David Cronenberg

[EddieLarkin]

As far as I can gather the only features missing from both sets are lost films.

[domino harvey]

Give it enough time and I’m sure Jess Franco will be fully represented by an assortment of boutique labels. That’s how we’ll know physical media is dead, when they run out of Jess Franco movies to release

[Mark L.]

Completing the availability of his entire 22 feature film filmography on Blu-ray.

I wonder if there's a director who also has their entire output on Blu-ray with more films than Cronenberg? John Carpenter comes to 21 if you count his TV movies.

Spielberg, no? Or is there something (probably famously) not on blu I’m missing?

[EddieLarkin]

Give it enough time and I’m sure Jess Franco will be fully represented by an assortment of boutique labels. That’s how we’ll know physical media is dead, when they run out of Jess Franco movies to release

By my count, there are 77 of his films available on Blu-ray, and going by Wikipedia and IMDb his full filmography consists of somewhere between 173 and 206 entries. So we're not even half way there! 16 years into the format, that means we should see the rest by 2058*. Mercifully, many of us will be dead before then (saying this as someone who *sigh* owns 42 of the 77).

Spielberg, no? Or is there something (probably famously) not on blu I’m missing?

No, you're right, and at 33 films Spielberg is surely the winner (Ridley Scott is another Cronenberg beater at 27). Bergman, Allen and Lang all have bigger filmographies but each have a small handful of films that are still DVD only.

*edit, my maths has let me down here. It'll only take until 2042!

[domino harvey]

Spielberg does have a couple TV movies not out on Blu, though

[Finch]

Spider BD vs old HD master comparison

And a photo of the back cover shows that Sony have carried over the extras from the old US DVD, i.e. trailer, 3 featurettes and a Cronenberg commentary. A Blu-Ray.com user noticed though that a 4k version is also available on Amazon Prime (!).

[Matt]

eXistenZ is actually a Top 3 Cronenberg for me. I love it deeply.

Now available on 4K UHD + Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome!

[Matt]

eXistenZ is actually a Top 3 Cronenberg for me. I love it deeply.

Now available on 4K UHD + Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome!

I have this now and it looks great. Almost too great with the incredible clarity of the 4K transfer. I can see every pore on the actors’ faces. It looks as good or better than I remember from multiple 35mm viewings in 1999. A solid collection of extras as well, both new and pulled from previous editions. If you don’t need the “flesh-textured hard slipcase,” a standard edition will be available January 30.

[therewillbeblus]

The New Yorker on Cronenberg's approach to body horror and relatable sexual-existential transformation takes an interesting turn in its back half. Curious what people think of it, given Becca Rothfeld's very precise and dense analyses of Cronenberg's themes.

[vincentscor]

Hello. Does anybody know where can I access David Cronenberg's early TV documentary shorts? So far I've only found Winter Garden (1972). Thank you very much in advance!

[Never Cursed]

Annoyingly, it was disrupted by an Extinction Rebellion protest that added another 20 or 30 minutes to a screening that already started pretty late. Cronenberg addressed this with some bemusement, recognizing that they must not be aware that he was already on the same page with their ostensible goals. They also held a protest during Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada, which I guess is further indication that they have no clue of what they're doing.

How did the protest add so much time to the screening? I was at the Oh, Canada showing that got disrupted (and the Almodovar, where he and Tilda Swinton were kind enough to provide a mic to the pro-Palestinian protests doing the disrupting), and I can't have imagined that it made the show run more than 5 minutes over.

I'm hardly opposed to either cause, and I think the pro-Palestinian one was actually well-targeted and topical, but interrupting the film itself (as they did for the Schrader film) just seems a bad strategy. It also makes the NYFF security look like idiots in failing to find the huge banners that they unfurled.

[hearthesilence]

Annoyingly, it was disrupted by an Extinction Rebellion protest that added another 20 or 30 minutes to a screening that already started pretty late. Cronenberg addressed this with some bemusement, recognizing that they must not be aware that he was already on the same page with their ostensible goals. They also held a protest during Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada, which I guess is further indication that they have no clue of what they're doing.

How did the protest add so much time to the screening? I was at the Oh, Canada showing that got disrupted (and the Almodovar, where he and Tilda Swinton were kind enough to provide a mic to the pro-Palestinian protests doing the disrupting), and I can't have imagined that it made the show run more than 5 minutes over.

