best Cronenberg poll

trying to pick between the brood and videodrome

Dead Ringers over The Fly, although Videodrome through Naked Lunch is a helluva sequence.

the brood (1979)
scanners (1981)
videodrome (1983)
the dead zone (1983)
the fly (1986)
dead ringers (1988)
naked lunch (1991)

^unfuckwithable streak

sorry Ray Stevens

xp - would totally agree - haven't actually seen dead zone though.

voted for videodrome; the brood is great but the rage babies are a little silly whereas videodrome is just disturbing the whole way through

Dead Zone is great!

anyway def Videodrome

the rage babies still terrify me - even after seeing the movie 5 times.

just watch last night again, uh, last night, cronenburg acts in it.

can't believe I haven't seen over half of these, voted for Dead Ringers

Videodrome pretty handily.

kinda tempted to vote for Naked Lunch for Ornette soundtrack, giant bugs, and Julian Sands

dead zone is indeed really good. voted dead ringers. the worst date movie ever.

The whole cast in Naked Lunch (Ian Holm, Roy Scheider, Judy Davis) is superb.

xp - saw this w/ soon-to-be-ex-bf, but i think we both have a penchant for things that would fall under the category of horrible date movies.

gotta go w/brundlefly

eXistenZ. No joke.

but it's kinda a remake of Videodrome -- but not as good as the original

We have to have done this already, right?

I'm voting Brood, because Jeff Goldblum is already going to get adequate support (deservedly).

xp - but not since i've been here.

I need to see M. Butterfly.

What was the name of the weird culty self-help type book in The Brood?

think I've seen everything here except for the pre-Rabid stuff and M. Butterfly. I don't think I even know what M. Butterfly is about lolz...

video google has some early stuff

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5802520938040356462#

I would like to take this opportunity to rep for shivers

Did anyone else see Spider? I totally missed it when it came out but caught it on video a yer or two back and it was really special. I thought the book was pretty much unfilmable, but as with Naked Lunch Cronenberg makes it work. Except for M. Butterfly (which is alright but nothing special) I really like or love everything from The Brood to the present.

Went with Naked Lunch; one of only two movies that when I walked out at the end I bought a ticket for the next showing. Seeing it twice in the theatre with only a fifteen minute downtime really etched it on my brain.

shakey, m butterfly is an adaptation of a famous broadway play!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Butterfly

Shivers is the scariest movie I've ever seen.

The Dead Zone, with Eastern Promises, The Fly, Crash, A History of Violence, and Dead Ringers all close seconds, Dead Ringers and Crash maybe docked for taking bizarre violent sex a tad too seriously, though on some days these are probably my favorites. Then maybe Scanners and The Brood, which I barely remember, and Videodrome, which was prophetic but pretty silly--James Woods felt wrong--and eXistenZ, which was fun but also sort of tiresome. Only flat-out dud: Naked Lunch. Haven't seen the rest.

xp cankles: brundlefly was pretty awesome.

there are so many freaky, nihilistic sequences in shivers

it opens with a middle aged doctor inexplicably strangling his teenage lover, cutting open her torso, pouring acid into the body cavity, and slitting his own throat

then things start getting crazy

Re: Woods in Videodrome, I mean wrong as a time-bomb believer in the new flesh, not as a sleazy small-time cable exec, which he was born to play.

i really dug Spider, too. that said, i guess i gotta go w/the mainstream vote of History of Violence

shivers has this great one-set economy/claustrophobia thing going on

it's his night of the living dead

except instead of zombies it has sex vampires

shivers is really great

I want to see Shivers and a few more of his movies, but some of the ones I've watch have seriously bothered me. I think it's all of the fleshy holes and mucus covered objects. It's rare that a film has made me actually sick to my stomach.

the Fly is a thing of beauty imo.

head says dead ringers / heart says eXistenZ

kinda bummed thinking of all the times I passed on the shivers DVD when it was around for $10

waaaay out of print now

nd I've watched and enjoyed many unsettling movies; Salo and too many horror films to mention. But Videodrome, Dead Ringers, and some of eXistenZ made me feel like throwing up. I never even finished Videodrome. That said I really enjoy his last two films.

Are his early films the sort that Criterion would rerelease? They already have a few of his films out.

crimes of the future is a bonus feature on the dvd of fast company i think

I think a friend still has my copy of Videodrome! Gotta get it back.

I need to watch some more older Cronenberg. I think I have a handful of his newer films by virtue of the fact it's an instant buy anytime I see one under $15.

xp: stereo is on the fast company dvd too.

don't much like Naked Lunch, esp after Judy Davis exits.

I like perverse romantic comedies, so The Fly over Dead Ringers, Videodrome and Crash.

don't much like Naked Lunch, esp after Judy Davis exits

There's only 10 minutes left!

What is all that shit before Shivers? TV or short film?

BROOD WZ ROBBED!

almost voted for it, it's my perennial 2nd favorite

eXistenZ. it's sorta videodrome-lite, but more comprehensible and arguably more fun. certainly less sleazy.

i dunno - i think they're equally comprehensible, and the sleaziness made videodrome more fun, speaking as an adult. Existenz felt like Videodrome for teenagers.

I have been up nights wondering if the fact that this is one of my favorite directors means that I am a sick person who should be avoided by the healthy.

I'm trying to think if I know any Scorpios that dislike Cronenberg.

If there are, I'm sure they do so with almost unreasonable passion.

Going back to your question though, I don't think it makes you a sick person, but a healthy person that is interested in sickness and its manifestations.

