pigeonholed as genre directors, and Cronenberg definitely had the most success with escaping the genre. But horror was what all these guys were best at, imho - or at least, it was the form that best accommodated their imaginations. (I mean, there's a good case to be made for DC being the best horror film maker of all time, whereas you wouldn't never say he was the best dramatic film maker of all time).
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:52 (six years ago) link
you WOULD never say...
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:53 (six years ago) link
Hmm, it's a good question, I think Cronenberg transcends horror so much that I'm not sure he even counts as horror. Is Videodrome horror? Is Crash? Dead Ringers? He's as much a sci-fi-fi director as horror director.
Ironically, he does have a habit of popping up in acting roles in shitty horror movies, like Nightbreed and Jason X.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:58 (six years ago) link
I remember Crash as being sort of abstractly sad.
Yes. Even though I don't experience it myself (the performances are just too wooden), I can see feeling sad for the characters in Crash--sadness at a remove. With The Dead Zone and The Fly, for sure--Dead Ringers is trickier--I feel an empathetic sadness with Walken and Goldblum and Geena Davis.
― clemenza, Monday, 21 August 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
imo his work is more science fiction/body horror and not the violent or menacing horror you get from a lot of films in the horror genre
it's seldom some external force menacing the characters in Cronenberg's films, it's usually a man-versus-self thing
I mean, in Videodrome there's technically a group that has been specifically targeting the protagonist, but he's only the perfect target because he's been seeking out the type of material already
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
Cronenberg has a lot (loosely) in common with Egoyan. Two Canadian directors working consistently within a certain theme, briefly flirting with the mainstream, then for some reason just sort of ... fizzling out. I could imagine Cronenberg making "Where the Truth Lies" or even "Chloe."
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:38 (six years ago) link
idk what Cronenberg's problem is these days re: features. The more recent shorts I've seen of his were great.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:38 (six years ago) link
It's weird, Spider (arguably the first of his films met with indifference) was followed by A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, maybe not the most Cronenberg-y of his films but really great nonetheless. But then it's a return to meh or disappointing (reportedly).
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:44 (six years ago) link
Cronenberg has made som meh movies recently, but nothing as awful as late period Egoyan.
― Frederik B, Monday, 21 August 2017 17:55 (six years ago) link
I finally figured out the problem with Crash: it's a movie made by someone who loves J.G. Ballard, but hates both sex and cars.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 22 August 2017 00:59 (six years ago) link
He loves cars and he probably likes sex.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 22 August 2017 02:02 (six years ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Company_(1979_film)
― dan selzer, Tuesday, 22 August 2017 14:27 (six years ago) link
he likes sex so much he demonstrated how to do it properly on the set of History of Violence
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 22 August 2017 15:35 (six years ago) link
Spider, History of Violence and A Dangerous Method are all v good. I could take or leave the last couple but they had their moments.
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Tuesday, 22 August 2017 15:39 (six years ago) link
he subsequently claimed he and Viggo were joking about this fwiw
― Number None, Tuesday, 22 August 2017 20:05 (six years ago) link
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 22 August 2017 20:11 (six years ago) link
75 today
have interviewed DC several times, he's great, but my favourite memory was meeting him when I was 15 and telling him I snuck into CRASH... he said "that's the way to do it."— Adam Nayman (@brofromanother) March 16, 2018
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Friday, 16 March 2018 21:03 (six years ago) link
Cronenberg getting his birthday cake. pic.twitter.com/fjbWPXWrkc— Philip Concannon (@Phil_on_Film) March 16, 2018
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 March 2018 21:06 (six years ago) link
David Cronenberg Is Developing a TV Series
Oodalally!
― Minister of the Pillow (fionnland), Saturday, 1 September 2018 20:18 (five years ago) link
Both excited about this, and sad that this wasn't done during the 20th century, when "Cronenbergian" had more meaning.
https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/07-cronenberg.gif
― nonderepressible (Sanpaku), Saturday, 1 September 2018 20:38 (five years ago) link
pic.twitter.com/DPfHCTsM8Q— Einojuhani (@__HypnoAngel) February 19, 2019
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 20 February 2019 21:05 (five years ago) link
David Cronenberg is one of my favorite directors, and he has directed a few of my favorite movies. And yet, I'd somehow managed to skip his last three movies. So in the interest of completion I decided to start in with the most recent, "Maps to the Stars," and man, what a dumb movie that one is, like a particularly unfunny David Lynch parody. I'm sure it was funny or smart (or something) to a handful of people, but ugh. I guess at least it's memorable, in a campy sort of way.
Was it filmed digitally? Because it didn't even look particularly good, and Cronenberg movies usually do.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 23 June 2019 18:56 (four years ago) link
OK, now Cosmopolis, I thought that one was great. I never read the book, but what a perfect pairing of material with director, and Pattison (the best thing about Maps to the Stars) was really good in it.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 27 June 2019 18:08 (four years ago) link
https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/interviews/crash-david-cronenberg-jeremy-thomas?utm_content=buffer5ebfd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterbfi&utm_campaign=buffer
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 5 September 2019 18:04 (four years ago) link
“You want to know the moral of making a film like Crash?” asks Thomas, just as we’re leaving. “Wear a seatbelt.”
haha um no
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 5 September 2019 18:10 (four years ago) link
Ballard himself was more withering, describing the moral panic as “little England at its worst… [symptomatic of a] strange, nervous nation.”
JGB otm, as usual
― who do you think you are kidding mr cummings (Matt #2), Thursday, 5 September 2019 19:04 (four years ago) link
YESSS:
Cronenberg said that he’s currently in pre-production on a brand-new TV series for Netflix that will be based on his recent novel “Consumed.”
https://theplaylist.net/david-cronenberg-netflix-consumed-20191016/
― ArchCarrier, Thursday, 17 October 2019 09:02 (four years ago) link
turns out he's a documentarian
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 March 2020 14:15 (four years ago) link
I'm hoping for a sexier virus like in Shivers.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 25 March 2020 20:42 (four years ago) link
Finally saw History of Violence. I liked it a lot but maybe not as much as Eastern Promises. The thing that bothered me most was that I thought it indulged a little too much in the male fantasy of being the secret ultimate badass. One of the great things about the famous steam room fight scene -- one of the greatest fight scenes of all time -- is that it really feels like he could lose and be killed, and therefore it really feels like life itself is at stake. Somehow the violence in History of Violence never quite reaches that visceral intensity, he always comes off as too much of an action hero, as nasty as he gets. The climactic scene felt tired and familiar, fighting the end boss and taking out all his dudes in the big mansion. It was Road House, it was Ghost Dog, it was a million other movies. I don't know where else the movie could have gone really, but it was overly contrived to have him finally kill ALL the guys from his past, including his own brother, and get on with his life. Other things felt very real to me - showing one's worst in a relationship and then getting on with it, both people deeply wounded.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, 3 October 2020 04:51 (three years ago) link
William Hurt was very funny as the brother, fwiw, yet it still felt like a character I had seen too many times.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, 3 October 2020 04:52 (three years ago) link
not that I am any expert on fighting to the death, but I imagine there is always a certain amount of chance involved even if someone is a trained killer. Eastern Promises captures that, History of Violence doesn't. I don't know if there's a reason for that or not. Maybe it's supposed to be a bit more cartoonish. It worked for me over all.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, 3 October 2020 04:59 (three years ago) link
I think they're after different vibes tbh. Mortensen's seeming invulnerability in AHOV works for me because it doesn't help him master the part of his life he actually wants to preserve - if anything, his superpowers are a freakish liability.
