ice age coming

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Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:04:22 +0400

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Sun, 01 Apr 2012 21:35:55 +0400

Cronenberg

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:08:03 +0300

JONATHAN PENNER
David Cronenberg © Ian Welch, Welchtoons.com

David Cronenberg arrived on the world’s cinema screens with a viscous splash. His unmistakable Cartesian horror films Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, and Existenz were extraordinary meditations on making the mental physical, and made Cronenberg one of the most admired auteurs of the late seventies and early eighties.

But since 1983’s The Dead Zone, most of Cronenberg’s films — like The Fly, Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, Naked Lunch, Crash, Spider, A History of Violence, A Dangerous Method, and the upcoming Cosmopolis — have not been made from his original scripts, but have been adaptations from the works of others.

Curious about his hero’s transition from originator to adapter, Los Angeles Review of Books Film Editor Jonathan Penner recently sat down with David Cronenberg to discuss the artist’s life and work.

¤
It’s Dangerous to Be an Artist
As a young upstart filmmaker I felt that you were not a real filmmaker if you didn’t write your own stuff and it should be original. And that was beyond the French version of the auteur theory which was really meant to rehabilitate the artistic credibility of guys like Howard Hawks and John Ford. The French were saying a director could work within the studio system and still be an artist and that those guys were, even though they didn’t normally write their own stuff. And for years I said, no, no you have to write your own stuff. But then I got involved with Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, and it was more of a studio project, and there were five scripts that had been written, one of them by Stephen King himself, and frankly I didn’t think his script was the best of the five. In fact, I thought that if I did his script people would kill me for betraying his novel. I think what happened is that he just wanted to try something else. He wasn’t interested in just doing the novels, so he changed it quite a lot to the point where it was less like the novel than Jeffrey Boam’s script, which was actually more faithful. So I started to work with Jeffrey Boam, and I started to really enjoy the process of working with other people and on the script, and I thought, well this is interesting ‘cause what it means is, if you mix your blood with other people’s, then you will create something that you wouldn’t have done on your own, but is enough of you that it’s exciting and feels like you. It’s kind of like making children.

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CELEBRITIES AND THEIR VINYL

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:17:29 +0400

CELEBRITIES AND THEIR VINYL

urhajos: ‘What on earth shall i do?’ by Gabriella Barouch

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:39:14 +0400

urhajos:

‘What on earth shall i do?’ by Gabriella Barouch

Photo

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:51:07 +0400

"It might not be long before people are seriously trying to “evolve” artificial intelligence in their..."

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:59:40 +0400

“It might not be long before people are seriously trying to “evolve” artificial intelligence in their computers. Now, it’s one thing to use genetic algorithms to come up with various specialised programs that perform simple tasks, but to “breed”, assess, and kill millions of sentient programs would be an abomination. If the first AI was created that way, it would have every right to despise its creators.”

- Greg Egan

"I loved Plato’s notion of an ideal plane. I could even picture it — rambling fields and..."

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:31:00 +0400

“I loved Plato’s notion of an ideal plane. I could even picture it — rambling fields and trees — sort of like the suburbs, but in the sky. I wished I could live there myself.”

- Father Francis Mulcahy, M*A*S*H 4077

"I mean, I didn’t even know there was a difference between North and South Korean barbeque. I..."

Sun, 01 May 2011 12:55:06 +0400

“I mean, I didn’t even know there was a difference between North and South Korean barbeque.
I mean, M*A*S*H lasted longer than that war.”

- Community 2x22

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Sun, 01 May 2011 11:04:32 +0400

Photo

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:08:28 +0400

shamelessocean: A mechanic checks a Rafale, on March 26, 2011,...

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 17:20:22 +0400

shamelessocean:

A mechanic checks a Rafale, on March 26, 2011, on the French Mediterranean island Corsica, after a mission in Libya.

urhajos: ‘Cheat Science’ by Shan Jiang

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:47:11 +0400

urhajos:

‘Cheat Science’ by Shan Jiang

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Sun, 20 Mar 2011 08:58:21 +0300

"Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don’t know what it is. I keep myself in a..."

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:23:05 +0300

“Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don’t know what it is. I keep myself in a constant state of utter confusion.”

- Colonel Sam Flagg (M*A*S*H)

"The main thing is that they never understood the show. Even the basics. I’m not talking about..."

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:47:39 +0300

“The main thing is that they never understood the show. Even the basics. I’m not talking about the outrageous stuff. Just talking about things like “Well, we’d like to do a cartoon with Ren and Stimpy in space.” The response was, “What do you mean in space? How could they get in space?” Well, I’d say, “They’re just in space in this cartoon.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” they’d reply. “How will the kids understand it?” Well, I’d ask, “Haven’t you people ever watched cartoons before? Sometimes Bugs Bunny’s in space, sometimes he’s a caveman, sometimes he’s in a forest. It’s a cartoon.” They never quite got that.”

- John Kricfalusi on the censorship on the “Nickelodeon” kids network

Mara Lorenzio (El Topo)

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:20:39 +0300

Mara Lorenzio (El Topo)

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Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:50:41 +0300

"- Сдается мне, - сказал шофер, - вы разыскиваете поле битвы. - Нет, - сказал я, - я не знаю ни..."

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 12:18:19 +0300

“- Сдается мне, - сказал шофер, - вы разыскиваете поле битвы.
- Нет, - сказал я, - я не знаю ни о какой битве.
- В пятьсот шестьдесят первом году, - начал он кротким тоном гида, - здесь произошла единственная в своем роде битва - битва за авторское право.
Я посмотрел на него, недоверчиво качая головой.
- Это чистая правда, - сказал он, - приверженцы святого Колумбана списали псалтырь, принадлежавший перу святого Финиана, и произошла битва между приверженцами святого Колумбана и святого Финиана. Было три тысячи убитых, но король положил конец спору, он сказал: “Как каждой корове положен теленок, так и каждой книге положена копия”.”

- Генрих Белль. Ирландский дневник

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Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:45:48 +0400