The Cronenberg Thread

the worst would be if newspaper writers didn't have control over the headlines of news articles

Can't wait for studios to roll out A-B trailer testing.

You're right, the directors may not have anything to do with it. I'm working from the assumption that at a certain level of control over your films--Cronenberg, Scorsese, Lynch--that also extends to the trailers and advertising campaigns. Which may be an incorrect assumption.

They've started this new thing the last couple of years--especially with superhero films--where it's not really a trailer, it's short interview clips with the director and cast interspersed with clips.

I really hate those.

Heck, don't forget that Tom Cruise introduces "Top Gun 2." In theatres now!

"From the mind of ..." is kind of quaint, like how they used to have "Steven McQueen IS ... Bullitt."

The "IS"--ubiquitous in the '70s. Why didn't they haul that in too for Crimes? "Viggo Mortensen IS Saul Tenser." That's like box-office gold.

Saul Tenser is such an excellent name

drifting off topic but just have to say my least favorite version of this was during the apatow bro-comedy era when they would try to make the producers seem totally cool and chill by saying "from the dudes who brought you ___"

From the mind of your friend across the street, your neighbor IS an up and coming auteur

"An Andrei Tarkovsky Joint"

Just remembered the most "From the mind of" director working today, and sure enough...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYy7igKD21A

Some stank bullshit from

this holiday season, from the second cousins who brought up your ex-wife again, an overcooked piece of fish is stuck to the pan

the trick is to keep extending this out until nearly every sentence evokes ridiculous film trailers

I want a "This summer..." from-the-mind-of-Mike Matheny trailer from KM.

I apologize for all this frivolousness. We can talk about organs and incisions if you'd rather.

lol, i can't bear to contemplate the mind of matheny for one second more, i am at my lifetime limit!

from the pancreas of your mom, a funeral you thought you had a good excuse to miss

Somebody really should use "from the ass of" though.

I don't recall hearing about many times directors had control over adverts and posters unless it was low budget stuff. I've long wanted a return to those old trailers with the director in them.

Hitchcock and DeMille did it too (think the Castle clip rips off from the Psycho trailer. Must have been others--Welles?

“Tube socks! Tube socks! Three for fi’ dollars!”

lol at the "these snozberries taste like snozberries" dude from Super Troopers in the Devil trailer

Very chilly and cold (quite a low budget on this one) but it keeps you at arms length so you can grapple with concepts like how will our bodies evolve in a dying planet. The Cronenberg movie it reminds me the most of is Crash. I'll give it a 8/10

i saw the trailer for that one m-night movie DEVIL in a theatre and yknow it was exciting and kinda scary and lots of heavy breathing and panicking and quick shots of scary things happening in darkness, and the audience sat in polite fear, and then it said

FROM THE MIND
OF M NIGHT SHYAMALAN

and the entire theatre as one burst into laughter

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Saturday, June 1, 2013 5:00 AM bookmarkflaglink

when I saw that trailer a bunch of kids behind me started booing and I wanted to hi-five them

I finally watched CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

I was relaxed and locked-in enough to just absorb everything as it was happening, and all of the plot threads kind of coalesced into a whole about five minutes after it ended. For a film that's visually and audibly rich, there's a sparseness to the plot and you're clued in to what characters were really doing only as the movie ends

watching rabid cz it's on mubi and i never saw it till now

this is excellent, poo to the h8as

lol the grotto scene

good movie

[THE FLY] It's like a B horror movie given new weight by Cronenberg, and for what it is it's very well done...Yet on its own it has no real vision—nothing that lifts it out of the horror-shock category. (1986)

— pauline kael bot (@paulinekaelbot) September 11, 2022

A timely bump; I finally saw Dead Ringers (presented in association with the National Gallery of Art exhibition "The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900"). The audience was full of giggles; I don't know whether it was an attempt to cope with the tension or because the film looks so supremely lol 80s.

Two women of a certain age right behind me could not stop talking about their gynecologic histories. I'm wondering if there's a story in generations of women whose medical issues doctors denied and dismissed somehow rebounding on them.

From Danielle Burgos' Screen Slate write-up of Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts (which I love)

"Greenaway claims after he presented A Zed & Two Noughts at TIFF, David Cronenberg “sat me down in a hamburger bar and questioned me for two hours. .‌ . . Eight months later he made a film called Dead Ringers (1988), which is about twinship, mutilated females, and human mutation.” Evolution and mutation are two sides of the same coin, it comes down to whether the change proves advantageous. Despite their commonalities, there’s no mistaking the films. Though Cronenberg isn’t traditional by Hollywood standards, his codependent character study spiced with taboo is a straightforward three-act narrative using the same visual grammar as D. W. Griffith. A Zed & Two Noughts is as much a film as “a film”, the first embrace of cinema qua cinema from a self-professed fine artist stepping beyond his early-career formalism to explore the medium on its own terms."