― the typo doer (Simon H.), Saturday, 3 October 2020 05:41 (three years ago) link
Saw a trailer for a new film by his son a couple of weeks ago.
― clemenza, Saturday, 3 October 2020 06:26 (three years ago) link
simon otm
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 3 October 2020 11:48 (three years ago) link
Re-linking to J.G. Ballard's review, which proposes a different kind of perspective:https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/23/jgballard
― your response will be deleted unread (Matt #2), Saturday, 3 October 2020 11:57 (three years ago) link
AHOV was based on a comic book...
I just noticed that Cosmopolis is available on Amazon Prime. Might watch that this weekend.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Saturday, 3 October 2020 11:57 (three years ago) link
I read the comic years and years ago, iirc it was a lot more generic hardboiled crime and WAY more graphically violent
― Gab B. Nebsit (wins), Saturday, 3 October 2020 12:07 (three years ago) link
Mortensen's seeming invulnerability in AHOV works for me because it doesn't help him master the part of his life he actually wants to preserve
Yup. The critique of masculinity was also going on.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 3 October 2020 12:11 (three years ago) link
File under filmmakers i keep trying to like but can't get into. Tried watching The Brood last night and found it just a brutal slog. I just have no clue what people get out of this movie other than the big gross out at the end. Its like he used up all his imagination on the body-horror stuff and didnt have any left over for the rest of the film. All that brown and beige, all those interminable bland shots of people getting in and out of cars, opening doors, walking down hallways, sitting down in nondescript barely-decorated rooms, slowly reading their lines to each other. Maybe he was going for 'stately pace', but it just gave me Corman vibes instead tbh. I couldnt hold in the giggles during the scene when the father in law is mourning his dead ex wife, which Cronenberg opts to depict by having him literally weeping and caressing the chalk outline of her dead body.
Should I keep going? I've watched just about everything up to The Fly. If thats the only one that I've liked, is there a chance of me finding anything beyond it that'll work for me, or should I just chalk it up as Not For Me?
― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:16 (three years ago) link
At least give Naked Lunch a shot.
― OrificeMax (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:20 (three years ago) link
I'm not a big fan of "The Brood." Have you seen Videodrome? If you haven't, you should. If you did and didn't like it, maybe take your foot off the gas a bit, but fwiw "The Fly" and "The Dead Zone" are the first ones (after "Videodrome") where he gets budgets and performances on par with his ideas. HIs post "Fly" work is kind of erratic - sometimes his ideas get the better of him, or at least are let down by their corresponding budgets, like "Naked Lunch" - but "Dead Ringers" is pretty incredible, "eXistenZ" fun, "Crash" worth watching, "Eastern Promises" and "History of Violence" excellent vehicles for Viggo. After that ... eh.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:24 (three years ago) link
IMO none of the movies he made after The Fly (except M Butterfly which I have not seen) are bad, though some are more interesting than others. tough to go wrong w/ Naked Lunch, Crash, or AHOV. the recent ones are stan-only affairs, more or less. I also have a soft spot for A Dangerous Method.
― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:28 (three years ago) link
All that brown and beige, all those interminable bland shots of people getting in and out of cars, opening doors, walking down hallways, sitting down in nondescript barely-decorated rooms, slowly reading their lines to each other.
Sounds good to me, Cronenberg in a nutshell.
― logout option: disabled (Matt #2), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:28 (three years ago) link
Haha, yeah, sign me up for that. (The Brood is my favorite of the early stuff.)
― Get the point? Good, let's dance with nunchaku. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:42 (three years ago) link
But then again Cosmopolis might be my favorite of the post Crash stuff, so I'm probably not to be trusted.
― Get the point? Good, let's dance with nunchaku. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:43 (three years ago) link
I really liked Cosmopolis, but really hated Maps to the Stars, perhaps the first of his movies I thought was outright bad across the board
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:45 (three years ago) link
Has anyone read Steve Bissette's monograph about The Brood?
https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-brood-hardcover-by-stephen-r-bissette-4784-p.asp
For me, one of the pleasing bonuses of early Cronenberg is all that beige 70s Canadian decor - I especially love the shopping mall in the opening of Scanners.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 13:59 (three years ago) link
oh my word, I want that!
― Maresn3st, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 14:15 (three years ago) link
690 pages is ... a lot for a monograph.
― Get the point? Good, let's dance with nunchaku. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 14:23 (three years ago) link
I watched Rabid a couple of days ago and was pretty underwhelmed. His early films have a slightly boring sameness to me. He really takes off in the 80s though.
― (show hidden tics) (WmC), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 14:32 (three years ago) link
Scanners suffers from a boring lead and leans hard on its gonzo climax, but it's more than worth it to get there imo
― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 14:39 (three years ago) link
yeah I think part of my trouble is ive had a hard time with some of the milquetoast leads in these pre-Fly ones. I always forget he did those 2 with Viggo, I should probably check one of those out
― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 14:43 (three years ago) link
The only thing I like about his early horror films are the brown and beige hallways and the people getting in and out of cars, largely out of Canadian nostalgia. Once the gore starts, I lose interest.
Admittedly, my taste in his films is unusual. I love Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Crash and Spider. I hate The Fly, Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch (though the latter is my favourite book).
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 14:48 (three years ago) link
Rabid and Shivers are both A+ ideas with the best execution money can buy, which is to say, no money, so shaky execution. Sort of like Romero's "The Crazies." "Videodrome" is his great leap forward in conception, ambition and execution.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 15:19 (three years ago) link
Steve Bissette's Brood bk, mentioned above, is currently one of the publisher's Black Friday specials:
https://pspublishing2.com/?fbclid=IwAR1EJehuL_QH4fffDSn0E8ofawi6qW0oa6X24L04mo3d84LsGoiwDGBk4Ls
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 27 November 2020 00:46 (three years ago) link
His son's in on the act now!
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/26/possessor-review-brandon-cronenberg-andrea-riseborough-sc0fi-horror
― xmas with hatt mancock (Matt #2), Friday, 27 November 2020 00:58 (three years ago) link
I watched Possessor a few weeks ago and it was really fucking great. Highly recommended.
― akm, Friday, 27 November 2020 02:04 (three years ago) link
hmm -- I don't agree. It's humorless and rather derivative. But keep your eye on him.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 November 2020 02:06 (three years ago) link
I laughed a few times
― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Friday, 27 November 2020 02:14 (three years ago) link
Somehow I'd enjoy it more if Cronenberg's offspring made fluffy romcoms.
― xmas with hatt mancock (Matt #2), Friday, 27 November 2020 09:20 (three years ago) link
Crash Into Me
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Friday, 27 November 2020 15:06 (three years ago) link
saw The Dead Zone for the first time, liked it more than I though I would
― Dan S, Thursday, 17 December 2020 00:50 (three years ago) link
It's my favourite Cronenberg, and would be my favourite King adaptation if The Shining didn't exist.
― Langdon Alger Stole the Highlights (cryptosicko), Thursday, 17 December 2020 00:51 (three years ago) link
To this day, my sister still refers to The Dead Zone as "that movie with the scissors."
