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David Cronenberg

January 8: Cronenberg wins Nat'l Society of Film Critics award

According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Cronenberg has been named Best Director of 2005 for A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE by the National Society of Film Critics. The group of 57 reviewers from all over the U.S. also named the film's Ed Harris (pictured) as Best Supporting Actor, and the movie itself came in a very close second (to CAPOTE) for Best Picture. Meanwhile, Fango pal Josh Olson has been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America for his VIOLENCE script (winners to be announced February 4), and he and John Wagner and Vince Locke, creators of the graphic novel upon which the movie is based, are up for a USC Scripter Award, which goes to the best screen adaptation and the source authors. —Michael Gingold
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www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5365
 
A History of Violence (R2) in March

Entertainment in Video have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of A History of Violence for 20th March 2006 priced at £19.99. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg, the movie stars Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello in the story of the Stall family and one single moment that dramatically shatters life as they know it.

Features include:

  • * Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
    * English DD2.0 & DD5.1 Surround
    * English subtitles
    * Feature commentary with David Cronenberg
    * Acts of Violence – 8 Part Documentary (66:12mins)
    * Scene 44 (Deleted Scene) with optional commentary by David Cronenberg (2:39mins)
    * The Unmaking of Scene 44 (7:05mins)
    * Violences History: United States Version vs International Version (1:22mins)
    * Too Commercial for Cannes (8:53mins)
    * Trailer
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www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=60406

Pre-order:
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000E ... ntmagaz-21
 
I viewed The Brood tonight for the first time in nearly twenty years. I had entirely forgotten it - confusing it with Shivers or Rabid or other Cronenbergs.

It combines Cronenberg's familiar body-horror and mutation themes with a story of emotional child-abuse which manifests as scars. Utterly bat-shit crazy, though strangely matter-of-fact in presentation.

The two-part version I saw seems to have disappeared off Youtube but a 10-part version is still up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAPrOMnO6kA

I was struck by how strongly two icons of later abuse and abduction were prefigured in this 1979 film. The image of a toddler marched away by two hooded figures was startlingly like the cctv images of the Bulger abduction, while the central girl appears in several shots exactly like the McCann child. I suppose photogenic images of vulnerability have kept the latter in the news and one small blonde tot is much like another but I did have to double-check the date of the film and the crimes to see if the film-maker was influenced by reailty or ahead of it. :shock:

 
So hit and miss with me, a lot of his stuff does seem so dated now as it was routed so firmly in the culture of the time. When he's sticking to body horror, I love it, he's an auteur for a reason.

But by that same token some of his stuff has been undeniably wank.
A Dangerous Method...sigh. Crash....sigh. Eastern Promises...good themes but kinda boring.

I've got Dead Ringers and Spider in my 'to watch' pile.

I did watch a TERRIBLE Cronenberg knock off last night, Altered States. The first 15 minutes were ok, lots of nice hallucinatory religious imagery in the kinda Jordorowsky style. The rest, boring as hell.
 
ally_katte said:
So hit and miss with me, a lot of his stuff does seem so dated now as it was routed so firmly in the culture of the time. When he's sticking to body horror, I love it, he's an auteur for a reason.

But by that same token some of his stuff has been undeniably wank.
A Dangerous Method...sigh. Crash....sigh. Eastern Promises...good themes but kinda boring.

I've got Dead Ringers and Spider in my 'to watch' pile.

I did watch a TERRIBLE Cronenberg knock off last night, Altered States. The first 15 minutes were ok, lots of nice hallucinatory religious imagery in the kinda Jordorowsky style. The rest, boring as hell.
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Dead Ringers and Spider are well worth watching. Both for the different ways in which they portray insanity.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I viewed The Brood tonight for the first time in nearly twenty years. I had entirely forgotten it - confusing it with Shivers or Rabid or other Cronenbergs.

I was struck by how strongly two icons of later abuse and abduction were prefigured in this 1979 film. The image of a toddler marched away by two hooded figures was startlingly like the cctv images of the Bulger abduction, while the central girl appears in several shots exactly like the McCann child. I suppose photogenic images of vulnerability have kept the latter in the news and one small blonde tot is much like another but I did have to double-check the date of the film and the crimes to see if the film-maker was influenced by reailty or ahead of it. :shock:
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The Brood was actually inspired by Cronenberg's messy divorce, he described the film as his version of Kramer vs Kramer, so it's more about the harm a controlling mother can have over her children rather than any outside influence. Blame the parent, basically. It also has a fantastically horrible scene where the killer kids barge into a classroom and kill the teacher in front of her screaming pupils, not something any horror movie maker other than Dave would have tried, and it's unnervingly effective.

As for his later stuff, I still hope for another Videodrome (but not that blasted remake proposal), and I did find A History of Violence and Eastern Promises really boring, but A Dangerous Method which was meant to be boring I actually really enjoyed. Dunno how historical it was, but it entertained me. Though I wish he'd make one last horror movie before he retires, he's no spring chicken now.
 
I think Existenz sent me doo-lally for a while. I mentioned on another thread ages ago that I had a sense of detachment from reality whilst living and working in London as a younger man.

