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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 22, 2020 10:22:12 GMT
On a related note I saw Cronenberg's 2014 film Maps to the Stars a few months back. I liked it a fair deal, thought that while it didn't have anything especially new to say with its messed up Hollywood types, it was engagingly executed. Chilly style, tight performances, suitably nasty. Has that good old Cronenberg experimental treatment of the body and mind. Yes, I thought that was a good one too, as a satire on the whole business of "celebrity". Crash I have never seen - it just doesn't appeal to me at all for some reason.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jan 22, 2020 11:11:13 GMT
The last film of his I saw was Spider which I retain the distinct impression of dismissing at the time as pretentious arty-farty nonsense. But that was almost 20 years ago mind and maybe a second viewing would elicit a different reaction. No such doubts surround the mesmerising multi-role performance of Miranda Richardson in it though. The best actress of her generation by a country mile. And why she isn't Hollywood royalty defies explanation.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 22, 2020 11:11:30 GMT
Re: Maps To The Stars, it's also definitely not what you'd call PC. The whole "look how fucked up Hollywood is" thing is a bit of a cliche, but I do remember it as often being very funny, as well as almost being a bona-fide "horror" film. I forget that Cronenberg can be pretty funny when he wants to be - A History of Violence also has a fair bit of off-beat humour in it.
I watched A History of Violence for the second time just a few months ago, so it's a bit fresher in my mind. I'm not sure if I read this somewhere, or just came up with it myself, but the film I would compare it to (in terms of shared "themes") is Shane (1953).
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 22, 2020 11:15:28 GMT
The last film of his I saw was Spider which I retain the distinct impression of dismissing at the time as pretentious arty-farty nonsense. But that was almost 20 years ago mind and maybe a second viewing would elicit a different reaction. No such doubts surround the mesmerising multi-role performance of Miranda Richardson in it though. The best actress of her generation by a country mile. And why she isn't Hollywood royalty defies explanation. Another one I haven't seen for some reason - I think there may be a bit of me that is actively avoiding some of his stuff; maybe I'm getting a bit squeamish in my old age. Scanners and The Fly are both classics of their type though.
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Post by bluetomb on Jan 22, 2020 13:19:20 GMT
The last film of his I saw was Spider which I retain the distinct impression of dismissing at the time as pretentious arty-farty nonsense. But that was almost 20 years ago mind and maybe a second viewing would elicit a different reaction. No such doubts surround the mesmerising multi-role performance of Miranda Richardson in it though. The best actress of her generation by a country mile. And why she isn't Hollywood royalty defies explanation. I've not seen Spider but it sounds like it may be a fairly accurate interpretation of the Patrick McGrath source novel, which is one of those relentlessly gloomy and insular unbalanced character study jobs.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 22, 2020 23:51:16 GMT
Seen on a "blog" today and pertinent to this thread:
“I really thought that I was finished with filmmaking. I was getting bored with it. I thought that I would end up writing another novel, and then I got interested in the whole Netflix thing and the idea of a streaming series . . . I generally don’t watch movies in a cinema at all. Netflix is the future. It’s the present.” For The Globe and Mail, maybe-ex-filmmaker David Cronenberg sat down to talk about cinema’s past and future, his own influence on the medium, and the end of the “so-called Cronenberg canon.”
H.
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Post by bluetomb on Jan 23, 2020 0:41:12 GMT
Seen on a "blog" today and pertinent to this thread: “I really thought that I was finished with filmmaking. I was getting bored with it. I thought that I would end up writing another novel, and then I got interested in the whole Netflix thing and the idea of a streaming series . . . I generally don’t watch movies in a cinema at all. Netflix is the future. It’s the present.” For The Globe and Mail, maybe-ex-filmmaker David Cronenberg sat down to talk about cinema’s past and future, his own influence on the medium, and the end of the “so-called Cronenberg canon.” H. I hope Netflix isn't the future. I do appreciate it and it has expanded my horizons somewhat, but it's not the same as the cinema when everything goes right. But otherwise, I'm happy with the Cronenberg we have so I don't think it's so bad if he wants to give it a rest. I think someone else will take up the mantle in their own way.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 23, 2020 2:50:01 GMT
I don't have Netflix or any of the popular big-ass streaming platforms. I do watch quite a bit on y.t. because there's so much good vintage stuff on there now and I just tend to enjoy that more. I own tons of DVDs and have been experimenting with material stored on portable hard-drive this past year (extraordinarily convenient and often looks great), the latter thanks to a very kind friend.