― Langdon Alger Stole the Highlights (cryptosicko), Thursday, 17 December 2020 00:52 (three years ago) link
it has an unsettling mood, like the moment WAlken gets a headache on the rollercoaster.
plus we have our own President Stillson now
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Thursday, 17 December 2020 00:59 (three years ago) link
Except Tr*mp would feel no shame about having used a toddler as a human shield.
― Langdon Alger Stole the Highlights (cryptosicko), Thursday, 17 December 2020 01:01 (three years ago) link
THAT BABY WAS A RINO!!!
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Thursday, 17 December 2020 01:02 (three years ago) link
i watched shivers the other day and thought it was excellent
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, 17 December 2020 01:48 (three years ago) link
gooood that one creeped me out
― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Thursday, 17 December 2020 01:58 (three years ago) link
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/04/david-cronenberg-sci-fi-movie-crimes-of-the-future-shoot-1234633841/
― In my house are many Manchins (WmC), Wednesday, 28 April 2021 17:39 (three years ago) link
The original Crimes of the Future is my favourite film of his, maybe my favourite of all time. The article implies the new film only shares its title, but doesn't provide any other details?
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 28 April 2021 17:43 (three years ago) link
Here to remind you that David Cronenberg had the best and most David Cronenberg take on streaming vs. theatrical: pic.twitter.com/3rkKsweHxB— Jane Schoenbrun (@janeschoenbrun) April 28, 2021
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 28 April 2021 18:27 (three years ago) link
I still can't figure out if this new one relates at all to the old "Crimes" which is awesome
https://variety.com/2021/film/global/david-cronenberg-crimes-of-the-future-viggo-mortensen-1235033420/
According to promotional materials, the film takes a deep dive into the not-so-distant future where humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings. This evolution moves humans beyond their natural state and into a metamorphosis known as “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” that alters their biological makeup. While some embrace the limitless potential of “transhumanism,” others attempt to police it.
― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 21:40 (two years ago) link
From the list of performers, it sounds as if he is reusing the general premise of biological metamorphosis, but not that all the women in the world have died from "Rouge's Malady".
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 4 August 2021 21:57 (two years ago) link
So I guess the "Dead Ringers" series is really going forward, huh?
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 August 2021 22:18 (two years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVX7df79BNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGwtPfjt9Zc
― ArchCarrier, Thursday, 14 April 2022 13:04 (two years ago) link
amazing.
like how the international trailer has more sex...but also more "techno" music.
― dan selzer, Thursday, 14 April 2022 13:26 (two years ago) link
With opening credits just like The Patty Duke Show, I assume.
― clemenza, Thursday, 14 April 2022 22:30 (two years ago) link
"Gynos . . . Identical gynos . . ."
― nickn, Friday, 15 April 2022 00:12 (two years ago) link
It looks like one of his more extreme gothic retro-future body horror films. I know I will have to watch it but this stuff makes me feel bad
― Dan S, Friday, 15 April 2022 00:20 (two years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veBhrS9Dkmk
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 16 May 2022 18:52 (one year ago) link
so great
― dan selzer, Monday, 16 May 2022 19:31 (one year ago) link
It looks like one of his more extreme gothic retro-future body horror films. I know I will have to watch it but this stuff makes me feel bad― Dan S, Thursday, April 14, 2022 8:20 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Dan S, Thursday, April 14, 2022 8:20 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink
I know just while watching it I was worried whether my tetanus booster was up to date.
So wait, Lamarck was right?
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Saturday, 4 June 2022 22:15 (one year ago) link
tomorrow!
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 4 June 2022 23:02 (one year ago) link
Second-tier Cronenberg, but what a treat to watch a film interrogating what constitutes sexual pleasure and why we would want to munch on plastic.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 June 2022 22:00 (one year ago) link
this made me lol
This guy is up to NO GOOD pic.twitter.com/taAe0SNhSq— Patrick Fisackerly (@fisackerly) June 5, 2022
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 6 June 2022 22:10 (one year ago) link
Hey that's me! (Not really, but I shouldn't be surprised I couldn't meet a single guy even if I offered a finder's fee.)
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Monday, 6 June 2022 23:53 (one year ago) link
just rewatched the trailer and that's probably enough for me
I'm glad he's revisiting the early material, but...
― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, 7 June 2022 00:35 (one year ago) link
this is top tier croneyboney for me, though admittedly i have seen only the wrong cronenberg films. haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since i got out of the theater last night. transhumanism through art surgery and consuming microplastics. my favorite movie of the year so far
the scenes where you get a glimpse of the wholemicrocosm of surgical artists (a surgical arts scene lol) were so funny. the whole movie was so funny
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 13:10 (one year ago) link
Second-tier for me -- the movie sorta just stops -- but like you I haven't stopped thinking about it, maybe his best recent techno-queer film.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 13:15 (one year ago) link
lol sorry -- I forgot I responded on Monday.
wasn't the Ear Guy dance sequence hot as fuck?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 13:16 (one year ago) link
So is Cronenberg the first director to use the same title twice for a film that is neither a sequel nor a remake?
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 8 June 2022 14:31 (one year ago) link
I'd say Mati Diop's Atlantiques (documentary short) and Atlantics (fiction feature) have the same name but ymmv.
― WmC, Wednesday, 8 June 2022 15:04 (one year ago) link
oh also this movie confirmed for me that kristen stewart as an actor is chaotic good jared leto and personally i'm a fan, glad she got to be a strange little weirdo in this film
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:19 (one year ago) link
She's hilarious.
Viggo 4ever. So happy he's part of Cronenberg's world.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:25 (one year ago) link
Have you seen Underwater? It rules (think Hellboy crossed with The Abyss) and she's great in it.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:30 (one year ago) link
I really get irrationally angry anytime people make Twilight jokes about her or Patterson as both have emerged as solid actors.
― Gymnopédie Pablo (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:33 (one year ago) link
I need to see this. Underwater is good fun. Stewart is incredible in Personal Shopper.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:36 (one year ago) link
She's been good to excellent for a decade.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, June 8, 2022 12:30 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
i have not watched this movie bc tj miller is in it and no movie no matter how great it is otherwise can survive the presence of tj miller
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
this movie is like what if the art crime cyberpunk thing happening in the background of bowie's outside were actually cool and worth thinking about
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 20:00 (one year ago) link
i can't tell if my takes on this movie are bad or not but it had a profound effect on me
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 20:01 (one year ago) link
ha -- I wrote down "Damien Hirst" but couldn't figure out how he fit.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 20:03 (one year ago) link
even tho k stew gives the best performance my favorite minor characters were the lesbian drill assassins who had a sensual lust for/were operating on behalf of(?) the tech modulating viggo's body
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 20:05 (one year ago) link
I like the idea of the Bowie character in the album playing Detective Cope...and Stewart as Algeria Touchshriek.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 8 June 2022 20:05 (one year ago) link
I am Ramona A. Stone.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 8 June 2022 20:53 (one year ago) link
i finally got my butt to the theater tonight, and then read this afterward:
https://www.artforum.com/print/202206/amy-taubin-talks-with-david-cronenberg-about-crimes-of-the-future-88615
this pull quote from that interview is a good one: “At what point can you no longer claim to be a person or a human? This question is certainly in the film.” —David Cronenberg
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Friday, 10 June 2022 03:56 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIIfKwL43Cg
― Maresn3st, Friday, 10 June 2022 10:53 (one year ago) link
^Gets a little graphic in places.
