If
you read Don DeLillo in your formative years chances are you were a bit fucked
up in the head, but that yielded only the urge to understand the hypocrisy of
the world to a better degree…you probably read a lot of Bret Easton Ellis along
with that. Now, if you watched Cronenberg growing up, congratulations you’re
probably smarter than 95% percent of the world’s population, and moreover if
you actually understand all of his films on body-horror, pan-existentialist
levels, then you’re a fucking genius.
A
few of his newest films have been rather polarizing. A Dangerous Method (2011) was schmaltzy crap the whole way through.
And Cosmopolis (2012) got all kinds
of black and white reviews, it’s the kind of film Armand White loves to write
about. The kind of film that gets a mixed reaction at Cannes, and Rotten
Tomatoes has a meltdown over because film critics turn into 5 year olds; All
having something to say each at a louder more obnoxious volume than the other.
Sarah Gadon plays the wife of Billionaire playboy Eric (Robert Pattinson) who promises that one day they will indeed have sex, but never delivers. Probably a smart move on her part.
I
had heard a shit ton of bad press about this film, but it was mostly from
people that didn’t ‘get it’ and were faux film critics to begin with in the
tradition of Ben Lyons who just tear it to shreds because they don’t understand
allegory and post-capitalist theory and still manage to make 6-figure salaries
(Fuck Ben Lyons is basically what I’m saying) he’s probably never watched
anything of Cronenberg’s past Dead
Ringers (1988)).
A prostate exam during a meeting with his financial advisor yeilds the metaphor that Eric has an asymmetrical prostate, take it for whatever you think it might mean.
This
is a film that combines sexual frustration and depression of fear of
being-in-the-world, particularly of being powerful, both sexually and
otherwise, and the inner struggle that exists in the responsibility which that
power comes with. Also, the boredom that comes from knowing that everything is too
easily accessible weather it be billions of dollars or seriously hot French tail.
It is a Jean-Paul Sartre manifesto on film, and no one better to understand
that and make it erotic than David Cronenberg. I thought the film was
fantastic, and thought most didn’t and it barely got distributed, it finally
landed on Netflix, so good for it, a bunch of teenagers can now be either
confused as fuck or take up reading DeLillo and start speaking with a French
accent.Either way, it’s one of
Cronenberg’s more complex and erotic films, which is exactly how he initially
made his name in the business, mixed with some political pathos, it makes for
one hell of a mindfuck.
Kink has come a long way...the first of many puns in this blog post.
Have we ever taken a turn for the masochistic of late. And I love it. Usually it required one locking up all doors and windows and ordering a channel only your most perverted friends had even heard of or going to a dingy warehouse with ziploc sandwich bags tied around your hands to pick out the right ball-gag which you would then proceed to lock in a steel safe in your basement until all of your neighbors were all away on a groupon cruise to the Mediterranean. Now you walk into a Walmart or a Von's and first thing on the shelf in front of you are copies of 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. Right next to it? Furry handcuffs.
Now,
kink is manifest in the more sophisticated class, with better
engineered instruments and a general polished, nuanced aesthetic that
appeals to more of a general public rather than just a cult fad.
Polo gear stores are struggling to keep riding crops on their shelves and the elderly ma & pa-type owners can't understand why they are selling those dang riding crops and nothing else. Here's a hint, it's not for polo tournaments, grandad.
And now Hollywood is getting in on all of the sado-masochistic action and popping that last taboo right into our 'vanilla' consciousness (no pun intended). Sundance premiered a film back in January called Compliance (2012), which for months was the talk of the town, and is slated for limited release this August. It stars Dreama Walker from Don't Trust the B---- in Apt 23 fame. It concerns a lowly fast-food employee around 19, who is tricked into some kind of sick masochistic scheme wherein her coworkers are coerced by an anonymous presence over the phone claiming to be the police to strip search her, and make her do generally degrading sexual acts all under the guise that she is guilty of stealing money from another co-worker.
Dreama Walker in Compliance (2012) one of the most highly anticipated films of the year.
There's no question about it, the biggest 'It' thing is BDSM, and everyone is trying their hand at it. 20/20 recently did a retrospective on how marriages were saved by 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. Couples started trying kink in the bedroom and it brought back all the heat, and made everyone pregnant. That's right, there's apparently a new baby boom looming and we have one person to thank for that; E. L. James, who took Twilight fanfiction and not only made it the highest selling book of all time, but generated a serious pop-culture fad that looks like it's going to stick around for a while...again, no pun intended.
Sexual trends have always carried significant weight in pop-culture, but then usually receded back into the norm, or what E. L. James describes as 'vanilla sex'; you know that boring kind of sex where you're in missionary just staring at each other, wondering if you want pasta or chicken for dinner, looking at the dog and mutually rolling your eyes, and counting down the seconds before you can start faking an orgasm. Kink has been around forever and the day. When I was 20, I went to the Red Vic in the Haight district in San Francisco to watch a series called The Good Old Naughty Days.