One day, we all will be.

unless you have fantasies about actually living videodrome, then i'd say you probably have some sort of problem.

No. I suppose my (relatively mild, tbh) preoccupation with the fragility of the body is expressed mainly through Cronenberg fandom and empathy with the sick and the old. I'm not even a hypochondriac, which is surprising even to me.

The reason I'm so fond of Cronenberg - the earlier stuff - History of Violence/Eastern Promises I like for other reasons - is the way he takes ideas about humanity and society and presents them through bodily horror, as physical manifestations.

The Fly is a great example of that, actually. It's a romance, and, to quote Cronenberg himself, is about "the way one person in a relationship always turns into a monster."

yes, it's a romantic comedy - maybe my favorite romantic comedy.

It's also a romantic tragedy.

yes - it is both. Actually it's tied with Cemetery Man for my favorite romantic comedy/tragedy.

I find it very moving, no joke. (Also VERY gross.)

It's about relationships, yes, but it's also fairly obviously about growing older, and the horror at your own body that is somewhat inevitable. It's enormously noble that the movie ends with euthanasia.

see i read it as being about mediated experience, and the way that television mirrors the body, and the issue of achieving intense "authentic" experience in a mediated environment, where your own physicality often feels inferior and less authentic to that you watch on television. I didn't see it as being about aging at all.

We're talking about The Fly, right?

Oh, doesn't matter. All his movies are about all of these things, to one degree or another, I suppose.

Oh - I was talking about videodrome - the fly, yes. Okay that makes sense.

There is certainly an element of mediated/compromised reality in The Fly as well, though that connection to Videodrome hadn't occurred to me before.

which?

The element of reality being compromised and actually changed by being filtered through technology.

eg, the steak tasted "fake".

as something that connects the fly to videodrome, or just in relation to videodrome?

Have you been drinking? :)

Not tonight.

Wow yr smooth Kenan

Not sure who you are, but I don't like you at all.

yes - it is both. Actually it's tied with Cemetery Man for my favorite romantic comedy/tragedy.

― sarahel, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 10:22 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark

gah what the shit. no one else is allowed to have these thoughts. two of my favorite movies ever ever ever (plus much more evers).

and to clarify even more, i am not down with the de-sleezing of videodrome in eXistenZ. which IS vdrome for teenagers, but that's alright.

sarahel, u mentioned that cronenberg's body horror literalizes ideas about society/humanity. which is true, but i think almost all of his films do this, in various ways. they literalize the mutability of human identity. even flicks like spider and history of violence do it (the former about the way madness distorts perception, the latter about the way films do).

interesting to look at the idea of "programming" in all of his films - the ways in which we're programmed by biology, by the ideas we encounter, by society. most literal in videodrome, by present everywhere.

well yeah - eastern promises and the tattooing (and some of the other aspects of the russian mafia's practices) are an example of how he doesn't completely diverge from the earlier work.

was never really able to get much cronenberg-ness out of EP. only saw it once though, so i dunno. seemed much more compromised than his other adaptations. (weird pun there.) tattooing, sure, but what does that have to do with the film's other themes? not asking, really, just wondering aloud. probably oughtta see it again.

rabid should've at least gotten a vote, come on.

Existenz felt like Videodrome for teenagers.

Totally agree.

interesting to look at the idea of "programming" in all of his films - the ways in which we're programmed by biology, by the ideas we encounter, by society.

totally--this is what interests me most about his films.

Existenz felt like Videodrome for teenagers.
Totally agree.

― real bears playing hockey (polyphonic)

cosign, will be using that sentence at parties, if you don't mind.

I'd be honored!

Thank you for not exercising brutal US copyright law on me. ;)

My name's Andrew Kenan

you killed my father, prepare to die

Interesting results, I had no idea there was so much love for Dead Ringers. Not enough Walken vase pulverising for my taste...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLhFIwkbtJI

yeah I guess Dead Ringers is a major movie of his, but I can't love it. I don't mind creepy, but messy is messy.

Existenz felt like Videodrome for teenagers.

also gotta agree.

and it kind of feels like watching a 90s videodrome, imo. probably inevitable but I prefer 80s videodome thank you very much.

and it kind of feels like watching a 90s videodrome, imo. probably inevitable but I prefer 80s videodome thank you very much.

Same here - not sure how much of that preference is due to age (i.e. being past my teens when Existenz came out).

I actually saw both in my late teens/early 20s but did see videodrome first. videodrome left me baffled after my first watch (in a good way) and existenz just left me nonplussed.

I'll admit that 80s movies have more nostalgic pull tho. (whether I've already seen them or not. in general, the lighting, film, and soundtracks feel very different from any other decade.)

agreed on the singularness of the 80s aesthetic - I saw Videodrome a few years before Existenz came out - I think I was 23 when I saw it - it was in the theater.

first time I saw videodrome came right at the end of a shut-in stint that had gone on a few days. a friend picked my up right after and I was all like, "man, I just watched the weirdest movie. james woods had a vagina in his stomach!!"

I took a screenshot of the Videodrome titles last night to find out what font it is, and was crestfallen to discover that the font comes standard on a Mac.

Glad to see others who love eXistenZ as much as I do.

Absolutely. And third is about the right placing for it imo. Though I would have Dead Ringers and The Fly swap places, and bump Crash up the list a bit, but otherwise all's well.

thought the fly would place 2nd for sure. that was pretty surprising.

existenz placing higher than the fly = why i love ILX.

Saw 'Maps to the Stars' for second time last night - much better on big screen. I wish it had a wider distro. Dark, meta incest comedy with great gags.