― Maresn3st, Friday, 10 June 2022 10:59 (one year ago) link
Opens here in a few days...Not hopeful after seeing the trailer last night. The body-horror stuff--precisely what most people love about Cronenberg--is my least favourite part of his films, why The Dead Zone remains my favourite. Maybe even more ominous, though, for me, is something I use as a running joke for directors whose every pronouncement is treated like the word of god: "From the mind of David Lynch," "From the mind of Stanley Kubrick," etc. Sure enough, "From the mind of David Cronenberg" in the trailer and on the poster.
― clemenza, Thursday, 16 June 2022 15:25 (one year ago) link
i think it's about the funniest and most idea-rich movie you'd get from the mind of any of those dudes
but yes it's also got a makeout scene with an incision
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 16:01 (one year ago) link
also the direct-to-video industrial sci-fi look of it is like the wallpaper/screensaver of my mind lol
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 16:02 (one year ago) link
anyway i finally saw crash this week and it was instantly my favorite movie
I had to avert my eyes a few times during the trailer, not a good sign. (Unaware that the film I was there to see, Men, would have its own share of body-horror towards the end.)
― clemenza, Thursday, 16 June 2022 16:10 (one year ago) link
I have a friend who fainted during the similar scene in Crash.
― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 16 June 2022 16:35 (one year ago) link
licking a fresh tattoo way worse than french kissing internal organs for me, for whatever reason
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 16:54 (one year ago) link
Rewatched Crash again and it really is up there with my favorites of his or anyone's.
― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Thursday, 16 June 2022 17:40 (one year ago) link
is it weird that i found crash pretty hot? or did i just reveal something about my psychosexual profile
i mean like a lot of his work it's hot and repellant at the same time
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 17:53 (one year ago) link
i was also delighted to see elias koteas, my favorite canadian character actor, giving the best performance i've ever seen
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 17:54 (one year ago) link
It is definitely weird that you found Crash hot.
Kidding (kinda), of course. What do you think of Ebert's take on it as a pornographic film about behaviour that no one could possibly find erotic? I always liked that read--or at the very least, it was the only substantial take I had read when I saw the film way back when, and it did help me get into what the film was doing.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Thursday, 16 June 2022 17:56 (one year ago) link
xpost he's never topping Casey Jones in TMNT for me
That was a crime, you purse-grabbing pukes! and here is the penalty!
― Slowzy LOLtidore (Neanderthal), Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:00 (one year ago) link
Arquette with the crutches is the most obvious thing I can remember but I still haven't seen any groups into car crashes and things like that. I thought the finger in the back of the head in Existenz was a great weird fetishy image.
Really looking forward to this film, I didn't think he'd ever return to this kind of imagery/subject. I wonder if younger directors (including his son) and artists inspired by him made him want to do it again?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:14 (one year ago) link
was also delighted to see elias koteas, my favorite canadian character actor, giving the best performance i've ever seen
My feelings about the film aside, I'm hoping you meant the best Elias Koteas performance you've ever seen here.
― clemenza, Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:15 (one year ago) link
I think Ballard's droll line that he 'didn't get an erection once while writing Crash' and 'would have considered it a failure' if he had is pretty definitive about the erotic nature of both the novel and the film.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
i think i disagree that that suggests anything definitive about the film
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:50 (one year ago) link
haven't read the book tho
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:53 (one year ago) link
What do you think of Ebert's take on it as a pornographic film about behaviour that no one could possibly find erotic?
i honestly love this take, it's very thoughtful
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, 16 June 2022 18:56 (one year ago) link
Yeah, definitive was a daft way of putting it - read like I was trying to shut down the conversation. I think Ballard is being playful as ever. He was mapping the erotic onto something that could and should never be framed as erotic - in that transfer an echo or residue (eck) is bound to carry across. Which is to say the whole project is weirdly charged with misplaced affect.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 16 June 2022 19:04 (one year ago) link
The key scene in Crash for me is not the one or two most notorious moments, but the one where Holly Hunter obsessively asks Koteas (I think) to keep rewinding a particular moment on one of the car crash videos. Even Hitchcock rarely did fetishism that well (and I'm still not even sure I particularly like this movie).
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Thursday, 16 June 2022 19:12 (one year ago) link
Ebert knew better and Siskel slid off the track imo
Siskel finding some scenes erotic and others leaving him cold isn't a failure of the movie to eroticize nor is it a failure of filmmaking that Siskel found a scene erotic. Ballard has a lot of sexual scenes in his works written in a very matter-of-fact way that leave them open for interpretation as to whether the reader should find them titillating, be disgusted by their own arousal, or view the proceedings clinically which might be a perversion in itself
Cronenberg leans into that ambiguity pretty well in several movies, sometimes fairly explicitly spelled out
― mh, Thursday, 16 June 2022 19:18 (one year ago) link
I mention this twice in the thread earlier; remembered it was buried in the Internet Archive, so here it is, something I tacked onto a 1997 year-end, my SCTV remake of Crash. (Written 25 years ago, so cut me some slack.)
SCTV parody of Crash:
Doesn't exist, of course, except in my mind--it's the one thing that could have redeemed such a solemnly preposterous film. Johnny LaRue heads the roving band of crash fetishists, with the badly mangled Woody Tobias Jr. its readymade love object (Tobias, Koteas, they even sound alike). There's a wild sex scene between Edith Prickley and Ed Grimley in the back of an overturned shuttle bus. Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok stand by the side of the road and cheer on every bit of mayhem and carnage. The film's in 3-D, but Count Floyd seems baffled as to what's so scary about it. Fifteen years later, Bobby Bittman releases ill-advised Crash Again remake.
― clemenza, Thursday, 16 June 2022 19:24 (one year ago) link
Doesn't should exist, of course
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Thursday, 16 June 2022 19:54 (one year ago) link
i just saw the fly for the first time (again i've seen all the wrong cronenberg) and it made me want to barf a lot and i loved it
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 17 June 2022 18:24 (one year ago) link
i don't blink at most body horror. the fly is fucking gross
Imagine seeing it when you were 9.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Friday, 17 June 2022 18:27 (one year ago) link
no!!!!
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 17 June 2022 18:29 (one year ago) link
the makeup and practical fx in that movie are so well done it has lost none of its power to disturb and upset
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 17 June 2022 18:31 (one year ago) link
but the most upsetting scene for me didn't involve brundlefly at all: the abortion dream sequence
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 17 June 2022 18:32 (one year ago) link
i was like "oh no oh no i don't want to see this" and nearly put my hands in front of my eyes!!!! a movie hasn't made me do that in.... idk if a movie has ever made me do that tbh
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 17 June 2022 18:34 (one year ago) link
I like to imagine the new one as Cronenberg's entry in the MCU. The ending is great, and I've been craving purple chocolate bars since I saw it.
