The Cronenberg Thread

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.

i think anyway, i switched over in protest at this botch up.

what made you say that? it was howard shore, btw.

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.