The Cronenberg Thread

it's good but not the last great, sheesh

When I first saw it Spider was one of the most depressing things I'd ever seen, being forced into such intimacy with a guy who writes an illegible diary and barely utters anything coherent. It was a genuinely uncomfortable, despairing psychological space to occupy. Admittedly the film didn't impress me quite as much when I saw it again a few years later, but I'd still probably it's still my favorite Cronenberg since, oh, Videodrome. I'm not quite sure on what level it's deemed a failure, what it should offer that it doesn't.

i wasn't terribly interested in the film's surface, well detailed though it was. it seemed to depend for tension on the unraveling of a mystery whose solution seemed fairly obvious from early on, and on the similarly predictable parallel disintegration of the protagonist's mental health.

i've never read the mcgrath novel on which the film is based, but others have suggested that it was a risky choice to begin with, given how much the original story depends on the protagonist's subjectivity. despite cronenberg's attempts to depict interior states visually, i felt as though i were observing only the shell of a narrative inside which something potentially interesting was happening.

The book is better than the film, but Spider is as good a film as one could make from it and have it still be watchable.

existenz is one of his best, but you may need to be steeped in canadian content to really get it i think

I don't know--I know lots about The Trouble with Tracy and the Poppy Family and Joey McLaughlin, and it didn't really help.

Well, here's one rave anyway:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/cosmopolis/6446

that doesn't really say much

'rizer, that novel's style has a certain amount in common with the one he adapted here, so bevare perhaps.

"darkly comic" is a phrase i'm always wary of seeing in reviews. It basically means "not funny"

To me it usually means I'll be one of the only ones laughing.

There was actually a lot of laughing at the press screening I went to, but probably of a few different varieties. There was also some yelling at the screen.

i may have emitted an anguished moan at some point

I may have launched an ironic belch.

Prostate exam was a crowd pleaser.

^when aint it

I did laugh a fair bit at the funny bits in Crash when I saw again a few months ago, as I did at much of Viggo's Freud in ADM.

However, the only great film I've seen from DC is The Fly.

I can settle on that as his best. (That or The Brood.)

I tried reading the novel several years ago.

can't decide between The Fly and Dead Ringers.

I'm also usually one of the only ones laughing at some moments.

Apparently a few friends are still wondering why I was giggling throughout a lot of Barry Lyndon

I like Dead Zone too

Dead Zone, the one time I saw it, was super.

A superhero movie, by definition, you know, it's comic book. It's for kids. It's adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying Dark Knight Rises is 'supreme cinema art,' I don't think they know what the fuck they're talking about.

http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/robert-pattinson-david-cronenberg-cosmopolis-interview/

As an actor, I would play Batman.

hell, who wouldn't? but with Adam West's rhythms.

with Heath Ledger's rhythms

^also adolescent in its core

checked Cosmopolis out of the library; it reads like a script.

Some dick is remaking Videodrome.

http://twitchfilm.com/news/2012/08/videodrome-remake-cronenberg-berg.php

script by the guy who wrote the Transformers movies.

They are the new flesh.

it's not even just that semi-talented people are remaking once-untouchable movies now, it's also that they're remaking movies to look more like video games, yet we can't even play our way through the emotionally bereft slickness, so, seriously, they should just fuck off with this

if there's no market for a Total Recall remake and I don't see why anyone would think there would be one for Videodrome.

Still: Who is today's Debbie Harry equivalent that they should cast for the role?

I would play a Videodrome point and click adventure

point and squick

if there's no market for a Total Recall remake and I don't see why anyone would think there would be one for Videodrome.

― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:12 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

there sort of is a market for a total recall remake... just not a $200 million one.

They'd probably swap Debbie Harry for Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj or other misc pop singer that likes to give crazy wide eyes in front of fish eye lenses.

saw Cosmopolis today, and may have been too tired and distracted to really get into it, but it was certainly compelling at points. I felt like the claustrophobic style was obviously motivated but it sure was exhausting and even a little boring. I was even spacing off during the final bit before the credits! (again that's probably my fault)

I did like the sense that it was about a guy having a total mental/life breakdown and keeping this odd composure through it all. I liked the dialogues...i liked how they portrayed how people talk when they are over-consuming information. they sorta talk AT each other.

i was sorta hoping for a movie of impending doom and dread and pessimism, but for all that certainly being there i didn't feel it much. maybe that makes it that much more despairing?

Crash is his last great movie, among the ones I've seen.

― Eric H., Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:31 PM (1 week ago)

yah, up until crash I had seen all his films save m butterfly, and crash felt like the logical end to what he was doing - science fiction made not with technology but with actual human behavior. one of my favorite directors, and I practically ignored him after that, have only seen a history of violence. I'm glad he's been able to build a successful career making movies that would end the careers of others, tho.

You're in a good spot, though, now. You're in the Woody Allen zone – you keep your budgets low, you get enough dough back in Europe, the people in the US that dig it dig it and then you make the next one.

That's true, and every time I've tried to play with the studios it's never worked out. I don't blame them or me, it's the mix of sensibilities is not there, we don't fit. Listen, I see some big movies and I think “Oh, it would be fun to make that, challenging.” Then reality sets in and it's not going to happen. Your estimation of where I'm at with filmmaking is pretty accurate....

I'm usually reluctant to include deleted scenes. They're deleted for a reason....

Have you seen the new High Frame Rate that Peter Jackson used for The Hobbit?

No, though you see it on television all the time. Sports shows are 60 frames. Those flawless slo-mo playbacks with no smearing. I haven't seen The Hobbit yet, but I do believe it would be nice to get away from 24 frames per second — even just to 30 frames per second. I don't have a nostalgic longing to stick with the smearing or strobing you get when you pan with a film camera. It's not nice. It comes from ancient technology that we don't need anymore. Even upping to 30 might get rid of that, I don't know why 48 as opposed to 50 or 60, frankly. In a weird way, 48, as double of 24, is still clinging to the old technology.

http://movieline.com/2012/12/31/david-cronenberg-talks-cosmopolis-high-frame-rates-and-bullshit-oscars/

OW! Oh, crap, the cat just jumped on me.

I like cats.

Yeah, he's adorable, but very heavy.

quality journalism here

I like cats too

it's so strange how journalism keeps getting worse as journalists' paychecks and job prospects keep getting smaller

oh no... 3 senteneces about cats... journalisms dead... stfu

no... please DON'T stfu. i'm talkin to you, Poliopolice!

tell me more about the state of journalism in 2013, damn it!

so I hafta quit film threads for the year too, huh

can't believe you guys hate cats like that

next one w/ Weisz, Viggo, Pattinson

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rachel-weisz-joins-david-cronenbergs-maps-to-the-stars-with-robert-pattinson-viggo-mortensen-20121107

so I hafta quit film threads for the year too, huh

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 2, 2013 6:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Don't get us excited if you don't mean really it