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When David Cronenberg accepts his Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival, the occasion will be marked by a screening of one of his 21 films. Cronenberg’s selection? “M. Butterfly,” his 1993 adaptation of David Henry Hwang’s Tony-winning play, about the decades-spanning love affair between a cross-dressing Chinese opera singer and the French diplomat unaware of his lover’s gender identity.

It’s a surprising choice, but then surprises are to be expected from the 75-year-old Canadian auteur, who has consistently evaded predictability across a five-decade career. “M. Butterfly” is rarely spoken of by critics as one of Cronenberg’s essential, or indeed quintessential, works: Reviews at the time were cool, and the film hasn’t built much of a revisionist following since. Yet Cronenberg is said to consider it among his most personal films. On closer inspection, you can see why. In an oeuvre that has...

David Cronenberg was my first favorite director. Even before I knew what a director did, or before I’d seen more than a grand total of two of his films, I knew this to be true. Seeing his name above both The Fly and Videodrome was enough for me to realize that there was something special about this one, and every film I’d subsequently watch would only help enforce that, diving me deeper and deeper into nightmare worlds of body transformation and sexual obsession. But as my last Crypt entry discussed, every director has to start somewhere—and with Cronenberg, that “somewhere” is two brief feature films, micro-budget experimental movies that help lay the groundwork for some of the greatest works from one of cinema’s greatest artists.

His first feature, Stereo (1969), is something of an independent miracle. Running only a little over an hour, Stereo was made on...

David Cronenberg swaps his  venereal ick-monsters for Samantha Eggar's mater furiosa,  an annihilating female who commits her killings as would the villain of a Greek tragedy -- through her offspring. Oliver Reed is the new-age guru of 'Psychoplasmics,' who teaches Eggar to direct her rage in an utterly unique way. The disturbing concept sounds less preposterous when one finds out it was written in response to a brutal divorce experience. Hell hath no fury. The Brood Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 777 1979 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 92 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 13, 2015 / 39.95 Starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle, Henry Beckman, Nuala Fitzgerald, Cindy Hinds, Susan Hogan, Gary McKeehan, Michael Magee, Robert Silverman, Felix Silla. Cinematography Mark Irwin Film Editor Alan Collins Original Music Howard Shore Special Makeup Jack Young, Dennis Pike Art Direction Carol Spier Produced by Claude Héroux Written and Directed by David Cronenberg

Reviewed by...

The Brood

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

Canada, 1979

Inspired by his own unpleasant divorce, and the subsequent liberation of his daughter just before his ex-wife was able to take the girl to a California cult, David Cronenberg’s The Brood is essentially an ugly, highly unorthodox custody battle. As the great Canadian filmmaker famously quipped, “The Brood is my version of Kramer vs. Kramer [also released in 1979], but more realistic.”

The Brood is Cronenberg’s sixth feature, coming just after the seemingly out of place Fast Company (1979)—not so very odd given the director’s love for automobile racing—and just before his more exemplary breakthrough, Scanners (1981). It is consummate Cronenberg, with a heady mixture of clinically twisted science and the deep psychological strain that inevitably mars said science with corporeal disfigurement.

With his wife, Nola (Samantha Eggar), undergoing treatment at a facility known as the Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics (a Cronenbergian...

As we get closer and closer to Halloween, the home entertainment releases on Blu-ray and DVD seem to get better and better, as this Tuesday will see the release of several fantastic cult classics and so much more. On October 13th, Criterion Collection is bringing home David Cronenberg’s terrifying masterpiece The Brood to both Blu and DVD and we’ve also got The Return of Count Yorga to look forward to courtesy of Scream Factory.

For those of you who love a good "bad movie," Synapse Releasing has a restored version of the granddaddy of them all, Manos: The Hands of Fate, arriving on both formats this week as well.

Other notable October 13th releases include a two-disc Blu-ray of the 192os classic The Phantom of the Opera, The Gallows, the 2oth anniversary release of Mosquito, Shakma, Tomorrowland, and the high-def debut of Class of Nuke ’Em High 3.

The Brood (Criterion Collection,...

