The Cronenberg Thread

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

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.

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

i like when directors not known for period pieces (altman, mike leigh, cronenberg) do them, they always bring something interesting and weird

Kubrick, arguably.

paul w.s. anderson

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.

Kubrick, arguably.

― 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

You might say Kubrick brought apes to the period piece.

you might say 2001 was the original "planet" of the "apes" movie

"you" might "say"

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

One thing about this film is that it may teach ilxors the correct way to say imago

imago ahead and say it

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.

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.

Spider is my second favourite after Dead Ringers. I think Spider is seriously neglected.

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.

one of only a few Cronenberg movies I've never bothered to watch since it sounds so deeply unpleasant and pointless

haven't watched Cosmopolis for similar reaseon

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.

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.

Cosmopolis is really, really funny.

I have never heard that opinion expressed

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.

in general I'm not v interested in films with twists about unreliable narrators

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.

so is this worth seeing or not?

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/book-compost-heap-interview-david-cronenberg

Does stuntpeople + actual fire cost that much? (Genuine q I know nothing)

― 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.

did the cronenberg augmented reality game ever happen?

you're...playing it right now

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.

I had shivers on DVD years ago.

I am thinking of watching The Brood tonight... never seen it before, hope it's good!

It's great.

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 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

you don't need to see ADM after you've seen the Brood

Duly noted ... maybe i'll just rewatch The Brood

Ward is rong.

ADM is a totally different, albeit minor and enjoyable, film

it has one really good joke in it

surveying, ranking the oeuvre

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/the-films-of-david-cronenberg-ranked

survey is good, rankings are ridic

Top 5 is accurate (in a different order, but still).

Crash is so bad

Eric possibly otm

Crash is much funnier than Maps to the Stars.

I loathed Crash in '97 (my first experience with crowds exiting a theatre) but it's due for a "rescreen."

A Dangerous Method has to be the worst, I forgot that was Cronenberg.