This retrospective even has its own wikipedia page check it out.
It was 10 or so 'blue films'. For those of you not in the know, a 'blue film' is what people used to call pornography, they also called them 'stag films'. Anyway these films were probably dirtier than anything I've seen with starring Sasha Grey these days. They had to do with things like nuns, plates, people on leashes, and so on and so forth. Did I mention these films were from 1895 - 1911? I didn't? Well that's rather important. People were basically making pornographic films for as long as people had been making films. That's right, while the
Georges Méliès was shooting A Trip to the Moon (1902), there were people shooting two women dressed as nuns licking each others nipples.
A still from one of the films in The Good Old Naughty Days series. These films were initially intended to be seen in French brothels as costumers waited for their prostitutes to get ready.
Kink kind of stayed in the background as American culture grew more mundane and compliant (no more puns intended!), but had a huge resurgence with the influx of fetish magazines in the 40's and Bettie Page who reinvented fetish culture particularly accessory fetishes like leather boots, lace-ups, stilettos, dark make-up, fishnet stalkings, and vinyl underwear.
Bettie Page in Teaser Girl in High Heels (1950) a cult short wearing her now infamous fetish gear.
In the 60's, the big thing was wife-swapping and orgies. Films were made about that as well such as Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969) starring Elliot Gould (I know, gross), Natalie Wood, and Diane Cannon. And now, it just so happens that the new fad in sex is to be tied down to a four-box bed and being whipped within an inch of your life...and liking it.
All Hollywood has to do now is catch up. Compliance (2012) is a gritty independent drama about sexual innocence lost through senseless and reckless violence, but with casting of Christian Grey being the hottest topic of conversation on the interwebs, and directors like Cronenberg still working with those themes, this might be the sex fad that's here to stay.
Cronenberg, who was always at the vanguard of strange sex, (which by the way is also the name of a hotly rated TV show at the moment), has released two films in the last two years about that very topic. One about spank-happy Sabina Spielrein, a pupil and sexual partner of Carl Jung, played immeasurably badly by Kiera Knightly - A Dangerous Method (2011). The other is the highly anticipated Cosmopolis (2012) about a billionaire playboy who has a lot of kinky sex in his limo while the world destroys itself around him, starring Robert Pattinson, the influence for the character of Christian Grey in the E. L. James series. How appropriate.
Still from Cronenberg's Cosmopolis (2012) which could be directly out of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' as far as I'm concerned. Robert Pattinson with Sarah Gadon, two people that could not be better cast as Christian and Anastasia respectively.
No longer is BDSM something only porn producers have to worry about. It's taken over basically all media outlets. From television to films, to the ads in Vogue to literature. If you're still thinking about writing the great American novel or re-booting the tale of Snow-White, maybe it's time to turn off the life-support and get with the times. The general consensus seems to be: Tie me up, America.
As you film buffs are well aware, in just a week the biggest and sparkliest names in show business will descend upon the beautiful resort town in the south of France called Cannes for the most prestigious film festival that exists in history. So basically it's a lot of pretentious Europeans and the Hollywood elite rubbing shoulders, watching a shit ton of movies, and booing Sophia Copolla and Lars Von Trier (which I have no problem with).
Two of the biggest films in competition this year are David Cronenberg's urban shit-show BDSM violence fantasy Cosmopolis (2012) and sensitive guy socialist Walter Salles' subterranean clusterfuck of disjointed Benzedrine-inspired bullshit On the Road (2012) both based renowned literary opuses, and both starring the principals from Twilight, how fucking appropriate. When you're thinking of adapting Kerouac, the first person that pops in your head should be Kristen Stewart I mean clearly.
Still from On the Road (2012) be prepared for a lot of nude driving.
Both contain excessive fucking and all other kinds of derogatory behavior, one is surreal, the other nostalgic. One is futuristic, the other, dated. And if you can't tell which is which, then go stand in the corner you dumb bitch.
Point is, that hey, it's France. Neither of these are going to pick up any Academy Awards for Best Tits, but they might snag an Un Certain Regard or two. Both are big 'risk' movies with explicit material. The Cosmopolis trailer was even slapped with a red band, therefore parents beware, but Frenchies get your binoculars out if you want to catch Robert Pattinson's peen.
Still from Cosmopolis (2012) be prepared for a lot of nude Robwrt Pattinson shooting and being shot at.
