Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jordan Hoffman and I’m an old man. Well, not THAT old, but, let’s just say that for me the phrase “VHS or Beta?” was more than just an indie band, it was an actual decision.
After film school I worked in the development offices of a New York-based production company for a few years, then did some solid Web 1.0 work at About.com. Then I made two independent films, both of which are good, neither of which made me any money. Eventually I got back into the writing game, working at Hearst’s UGO.com for over four years and now I’m having a blast reviewing and writing about film for a number of different publications.
The fine folk here at /Film have allowed me this weekly column to put on my bifocals, peer into the rich history of cinema and make some recommendations that may be unknown to you.
Since the big release this weekend is the extremely entertaining Chronicle I thought it might be a good idea to think back to a time before Cloverfield or go deeper than The Blair Witch Project. Read More »
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The biggest news today has been what people won’t do, rather than movies they will. We started off with Steven Soderbergh’s withdrawal from The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and now we move on to the fact that Joel Edgerton has said ‘no’ to 300: Battle of Artemisia, Fox has decided not to make David Cronenberg‘s sequel to The Fly, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt won’t make the true-life ‘poisoned KGB agent’ movie Londongrad after all. Read More »
Most of us haven’t yet had a chance to see David Cronenberg‘s new movie A Dangerous Method, but the director is already wrapping up yet another film: an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel Cosmopolis. Robert Pattinson stars in the film as a young billionaire whose journey across Manhattan over the course of a day proves… eventful, at the very least. Sarah Gadon plays his wife, and there are new images of both, below. Read More »
David Cronenberg has been a forward-thinking guy at many points in his career, but the overall tone of his films tends more towards the classic than the contemporary. He has relied upon Howard Shore to score his films for over thirty years. While some of those scores have been as unusual as the films they complemented, none have exactly been rock. (Even Crash, an absolutely brilliant score based around reverb and guitar, is far less rock than, say, Neil Young’s Dead Man, a similar score.)
So it’s a surprise to hear that Canadian rock band Metric, of whom you may know thanks to their song ‘Black Sheep,’ used in Scott Pilgrim, will collaborate with Howard Shore on the score for Cronenberg’s upcoming Cosmopolis. Read More »
Two years ago, in September 2009, we heard the fairly surprising news that David Cronenberg might direct a remake of the 1986 film The Fly for Fox. Thing is, that ’86 film (which we celebrated not long ago) was also a remake, and also directed by Cronenberg. And if the idea of Cronenberg directing a remake of his own remake was pretty wild, that’s because the story wasn’t exactly correct.
Fox may have been thinking of making a new Fly, and the idea may have been to do something like what Universal has done with the prequel to the ’82 The Thing, with this year’s release also called The Thing. Because now Cronenberg says what he wrote was a semi-sequel to his great ’86 film.
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The Telluride Film Festival, a presentation of the National Film Preserve which takes place beginning tomorrow, Friday Sept 2 and runs through Monday Sept 5, is an unusual beast as far as film festivals go. The core film lineup is not announced until the day before the festival begins, so attendees have to commit to the fest without knowing any of the movies that will definitely play.
Now the first list of films is out, and it has some expected inclusions such as David Cronenberg‘s A Dangerous Method (trailer) and the Cannes fave The Artist (trailer). In addition there are some good surprises, such as Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender‘s reunion, Shame (pics), and the Dardenne Brothers‘ The Kid With a Bike.
More films will be announced at the last minute over the next couple days. One addition, for example, according to Kris Tapley, is Butter. Peter is arriving in Telluride later today so he’ll have coverage of the festival during the holiday weekend. Check out the announced lineup below. Read More »
Oh, I can’t wait for this. Here’s the second trailer we’ve seen for David Cronenberg‘s A Dangerous Method, which tells the story of Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), who both fall into a web tethered by Jung’s patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).
The previous trailer was just a bit more explicit — as you’d expect from the intersection of Cronenberg and early psychoanalysis, there is some kink ahead. So this trailer is much the same as the international one that arrived in June, only with a handful of shots swapped out for tamer stuff. But there’s a proper HD version now, and it is lovely. Read More »
Well, look at that: Brundlefly is twenty-five years old today. On August 15, 1986, David Cronenberg’s The Fly was released by Twentieth-Century Fox. The film became Cronenberg’s greatest success to date, and quickly established itself as an instant classic of practical effects thanks to the Oscar-winning work of Chris Walas. (Who would go on to direct the sequel.) The Fly also gave stars Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, who had met and begun dating while making Transylvania 6-5000, their first true breakout lead opportunities.
Those are all significant results of the film’s release, but The Fly is a film worth revisiting and honoring for other reasons. It marks a real turning point in the career of David Cronenberg, and stands as one of the unassailable arguments for the idea of the film remake. And, in the cinematic culture of 2011, where the superhero is ascendant, some of you might join me in hoping that we might eventually cycle back around to a point where much weirder stories of transformation and the effects of power on the human body and psyche seem like viable commercial efforts. Read More »
