Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg does DeLillo starring Robert Pattinson

I love DeLillo but never read this book cause the plot sounded so contrived. Mostly takes place on a limo ride across Manhattan on some "Bret Easton Ellis meets The Mezzanine" ridiculousness if my impression is right. Anyway this looks pretttttty bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=q3ZmIwteUAY&NR=1

Some discussion here: The Cronenberg Thread

whoops! thanks.

LOOOL Cronenberg's back at it with the car fetish... Look at the size of that limo!

I wasn't particularly fond of the book, but I'm cautiously optimistic about the film.

The heavy use of strobing in the trailer is really irritating

"free to do WHAT?" in the trailer makes me lol every every time. crazy excited for this actually.

A.O. Scott likes: http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/movies/movie-review-cosmopolis-directed-by-david-cronenberg.html?ref=arts

Mr. Cronenberg keeps you rapt, even when the story and actors don’t. Some of this disengagement is certainly intentional. Taken as a commentary on the state of the world in the era of late capitalism (for starters), “Cosmopolis” can seem obvious and almost banal. But these banalities, which here are accompanied by glazed eyes, are also to the point: the world is burning, and all that some of us do is look at the flames with exhausted familiarity.

all the positive reviews i've read seem to be using a lot of waffle to disguise the fact that they didn't actually like the movie

god that is so ao scott

That's a pretty accurate recap of what it feels like to watch Cosmopolis, tho.

did Cronenberg slag off comic book movies somewhere recently...?

yeah

http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/robert-pattinson-david-cronenberg-cosmopolis-interview

it's actually "superhero movies" though, so he has an out

Does anyone else do a quick scan of current reviews whenever Ebert bashes a "difficult" movie? Just to see what fluff has gotten 3.5 or 4 stars lately? (Currently, ftr, big love for Odd Life of Timothy Green, Hit & Run, Snow White & the Huntsman, et al.)

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120822/REVIEWS/120829995

Movie appears to be improving retroactively in my memory. Samantha Morton's sequence is up there with Tatum's "Pony" for my favorite individual sequence this year.

David Cronenberg is a master filmmaker, whose films sometimes fail to reverberate with me, but whose genius cannot be denied. There is a coldness and abstraction in much of his work, a heartlessness.

sorry if an apocalyptic film doesnt reach the awesome adrenaline highs of Tony Scott clockpunchers.

Yeah, he's just not up to the challenge anymore. I remember some discussion on another board around the time The Fountain came out about how it was the kinda film Ebert woulda gone nuts for back in the day (the film was released when he was off sick) and then when he finally did go back and review it he gave it like 2 stars.

don't understand complaints about "heartlessness" about anything

Avowed Cronenberg lover Walter Chaw's take:

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2012/08/cosmopolis.html#more

David Cronenberg's North by Northwest

OK, stop right there.

Alfred, crix are scratching their lazy distorted Kubrick itch w/ DC now.

There is definitely a critical level of detachment in this latest one, tho.

It is, finally, a summary of Cronenberg's work to this point, as well as a statement of absolute fear and loathing. A lovely post-modern work, it's killed God by discovering there never was one to begin with.

this is guff, and i'm getting p irritated w/ this critical position that if you don't dig cosmopolis then you don't really dig cronenberg at all, it's like revenge of the art film snob. for some tru cronenberg heads - well, me - it's all been downhill since the fly, and these faithful bloodless literary adaptations don't come close to the power and pleasure of the brood, videodrome, scanners etc etc. long live the new horror movie.

I'm mostly with you, but this is the first time I've really kinda dug a Cronenberg movie in more than a decade. We are also at the point in his career where every. single. one of his movies gets the lazy "career summation" treatment from stans.

ppl define "tru" differently, don't they

tru

No, there is only one tru Cronenberg head.

http://www.wheaton.me.uk/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/ScannersExplodingHead.gif

yeah, everything before Scanners is p meaningless to me

for some tru cronenberg heads - well, me - it's all been downhill since the fly, and these faithful bloodless literary adaptations don't come close to the power and pleasure of the brood, videodrome, scanners etc etc. long live the new horror movie.

