Tag: David Cronenberg (Page 2 of 2)

Avatar-mania, Oscar possibilities, the Obamas’ guest list, and cinegeeks bossing Stephen King around

November 25, 2009 /

I had a nasty case of food poisoning yesterday. Not that you care, but a lot has been happening while I spent a day catatonic before TCM and IFC.

* There’s a new “interactive” trailer for “Avatar” that you can download if you don’t mind also downloading some new Adobe software (at least I had to on the computer I’m using right now). The reason “interactive” is in quotes is that the only thing unusual about this longer trailer is that it pauses and allows you to watch additional short promotional films based around the various characters and some of the hardware, etc. It also allows you to buy tickets early.

I’m not sure what “interactive” really means because just about everything is interactive to some degree and this does not particularly impress me as anything new or different. Maybe we can think of a new buzzword.

Avatar movie image (3)

* And’s that’s not all. Anne Thompson has the scoop that “Avatar” may premiere at Harry Knowles’ annual, 24-hour invitation-only Butt-Numb-A-Thon despite some issues between Knowles and Fox. Also, you’ve probably heard about/seen this already, but the movie and writer-director James Cameron got the “60 Minutes” treatment Sunday night. Nothing earth shattering in the arguably slightly puffy Morley Safer piece, though it’s nice to hear Cameron admit that when it comes right down to it, amazing CGI/3-D or not, it all comes down to the story and what’s happening in the actors’ eyes. On the other hand, I really don’t need or want to see 3-D news stories. Will I will wind up doing so anyway?

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External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News

Friday film news dump

September 25, 2009 /

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Howdy folks, I’ve been a bit distracted by a couple of big pieces I did earlier, but the movie world moves on and, in the tradition of the White House emitting unpleasant stories late on Fridays to avoid too much notice, we have a couple of new bummer items and some more typical stuff from before that I missed.

* Nikki Finke is breaking the news of some possibly very serious fiscal problems at MGM, though I have to admit that these sorts of details are about as clear as mud to this innumerate fiscal ignoramus. In any case, the once-dominant studio has long been a shadow of its former self and isn’t even really a studio anymore (though it owns UA, and boy is that a complicated story for a tired guy to follow/remember right now). It sold off its historic lot in 2004 — where I actually spent a few hours on Tuesday, as it happens — to Sony, which is a change I’ve yet to get used to. Still, they have their fingers in a few pies. As Finke reports, if the not-studio really does go bankrupt, it could affect both the upcoming adaptations of “The Hobbit” and the ever-present James Bond series through its ownership of the also much-smaller-than-it-used-to-be United Artists.

* In news that is worse because it’s certain, the popular Cinevegas Film Festival is taking a break next year and, it sounds like, the year after that and who knows for how long if the overall economy doesn’t pick up. Of course, Las Vegas is probably one of the most shell-shocked places in the U.S. by the real estate bubble and general over-development. During the boom times, I would go to Vegas, look at all the ultra-high end restaurants, spas, and especially the stores and wonder when they’d run out of rich people.

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Action Movies, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, New Media, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Hanging with the new flesh

September 25, 2009 /

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“Your reality is already half video hallucination. If you’re not careful, it will become total hallucination. You’ll have to learn to live in a very strange new world.” – Media philosopher Brian O’Blivion in David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” (1983)

So far, the bulk of gifted documentarian Ondi Timoner’s work has dealt with the forces that persuade human beings to give up some part of themselves, whether it be in pursuit of creative growth, God, or fame. Her latest film, takes that as far as it can possibly go. Unlike her remarkable “DiG!,” about the cultish neo-psychedelic rock band, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, or “Join Us,” about an actual religious cult, this time the cult is not just a few fanatics, it’s you and me.

I first praised the Sundance Grand Jury prize-winning “We Live in Public,” opening Friday at L.A.’s Nuart Theater (with special Q&As Friday and Saturday nights), back in June when I saw it at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The screening was capped off with the then somewhat surprising appearance by the documentary’s antihero, Internet entrepreneur and self-styled conceptual artist Josh Harris. Having returned from an idyll in Ethiopia, he said that his next project was something he called “the Wired City” and that, in his view, a typical human’s life in the future is going to be something like the present day existence of “a Purdue chicken.” He also said he hadn’t seen the movie and wasn’t sure when he would.