― dinnerboat, Friday, 17 June 2022 19:17 (one year ago) link
Yeah, I rewatched The Fly recently (it's on HBO Max or Hulu) for the first time since seeing it in theaters. I was expecting it not to hold up but it really fucking does.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, 17 June 2022 19:20 (one year ago) link
the final skin-shedding is the most chilling moment for me
― Slowzy LOLtidore (Neanderthal), Friday, 17 June 2022 19:22 (one year ago) link
Shotgun to the head.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 17 June 2022 19:24 (one year ago) link
have only seen Pattorhson in Lighthouse, Good Times and Wild Palms, no idea what the jokes would be (saw a few minutes of a Twilight when a flatmate was watching it but dunno if he was in that scene)
Stewart was p unbearable to me in Adventureland and running the same changes in the Twilight scene but the material was not exactly inspiring. she seems to be making good decisions about what to let her name get funded tho (could not tell if I thought she was any good in this but her performance fit the tone fine)
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Saturday, 18 June 2022 06:14 (one year ago) link
her own film suggested an interest and aspiration beyond her capability, which might also describe her acting idk? better that than the reverse for sure tho
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Saturday, 18 June 2022 06:22 (one year ago) link
Watch her Assayas flicks.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 18 June 2022 12:49 (one year ago) link
Interesting premise(s), gross, I got through it. I'm not sure why I continue to see most every Cronenberg film because I really liked three or four of them 35 years ago.
Love Adventureland, so of course I love Stewart in it. She's very affected and somewhat funny in Crimes of the Future.
― clemenza, Sunday, 19 June 2022 01:37 (one year ago) link
Haven't seen Crimes of the Future, but I thought Kristen Stewart was pretty great in Spencer. I also really felt her when she came out in her monologue on SNL, that was very memorable moment for me
― Dan S, Sunday, 19 June 2022 02:08 (one year ago) link
Rex Reed — still alive!
David Cronenberg’s ‘Crimes of the Future’ Is a Senseless Collection of Horrifying GarbageCrimes of the Future is a load of crap. I would like to find a more civil way to describe even a sick and depraved barf bag of a movie like this one, but it defeats every reasonable attempt to try. Publicity poopery declares it “From the mind of David Cronenberg.” That’s your first warning signal. I’ve been able to endure a few of his epic horrors in the past, but 90% of the time I’ve found no evidence of any kind of mind at all. Still, in what has become of a film industry badly in need of triage, wonders never cease. Quick on the heels of its world premiere a few weeks ago in Cannes, where it was shown to audiences who walked out in droves, loudly booed and declared “unreleasable,” Crimes of the Future is now upon us, like a rabid raccoon....The movie opens with a mother smothering her sleeping child to death and goes steadily downhill from there. One scene does not follow another. Images just sort of invade each other while you hope something will make some sort of sense. Unfortunately, logic is nowhere in sight and nothing in the movie makes any sense. As repellent and revolting as it is, I was astonished to find it doubly boring. At the screening I attended, a lot of people walked out, but even more people were snoring. Eventually it becomes so silly that it sinks into a pandemic of farce. ...The film has no dynamic, which explains why it has so little impact. Crimes of the Future is Grand Guignol to a new level of incomprehensible gibberish—the kind of self-indulgent, IQ-wrecking trash on film for which landfills and garbage dumps were invented.
Crimes of the Future is a load of crap. I would like to find a more civil way to describe even a sick and depraved barf bag of a movie like this one, but it defeats every reasonable attempt to try. Publicity poopery declares it “From the mind of David Cronenberg.” That’s your first warning signal. I’ve been able to endure a few of his epic horrors in the past, but 90% of the time I’ve found no evidence of any kind of mind at all. Still, in what has become of a film industry badly in need of triage, wonders never cease. Quick on the heels of its world premiere a few weeks ago in Cannes, where it was shown to audiences who walked out in droves, loudly booed and declared “unreleasable,” Crimes of the Future is now upon us, like a rabid raccoon.
The movie opens with a mother smothering her sleeping child to death and goes steadily downhill from there. One scene does not follow another. Images just sort of invade each other while you hope something will make some sort of sense. Unfortunately, logic is nowhere in sight and nothing in the movie makes any sense. As repellent and revolting as it is, I was astonished to find it doubly boring. At the screening I attended, a lot of people walked out, but even more people were snoring. Eventually it becomes so silly that it sinks into a pandemic of farce.
The film has no dynamic, which explains why it has so little impact. Crimes of the Future is Grand Guignol to a new level of incomprehensible gibberish—the kind of self-indulgent, IQ-wrecking trash on film for which landfills and garbage dumps were invented.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 12:55 (one year ago) link
Publicity poopery declares it “From the mind of David Cronenberg.” That’s your first warning signal.
Rex and I on the same page.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 13:27 (one year ago) link
Rex Reed shoulda been executed by firing squad after his post-Oldboy racism and Melissa McCarthy body-shaming
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:07 (one year ago) link
or his Get Out "I don't care if black people are turned into robots"
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:08 (one year ago) link
Don't know about any of that. He's been a terrible non-critic for a long time, but I applaud the line I quoted above.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:09 (one year ago) link
my comments weren't related to what you just said btw, just happened to come right after your post.
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:10 (one year ago) link
Oh, I know. He's actually famous enough to have turned up in a good movie (Superman) and in a great one (Lost in America--voice only). I could never tell if Albert Brooks was making fun of him (Larry King: "So what is Rex Reed's modus operandi?") or if he liked his little bit about not needing anybody else around if a comedy makes him laugh.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:15 (one year ago) link
i guess the deepest engagement the rex reed piece has with the film is with its pr campaign yeah
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:49 (one year ago) link
I love Cronenberg but still haven't seen this because after a winning streak longer than most careers, "Maps to the Stars" was some hot garbage, imo. I don't want to be disappointed again. (I mean, I *will* see this, I'm just wary.)
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:53 (one year ago) link
this is v much not like that movie
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 14:56 (one year ago) link
maybe more like Maps to Your Intestines
oh man, i loved this movie. i don't know who rex reed is. i really dislike when critics can't even understand why something _could_ be good, especially when the thing they're criticizing really _is_ good. it's like a guy dry-choking who doesn't believe there is water
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 15:52 (one year ago) link
i saw some of this movie and it was too late in the evening and my restless-leg syndrome kicked in so I couldn't finish or concentrate, but I want to go back cos I love Cronenberg. the bits I saw were prime-era Cronie
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 15:55 (one year ago) link
I loved this as well. Mortenson puts in a fantastic shift. Who the fuck is Rex Reed, never heard of him!
― calzino, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 16:10 (one year ago) link
"Maps to the Stars" was some hot garbage, imo
Maps was him bringing his cool austerity to Wild-Palms-but-everyone's-older-now; Crimes is him bringing his cool austerity to classic-Cronenberg-but-everyone's-older-now.
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:06 (one year ago) link
only wack scene was the scene of Julianne Moore taking a dump really
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:07 (one year ago) link
did anyone pick up that it was supposed to be in greece? in retrospect i can see how certain sets suggested it, but did they ever mention so in the dialogue or otherwise?
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:11 (one year ago) link
Getting older sometimes leaves you in the strange position of doing things like defending Rex Reed (I suspect ILX's patron saint would have done the same thing). Not as a critic--again, he's never been more that a breathless pull-quote guy, although I'm sure he sees himself very differently--but more against the charge of "Who is this guy I've never even heard of?" He's not some obscure blogger; in the late '60s and early '70s (which, yes, was a long time ago), he was as famous as Kael.
(Possible response: "Kael who?")
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:27 (one year ago) link
"more than"
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:28 (one year ago) link
I remember reading something about Maps of the Stars at the time that indicated that Moore's performance was inspired by/revenge against Madonna, with whom she had appeared in Body of Evidence.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:29 (one year ago) link
did anyone pick up that it was supposed to be in greece?
