Long live the new flesh: the David Cronenberg thread

[frankie teardrop]

kicking off a discussion about one of my all time favorite directors, david cronenberg. from the early body horror social commentary films to the more recent portrayals of violence in culture, i have loved nearly everything he's done, with few exceptions (*cough*spider*cough*). Favorites include the brood, crash, and shivers.

i haven't seen a dangerous method yet, but i expect great things.

[aggroculture]

Really hit or miss for me. I loved existenz, and A History of Violence, liked Eastern Promises, hated Crash and Naked Lunch. Going to give the new one a miss.

[frankie teardrop]

have you tried his 'classic' run (scanners, videodrome, the fly, dead zone)? debatably the four most popular of the lot. crash took forever to grow on me, but getting into ballard a few years back did the trick.

i can't vouch for it yet, but seeing as you dug history/eastern promises, the latest also has viggo in tow.

[Lutz]

Criterion recently posted this on their Facebook http://ow.ly/i/iqju

[Wretchedest]

Ive always wondered what freud and young would say about ol' dave. Now in a twisted turn of fate, i get to see what he says about them.


Has anyone seen eXistenze? Totally his best movie

[aggroculture]

have you tried his 'classic' run (scanners, videodrome, the fly, dead zone)? debatably the four most popular of the lot. crash took forever to grow on me, but getting into ballard a few years back did the trick.

i can't vouch for it yet, but seeing as you dug history/eastern promises, the latest also has viggo in tow.

I liked Dead Zone and The Fly, but remember finding Videodrome a bit cheesy, especially that stuff about inserting videotapes into the chest. I want to see Dead Ringers, and may yet cave on ADM. My gf wants to see it.
As for Ballard...I find his writing attractive on some level, but also deadly boring. There's something deeply inhuman about it.

[Lutz]

Is Dead Ringers a remake of the Betty Davis film Dead Ringer?

[thevoid99]

So far, I've seen everything he's done from Videodrome to Eastern Promises with the exception of Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, and a few TV stuff/short films. I would highly recommend seeing his short At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World for the To Each His Own Cinema anthology film. It's fucking amazing for those that has never seen it. There's a lot of great shorts in that film and a few bad ones including the one by Michael Cimino.

[eversonpoe]

Is Dead Ringers a remake of the Betty Davis film Dead Ringer?

no. it is definitely not.

[Highly Psychological]

Crash was fucking weird. And that's by my standards. I had never seen anything like it. That film was SO controversial. People getting orgasms from crashing cars. Oh my.

[Kamelion]

Really like Cronenberg, especially The Fly, eXistenZ, Dead Ringers and Videodrome (which I only saw a couple of weeks ago!)

[aggroculture]

A Dangerous Method: another Cronenberg dud. Awful, boring, mediocre movie.

[Timinator]

He's had some films that don't entirely work, for sure, but I think he's only made on truly shit film (Fast Company). Overall I like all other Cronenberg films, and love some (The Fly, A History of Violence, Crash, Scanners).

Here's a story:
In late 1993/early 1994 I was living in Toronto, Canada. I learned that James Earl Jones was going to be a guest at a Canadian talk show taping. I love Jones, so got the free tickets to go to the taping. It was held during a weekday, but I was a uni student at the time, so I had no problem going.

Once there I found that the audience was comprised of me, my partner at the time, and several dozen middle-aged housewives (unsurprising, perhaps, given the type of talk show and the daytime recording time).

The segments rolled on. Some were tedious. James Earl Jones was very warm and interesting and entertaining.

But then there was a segment about an exhibition running at the Royal Ontario Museum: of props and items from David Cronenberg's films. Wow! They showed sample mugwump models and a Brundlefly maquette and some Dead Ringers gynecological tools. I was entranced.

At the end of the segment they offered up two free tickets to go see the exhibit. All of the housewives recoiled in horror. I jumped up: "Ooh ooh! Me me!"

So I went, and it was pretty cool. There was a warning of explicit material for the exhibit, and I got to see a telepod and lots of film clips and Naked Lunch props.

I found this review from the time, captured on a German Cronenberg fansite that describes the exhibit in more detail.

[henryeatscereal]

Bumping this because flesh-guns are rad...

[thevoid99]

I just saw The Brood as I'm currently doing a mini-Cronenberg marathon as part of my Auteurs series on him where I'm working on the first part from 1966 to 1988 while the 2nd part is going to cover everything he did from Naked Lunch to his upcoming film Maps to the Stars. The only films I need to see are Scanners and Cosmpolis as well a few shorts. Here is my list of Cronenberg films ranked so far...

[Fredy_Brown]

MAPS TO THE STARS
Picture Lynch’s Mulholland Drive content with Coppola’s Bling Ring script and add a twist of Soderbergh’s Side Effects. Scrap it all into Cronenberg’s needle and feel free to inject – yes, scars are included. This is where Stars drags you and leaves you at some two hours later.
Maps of the Stars is a flaccid meditation on a broad dysfunctional family that could only make its fortune in LA’s glittery show business whereabouts. The characters are wallowing and slightly hysterical. Perhaps it’s the amount of prescription drugs Bruce Wagner doses them with.
Besides Cali hills hefty lifestyle they’ve all got one more thing in common: they are children but age does not really matter in Cronenberg’s universe. Having lost all of their virginities a lot time ago, past and present child actors of the Stars are haunted by their daemons. Little matters whether you are a self-help professional or a mother pimping her son, all is equally acceptable in the modern age HollyWood. Everyone is young too - except they are not and they suffer because of it. The Stars is a present day HollyWood bildungsdrama with its own Justin Biebers and Selena Gomezes – they are famous, young & beautiful, and too arrogant to function. But that is all there is, do not expect more.
Yet the blurry images of unwieldy and shallow plot strangely hold together – mostly because of Sanders’ good editing and Howard Shore’s punctual touch.
Late Cronenberg is somewhat comfortable and less demanding. But that’s ok, he’s been that way since eXistenZ, in case you didn’t notice. Far from narrative denseness of Burroughs' Naked or Ballard’s Crash, the Stars reads more like DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. It too captures and capitalizes on anxiety of what was once called high society. The difference between then and now is the overwhelming pomposity and inner emptiness. But it is its satirical tone what makes the film worthwhile for it makes its seeming hyper-realism perfectly normal - for the lives of wealthy and famous that is.

[Millionaire]

One of the greats. Some of Cronenberg's films blew my mind when I saw them as a teen, and very much formed the way I looked at film. As for his recent stuff, I actually liked A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis, but I understand why people wouldn't. I'm looking forward to Maps. It sounds bananas.

[green]

I was surprised to find out he played Dr. Decker in Nightbreed. I forgot all about that movie, until recently. Certainly a fan, and Naked Lunch is one of my favorites. Anyone else notice how horrible the acting is in Scanners, yet for some reason the film is still a cult classic? It's okay imo, but that acting is almost comical. Too bad because the actual story is pretty great.