Possibly setting a record for most images of needles piercing human skin in a motion picture, Brandon Cronenberg’s syringe-tastic Antiviral suggests the fledgling filmmaker has some corporeal-horror preoccupations in common with famous dad David . Set in an icy near-future where celebrities’ diseases are sold like crack vials, this creepy speculative satire tends to hit the same notes in its dissection of seriously unhealthy celebrity obsession, but exerts a queasy fascination regardless. Overlong Canadian production may prove too clinically distanced for gorehounds and too yucky for specialty auds, though the Cronenberg imprimatur is sure to stir theatrical interest. Inspired by a particularly nasty case of the flu he came down with in film school, Cronenberg hit upon the ingeniously out-there concept of a free market for famous people’s germs. As an indictment of a star-struck population already addicted to celebrity Twitter feeds and sex tapes, the message couldn’t be plainer or more literal: Our media-obsessed culture is seriously sick. The viewer’s guide to this distasteful world of corporatized disease exchange is Syd March ( Caleb Landry Jones, X-Men: First Class ), an employee at the white-walled Lucas Clinic , where customers pay large sums to be infected with, say, a herpes simplex virus harvested from the latest hot young starlet. In order to maintain a competitive edge, the Lucas Clinic practices its own form of copy protection, altering each specimen to be non-contagious. Syd, however, has found a secret way around these measures and runs a black-market sideline in live viruses, which he smuggles out of HQ in his own body. For him, catching someone else’s cold isn’t an occupational hazard but a daily necessity. But the operation backfires when he injects himself with a rare specimen extracted from celebrity Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) . The disease takes hold far too quickly, and when news breaks of Hannah’s untimely death, Syd realizes he has only a little time left, during which he is continually ambushed by rivals and collectors who covet his fatal affliction, never mind that it causes him to develop unsightly lesions and vomit chocolate-colored blood all over Arvinder Grewal’s chillingly sterile production design. Gradually establishing its ground rules in deadpan fashion, the script eventually reveals, consciously or not, a certain structural resemblance to the elder Cronenberg’s Videodrome . Like that prescient 1983 splatter classic, Antiviral takes aim at an industry equipped to service ever baser and more twisted human needs, bringing down the system through the violent rebellion of a disgruntled, self-contaminated drone. The perpetually scowling Jones isn’t the most charismatic protagonist here and doesn’t need to be; no one in this pathetic simulacrum of the future is worth rooting for or emulating. Whatever creative genes he may have inherited, Brandon Cronenberg has his own distinct flair for the grotesque. Among the weirder images and innovations here are a butcher shop that sells what appear to be cuts of meat replicated from celebrity tissue; a TV network that beams out updates 24-7 on stars’ body parts, with an emphasis on crotch photos and colonoscopy footage; a doctor ( Malcolm McDowell , quite at home in this bizarro universe) with skin grafts from four different people on one arm; and recurring images of needles being stuck in all manner of imaginative and unwelcome places. On a more prosaic level, the film suffers from basic pacing issues, particularly in its increasingly slack and repetitive second half, by which point the moral rot of nonstop celebrity worship has been duly beaten to death. Icky though it is, Antiviral never builds the sort of character investment or narrative momentum that would allow its visceral horrors to seriously disturb, rather than seeming like choice gross-out moments lovingly designed for maximum viewer recoil. With its flat, detached tone and fixed camera setups, the pic consistently opts for grisly dark comedy over horror-thriller tension, a strategy that does pay off with a certain gruesome logic in the film’s nightmarish final image. D.p. Karim Hussain’s crisp, high-definition images rep the chief standout of a decent tech package. More on Antiviral: Antiviral Trailer: Get Squirmy With Brandon Cronenberg’s Sci-Fi Body Horror Creep-Out Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in early Thursday’s round-up of news briefs: Rachel Weisz is a possible go for a David Cronenberg project; Tarzan gets new life; And the Dubai International Film Festival rounds out its 2012 program. Tim Robbins, Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloe Moretz Board Man Under Robbins will also direct the dysfunctional family comedy. The film follows a Yonkers family whose lives go haywire when NYC’s Museum of Modern Art displays photos of them in an exhibit, turning them in celebrities, Deadline reports . Matt Damon Eyes Showtime Climate Change Doc The actor will take part in an eight-part documentary series for Showtime from James Cameron and Jerry Weintraub. The program will show the human element of climate change. Damon is an active environmentalist and philanthropist. Damon’s upcoming movies include HBO’s Behind the Candelabra , which stars Michael Douglas as Liberace; and Promised Land , directed by Gus Van Sant, THR reports . Rachel Weisz Eyes David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars Robert Pattinson, who starred in Cosmopolis , and Cronenberg regular Viggo Mortensen have already been linked to the Hollywood-set film that also has Rachel Weisz coming on as a possibility. The story reportedly is a dark comic look at Hollywood excess, Deadline reports . David Yates Eyes Warner Bros.’ Tarzan The director of the last four Harry Potter films is likely on board to direct a big-screen version of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan at Warner Bros. The project has been in development with producer Jerry Weintraub for years, Vulture reports . Dubai International Film Festival to Screen Cloud Atlas , The Master Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson starring Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet with Maggie Smith and Wayne Blair’s musical drama The Sapphires also joins the lineup at the Gulf State festival. The ninth edition of the Dubai International Film Festival runs Dec. 9 – 16, THR reports .
