The Cronenberg Thread

So, yes. Ebert liked it way more than I did, though.

POV:
Dead Ringers
Dead Zone
Scanners
Videodrome
The Fly

I really want to see Shivers.

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.

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.

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.

Really? Unintentionally?

Shivers
Naked Lunch
Videodrome
ExistenZ
Dead 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).

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.

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.

* 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.

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.

xpost
Holy shit, "psychological profiler"? That's messed up. Awesome.

Personally, I think I like Crash and The Dead Zone the best.

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.

nepo brood

From the bowels of

"From the nepo baby of David Cronenberg"

absolutely, I'll see that movie (when it hits streaming)

Looking forward to the new Cronenberg…mind you really looked forward to his last one and that was a major disappointment

Some late style clunkiness aside, The Shrouds is a typically excellent and thought provoking Cronenberg movie.

It was possibly my favorite film last year that wasn't a documentary. Not perfect and it may not be among his very best, but it was wonderful all the same.

Should add, I saw it at a festival. It opens in mid-April in NY and LA then expands the following week.

all the real cronenberg heads who haven't made it to a festival are in envy right now

Gonna watch it in an hour.

this is ilxor so no doubt everyone but me DID in fact already know this but here goes: is it widely known that "help me", the themetune for THE FLY (1986), is sung by bryan ferry? i was startled to learn this (it's right there in the end credits)

no it's not used in the film (or i think it is, but only briefly in the background, on the jukebox during the arm-wrestling bar scene): it was commissioned, BF recorded it, cronenberg didn't hate it per se but didn't think it fitted the mood, they tried a cut with it over the end credits but everyone agreed it didn't work, so it was relegated to right at the back of the cupboard

it's really not ferry's best work lol (= he doesn't do the voice when he says "help me") (i mean he does his own normal voice, not a little human fly's voice: missed opportunity all round)

He's in love with his bangs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg-Yte9X1go

Can see Scott Walker having a go at the 'help me' voice.

Main thing that really stuck with me from Shrouds was wondering if conspiracy theories are a real fetish, can't find anything about it, would be really something if some of the famous conspiracy theorists were like this. I used to assume car crashes was not a real turn-on but it actually seems to be and I recently read accounts about Ballard that suggested he was genuinely into vehicle crashes.

Found these fascinating paragraphs! Won't link it but I'm sure anyone can find it if they want
"Edward Smith told his story in The Telegraph over ten years ago, shocking the world by proclaiming his promiscuity: he admitted to sex with over 1000 cars. He felt attracted to them for as long as he could recall, had sex with a car the first time at age fifteen, and didn’t feel sexual attraction at all to women or to men.

Men who love cars the way Ed loves cars have relationships with them as well as flings, and feel specific attractions to certain cars—the cars are not interchangeable. It’s mostly guys who report this strange kind of love, but a similar attractions to bridges, walls, and towers is often reported by women."

"Object Sexuality, or: the humans who fall in love with buildings" By Nicholas Korody has an interview with such a woman.

Back to the film: I thought it was very interesting but wasn't happy with the avatar character, just looked so much like something from a 3d animated family film. The very end scene totally whooshed over my head.

fucking looooved the shrouds. it had so much on its mind

but not in its body.

This one slipped completely from memory.

idk that the dream sequences with his wife will slip from my memory. leaving the room only to return eaten-away-at. such a stirring meditation on the howling unknown beyond death and trying/failing to reincarnate what you've lost to it in the here and now through imagination, technology, and conspiracy

also: really ugly. also: hilarious

so many shots of decaying bodies/skeletons and the most haunting image remains the memoji AI chatbot version of his wife in her koala skin

I liked it. But, completely contradictory to my Cronenberg love, I fell asleep in the theater during it! It was the day after my birthday and I was mildly hungover, but I’d popped an allergy pill and then had exactly one beer at the theater.

Oddly, the only other people in the theater were two in an extended friend group. I know I fell asleep because the guy loudly said my name at me, imagine “EMMM HAITCH” being intoned loudly during the quiet end of the second third. I was snoring!

I’ll watch it again, probably multiple times since it’s my lane. But I think it was the car auto driving bit.

Boy, does "Videodrome" get more prophetic by the year.