The Cronenberg Thread

so I hafta quit film threads for the year too, huh

can't believe you guys hate cats like that

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

so I hafta quit film threads for the year too, huh

― 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

try to get shakey to do it

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.

I am ashamed it took me so long, but I watched Dead Ringers for the first time last night.

Any Toronto people going to the Cronenberg exhibit at TIFF? http://tiff.net/cronenberg

I am not a Toronto person but that looks really tempting

Man, would I love to smoke some crack with Rob Ford and go to that.

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.

No, it will not embed--here's the link:

twitter.com/PhilNobileJr/status/409872028406018048/photo/1/large

has anyone been to that exhibit at TIFF that Dan mentioned?

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.

did you go to the exhibit clemenza? just went last week

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

what mug?

(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.

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.

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

oh shit would totally put my baby boy in that

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.

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

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!

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.)

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

Wise decision. I suspect postage would be more than the cost of the mug itself.

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.

those are two of my favorite horror movies!
i love the creepy gnome/human concept

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.

Sisters is splashier, but fits in too imo.

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

I recognized him from Scanners. He's funny in The Brood.

I was just watching Naked Lunch the other night - he's funny/weird/off-putting in that, too.

Well this looks weird. And not the good kind of weird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAWi6i4cmpE

that just looks like a shitty thrown-together trailer

many of the simple shots in it seem very cronenbergian

he really has such a specific way of framing one-shots

i mean recognizable

not gonna watch it if it's that thrown-together

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.

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.

Just Scanners from what I saw.

It does include his first film, Stereo, though.

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.

here are the extras:

The “Scanners” Way, a new documentary on the film’s special effects
New interview with actor Michael Ironside
The Ephemerol Diaries, a 2012 interview with actor and artist Stephen Lack
Excerpt from a 1981 interview with Cronenberg on the CBC’s The Bob McLean Show
Stereo (1969), Cronenberg’s first feature film
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kim Newman

Oh wow. That cover design!

http://www.diabolikdvd.com/imgproduct/dab365c12bf05e22e0eb5df3b75b2212.jpg

cover is better than the movie lol

brood is hilarious, would make a great double bill with possesion.

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