Also in early Thursday’s round-up of news briefs: Rachel Weisz is a possible go for a David Cronenberg project; Tarzan gets new life; And the Dubai International Film Festival rounds out its 2012 program. Tim Robbins, Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloe Moretz Board Man Under Robbins will also direct the dysfunctional family comedy. The film follows a Yonkers family whose lives go haywire when NYC’s Museum of Modern Art displays photos of them in an exhibit, turning them in celebrities, Deadline reports . Matt Damon Eyes Showtime Climate Change Doc The actor will take part in an eight-part documentary series for Showtime from James Cameron and Jerry Weintraub. The program will show the human element of climate change. Damon is an active environmentalist and philanthropist. Damon’s upcoming movies include HBO’s Behind the Candelabra , which stars Michael Douglas as Liberace; and Promised Land , directed by Gus Van Sant, THR reports . Rachel Weisz Eyes David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars Robert Pattinson, who starred in Cosmopolis , and Cronenberg regular Viggo Mortensen have already been linked to the Hollywood-set film that also has Rachel Weisz coming on as a possibility. The story reportedly is a dark comic look at Hollywood excess, Deadline reports . David Yates Eyes Warner Bros.’ Tarzan The director of the last four Harry Potter films is likely on board to direct a big-screen version of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan at Warner Bros. The project has been in development with producer Jerry Weintraub for years, Vulture reports . Dubai International Film Festival to Screen Cloud Atlas , The Master Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson starring Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet with Maggie Smith and Wayne Blair’s musical drama The Sapphires also joins the lineup at the Gulf State festival. The ninth edition of the Dubai International Film Festival runs Dec. 9 – 16, THR reports .
With a few hours to go before the official Cannes line-up gets announced, we’ve got quite a little treat. Following the exhilarating teaser, a brand spankin’ new trailer for David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis is out, which confirms its Cannes debut. Based on the novel by Don DeLillo, the film stars Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon in Broadcasting platform : Allocine Source : The Film Stage Discovery Date : 19/04/2012 07:02 Number of articles : 3
Move over, Prometheus : David Cronenberg and Robert Pattinson are here with a 30-second foreign teaser for Cosmopolis , their adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel about a young billionaire’s dark, demented and all-around catastrophic 24-hour Manhattan odyssey. And it looks amazing. In fairness, it’s basically only 30 NSFW seconds of hyper-edited visuals, but what visuals: Times Square overrun with dinosaurs, Pattinson’s Eric Packer shooting a hole through his hand, limousine trysts and pee breaks, and all the quintessentially Cronenbergian glimpses of the perverse in the quotidian. Niftier still is the dialogue introducing the teaser, clipped in DeLillo’s own trademark staccato, hinting at a spiritual fidelity to the flawed but sui generis source material. It just looks and feels right . We’ll see how the other 100 minutes or so can compare later this spring, when Cosmopolis presumably debuts (and lands an American distributor) at Cannes. [via Movies.com ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
How does Keira Knightley devour so much scenery in A Dangerous Method yet stay so thin? That was the big question Tuesday at Lincoln Center, where her director David Cronenberg and co-star Michael Fassbender dropped by to meet the press ahead of tonight’s New York Film Festival premiere of Method .
‘I’m one of the only characters that comes in and out of the story,’ Sarah Gadon tells MTV News about the David Cronenberg film. By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon in “Cosmopolis” Photo: Caitlin Cronenberg’s Twitter Robert Pattinson , who will marry Kristen Stewart in “Breaking Dawn” this November, is also set to wed Sarah Gadon in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis.” And, as Gadon revealed to MTV News, it’s going be a very interesting journey for the newlyweds in the film. “I think it’s a really interesting film, and I don’t want to give away too much, but I think in a really kind of pared-down version of the film, it’s about a young millionaire who loses everything in the course of a day,” New Class -er Gadon said. “I play his new wife, so I’m one of the only characters that comes in and out of the story throughout the film. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner together, and those are going to be some interesting meals.” Having already worked with Cronenberg on the Freudian flick “A Dangerous Method,” Gadon said she was fully aware what she was getting herself into, so watching Pattinson get into the director’s dangerous method proved to be quite interesting. “For me, it was really interesting and great to work with Rob at this point in his career,” she said. “And I think David Cronenberg is a fabulous director, and to see Rob meet with David at this point in his journey as an artist was really special for me to watch. “I think when you work with David Cronenberg, it’s a really exciting and liberating and, at the same time, terrifying experience. And it was really great, having worked with David, to watch somebody new go through that … I think it’s really great for [Pattinson] to have chosen this role and be a part of our film.” It’s a great time to be Gadon: Her star is definitely on the rise, and having someone like Cronenberg on her side is certainly proving to be fruitful for the 24-year-old Canadian native. “I thought that going into the process with ‘A Dangerous Method’ was way more daunting,” she admitted. “I had created an audition tape, sent it into David, had booked the role, flew to Germany knowing I would be playing Michael Fassbender’s wife in a film with Keira Knightley and Viggo [Mortensen] and Vincent Cassel. And then, not having met David until the day I arrived in full period hair and makeup for our camera tests … I didn’t even sleep. “So, that whole experience really made me grow so much as an actor that by the time ‘Cosmopolis’ came around, not to brush it off, but I was ready for something like that. I felt prepared,” she continued. “Also, David is such an intelligent and thoughtful director, but he’s also a man of few words, so getting ‘Cosmopolis,’ when he asked me to be a part of that film, in a way, it was a validation.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Cosmopolis.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
Gidget . It’s a brand with next to no name recognition for its target audience of teenage girls, and yet, it’s the next franchise to get a big ol’ Hollywood reboot. 300 producer Mark Canton is planning a TV and movie makeover for the Malibu surf bunny heroine, though when I read excited statements from executives and producers who talk about “reviving Gidget,” all I can think is “too soon.” [ Variety ]
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