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, August 23, 2012 12:57 PM (2 hours ago)

boom

though i have enjoyed quite a few of his post-fly films

this couldve been a lot better than it was

whoever thought that delillos prose shd be treated like mamet or whomever gets the gasface & pls dont let them make 'underworld' into a 12 hr epic

an old dude a few rows in front of me left abt halfway thru muttering (fairly loudly) 'crap'

Audience reaction was pretty visceral at my press screening. Toward the end, there was even some talkback.

Ward - Crash was p good, no?

Toward the end, there was even some talkback.

with Pattinson in his limo listening

Crash is awful

I was asking Ward.

Looking at that comment I guess it doesn't apply to Crash. The book is 'bloodless', the adaptation matches that. However Ballard is hardly 'literary'.

how is Ballard not literary

good question, and cronenberg's crash is a "literary adaptation" no matter what you think of the source material

Used to describe well written work that doesn't do much more than being well written (?) -- although that wasn't the way the word was being used earlier.

The path has been downhill (whose hasn't?) but I'd excuse Crash from that. xp

that makes "literary" sound like an insult...

Sure, it is...

"Crash" is closer to "Naked Lunch" in terms of how the adaptations relate to their source material (and Cronenberg's take on the latter is much more successful than the former imho). But I think both of those cases are different from what Ward was referring to as "faithful bloodless literary adaptations".

Sure, it is...

lol, i've never heard it used that way

But I think both of those cases are different from what Ward was referring to as "faithful bloodless literary adaptations".

― The Radioheads are massive in the Man community (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 24, 2012 3:04 PM (1 minute ago)

must be, because neither is terribly faithful to its source

Naked Lunch >>>>>>>>>>>>> Crash

http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/interview-david-cronenberg

Crash > Naked Lunch.

Naked Lunch has a cracking score. Best music on any of DC's music.

cronenberg is at his best when he's completely humourless

You're nuts; all his films are funny, cept some of the early horror garbage.

I've had some pretty funny prostate exams.

All of the dialogue in this film feels like it's delivered by human computers, computational machines of human nature and geography. I'm not sure if the humor is in the disconnect, the stoic dialogue, or the strict continuance of plot.

There's something here, and maybe a different "here" than the novelette by its very difference.

Eh, I got that it was supposed to be funny. Problem was that it wasn't funny enough. And that many of the performances were horribly dull - odd and disconnected in a bad way.

"How come we never spent this kind of time together?"

*lascivious -- or is it threatened? -- eye contact *

* doctor fiddles around with gloves *

"Your prostate is asymmetrical."

It's really a movie where everyone speaks in their logical imperatives and not actual dialogue

refreshing

(it's breakdown language, somewhat akin to Beckett p'raps)

concede that the prostate exam was hilarious, easily my favorite scene

i really loved the language, even (especially?) when i could barely make out what it was supposed to mean. i liked the ominous foreboding entailed in everyone's manner but minus the emergence of, you know, an actual object of that dread.

hadn't thought of a beckett comparison, probably because I'm underversed in beckett. good avenue to explore, thanks.

along those same lines i think Delillo's own "The Names" explicitly engages a lot of these themes re: language and in really stupendous fashion. my fav novel of his that i've read.

(admittedly a good minor work, a step down from A Dangerous Method)

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 2, 2013 11:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

allow me to just bristle at the implication that ADM was a major work

bristle, the universe will endure

Bristle4Ass

ADM underrated I think, but don't think this was minor in comparison.

Prostate scene was great, but it was Samantha Morton's scene that really worked on all sorts of levels.

She brought some welcome Laurie Anderson into the proceedings.

Cosmopolis is at least a step up from the awful ADM, which seems to me much more of a Christopher Hampton film than a David Cronenberg film

Look more carefully, Ward.

when I read the Morton scene in the novel, I actually visualized Pauline Kael.

