The Cronenberg Thread

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are you kidding? he's terrible. more wooden than keanu.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

but smugger!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

spader is pretty wooden, but he does seem to have a bit more going on upstairs than keanu.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

how can you tell?!?!? he's wooden!

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

his eyebrows are carved a tad differently than keanus on the wood!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't think spader is wooden at all, I think he's genius. in most roles he's like "this movie is so below me that I'm not even going to bother raising my eyelids all the way".

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

hstencil OTM.

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

You guys just hate him cuz he's a stoner and his droopy eyelids make him look "wooden."

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 24 September 2005 00:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

A History of Violence is wow. Completely and totally wow. I think I need to see it again. I'm not even sure I can quite process it.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Saturday, 24 September 2005 02:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

really?!! must see must see must see. I couldn't make it this afternoon. Tomorrow then.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

I have no idea what Cronenberg was trying to do with Crash, but whatever it was it ended being horribly unsuccessful in everything it attempted (it's not funny enough to be "funny" IMO.) I think the biggest problem is that taken out of the time when the novel was written, the themes begin to make very little less sense (car crash culture just isn't what it was.) Maybe if Diana had died before the movie was made it might have worked somehow, really given the film something to focus on, but as it stood the whole car crash thing did seem kind of like joke and frankly there are funnier ones.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Saturday, 24 September 2005 04:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

I recall reading that Ballard liked the film very much.. Um, there never was a car crash culture, that was the reason he chose it (JGB I mean), a fetish that doesn't exist.

― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 24 September 2005 04:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, look, a blog:
http://www.historyofviolence.com/cronenbergblog/

― dar1a g (daria g), Saturday, 24 September 2005 15:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

actually my parents were big into car crash culture in the 70's and i was actually conceived in a car crash orgy. so Crash is a personal movie for me.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 15:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

I am lamely excited about this movie. The end of the graphic novel goes way over the top and I'm very interested in seeing what DC does with it.

― adam (adam), Saturday, 24 September 2005 16:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm looking forward to it too. The last Cronenberg film I liked was Naked Lunch.

My faves:

Dead Ringers
The Fly
Naked Lunch
Videodrome

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 24 September 2005 19:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

actually my parents were big into car crash culture in the 70's and i was actually conceived in a car crash orgy. so Crash is a personal movie for me.

so are you sure that's your dad?

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Saturday, 24 September 2005 21:12 (7 years ago) Permalink

History of Violence..

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm seeing HOV tomorrow. But I just watched Naked Lunch again, and holy shit what a movie.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

It was fun to watch it with a bunch of virgins, to Cronenberg and to Beats. I got to point things out... "That's Kerouac. That's Ginsberg. That's Tangiers." And I got to glance over to their reactions to, say, him rubbing bug powder dust on the talking asshole of a giant imaginary bug. God I love that movie.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

That's one I haven't seen! I'll have to rent it soon.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

you lucky big city folk! ;-)

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 25 September 2005 04:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've been dying to see History of Violence for so long it seems. This week! As soon as freakin' possible! I even had a conversation tonight about Cronenberg with a friend who turns out to be a big fan too! Right now, well, maybe not right now but earlier today or tomorrow, I would be reading the book "Cronenberg on Cronenberg" but the library's self-checkout wouldn't scan it yesterday (and the real-person checkout was closed.) Anyway, new Cronenberg + latest ep of Battlestar + discovery that I do in fact really like Joanna Newsom = pretty good day.

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Sunday, 25 September 2005 05:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ok, HOV was great. Everything Cronenberg is good at stripped down to essentials, shot and acted very well. Very funny, too.