I definitely think there is a difference seeing a film in a theatre. I'm fortunate that there are two very good rep cinemas in my local area as well as several good first run houses. And there's a quite literate movie-going population here. I recently saw Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse at one of the better venues and it was a truly magical, compelling experience.
I think old artists sometimes go into rather dark or obscure places in their thinking about facets of their craft. I was quite surprised to see Jodorowsky fulminate in an interview a couple of years ago that "the book, the novel is dead." No, it isn't. But his interest in anything at all literary and print focused may have died the death.
H.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 29, 2020 23:44:22 GMT
This looks quite promising; new adaptation (most likely with a script cut completely from whole cloth) of Agatha Christie's Pale Horse, which I believe received a more conventional film portrayal back in the 1990s: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPQyP5nUbP4The cast includes legendary Sixties dollybird Rita Tushingham as an elderly village Witch. (Interview with her in the Guardian recently.) H.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 3, 2020 2:01:52 GMT
More Agatha Christie. An episode of something called The Agatha Christie Hour. The entire series, originally aired 1982, is on y.t., for the time being, on this individual's channel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO8mwyp0uM8&cheers, H.
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Post by bluetomb on Feb 7, 2020 13:13:44 GMT
Learned last night that the wonderful Dyanne Thorne passed away on January 28th at the age of 83. Best known for the title role in the Ilsa trilogy (She Wolf of the SS, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks and Tigress of Siberia) and the unofficial retitled Jess Franco entry The Wicked Warden (I believe originally Greta : Absolute Power), but some other fun stuff besides, particularly the charming erotic witchcraft cheapie Blood Sabbath. Later in life she got a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion and became a non denominational minister, performing non traditional outdoors weddings, sometimes for exploitation fans from across the globe. By all accounts a fab lady throughout, I actually first heard of her passing in a post by the death/doom metal band Ilsa, who had a bit of correspondence with her after first writing to thank her for inspiring their name. Plenty such folks would have just sought to brush their old days under the rub I'm sure, but she was pretty cool with it. A little mournful time for all us enduring sleaze, trash and weirdness fiends.
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Post by bluetomb on Feb 21, 2020 18:10:51 GMT
In more sad news, Jose Mojica Marins, a.k.a. Zé do Caixão or Coffin Joe, passed away on Wednesday. In my book an icon of horror cinema and world psychotronica at large, with one of the most personal and charming, while still frequently sleazy, gruesome and bonkers bodies of work out there. His production values, technical abilities and morality were... eccentric, to say the least, but he was rarely dull. Seeing At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse and Embodiment Of Evil as a triple bill at the ICA was one of my most cherished ever evenings at the pictures.
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 3, 2020 18:38:51 GMT
Here is the trailer for Richard Stanley's Color Out Of Space -
There is also an interview with RS in the most recent Fortean Times.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 3, 2020 19:01:09 GMT
Have to say I am quite interested in this. Not my favorite Lovecraft story, but it has some potential to be something interesting.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 3, 2020 19:13:18 GMT
Have to say I am quite interested in this. Not my favorite Lovecraft story, but it has some potential to be something interesting. I'm quite hopeful about it too. I've always felt that Lovecraft had some great ideas, but his use of English irritates me and detracts from reading his stuff. A bit like how it's hard to appreciate a well-designed building because the builder decided he'd finished the job but left all the scaffolding up. So a movie which (with luck) keeps the plot but loses the Sticklebrick prose style could be great. But Hollywood's let me down before...
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