dave depraved cronenberg

Started by Cecil, February 10, 2003, 07:23:04 PM

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modage

Quote from: RaviIs The Fly good?
it's awesome.  and one of the best horror films of the 80's.  also notable for a particularly good/weird jeff goldblum performance and some great/gross effects.  special edition DVD comes out Oct. 4th.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

rustinglass

I had a great time watching Shivers tonight at the cinematheque, it's really a bold first feature.
"In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie."
-Emir Kusturica

modage

i just watched videodrome.  it kinda sucked.  though had a lot in common with existenz which i liked a lot more.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

cowboykurtis

Quote from: modagei just watched videodrome.  it kinda sucked.  though had a lot in common with existenz which i liked a lot more.

I'm in the minority who absolutely hates videodrome - It was a chore to sit through.

I think dead ringers stands as his best.
...your excuses are your own...

socketlevel

Quote from: rustinglassI had a great time watching Shivers tonight at the cinematheque, it's really a bold first feature.

yeah i agree, that's why rabid is a disappointing follow up.

-sl-
the one last hit that spent you...

SiliasRuby

I just saw Crash the other night. Man, what a crazy experience. It really Jolted Me.
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

SoNowThen

I work in a hotel. For some reason, everytime I'm waiting for the elevator, at the moment it arrives, I get instant images in my head from either Dead Ringers or Videodrome.

I wonder why? I suppose there are a few good scenes around the office elevator in DR... but still... and Videodrome, I don't even like that movie...

Anyone else have these weird Pavlovian associations around Cronenberg movies?
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

MacGuffin

Cronenberg Gives Lowdon On Next Films
Source: The Toronto Star
 
For the benefit of David Cronenberg fans everywhere, here's the lowdown from the man himself about what he's up to next - as stated in an interview this week The Toronto Star for the DVD release of "A History of Violence:

Maps to the Stars: "That's probably going to be my next movie, and I'm doing it with Robert (Lantos) and Serendipity. It's a script that Bruce Wagner wrote that isn't exactly based on any of his novels, but is in the nature of his novels, which are mostly about Hollywood. He's a brilliant novelist. The only thing that could stop it from being my next movie is if we can't get casting or can't get financing. I mean, it is an independent film and those things can happen. But Robert is a very experienced producer, so I don't expect any of those things to happen. The earliest I could be working is probably September."

Eastern Promises: "This is a Focus Features film that they've approached me with and it's a very good script to begin with. It's being rewritten right now by Steve Knight, who wrote Dirty Pretty Things for Stephen Frears. That was a good movie and Knight is a good writer and the script is being rewritten with a view to, I hope, me doing that movie. But I don't know when. At the moment, Maps has priority." London Fields: "It's still a possibility. There is a script that Martin Amis wrote with Roberta Hanley of his novel, and it's a project I'm interested in. It's sort of on a back burner, I would say. It's about third in line."

Red Cars: "Have you gone to http://www.redcars.it? My script is now a book, a beautiful coffee table book for fans of Formula One or of my work or whatever. It's expensive, but it's really beautiful and the printing is exquisite. I would be happy if some producer said, `Yes, I want to make this movie,' but so far, no one has. So unless that happens, it's not going to be a movie. At least it's a book."

Painkillers: "Painkillers is dead. Who knows about the future, but it's a script I wrote around 2000 and I have just sort of disconnected from it somehow. I feel like it's not something I want to pursue. I know Robert announced it at Cannes, but he was being a good producer by trying to make it become a reality. He was trying to excite me about my own project again. So it was a strange kind of situation, but for some reason, it just feels like it's something that I've done already so I've decided not to do it. He and I agreed to let it die. It still exists as a script, but that's it.

I Kill: "It doesn't exist, and we've been trying to get the IMDb to take the damn thing off. What that was is something (producer) Aurelio De Laurentiis approached me about. It was a novel that was a big best seller in Italy. I read it and I wasn't crazy about it. He had a script written and showed that to me, and I wasn't crazy about that, either. I said I didn't want to do it, and that was the end of it. For some reason, I think the guy who wrote the book was talking to the Italian press and he said that I'm doing it. So suddenly that becomes my next project, but I was never doing it."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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analogzombie

Quote from: cowboykurtis on September 29, 2005, 12:04:12 AM
I'm in the minority who absolutely hates videodrome - It was a chore to sit through.

I think dead ringers stands as his best.

just swap the titles around in the quote and it'd be exactly how i feel
"I have love to give, I just don't know where to put it."

Split Infinitive

I've been reading a book of interviews with filmmakers by David Breskin, and the conversation with Cronenberg is fascinating.  Here's one quote that particularly stuck out to me as summarizing a great deal of his outlook:

"See, one of the reasons I'm not a true paranoid is because I think there is an optimism built into paranoia. See, if you're a wonderful paranoid, you believe that someone is in control, and to me that's optimistic."

I'm not a huge fan of his, but I've been trying to get more into him.  His best film that I've seen is Dead Ringers, though I haven't seen most of his filmography, so that may not count for much.  Interesting guy, though.
Please don't correct me. It makes me sick.

MacGuffin

Dead Zone SE Due
The Stephen King classic gets a recharged special edition in Sept.

On September 26, 2006, Paramount Home Entertainment will release Stephen King's The Dead Zone (Special Collector's Edition) on DVD. The double dip of the widely regarded King classic will feature several bonus materials and extra features. It will be available for the MSRP of $14.99.