I do not think it was supposed to be in Greece.
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:36 (one year ago) link
I want to suggest that anyone who shrugs at the name Rex Reed watch Myra Breckenridge, but I suspect that would only lead to more confusion.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:41 (one year ago) link
the reason i mention it was this interview:
in the intro to the interview, taubin writes "The antecedent planetary catastrophe is never specified, but it is suggested that survivors of a defunct globalism have arrived on the Aegean coast by boat."
and then, in the interview:
AT: The lighting is very different from the lighting I’ve seen before in your films.DC: It’s shooting in Athens, and in Mediterranean light, which I’ve never done before. I really embraced Athens and Greece for everything, including the streets, the graffiti, the color of the Mediterranean, and that had a lot to do with the way the film looked. When I wrote the script more than twenty years ago, I was thinking of Toronto, of course. But once we decided on Athens, I embraced it completely. And part of it is the color.AT: I can’t imagine this film in Toronto, because what you see is the crumbling relics of the cradle of Western civilization, which is different from the relics of postmodern Toronto.DC: Absolutely. You have three thousand years of human habitation at a grand scale, even though we didn’t shoot at the Acropolis. But you can feel it in the streets. You just feel it everywhere.
DC: It’s shooting in Athens, and in Mediterranean light, which I’ve never done before. I really embraced Athens and Greece for everything, including the streets, the graffiti, the color of the Mediterranean, and that had a lot to do with the way the film looked. When I wrote the script more than twenty years ago, I was thinking of Toronto, of course. But once we decided on Athens, I embraced it completely. And part of it is the color.
AT: I can’t imagine this film in Toronto, because what you see is the crumbling relics of the cradle of Western civilization, which is different from the relics of postmodern Toronto.
DC: Absolutely. You have three thousand years of human habitation at a grand scale, even though we didn’t shoot at the Acropolis. But you can feel it in the streets. You just feel it everywhere.
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:41 (one year ago) link
(xpost) Forgot all about that--more than cameos, he actually starred in a big-budget movie.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:42 (one year ago) link
Amy Taubin, by the way, is Cronenberg's #1 critical supporter--he's always been an automatic Top 10 inclusion for her any year he has a film out. (Taubin and Taubin's Screen Test for Warhol were in the VU documentary.)
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:44 (one year ago) link
He’s had Canada play the US plenty of times before — that excerpt reads to me like he’s saying he used the light and streets they were shooting on to play the deliberately unspecified future setting, but maybe not.
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:53 (one year ago) link
That is not something someone should ever boast about in print.
― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 17:58 (one year ago) link
Rex Reed means as much to global film culture as Barry Norman
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:00 (one year ago) link
xp sic
yeah, i agree it's very ambiguous - i definitely didn't notice it while i was watching, and i'm still curious what taubin thought were suggestions that it was the Aegean coast specifically.
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:04 (one year ago) link
We're going around in circles on three different things at once.
1) He's a poor excuse for a film critic. (True.)
2) Who in the world is Rex Reed? (He's very famous.)
3) Because he's a poor film critic, anything he says about David Cronenberg must be wrong. (No--he's absolutely right in making fun of that "From the mind of..." nonsense.)
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:09 (one year ago) link
xp there's Greek language signage in at least one scene.
― bulb after bulb, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
I think Cronenberg has earned the right to use "From the mind of..." as he did write the screenplay!
― calzino, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
I like "From the mind of" only because, cheesy as it is, it evokes an earlier method of advertising films that I thought had fallen out of fashion in the wake of the current bludgeoning-pop-song-overtop-bludgeoning-images style.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:29 (one year ago) link
The Suicide Squad was advertised as From The Horribly Beautiful Mind Of James Gunn, the Crimes marketing are really sleeping on a chance there
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:32 (one year ago) link
(xpost) Very old-fashioned, I'll give you that (guessing Kubrick was the first director who would have been been given that treatment in a trailer). Besides Cronenberg and Lynch, I think I've seen it used with De Palma. You can almost predict whether a director sees himself as a "From the mind of..."-type. (I can't imagine a female director okaying that, which is 100% a compliment.) "From the mind of James Cameron"--sure. "From the mind of Terrence Malick"--probably. "From the mind of Martin Scorsese"--don't think so.
Sorry--it's just a construction that pushes a button with me, like the director's announcing that he's a true visionary, and you just might not be visionary enough yourself to keep up.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:43 (one year ago) link
"From the mind of Martin Scorsese"--don't think so.
Again, he hasn't solo written a script for any of his films since Who's That Knocking at My Door
― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:44 (one year ago) link
I get that. It is pompous as hell--just maybe in a way that I miss?
Also, didn't know James Gunn (or rather, the studio) was trying to pull that auteurist shit. A counter to Scorsese's critiques of superhero blockbusters, I imagine.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:46 (one year ago) link
from the ass of Tim Burton
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:47 (one year ago) link
(xposts) Is that the determining factor then--only people who write their own scripts? When I mentioned Kubrick, I wouldn't doubt that it started with 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, and those are adaptations. (Or Barry Lydon, or The Shining, or Eyes Wide Shut.) I always thought it more to do with the idea of the director creating his own recognizable world--with art direction and ways of moving the camera and such. And ego. I'm not saying that Scorsese wouldn't be a director where they'd use that in a trailer, just that I can't see him going along with that. For all I know, he has on occasion. Hitchcock was a total "From the mind of" guy.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:53 (one year ago) link
I guess you can't say "From the mind of Stanley Kubrick, by way of Stephen King (who doesn't really like this, by the way)."
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:54 (one year ago) link
I could 100% see David Fincher trying that bullshit.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:56 (one year ago) link
Directors should go back to starring in trailers for their own films. My fave example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwX8NiXv9Hw
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:56 (one year ago) link
"who is that silver fox lesbian? - oh"
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:58 (one year ago) link
Agree!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjXmLrR6uWQ
Would love to see Cronenberg introduce his films in trailers--he's always a great interview.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 18:59 (one year ago) link
yes I like Cronenberg interviews as well, and he doesn't come across as pompous at all. Which is why I wouldn't take "from the mind of" in that manner at all.
― calzino, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:02 (one year ago) link
Considering Cronenberg's very Castle-like hyping of the outrageous content of his latest, this would have been a great way to go.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:04 (one year ago) link
Hitchcock and DeMille did it too (think the Castle clip rips off from the Psycho trailer. Must have been others--Welles?
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:08 (one year ago) link
My point is that you're casting a lot of good and bad faith on directors who might not even have control of how they're being represented in trailers, clem.
― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:33 (one year ago) link
next you're going to tell me that the pitchfork writers don't have full control over the ratings of the albums they review!
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:33 (one year ago) link
I get it, Cronenberg rubs you the wrong way and Scorsese is a dude. That doesn't necessitate a 1-on-1 correlation with how they're being marketed -- which isn't to say that those promotional teams aren't picking up on cues from auteurs' reputations, etc.
― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:34 (one year ago) link
the worst would be if newspaper writers didn't have control over the headlines of news articles
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:34 (one year ago) link
Can't wait for studios to roll out A-B trailer testing.
― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:36 (one year ago) link
You're right, the directors may not have anything to do with it. I'm working from the assumption that at a certain level of control over your films--Cronenberg, Scorsese, Lynch--that also extends to the trailers and advertising campaigns. Which may be an incorrect assumption.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:46 (one year ago) link
They've started this new thing the last couple of years--especially with superhero films--where it's not really a trailer, it's short interview clips with the director and cast interspersed with clips.