Back in the 1990’s, Harris made a large fortune largely by being one of the first to see the full communications potential of the web and was a dot-com era sensation via his groundbreaking web entertainment company, Pseudo. Leaving that when his eccentric and creative side grew to be too artsy and weird for the corporate room, he then spent a good chunk of that fortune on two highly provocative experiments/art projects.

We Live in PublicFirst came “Quiet” – basically a month-long party/community in an underground compound on the west side of New York with overt fascistic overtones. Harris recruited roughly 100 artists and creative types to live there 24/7 for an indefinite period (it turned out to be a month). He would provide all the food, (legal) party favors, a firing range and plenty of weaponry (blanks only, I’m told), as well as a fake church and real interrogation tactics borrowed from the Cold War-era East German secret police.

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Actresses, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Dramas, Movies, New Media, News, Reviews, Sci-Fi Movies, TV, Video

Comic-Con mess o’ stuff

July 25, 2009 /


I might have missed my Joss Whedon panel yesterday (clearly, I didn’t want it enough and failed to get in line an hour early), but lots of other folks aren’t missing a thing.

* Apparently, Robert Downey, Jr. is claiming his martial arts using, womanizing (at least that’s how I remember the trailer), and druggie Holmes is closer to the Arthur Conan Doyle character that the scads of cinematic and TV Holmesessess we have had up to now. Well, the literary Holmes did use cocaine. Let’s just say I share Luke Thompson’s differing memory on those points.

Maybe it was all a product of the squirrelly Downey sense of humor we’ve seen in so many unusual performances over the years. I’m also skeptical of why Steven Zeitchik thinks the Guy Ritchie-directed Holmes is a particularly tough sell to geeks. Isn’t Data one of our patron saints? The geeks I grew up with actually used words like “Holmesiana.” The Aleister Crowley-cult thing won’t hurt with a certain breed of gothy nerd, either.

* John Lasseter presented one of the real greats, still very active and hoping for his first stateside hit: Hiyao Miyazaki.

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Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Comic-Con, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVDs, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

“We Live in Public” and the arrival of the new flesh

June 25, 2009 /

First of all, my apologies for subjecting you to the picture above of “Luvvy,” the frightening Mrs. Thurston Howell III-inspired clown alter ego of dot-com millionaire turned visionary self-described artiste Josh Harris. However, it’s arguably one of the less disturbing images available from what is probably going to be the most newsworthy film I’ll see at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and maybe anywhere else for a while.

It seemed even more that way when I learned while writing this post that Michael Jackson, an early experiment in living in public, had passed away at UCLA Medical Center — less than a quarter mile from the coffee house I’m writing this from. There’s a weirdness floating over L.A. right at the moment (as well as what sounds like a thousand helicopters).

Ondi Timoner’s “We Live in Public” scored the grand jury prize at Sundance this year, and not for no reason. If there’s any doubt that, despite the lack of flying cars or commercial space travel, we live in a science-fiction world, this film’s look at Harris’s ethically questionable but fascinating experiments in weirder-living through ‘net-driven intrusion does the trick. Philip Dick would be quite comfortable here and the Marshall McLuhanesque nightmare envisioned by David Cronenberg 1986 science-fiction classic, “Videodrome,” with its talk of media-generated “new flesh” seems closer than ever. (Naturally, a remake is in the offing.)

After making a bundle by arriving very early at the commercial and entertainment possibilities of the webtubes, Harris spent a huge chunk of his earnings in 1999 and 2000 on “Quiet.” It was an ultra-“Big Brother” type experiment in which hoardes of NYC hipsters and artists were sequestered in a high-tech bunker and placed under constant Internet surveillance, subjected to Stasi-style interrogations, and otherwise robbed of their humanity with their full cooperation. People who heard about it were able to see everything, and that includes all the stuff you’re thinking of (though judging from the film, a few people at least resorted to the old PG-13 movie trick of making love underneath blankets). Since there was also quite a few guns around, for some reason, it’s no surprise that the NYPD finally broke the thing up, though the situation had already turned a bit ugly, though not gun-ugly.

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Documentaries, Movies, New Media, News, Sci-Fi Movies

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