The Stephen King's The Dead Zone (Special Collector's Edition) DVD will feature the following bonus materials:

*Featurettes include all new interviews with Director David Cronenberg, Actress Brooke Adams, Author/Critic/Biographer Douglas E. Winter, Director of Photography Mark Irwin, and Editor Ronald Sanders
*Memories From The Dead Zone
*The Look of The Dead Zone
*Visions and Horror From The Dead Zone
*Politics of The Dead Zone
*Theatrical Trailer

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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modage

2 hourlong audio interviews with David Cronenberg from the Museum Of The Moving Image circa Naked Lunch and Spider...

David Cronenberg - January 11, 1992

The Canadian director David Cronenberg has redefined the notion of what a horror film can be. While horror and science-fiction films traditionally have been about threats from the outside—monsters or alien forces—Cronenberg's films (including The Brood and The Fly) have been about threats that come from inside our own bodies, and our psyches. It was fitting, then, that Cronenberg should be the director to adapt William S. Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, with its grotesque and comical mix of the organic, the chemical, and the hallucinatory. Cronenberg spoke at the Museum with a premiere screening of Naked Lunch on the opening day of a complete retrospective of his films.

Naked Lunch: http://www.movingimage.us/pinewood/mp3.php?media_id=205

David Cronenberg - February 10, 2003
The elusive nature of reality, and the way that perception is shaped by memory and imagination, is among David Cronenberg's key subjects. Working in the supposedly lowbrow genres of horror and science fiction (Videodrome, Scanners), and in the highbrow form of literary or theatrical adaptation (Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, Spider), Cronenberg has created a remarkably varied body of work. A decade after his complete retrospective at the Museum, Cronenberg returned to Moving Image to discuss Spider, his adaptation of Patrick McGrath's novel about a schizophrenic whose tenuous hold on reality is threatened by fragmented memories of a family trauma.

Spider: http://www.movingimage.us/pinewood/mp3.php?media_id=239
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

Cronenberg's The Fly to transform into an opera
Source: CBC Arts

Canadian director David Cronenberg has teamed up with tenor Placido Domingo and Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore to create an opera based on Cronenberg's 1986 movie, The Fly.

The unlikely trio made an official announcement Friday in Paris saying the co-production between Theatre du Chatelet in Paris and the Los Angeles Opera would open in Paris July 1, 2008, and then move to Los Angeles in September.

"It's a magical reliving of a part of my life, this time playing a completely different role in the creation of a very different animal," Cronenberg said.

The 1986 movie, starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who slowly transforms into a fly, was based on a 1957 short story by George Langelaan. Cronenberg's other movies include the award-winning A History of Violence, Spider, eXistenZ and Dead Ringers.

The two-act opera was conceived by Shore, who called the plot an "intimate story" of love and death. Shore worked on the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

"I thought it was a very good opera subject for staging and I wanted to work with something I knew," said Shore at the press conference. He added that Cronenberg's movie provided a "canvas to work on to create something new."

The work will feature three main characters — a lead baritone, a tenor and a mezzo-soprano — along with a chorus and a 75-piece orchestra.

Domingo, who called it a "magical collaboration," will act as the opera's musical director.

"It has long been my dream to unite the worlds of film with those of opera," said the tenor in a statement.

Others working on the production include playwright David Henry Hwang, who previously worked with the 63-year-old director on the 1993 film M. Butterfly. Hwang will pen the opera's libretto while Denise Cronenberg, the director's sister, is the costume designer.

A report in Saturday's Globe and Mail newspaper said the Canadian Opera Company was first approached to mount the production. The COC is located in Cronenberg's hometown, Toronto.

COC general director Richard Bradshaw said the fees involved were too much for the company. He indicated, though, that the opera could still make its way to Toronto, perhaps in the summer of 2009.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

EXCLUSIVE: Cronenberg finds the CURE
Source: Obsessed With Film

David Cronenberg has had a fascinating career. It's strange that the guy responsible for Scanners and Videodrome is also behind A History of Violence and Eastern Promises.

Next up he'll direct The Talking Cure, a movie based on Christopher Hampton's play. The play, which starred Ralph Fiennes and Jodhi May during it's London run a few years back, is described thusly on Amazon:-

"Overshadowed by portents of the coming wars, Zurich and Vienna are the setting for this tale of emotional vicissitude and intellectual debate. The Talking Cure is an intimate picture of the birth of psychoanalysis and of two intense and inextricably interwoven relationships. Carl Jung uses Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" on Sabina, a young Russian hysteric with whom he will fall in love. Impressed with Jung's results, Freud anoints him his successor, but when Jung develops his own theories they part ways. Sensitive and intelligent, The Talking Cure illuminates the origins of one of the twentieth century's most influential schools of thought."

Cronenberg has gravitated towards themes of personal identity and invested his films with subtle psychological nuance in recent years so this project would slot nicely into his ouvre.

Hampton will write the movie with Jeremy Thomas producing, shooting is to take place in Austria and Germany. Interestingly Ralph Fiennes - who starred in the play as Carl Jung - also worked with Cronenberg on Spider. Perhaps a reunion could be on the cards?
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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last days of gerry the elephant

I'd be more excited about this next project if Eastern Promises didn't suck.