I was working in a nightclub at the time - no daylight, not enough sleep, too much drinking and "partying" and then I went to see a late night showing of Existenz.

I was confused for days afterwards and the film blended into my fuzzy reality. I got better as soon as I switched to day work and could get a regular sleep pattern but the film still makes me feel uncomfortable and slightly worried.
 
tonyblair11 said:
If you found yourself suddenly working as a fish gutter.... :twisted:
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Or plugging your games console into a bodily orifice... :twisted:
 
Well Dead Ringers turned up in my in-tray tonight. When I saw it in the early nineties, it seemed rather mild and very slow but I was probably expecting a horror film.

To feel the full horror of those invented surgical instruments, you probably need to be a female on the eve of a smear. It's probably based on the medieval notion of demonstrating the tools to be used in a torture session.

I'm not a massive fan of Jeremy Irons and a double dose of him might have seemed a bit of a torment in itself but it is very well performed and edited. More than a mere stunt.

Some rate this as Cronenberg's most substantial movie and I wouldn't really disagree with that - though I don't know them all and it is never likely to be a favourite. I'll see it again in twenty years, if I'm still around. Hopefully without the Thai subtitles, which were an indelible feature of the Youtube print! :?
 
Just sat down to watch Spider, so far it's really quite sad. As a person of feeble mind myself!
 
Cronenberg appeared as himself in this 1991 Canadian comedy series. He's at the beginning and end of this episode:

 
Maps To The Stars
Available on iplayer for 30 days

Very black comedy by David Cronenberg about a highly successful but completely fucked & disfunctional Hollywood family. Father is a quack therapist & motivational guru, mother manages the son, a brat of a child star just out of rehab. Their arsonist daughter reappears after being released from a secure hospital.

Julianne Moore features & is excellent as an ageing star obsessed with landing a role. She's haunted by the ghost of her mother who died in a fire & is a drugged-up neurotic mess perpetually on the edge of a breakdown. Carrie Fisher has a brief cameo.

Sex, incest, drugs, appalling obnoxious characters. It's a picture of a dark side of LA & Hollywood behind the veneer. Excellent performances all round.
 
MttS reminded me of Day of the Locust, only updated to the 2010s. Says about Hollywood "You do have to be mad here, and it doesn't help".
 
Cronenberg plans a TV series but details are scanty.

The Venice Film Festival just handed David Cronenberg a lifetime achievement award, and precisely no one thought it was undeserved. The acclaimed director has churned out some of our all time favourite movies over the years, including The Fly, Scanners, The Dead Zone and Videodrome, and up until 2014 he was still consistently delivering some uniquely strange and extremely watchable projects.

The director has also dabbled in TV before, and quite a lot during his early career, but it's all just been the odd episode here and there since. Now, he's announced that it's absolutely the right time for a big fat Cronenbergian debut TV series to come to fruition on the small screen, and to this we say "yes, please."

During a filmmaker's panel over the weekend, Cronenberg refused to dish up any details about the planned longform TV series he's currently gestating, but did back up previous comments he's made about not giving a single solitary fudge about the death of the classic cinema experience for punters, adding this time that the art of making movies isn't dying, but “just evolving.”

http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/davi...letter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
 
Only discovered this today,

‘Secret Weapons’: David Cronenberg’s made-for-TV dystopian sci-fi biker movie, 1972
In 1972 David Cronenberg’s resume as a filmmaker consisted of Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970)—both of those movies, incidentally, are available quite affordably if you order the 2-disc Fast Company DVD set. The latter title, Crimes of the Future, would also function pretty well for Secret Weapons, a 22-minute movie Cronenberg directed for the Canadian Broadcasting Company in 1972. Secret Weapons appeared on some kind of anthology show called Programme X. His friend Norman Snider wrote the script; he would work with Cronenberg again much later, on the screenplay for Dead Ringers. That’s Snider as “The Wise Man”—so IMDb has it—but in all honesty I’m not sure which character that refers to. More recent pics of Snider would make you think that Snider played the main character, but I’m just not sure.
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https://dangerousminds.net/comments/secret_weapons_david_cronenbergs_made_for_tv
 
Crimes of the Future: Cronenberg's first SF/Horror feature since eXistenZ isn't exactly a return to form being largely a triumph of style over substance. We've got a darkly imagined future, everything is run down, a lot of analog technology in use but this is combined and uneven development: there is also highly advanced biotechnology in use. The human race is evolving, developing and growing new internal organs but some radicals try to force the pace through surgery. There are myriad conspiracies in play here, no one is quite what they seem to be. Hardly surprising given that this also a tale about performance artists; some publicly remove the new organs, others, cosmetic surgeons, attach ears all over a performer's body. Some baroque medical machines which could have come from Giger, also gruesome surgical scenes and driller killer attacks. Also a love story of sorts. You'll have to pay close attention to follow what's going on in this multi-layered confusing story made more elusive due to some actors' accents/swallowing their lines. It would have benefited from having 10 minutes shaved off it's 107 minute running time. Written and Directed by David Cronenberg. 7/10.

In cinemas.
 
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