And to assume that a book based on professional drunk Jack Karouac's On The Road would be anything but blatantly explicit is just plain ignorant. Now, I'm not a big fan of either of the books, but I am a fan of Don DeLillo in general (who wrote Cosmopolis, not his best by far) and a way bigger fan of Cronenberg than Salles. To me, if it's competing for who's got the hotter, filthier, more provocative film, it's like the junior varsity sit-ins vs. the starting team on the Lakers. Oh snap, i just made a sports analogy (not even sure if it worked but whateves). It's a no-brainer folks, you're going to make it rain golden palms on Cosmopolis.
Now none of this is to say that either is going to be a 'good' film in the way that we define 'a good film' in fact, I'm not too excited about either. I'm going to go ahead and say for the record that Abbas Kiarostami is going to walk away with the Palme d'Or or even Sang-soo Hong. 'Oh who?' you ask...go stand in the corner, bitch.
Promo for the highly anticipated Cosmopolis, adapted from the book by Don DeLillo, directed by David Cronenberg...and starring Johnny Depp if it was being made 15 years ago. Rob, don't let us down.
A question I've asked myself a lot lately is what is going to happen to Robert Pattinson's career? Because I'm sad, and silly. Will he be neatly placed into the category of teen sex-symbol forever etched into every 15 year old girl's first sexual fantasy or will he develop his sexual persona on screen for a broader audience and one day do Vincent Gallo-type roles?
I don't think it's to inconceivable to believe that second part. In one of his first film roles, he already scored a masturbation scene and a guy-on-guy love scene, albeit in a pretty awful film, Little Ashes (2008) but still, that's a good start.
Let's just put aside the whole Water for Elephants (2010) fiasco for now, because I think we'd all like to pretend it didn't happen, and even so, it was very strangely incestuous considering Reese Witherspoone had played HIS MOTHER a few years earlier in Vanity Fair (2004), all made even more creepy by the fact that Pattinson pointed it out saying something like, 'I've played your son, and then i got to fuck you...' I can't remember verbatim, but it was so awkward.
This leaves his Twilight legacy to be considered. It's highly likely that Pattinson will be remembered solely for this, which is fine. Do any of us believe that Daniel Radcliffe will be remembered for anything other than Harry Potter no matter how many plays requiring full nudity for its entirety he does? Pattinson's position is of course different. He was brought in to step into a nationally recognized sexual identity much like Clark Gable did with Rhett Butler for Gone with the Wind (1939). But in Gable's case, the public had envisioned him in the role way before the film was even in pre-production, so the casting was an obvious decision. With Pattinson, we have to ask ourselves a few more questions (or at least I did) before we can accept him into the sprawling history of sex in cinema, particularly male sex symbol status.
Vampires in film have a long history of being the seducer and corrupter on both ends of the gender spectrum, so Pattinson had some seriously big shoes to fill. And did he? Or did he get stuck in teenybopper limbo where because you're cast in the role, you're automatically adored by millions of screaming young girls who are not even sure why they find you tantalizing. Within the context of the Twilight premise, Pattinson is safe, he has a steady and loyal following while he serves as the embodiment of a character that thrives on the fantasy-wild minds of pre-pubescent girls. But he's showing signs of wanting to be more than just a wet dream or source of highly misguided fan fiction a la Orlando Bloom, but the question is; is he capable of this?
Below is a still from the first installment of Twilight (2008), and below that is a still from the upcoming Bel Ami (2012). Agreed that he needs more than just the one facial expression on his resume?
His next project, Cosmopolis (2012) (directed by well established manipulator of cinematic perversions David Cronenberg) will prove to either make or break his trajectory. This is where we see if Pattinson's route will be that of transition from teen-icon to sex-icon, in my opinion. Clearly he's trying to experiment with more meaty parts (no pun intended), but it's been mostly miss and miss rather than hit and miss. Now that the Twilight Saga is mercifully on the last half of its last installment, we can truly see how he fairs with someone who is not Kristen Stewart, and if he can keep his momentum going. I don't think anyone is doubting whether he is a serious actor or not, and honestly, i don't think any of us really care. It's whether or not his sexual persona has staying power to transition into that of bona fide icon or will it fizzle like a Paul Walker balloon when the saga ends?
Lets not forget his new role as ruthless Lothario Georges Duroy in Bel Ami (2012) based on the classic novel by Guy de Maupassant. The most we can hope for is that he plays it sans all of the idiosyncrasies he picked up while playing Edward Cullen for 5 years straight, because I have to say, in the trailer, it looks like he's playing Edward in a Victorian costume.
So Pattinson, here's my advice to you. Put down the styling mousse, brush up on your interview skills, and read a Rock Hudson biography because all of those teenagers eventually grow up into adults will eventually lose interest....most of them.
Below is the trailer for Bel Ami (2012)
Also, here's the trailer for the little known and little seen film Little Ashes (2008) where he played, get ready for it...Salvador Dali. It was...bad.