“Mommie’S Dearest”

By Raymond Benson

David Cronenberg’s horror films always seem to tackle subjects that involve an unpredictable human body and the terror of your consciousness residing inside of it. He explored parasites in his first mainstream picture, Shivers (aka They Came From Within, 1975), and viral “stingers” than grow in a woman’s armpit in his second, Rabid, 1977. The rest of his movies, leading up to the ultimate statement of being trapped in a horrible body, The Fly (1986), all dealt with some aspect of physical or mental transformation. The Brood, released in 1979, fits right in with Cronenberg’s thematic fascination with flesh and blood. And it’s a corker.

Oliver Reed plays Dr. Raglan, an unorthodox psychotherapist who uses controversial techniques that cause his patients to manifest their inner turmoil and anger into visible, bizarre growths on their bodies. One guy sprouts spots. Another man grows a weird...

About once a month, Cinelinx will chose one director for an in-depth examination of the “signatures” that they leave behind in their work. This week, we’re examining the trademark style and calling signs of David Cronenberg as director.

Cronenberg first became interested in film during college, where he self-taught himself the art before establishing a co-op to produce films. His first feature length films were art-house movies, Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970). Shivers (1975) was his breakthrough. That film received a lot of attention because although people were talking about it, they were divided in regards to its vulgarity, especially considering the fact that it was funded by the Canadian government. Still, it was the most profitable film funded by the Canadian government up to that point. His follow up was Rancid (1977) which was commercially successful. His next movie took a break from body horror to explore his love of cars and racing.

Fans of David Cronenberg and Brian De Palma are in for a treat this summer and fall, as The Criterion Collection will release the former's The Brood and the latter's Dressed to Kill on respective Blu-rays.

The Criterion Collection will release The Brood on Blu-ray October 13th and Dressed to Kill on Blu-ray August 18th:

From The Criterion Collection: The Brood: "A disturbed woman is receiving a radical form of psychotherapy at a remote, mysterious institute. Meanwhile, her five-year-old daughter, under the care of her estranged husband, is being terrorized by a group of demonic beings. How these two story lines connect is the shocking and grotesque secret of this bloody tale of monstrous parenthood from David Cronenberg, starring Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar. With its combination of psychological and body horror, The Brood laid the groundwork for many of the director’s films to come, but it stands...

The Criterion Collection is doing Halloween right this year. With nights getting colder and evenings growing spookier, the boutique label has some chillers lined up, ready to give you a scare. Right at the top of the list is David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," considered by many to be his greatest film. It will arrive with a fancy new 4K restoration, new interviews, and a booklet. However, there won't be any deleted scenes or other such goodies, but the movie itself has enough puzzles to have you pulling it out more than once. Also on the scare spectrum is David Cronenberg's "The Brood." The Canadian director's early work will be paired up with a 1970 feature "Crimes Of The Future," plus a whole new documentary about "The Brood." Plus there will be interviews, vintage promo footage and more. For you foreign film enthusiasts, Criterion has plenty to offer in October as well.

Crimes of the Future

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

Canada, 1970

A lot of even very excitable David Cronenberg fans have never seen his 1970 film Crimes of the Future: it seems to be seen as something of a curate’s egg and dark and imaginative, of course, like everything he does, but perhaps made too long ago now, and surely overshadowed by his later work. It was his second film, after Stereo in 1969. Stereo is a similarly short feature film dealing with telepathy, sexual exploration and, like Crimes of the Future, had its commentary added later: it also starts Ronald Mlodzik wearing black and looking terrifying. But where Stereo was both creepy and austere, Crimes of the Future gives its remarkable characters more room to breathe and, in their own weird way, to play, picking their way around a modernist compound and narrated retroactively by the main character. It is fascinating viewing,...

David Cronenberg. From “Stereo” to “The Fly” to “Crash” (no, not that one, the one from 1996), to “A Dangerous Method” and beyond, it’s hard to argue that the (sometimes) writer, (more often) director has had an eclectic career. And with his first credited short nearly fifty years ago, perhaps that isn't surprising. Vimeo user Shaun Higgins (d.b.a. Hello Wizard) has paid homage to the uniquely varied director via a new seven-minute tribute supercut. The short splices shots from 21 of Cronenberg’s films together, lending some semblance to what defines a Cronenberg picture. In chronological order, going all the way back to 1969 and up through the present, Higgins includes: “Stereo,” “Crimes of the Future,” “Shivers” (a.k.a. “They Came From Within”), “Rabid,” “Fast Company,” “The Brood,” “Scanners,” “Videodrome,” “The Dead Zone,” “The Fly,” “Dead Ringers,” “Naked Lunch,” “M Butterfly,” “Crash,” “eXistenZ,” “Spider,” “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises,...