Just seen Crimes Of The Future and liked it a lot. Barely anyone there and... a general question about cinema releases. The buzz about this film was months ago and I thought I had missed it until my brother spotted it in the "currently showing" listings.
I feel like films have had fairly uniform worldwide releases for over a decade and it wasn't until Green Knight that I started noticing films being months apart in different countries. Is this a recent change or has nothing changed really? Just seems like a really bad idea to start showing a film in some countries well after all the American screenings buzz is gone, because I don't think I'm alone in missing films because I don't know if or when it's coming around here. There's never enough films I want to see to keep up with the weekly local cinema listings.

Just saw Crimes of the Future. I thought it was fascinating (and at times weirdly funny). Lots to think about. Kind of reminded me of Naked Lunch, in some ways, at least in passing. Or at least how I remember it.

Great score

I started noticing films being months apart in different countries.

Of course, in the 70s, a film might open over a few months in different parts of the same country, slowly accumulating word-of-mouth. I don't know why this practice would return in the digital/home viewing era, but I suppose the exhibitors think that the people who would go out to see a new Cronenberg movie on the big screen will show up whenever it appears, buzz or no buzz.

I could be wrong, but I think the slow-build, word-of-mouth opening was dead by the late '70s, killed off either by Jaws or Star Wars.

Wasn't the slow release thing also because of the cost of making 35 mm prints? They wanted to test the market before committing to hundreds of prints. Digital projection gets rid of that factor.

Watched CRIMES OF THE FUTURE last night (it's on Hulu). It's pretty much a note-perfect parody of a David Cronenberg movie. If only it was funny. (OK, the guy with ears all over his body dancing to shitty techno was a little funny.) But the more I think about it this morning, the more it feels like an empty, hollow rehash. So many things are lifted from previous Cronenberg movies, from Mortensen's character being an undercover cop (EASTERN PROMISES) to the insectile surgical instruments (DEAD RINGERS) to Lea Seydoux having Judy Davis's haircut from NAKED LUNCH. And every line of dialogue sounded like the characters were reading it off a sign on an art gallery wall. Really disappointing. I'm having a REPO MAN-ish "I can't believe I used to like this guy" moment.

That was my feeling when I saw Existenz.

“Hey Cronenberg, you need to make a Cronenberg movie.”

“But all of my movies are Cronenberg movies?”

“No no, you need to make more movies with the gross weird stuff.”

“Fine, let’s do it.”

I thought Existenz was pretty self-aware, almost to the point of parody, but as I remember it it paid off. Crimes of the Future (which I enjoyed) was almost like a Cronenberg stage production. I suppose a lot of whatever enjoyment one gets out of it boils down to whether one feels it is funny/ridiculous on purpose or funny/ridiculous inadvertently. It's so ridiculous (and sometimes funny) that I lean the former.

Coincidence re: Existenz, I believe Crimes is the first of his films to feature an original screenplay by Cronenberg that was not an adaptation since Existenz.

it's a synthesis of ideas he's been turning over for his whole career but doesn't feel exactly like any of them. and it is hilarious

We watched Crimes of the Future last night too, but we all basically liked it and/or were fascinated by it. It was the kids' first Cronenberg so they were just kind of amazed that this existed as a movie. And the philosophical explorations were broken up frequently enough by weird gross stuff that they didn't get bored. I also thought it was funny on purpose at several moments. I wouldn't call it so much a rehash as kind of a summing up of a lot of his core obsessions. (That he recycled the title from his first film adds to that impression.)

I also had the thought that if you showed this at a Qanon movie night (if Qanon people have movie nights) as a Hollywood insider's knowing nod to child mutilation rituals, it go over big.

I'll get right on that.

I also thought it was funny on purpose at several moments.

The scene with Kristen Stewart chasing Viggo around the office was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time.

yes

The scene with Kristen Stewart chasing Viggo around the office was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time.

Yes, that was really good, and Viggo's "Sorry; I'm not very good at the old sex" after the world's most off-putting kiss was a great punch line.

I think Cosmopolis has become my favorite of his movies

Or Crash ... one of those two, for sure

don't think I'm alone in missing films because I don't know if or when it's coming around here. There's never enough films I want to see to keep up with the weekly local cinema listings.

🤔

huh, Crimes is on hulu now. hope that there are some fun online “what the hell was that?” responses

I still convulse & uncontrollably shudder to myself when remembering Keira Knightley's performance in A Dangerous Method