Doesn't Packer get tased by the female bodyguard in the book?

i feel like i liked ADM to such a greater extent than everyone else here i missed something essentially embarrassing about it. possibly i just geeked out at a movie about 20th century intellectuals.

I need to rewatch it, but I just thought it was boring

Thought it was his best in years (tho I never saw Eastern Promises)

see i did find ADM funny. The Freud/Jung scenes anyway

maybe it was because of almost zero expectations, but i thought this pretty much ruled. maybe my favorite Cronenberg since the 80s. i don't know who played the main bodyguard, but i could watch him all day long. reminded me of Bill Callahan.

It's whatshisface from Lost.

i gave up on that shit early on. was he towards the beginning?

Somewhere in the middle iirc.

Kevin Durand is his name.

He was in the last third of Lost. As a corporate-seeming mercenary type!

Pattinson turning into what Depp used to be, only moreso?

Over the last year, he has been diligently making movie after independent movie, in what has been his first stretch of work post-Twilight. And so far, his direction seems clear – he’s working exclusively with auteurs, on films that are not obviously commercial, and in roles that are uniquely challenging and wildly different, one to the next.

Last summer, he finished The Rover in Australia, a dystopian western from David Michôd, who made 2010’s brilliant Animal Kingdom. Pattinson’s performance is already receiving rave reviews. He then spent 10 days on Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s merciless satire about Hollywood, followed by Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert in which he plays Lawrence of Arabia. This spring, he made Anton Corbijn’s Life, in which he plays the photographer Dennis Stock, who took iconic photos of celebrities in the Fifties. And later, there’s a crime drama by the French director Olivier Assayas, co-starring Robert De Niro.

These are just the confirmed productions. There’s a long list of other compelling indie projects in the pipeline. A film with James Gray based on David Grann’s book The Lost City of Z, and a couple of films that are actually being written for him – Harmony Korine is writing him a gangster movie, set in Miami, and Brady Corbet, one of the killers in Michael Haneke’s blood-chilling Funny Games, is developing a script called Childhood of a Leader. “It’s about the youth of a future dictator in the Thirties,” he says....

http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/film-tv/6735/robert-pattinson-interview-esquire-cover-star/

lol @ Korine bit

And later, there’s a crime drama by the French director Olivier Assayas, co-starring Robert De Niro.

oh lord no

hey morbius just outta curiosity which arc of depp's career would you match that to? asking out of ignorance & skepticism of jay-dee, i don't remember a hugely fruitful affiliation w/auteurs beyond jarmusch & i guess like ... schnabel

Well, Depp did Waters, Jarmusch, Lasse Hallstrom, Kusturica, John Badham, Gilliam, Polanski, Sally Potter, etc., all while juggling Burton and the occasional romcom.

that's about what i was thinkin... tho Hallstrom went to the dark side early

dude's certainly been putting in the indie cred-work (and will get to as long as his name helps with foreign pre-sales) but dude's actually yet to have one of his art-house efforts really be acclaimed

i'm sure one of them will ding bells on Metacritic eventually

unanimous acclaim frequently betrays some pandering

have you liked him in anything? can't say i've spotted a ton of potential

haha whoops, forgot what thread we're on

quickly checking Letterboxd, guess what single film i've seen him in

ty josh/morbs, xxxxp

i really liked the Depp-Kusturica film, but it essentially went unreleased in the US

wonder if Assayas can trick De Niro into making an effort

I can imagine him saying in press for the film, "Yes, the trick was to persuade Bobby to make an effort."

I've never seen Pattinson in anything but he's really good in this. He's EXTREMELY beautiful and weird looking though, no?

Yep.

I really like how his accent shifts when he visits the barber.

the scenes with sarah gadon are nice because it's two people who you can't help but stare at.

When he meets her outside the theatre the show she's just been to see is called Stage Play - I can't remember if that's in the book but I liked it.