By Ernie Magnotta

These days, cinema buffs searching high and low for a lost, early work of a modern filmmaker is almost unheard of , as most everything is readily available on DVD or Blu-ray. However, back in the day, this was far from the case. Way back when, many early efforts from then current directorial masters were extremely hard to find. For example, throughout the 1980s, I can remember looking everywhere for a copy of George A. Romero’s third film Season of the Witch aka Hungry Wives (1972) as well as Martin Scorsese’s debut feature Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (1967) just to name a few. Another movie I always longed to see was a strange, little action film called Fast Company. The reason I use the word strange is because the movie was directed by the enormously talented, Canadian born David Cronenberg. Although he is now known...

Tokyo FILMeX 2014 ended today with a lineup devoted to Canadian master David Cronenberg. The director's two earliest films, 1969's Stereo and 1970's Crimes of the Future, were shown before his latest, Maps To The Stars, closed the festival. Before the screening of the body-horror maestro's cutting Hollywood satire the festival's awards were announced by a jury headed by Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke. Grand PrixWinner - Crocodile Dir. Francis Xavier Pasion The PhilippinesDirector Francis Xavier Pasion won the Best Film Award at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival for his first film Jay before he went on to take part in FILMeX's own Next Tokyo Masters in 2010. Crocodile, his third film, follows mother Divina as she receives some terrible news; a crocodile has attacked...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Tiff’s acclaimed Evolution exhibition — celebrating the career of hometown boy David Cronenberg — had just closed when Ocad University hosted a free discussion between him and Tiff CEO Piers Handling. For the past five months, the art school has been partnering with Toronto International on The Cronenberg Project, a multimedia exploration of the director of Dead Ringers, Crash and A History of Violence. It’s appropriate that the discussion before an audience of 325 students and VIPs centered on Cronenberg’s student years, early films and architecture. The talk began with excerpts from Stereo (1969) and Crimes of The Future (1970), […]...

Tiff’s acclaimed Evolution exhibition — celebrating the career of hometown boy David Cronenberg — had just closed when Ocad University hosted a free discussion between him and Tiff CEO Piers Handling. For the past five months, the art school has been partnering with Toronto International on The Cronenberg Project, a multimedia exploration of the director of Dead Ringers, Crash and A History of Violence. It’s appropriate that the discussion before an audience of 325 students and VIPs centered on Cronenberg’s student years, early films and architecture. The talk began with excerpts from Stereo (1969) and Crimes of The Future (1970), […]...

Veteran entertainment reporter Paula Bernstein has joined Indiewire in the newly created position of Filmmaker Toolkit/Technology Editor. She is based in New York. Bernstein will expand Indiewire's coverage of the entertainment and technology intersections, including transmedia, social media, crowdfunding, new distribution platforms, and digital filmmaking."Paula's hire represents the enhancement of a vital coverage area for us," said Dana Harris, editor in chief and general manger of Indiewire. "Technology has become a far-reaching entertainment area that can include filmmaking, distribution, financing, gear, startups, apps, VOD and more. We've covered a lot of this territory with our popular Filmmaker Toolkit section, but adding Paula to our team means we'll include more features, reviews, interviews, first-person reports and case studies than ever before." Bernstein has been a contributor to Fast Company, a social media consultant, and a television reporter for...

As the world once more turns its attention to Apple—praising it for finally adding the fingerprint scanning that Alexander Graham Bell shortsightedly left off his “telephone,” if you can even call it that—Fast Company has compiled an accompanying oral history on the company’s design, so at last you can read a discussion of Apple products on the Internet. But it does have one unexpected insight concerning The Simpsons, and therefore actually piques our interest: According to Scott Forstall, former senior vice president of iOS software, you can credit the the iPhone’s keyboard to a gag from ...

You spent years with Ashton Kutcher's hippie Kelso and even helped him find his car, but you probably don't know everything there is to know about the A-lister.

This week, Kutcher portrays one of the 21st century's most pioneering innovators in "Jobs," a part he's more than qualified for: The actor and tech investor has dabbled in plenty of industries and organizations, always keeping busy to better the world and technology.