― adam (adam), Sunday, 25 September 2005 11:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

*spoilspoilspoil*
I saw it last night. Seven out of ten. Good things: acting, little tiny details (children's heights on doorframe, clothes that are not his own being too big for him), flitting from one little girl to another at the beginning lost me, then by losing me got me right into it because I started thinking. Bad things: one of the sex scenes, unbelievably cute mother with hips that are unlikely to have borne two children in slinky jeans that show them off too well, big scary gangster played a bit too comedy. I also liked the way the two guys who hold up the diner are like islands in the plot.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Sunday, 25 September 2005 15:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

That's one I haven't seen! I'll have to rent it soon.
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 (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 (7 years ago) Permalink

Edelstein's review isn't great, but he at least deals with a number of the isseus the film raises. (I can think of little good popular criticism that doens't also deal with the critic's "own issues". What do you want, pure formalism?).
It's a mesmerizing movie but Cronenberg is really playing both sides of the violence coin. It's not just that the movie is explicitly violent but in a number of scenes (especially when the son beats up the bully) there's the typical action/thriller treatment of violence-as-catharsis. I think Sympathy for Mr. Vengenance deals with a number of the same ideas (and is equally pornographically violent) in a more compelling (not necessarily better) manner.

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Sunday, 25 September 2005 19:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

I found it pretty aggravating, like he's fixated on this shame/guilt thing which didn't make any sense to me, and I didn't see it in the movie. But then, I didn't find anything satisfying or virtuosic about any of the violence in the movie, it was all hard to watch, I thought.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

i liked it alot!

― huell howser (chaki), Monday, 26 September 2005 07:37 (7 years ago) Permalink

I liked it, too.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

I hated it!

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 03:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

is this going to be released nationwide? curse my hick town!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 1 October 2005 03:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

I was so rooting for Cronenberg, but this movie was a horrible reminder that he is just the fuck that made Existenz!

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 04:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

Also the acting was some of the worst I've seen in quite some time and the score was so intrusive and portentous and awful. I'm starting to believe that Spider (which I loved) was just an anomaly and that David Cronenberg started out making great movies and is going to make progressively worse ones as time passes.

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 04:46 (7 years ago) Permalink

AND ANOTHER THING

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 04:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

Existenz is totally hilarious!

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

Cronenberg characters always seem a little detached from the actual happenings of the film, that's absolutely nothing new. Spider *thrived* on that, since it was kind of the point of the film! This is why, no matter how Crash turned out, Cronenberg was the best director for that job, too. The detached pragmatism and lack of aversion when it comes to the grotesque or violent...

― mike h. (mike h.), Saturday, 1 October 2005 05:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, Adam.

― jaymc (jaymc), Saturday, 1 October 2005 06:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

how sexy is it?

― j blount (papa la bas), Saturday, 1 October 2005 06:34 (7 years ago) Permalink

i hated the howard shore score at the beginning but as the movie progressed it was great! and btw it was based on a graphic novel. of course the acting was comic book like.

― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 07:15 (7 years ago) Permalink

Why is that an explanation for bad acting, Chaki? I'm sorry, I can't help it if terrible dialogue and implausible relationships ruin my enjoyment of a movie. Sin City had more complex characters than this film!

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm sort of becoming a pariah on these film threads, I guess.

I still love and respect all of you and your opinions, though!

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 14:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

how sexy is it?

not very. The sex scenes actually had both of us laughing out loud!

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Saturday, 1 October 2005 14:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

Comparing Sin City to A History of Violence is like comparing Magnum Force to The Wild Bunch. Please.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

Adam, have you seen that much Cronenberg or seen him interviewed? I don't think he's trying to be "deep" per se, just that he has this interesting ideas and runs with them. If you're getting a treatise from one of his film, it's one you're bringing to the table.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

i thought the sex scenes were interesting!

― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

And "Violence" is very much a piece with Cronenberg's other genre explorations. The contours of this picture (the scenes involving Mortenson's son in school; the pulp dialogue Ed Harris has to deliver) are B movie-esque.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

that son was a horrible actor!

― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

that son was a horrible actor!
-- huell howser (chaki.tim...), October 1st, 2005.

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 (7 years ago) Permalink

yah.. that was pretty bad. but great!

― huell howser (chaki), Saturday, 1 October 2005 20:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

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