The Cronenberg Thread

what a guy.

half the time I love and appreciate Ebert, and then I just wonder what the hell he is thinking the other part

Gotta admit I was bummed when Ebert chose Tree of Life over Synecdoche for his S&S list, but if I'd been through what he'd been through lately perhaps new age hokum would be more appealing to me than something as beautifully miserable as Synecdoche.

Synechdoche kind of falls down in the last third (agree w Morbz, in general)

kind of want to punch anyone that refers to Tree of Life as "new age hokum" a hundred thousand times in the face.

BUT, different thread.

Take yr best shot :-)

In fairness, I *like* TOL on balance...I just woulda liked it better if it were just the 50's coming of age stuff without an introductory half hour of pretty screen-savers and the last half hour of dead people walking on a beach.

creation sequence is awes fuiud. more ambivalent about the ending, but interesting stuff there and hey it's only 15 or so minutes iirc.

even more psyched for Cosmopolis now tbh.

me too
i just expect to feel a certain kind of bored-but-not-bored feeling when watching cronenberg films, and i like it

i think most Canadian filmmakers are dealing in how to dramatize boredom/the boring on one level or another

but interesting stuff there and hey it's only 15 or so minutes iirc.

6 or 7 tops.

6 or 7 tops

Oooh. What are their names?

Chaz, Bo, Dunk, Tad, Bluto, Swain, and Tia

MY GOD this was tedious

Agonizing. A running stream of babble we're supposed to find profound, Twilight looks like he's struggling to remember his lines. JBinoche still hot, though.

I'm scared that Cronenberg's ability to slow burn has exceeded his film length. I'm sure there's tons of crazy action and violence in the 110th minute of A Dangerous Method but the movie was over by then.

Big shrug of the shoulders for Cosmopolis. Fun spotting Toronto locations, and that was about it. I was sort of with it for the first half, Giamatti's scene was interminable. Maybe the philosophizing on capitalism and greed might have seemed more immediate three years ago, but after so many documentaries on the subject, it was like a weak echo. (I should mention I haven't read the book.) My biggest problem was simply the lifelessness of just about everyone, the lead especially. I know, he's supposed to be lifeless. he's dead inside...which is rarely a good strategy. James Woods in Videodrome, Walken in The Dead Zone, Goldblum and Davis in The Fly, even Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers to a lesser degree--these are all engaging characters. When Cronenberg drifts way over to his clinical, austere side, he loses me.

I assume you're counting Crash as 'clinical, austere', which works fine for me.

I would, yeah...At the time, I was really proud of something I tacked onto my year-end music ballot, which was Crash reimagined as an SCTV parody. Edith Prickley got the Holly Hunter role, I think. Being a Canadian publication, they used it.

from NYT feature:

“I don’t think Rob’s face has ever been examined in such excruciating detail, from so many angles,” Mr. Cronenberg said. “That was part of the casting. You want a face that can take that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/movies/cosmopolis-cronenbergs-take-on-don-delillo.html?ref=movies

Croney, Pattz ring NYSE opening bell. Thank God for meta-marketing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/robert-pattinson-makes-sure-stocks-can-be-traded-today-by-ringing-bell/2012/08/14/56991bfe-e61d-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_blog.html

That's ... kinda perfect.

is this movie as bad as everyone said? I always get excited about cronenberg movies, then get depressed by bad reviews, then eventually watch them on demand or whatever and end up loving them.

I kinda liked this one, or at least admired its arrogance.

Ending will make a lot of people want to hurt someone, tho.

trailer for new (brandon) cronenberg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcJTd69dMyQ

Glenn Kenny gave it five stars. I haven't looked at a lot of reviews, but my general impression from festival-time was people were at best muted and at worst severely disappointed. GK isn't at all credible though because he's a pretty hardcore Cronenberg stan, but I sort-of am as well so I'm still pumped.

This is a pretentious Cronenberg stylez I can get behind.

A Dangerous Method was the only Cronenberg film where I've felt unenthused, but I think that was a glitch.

Agree with crix that call Giamatti's segment (or, rather, his performance) a miscalculation, but it was still kind of riveting after all that android pseudo-conversation.

Haven't bought the issue yet, but Amy Taubin has Cosmopolis on her S&S list. She always has a Cronenberg film on there. I think she may second-guess that one.

?!

I guess that's no stranger than putting Spider on her '02 list, tho I still haven't managed to sit through that one.

wonder if this means Cronenberg will get *another* Film Comment cover

Haven't bought the issue yet, but Amy Taubin has Cosmopolis on her S&S list. She always has a Cronenberg film on there. I think she may second-guess that one.

― clemenza, Tuesday, 14 August 2012 21:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i read her repping for it somewhere - film comment's cannes review i think - & it made me really want to see it. i like taubz & i think it's probably in some ways as honourable to include something super current as to just co-sign potemkin or w/e.

spider sucks iirc

^^^

Spider's pretty good, cert'ly tons better than A History of Graphic Novel Violence.

you're replacing one graphic-novel-level approach with another?

still love HoV, but I guess it did come from that inferior art form

M. Butterfly, Crash, existenZ, and Spider are the duds of the last twenty years, although I'd watch the last one again. Funny how no one has ever made a case for the first on this list. I saw in the theatre after loving Naked Lunch -- one of my first disappointments as an Adult Film Watcher.

still love HoV, but I guess it did come from that inferior art form

lol, art form. i liked it cuz it was fun to think about, appealingly heightened and quite strange. spider was just a drag.

alfred otm, except that i genuinely love about 90% of existenz. falls apart towards the end cuz the dreamlike oddity is much more interesting than the espionage plotting behind it, but up to that point, i've got no complaints.

"cuz"

alfred OTM about all those EXCEPT eXistenZ imho, which is awesome

on the other hand I don't like them all but he went from strength to strength in the Videodrome-The Fly-Dead Ringers-Naked Lunch sequence.

Alfred all wet cept for M Butterfly

Naked Lunch is an interesting failure, and I bet we've all said these fucking things upthread.

we're improving as we age, appearances to the contrary

no, I still look good but have otherwise gone to shit.

Another existenz lover here.