From his high school arrest to his Twitter attack on the Village Voice, check out these facts to get to know the man behind the Steve Jobs biopic.

1. Kutcher has a fraternal twin brother, Michael, who was born with a septal heart defect and has cerebral palsy.

2. Kutcher attended the University of Iowa and majored in Biochemical Engineering with the hope of finding a cure for his brother's condition. However, he dropped out to pursue modeling after winning...

1. The Man Who Sees The Future

The news this week that Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, purchased The Washington Post for $250 million led many to wonder about What It Means for the newspaper specifically and the future of journalism more generally.

The truth is, no one really knows whether Bezos bought the Post in order to serve as a charitable benefactor or because he sees the Next Big Thing coming around the bend. But as J.J. McCorvey writes in a new cover story in Fast Company, published with incredible timing just hours after The Washington Post sale was announced on Tuesday: "Given the astounding growth of Amazon, and the seemingly infinite ways it has defied the critics, Bezos may have proved himself the best CEO in the world at taking the long view."

Bezos' big plan, McCorvey writes, is "to make Amazon the dominant servicer -- not just...

Scanners is the last low-budget Canadian film that David Cronenberg made before he went legit with the masterpiece Videodrome and pretty good Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone. Scanners was also way ahead of its time, it presents similar themes and characters that would become commonplace some twenty years later with things like Heroes, X-Men and Chronicle. Of course this is all done on an early 80s definition of a low-budget but still it manages to work although it is not without flaws.

We start with a hobo named Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) who is arrested at a shopping mall after he seems to telepathically make a woman have a heart attack after she mocks him. Cameron is introduced to Dr Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) who works for the ConSec corporation that is there for the purpose of researching ‘Scanners’ , telepathic beings who are capable of doing great harm to the human race.

Our look back at the movies of David Cronenberg continues with 1977’s Rabid, a typically personal take on the vampire movie…

If Cronenberg’s first commercial feature Shivers was a venereal take on the zombie genre, his follow-up, 1977’s Rabid, applies the same preoccupations of sexuality and disease to the vampire movie.

In fact, Rabid is remarkably similar to Shivers in several ways. A scientific breakthrough goes awry, turning a young woman into a crazed, blood-sucking killer. Her victims, in turn, are infected with the same bloodlust, and the disease gradually spreads throughout Montreal.

The reasons for this narrative similarity are probably because Cronenberg began to make Rabid so close to the completion of his first film. With Shivers proving unexpectedly successful for exploitation specialists, Cinepix (propelled as it was by no small amount of controversy), the company immediately asked the director if he had another ideas. Rabid originally began as something called Mosquito,...

The weather in New York may delay this afternoon's scheduled conversation with David Cronenberg at the Museum of the Moving Image, but as of this writing, it's still on for 2 pm, i.e., in just a few hours. Chief Curator David Schwartz plans to chat with Cronenberg about "the themes and motifs of his films, from his early experimental works and horror films to the accomplished, adventurous adaptations of recent years." And yes, there will be clips.

The conversation launches a retrospective that'll run through February 12, the occasion of two new pieces at Moving Image Source: "Of course, as Cronenberg and monster movies show, it's usually the body that thinks before the mind," writes Gina Telaroli, introducing her video essay. "So with a found-footage, montage-movie, I found myself with the same issues of any shit-grade horror filmmaker collapsing traditional hierarchy of thought/action, mind/body, inside/outside, in which the...

I'm going to get this out of the way first.  It's the list of great science-fiction films of the late 1970s and early 1980s that I felt were specifically referenced in Beyond the Black Rainbow, as jotted in order in my notebook as I watched the international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival:

Peter Greenaway's The Falls, David Cronenberg's The Brood (and, later, Crimes of the Future and Scanners), The Andromeda Strain, Thx-1138, Star Crash, Cosmos: War of the Planets, Firestarter, Soylent Green, Blue Sunshine, Altered States, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, Brainstorm, Rush's video for "Distant Early Warning" and every cover of Omni Magazine ever.

Director Panos Cosmatos has no shortage of design influences.  Beyond the Black Rainbow is set in an alternate future 1983 where up-no-good new age scientists have let their experiments with consciousness-altering drugs mutate a young woman. In addition to looking worried,...