I really hate those.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:48 (one year ago) link
Heck, don't forget that Tom Cruise introduces "Top Gun 2." In theatres now!
"From the mind of ..." is kind of quaint, like how they used to have "Steven McQueen IS ... Bullitt."
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:48 (one year ago) link
The "IS"--ubiquitous in the '70s. Why didn't they haul that in too for Crimes? "Viggo Mortensen IS Saul Tenser." That's like box-office gold.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:51 (one year ago) link
Saul Tenser is such an excellent name
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:57 (one year ago) link
drifting off topic but just have to say my least favorite version of this was during the apatow bro-comedy era when they would try to make the producers seem totally cool and chill by saying "from the dudes who brought you ___"
― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:58 (one year ago) link
From the mind of your friend across the street, your neighbor IS an up and coming auteur
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 19:59 (one year ago) link
"An Andrei Tarkovsky Joint"
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:02 (one year ago) link
Just remembered the most "From the mind of" director working today, and sure enough...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYy7igKD21A
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:08 (one year ago) link
Some stank bullshit from
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:10 (one year ago) link
this holiday season, from the second cousins who brought up your ex-wife again, an overcooked piece of fish is stuck to the pan
the trick is to keep extending this out until nearly every sentence evokes ridiculous film trailers
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:13 (one year ago) link
I want a "This summer..." from-the-mind-of-Mike Matheny trailer from KM.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:16 (one year ago) link
I apologize for all this frivolousness. We can talk about organs and incisions if you'd rather.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:18 (one year ago) link
lol, i can't bear to contemplate the mind of matheny for one second more, i am at my lifetime limit!
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:28 (one year ago) link
from the pancreas of your mom, a funeral you thought you had a good excuse to miss
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:32 (one year ago) link
Somebody really should use "from the ass of" though.
I don't recall hearing about many times directors had control over adverts and posters unless it was low budget stuff. I've long wanted a return to those old trailers with the director in them.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 22 June 2022 20:54 (one year ago) link
Hitchcock and DeMille did it too (think the Castle clip rips off from the Psycho trailer. Must have been others--Welles?“Tube socks! Tube socks! Three for fi’ dollars!”
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Wednesday, 22 June 2022 21:17 (one year ago) link
lol at the "these snozberries taste like snozberries" dude from Super Troopers in the Devil trailer
― Saxophone Of Futility (Michael B), Thursday, 23 June 2022 15:55 (one year ago) link
Very chilly and cold (quite a low budget on this one) but it keeps you at arms length so you can grapple with concepts like how will our bodies evolve in a dying planet. The Cronenberg movie it reminds me the most of is Crash. I'll give it a 8/10
― Saxophone Of Futility (Michael B), Friday, 24 June 2022 01:20 (one year ago) link
i saw the trailer for that one m-night movie DEVIL in a theatre and yknow it was exciting and kinda scary and lots of heavy breathing and panicking and quick shots of scary things happening in darkness, and the audience sat in polite fear, and then it said
FROM THE MINDOF M NIGHT SHYAMALAN
and the entire theatre as one burst into laughter
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Saturday, June 1, 2013 5:00 AM bookmarkflaglink
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 24 June 2022 01:25 (one year ago) link
when I saw that trailer a bunch of kids behind me started booing and I wanted to hi-five them
― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Friday, 24 June 2022 01:27 (one year ago) link
I finally watched CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
I was relaxed and locked-in enough to just absorb everything as it was happening, and all of the plot threads kind of coalesced into a whole about five minutes after it ended. For a film that's visually and audibly rich, there's a sparseness to the plot and you're clued in to what characters were really doing only as the movie ends
― mh, Monday, 1 August 2022 22:19 (one year ago) link
watching rabid cz it's on mubi and i never saw it till now
― mark s, Sunday, 11 September 2022 17:55 (one year ago) link
this is excellent, poo to the h8as
― mark s, Sunday, 11 September 2022 17:59 (one year ago) link
lol the grotto scene
― mark s, Sunday, 11 September 2022 19:15 (one year ago) link
good movie
― mark s, Sunday, 11 September 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
[THE FLY] It's like a B horror movie given new weight by Cronenberg, and for what it is it's very well done...Yet on its own it has no real vision—nothing that lifts it out of the horror-shock category. (1986)— pauline kael bot (@paulinekaelbot) September 11, 2022
― Bait Kush (Eric H.), Sunday, 11 September 2022 20:52 (one year ago) link
A timely bump; I finally saw Dead Ringers (presented in association with the National Gallery of Art exhibition "The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900"). The audience was full of giggles; I don't know whether it was an attempt to cope with the tension or because the film looks so supremely lol 80s.
Two women of a certain age right behind me could not stop talking about their gynecologic histories. I'm wondering if there's a story in generations of women whose medical issues doctors denied and dismissed somehow rebounding on them.
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Monday, 12 September 2022 00:38 (one year ago) link
From Danielle Burgos' Screen Slate write-up of Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts (which I love)
"Greenaway claims after he presented A Zed & Two Noughts at TIFF, David Cronenberg “sat me down in a hamburger bar and questioned me for two hours. . . . Eight months later he made a film called Dead Ringers (1988), which is about twinship, mutilated females, and human mutation.” Evolution and mutation are two sides of the same coin, it comes down to whether the change proves advantageous. Despite their commonalities, there’s no mistaking the films. Though Cronenberg isn’t traditional by Hollywood standards, his codependent character study spiced with taboo is a straightforward three-act narrative using the same visual grammar as D. W. Griffith. A Zed & Two Noughts is as much a film as “a film”, the first embrace of cinema qua cinema from a self-professed fine artist stepping beyond his early-career formalism to explore the medium on its own terms."
― dan selzer, Monday, 12 September 2022 05:01 (one year ago) link
Just seen Crimes Of The Future and liked it a lot. Barely anyone there and... a general question about cinema releases. The buzz about this film was months ago and I thought I had missed it until my brother spotted it in the "currently showing" listings. I feel like films have had fairly uniform worldwide releases for over a decade and it wasn't until Green Knight that I started noticing films being months apart in different countries. Is this a recent change or has nothing changed really? Just seems like a really bad idea to start showing a film in some countries well after all the American screenings buzz is gone, because I don't think I'm alone in missing films because I don't know if or when it's coming around here. There's never enough films I want to see to keep up with the weekly local cinema listings.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 17 September 2022 19:23 (one year ago) link
Just saw Crimes of the Future. I thought it was fascinating (and at times weirdly funny). Lots to think about. Kind of reminded me of Naked Lunch, in some ways, at least in passing. Or at least how I remember it.Great score
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 1 October 2022 02:25 (one year ago) link
I started noticing films being months apart in different countries.
Of course, in the 70s, a film might open over a few months in different parts of the same country, slowly accumulating word-of-mouth. I don't know why this practice would return in the digital/home viewing era, but I suppose the exhibitors think that the people who would go out to see a new Cronenberg movie on the big screen will show up whenever it appears, buzz or no buzz.
― Halfway there but for you, Saturday, 1 October 2022 02:50 (one year ago) link
I could be wrong, but I think the slow-build, word-of-mouth opening was dead by the late '70s, killed off either by Jaws or Star Wars.