I'm hardly opposed to either cause, and I think the pro-Palestinian one was actually well-targeted and topical, but interrupting the film itself (as they did for the Schrader film) just seems a bad strategy. It also makes the NYFF security look like idiots in failing to find the huge banners that they unfurled.

I was completely unaware of the pro-Palestinian protest, and I agree with the way Almodovar and Swinton handled it (and not surprised either - Swinton has vocally opposed Israel's destructive response from the very beginning). Colbert did something similar when protesters interrupted an interview with Nancy Pelosi - instead of silencing them or throwing them out, he asked them first to settle down and then relayed their questions and concerns to Pelosi, asking her to address them.

Re: NYFF security, I think I posted this when it happened, but when Scorsese presented the Film Foundation restoration of Henry V at the NYFF (also in the Walter Reade Theater), a "naked photographer" got up in the front row and made a ruckus blatantly meant as self-promotion. Before she could begin screaming out her alias and website's URL, a security guard already had his arms around her and immediately dragged her out the stage right exit. (Scorsese joked "Shakespeare would've loved that.")

So with that in mind, I was surprised it took security so long to address the situation today, and even when they got to the stage, it took a long while to deal with it. In hindsight, it may have been security hired specifically for Scorsese that dealt with the problem, hence the difference.

First they continued screaming as the film played, and after a few minutes, they paused the film. Then it just went on for a while with audience members telling them "you're in the wrong movie for this" or "who is this for?" with one person yelling "you need to go to an AMC and go to a Marvel movie - this is the WRONG movie for this." Eventually, two security guards finally came, and they basically took a while to deal with it. Even when they started taking the banner away, one of the protesters sat down, forcing security to find a way to get him out of there. I got the feeling they weren't sure how much force to use because they clearly didn't want to hurt them. Had security consisted of two big muscular guys à la Schwarzenegger, I'm sure they would've immediately picked them up and carried them out, but that wasn't security and that wasn't going to happen. By the time they restarted the movie, they backtracked a bit which made sense, but of course that meant more time was eaten up.

Anyway, I can't remember what the time was when I checked my phone, but maybe it was more like a 30 minute delay WITH the late start? I got the feeling a good chunk of people left before the Q&A because they had other screenings they didn't want to miss. (A few people seemed to rush out even before the credits played.)

[hearthesilence]

David Cronenberg has several Q&A's scheduled this week, all of which are sold out, but the two he did for the NYFF were recorded and are up on YouTube. They're quite good and don't have that much overlap, so they're both worth viewing/listening to.

This is the first one at Alice Tully Hall. (At one point he discusses Brexit's impact on his films - due to the way his films are financed, he can actually no longer work with Peter Suschitzky because he's British and he needs to hire someone from an EU country.)

This is the one at Walter Reade (which I attended).

[Matt]

(At one point he discusses Brexit's impact on his films - due to the way his films are financed, he can actually no longer work with Peter Suschitzky because he's British and he needs to hire someone from an EU country.)

I wondered what happened. How stupid that this is the reason.

[hearthesilence]

(At one point he discusses Brexit's impact on his films - due to the way his films are financed, he can actually no longer work with Peter Suschitzky because he's British and he needs to hire someone from an EU country.)

I wondered what happened. How stupid that this is the reason.

I'll keep it as short as I can without overgeneralizing it. Unless a major streamer is bankrolling them from the start, most name directors in the art film world end up getting their financing overseas. In order to make it work, they usually end up taking advantage of a tax credit, but those tax credits are usually passed into law to draw things like labor, so there will be a stipulation that says you have to hire a certain number of locals (or in this case citizens of the EU) in order qualify for the tax credit. It varies and not all positions (usually the higher up ones like the director or lead actor) will apply.

It's no surprise. As a former colleague of mine lamented the morning after the vote to leave, countless opportunities would now be terminated or lost (along with friendships, even relationships and marriages, that will never happen) because those paths were ruthlessly taken away by a bunch of reactionary schmucks.

[hearthesilence]

Pretty amazing conversation between Cronenberg and Jim Jarmusch, which took place minutes after they found out David Lynch had died.

I should bring up this anecdote I posted a while back, which relates to something they discuss in the interview:

I went to see Eastern Promises at a MoMA program celebrating Focus Features' anniversary, and during the opening barber scene, after two people were cracking up at what was clearly intentional humor running through the entire scene, some guy actually yelled at them. He actually said something like "is this really FUNNY?!?" and the response was "Um....yeah?"