― clemenza, Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:45 (one year ago) link
Wasn't the slow release thing also because of the cost of making 35 mm prints? They wanted to test the market before committing to hundreds of prints. Digital projection gets rid of that factor.
― nickn, Saturday, 1 October 2022 16:51 (one year ago) link
Watched CRIMES OF THE FUTURE last night (it's on Hulu). It's pretty much a note-perfect parody of a David Cronenberg movie. If only it was funny. (OK, the guy with ears all over his body dancing to shitty techno was a little funny.) But the more I think about it this morning, the more it feels like an empty, hollow rehash. So many things are lifted from previous Cronenberg movies, from Mortensen's character being an undercover cop (EASTERN PROMISES) to the insectile surgical instruments (DEAD RINGERS) to Lea Seydoux having Judy Davis's haircut from NAKED LUNCH. And every line of dialogue sounded like the characters were reading it off a sign on an art gallery wall. Really disappointing. I'm having a REPO MAN-ish "I can't believe I used to like this guy" moment.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, 6 November 2022 14:20 (one year ago) link
That was my feeling when I saw Existenz.
“Hey Cronenberg, you need to make a Cronenberg movie.”
“But all of my movies are Cronenberg movies?”
“No no, you need to make more movies with the gross weird stuff.”
“Fine, let’s do it.”
― Cow_Art, Sunday, 6 November 2022 14:27 (one year ago) link
I thought Existenz was pretty self-aware, almost to the point of parody, but as I remember it it paid off. Crimes of the Future (which I enjoyed) was almost like a Cronenberg stage production. I suppose a lot of whatever enjoyment one gets out of it boils down to whether one feels it is funny/ridiculous on purpose or funny/ridiculous inadvertently. It's so ridiculous (and sometimes funny) that I lean the former.
Coincidence re: Existenz, I believe Crimes is the first of his films to feature an original screenplay by Cronenberg that was not an adaptation since Existenz.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 6 November 2022 14:46 (one year ago) link
it's a synthesis of ideas he's been turning over for his whole career but doesn't feel exactly like any of them. and it is hilarious
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Sunday, 6 November 2022 14:48 (one year ago) link
We watched Crimes of the Future last night too, but we all basically liked it and/or were fascinated by it. It was the kids' first Cronenberg so they were just kind of amazed that this existed as a movie. And the philosophical explorations were broken up frequently enough by weird gross stuff that they didn't get bored. I also thought it was funny on purpose at several moments. I wouldn't call it so much a rehash as kind of a summing up of a lot of his core obsessions. (That he recycled the title from his first film adds to that impression.)
I also had the thought that if you showed this at a Qanon movie night (if Qanon people have movie nights) as a Hollywood insider's knowing nod to child mutilation rituals, it go over big.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 6 November 2022 14:52 (one year ago) link
I'll get right on that.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 6 November 2022 14:57 (one year ago) link
I also thought it was funny on purpose at several moments.
The scene with Kristen Stewart chasing Viggo around the office was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time.
― DPRK in Cincinnati (WmC), Sunday, 6 November 2022 15:11 (one year ago) link
yes
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 6 November 2022 15:13 (one year ago) link
Yes, that was really good, and Viggo's "Sorry; I'm not very good at the old sex" after the world's most off-putting kiss was a great punch line.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, 6 November 2022 15:18 (one year ago) link
I think Cosmopolis has become my favorite of his movies
― ex-McKinsey wonk who looks like a human version of a rat (Eric H.), Sunday, 6 November 2022 19:42 (one year ago) link
Or Crash ... one of those two, for sure
― ex-McKinsey wonk who looks like a human version of a rat (Eric H.), Sunday, 6 November 2022 19:45 (one year ago) link
don't think I'm alone in missing films because I don't know if or when it's coming around here. There's never enough films I want to see to keep up with the weekly local cinema listings.🤔
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Monday, 7 November 2022 07:58 (one year ago) link
huh, Crimes is on hulu now. hope that there are some fun online “what the hell was that?” responses
― mh, Tuesday, 8 November 2022 00:34 (one year ago) link
I still convulse & uncontrollably shudder to myself when remembering Keira Knightley's performance in A Dangerous Method
― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, 8 November 2022 00:41 (one year ago) link
just feel lucky it was her and not ornaldo bloomps
― mh, Tuesday, 8 November 2022 00:58 (one year ago) link
I really like the dialogue in Crimes, I wish more taken this approach
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 12 November 2022 20:48 (one year ago) link
Just saw that Caitlin (daughter of David) Cronenberg has her debut on its way.
“'Humane' takes place over a single day months after a global environmental collapse has forced world leaders to take extreme measures to reduce the earth’s population. In a wealthy enclave, a recently retired newsman invites his four grown children to dinner to announce his intentions to enlist in the nation’s new euthanasia program. But when the father’s plan goes horribly awry, tensions flare and chaos erupts among his children.”
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 22 November 2022 17:53 (one year ago) link
I liked his son Brandon's recent one. Sure, give me more Cronenbergs!
― mh, Tuesday, 22 November 2022 18:49 (one year ago) link
long live the new flesh indeed
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Tuesday, 22 November 2022 18:53 (one year ago) link
Crimes was good and I enjoyed it well enough, but the final shot is what stuck with me. I love a movie that ends at the climax.
― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Tuesday, 22 November 2022 19:09 (one year ago) link
I finished processing the plot about five minutes after the end of Crimes
at which point I was thinking "ooh, that was good"
― mh, Tuesday, 22 November 2022 19:16 (one year ago) link
I missed the news that Amazon is making a tv series of Dead Ringers starring Rachel Weisz as Beverly and Elliot:
https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/14130930/DDRG_S1_FG_106_00505514_Still001.jpg
― ArchCarrier, Wednesday, 15 February 2023 18:38 (one year ago) link
More pictures here
― ArchCarrier, Wednesday, 15 February 2023 18:41 (one year ago) link
Every David Cronenberg film summarised by dril— ☭ Daydream of Hell 🏳️⚧️ (@hellsdaydream) May 21, 2023
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Sunday, 21 May 2023 19:18 (eleven months ago) link
they're on private, looks like :(
― mh, Tuesday, 23 May 2023 20:01 (eleven months ago) link
Saw a preview announcement last night for Humane: "From the mind of Caitlin Cronenberg." That seems very premature for her first feature film--you have to make at least three or four ponderous vanity films before you've earned a "from the mind of." Must be genetic.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 16:26 (three weeks ago) link
I think that's too judgy, and that the last name is enough of a CV.
― Ippei's on a bummer now (WmC), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 16:42 (three weeks ago) link
Shows sufficient humility by not characterising said mind as twisted imo.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 16:50 (three weeks ago) link
going to provisionally allow it based on her family's name
Brandon's gotten pretty good at this movie thing. I'm willing to check it out
― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 17:03 (three weeks ago) link
"From the nepo baby of David Cronenberg"
― bae (sic), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 17:23 (three weeks ago) link
nepo brood
― subpost master (wins), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 17:25 (three weeks ago) link
From the bowels of
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 17:25 (three weeks ago) link
absolutely, I'll see that movie (when it hits streaming)
― Ippei's on a bummer now (WmC), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 18:54 (three weeks ago) link
Looking forward to the new Cronenberg…mind you really looked forward to his last one and that was a major disappointment
― X-Prince Protégé (sonnyboy), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 19:38 (three weeks ago) link