blorp visual cuisine

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This week we have a double feature of David Cronenberg films based off the works of two famous authors: J.G. Ballard & David Henry Hwang. There's a related intermission and an unrelated pre-show to help counter the fact that there's not enough music in the second film despite it being about an opera singer.

Crash (1996)

1h 39m 39s, English with optional English subtitles
Director: David Cronenberg, Writers: J.G. Ballard, David Cronenberg

Featuring James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Elias Koteas, the film looks at the Fetishism of car culture, the inevitable car accidents, and oh, let's say a need to feel something. WARNING: not for the feint of heart nor non-adults due to large amounts of sex and violence.

American Cinematographer calls it:

a psychological future-scape populated by characters who, having lost the ability to connect on an emotional level, engage in fetishistic sex and bizarre car-crash rituals.

Roger Ebert concluded his review by saying:

It’s like a porno movie made by a computer: It downloads gigabytes of information about sex, it discovers our love affair with cars, and it combines them in a mistaken algorithm. The result is challenging, courageous and original–a dissection of the mechanics of pornography. I admired it, although I cannot say I “liked” it. It goes on a bit too long. Afterward, I found myself wishing a major director would lavish this kind of love and attention on a movie about my fetishes.

The BBC notes that Francis Ford Coppola so disliked the film that a special jury prize was created for Crash at Cannes because Coppola refused to hand the award to Cronenberg personally.

(Intermission) Crash! (1971)

A BBC short program/adaptation (17 minutes) directed by Harley Cokeliss based on a chapter in J. G. Ballard's book The Atrocity Exhibition (written before Crash), and including Ballard talking about the ideas in his book. From the film:

"Each year, hundreds of thousands are killed in car crashes all over the world. Are these arranged deaths? Arranged by the colliding forces of our technological landscape, by our own unconscious fantasies about power and aggression?"

M. Butterfly (1993)

1h 41m 01s, English with hardcoded English subtitles
Director: David Cronenberg, Writer: David Henry Hwang

Jeremy Irons, John Lone, Barbara Sukowa

In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling - but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks, based on the Tony winning play by David Henry Hwang. The story is inspired by the opera Madama Butterfly and a (different) true story.

from Crooked Marquee:

M. Butterfly is typically written off as one of Cronenberg’s worst, a misguided slip into normalcy before returning to his patented madness with the likes of Crash and Existenz. He never made anything this muted again, which is a shame because M. Butterfly is still very much a narrative with his name all over it. it may not be as viscerally terrifying as seeing your own organs on display, but being confronted with your smothering fantasies of bigotry by those you oppress is perhaps a more realistic fear for many of Cronenberg’s viewers.

Content Warnings

Crash: UK rated 18, US rated TV-MA
Sex & Nudity: Severe
Violence & Gore: Severe
Profanity: Severe
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Mild
Frightening & Intense Scenes: Severe

M. Butterfly: U.S. rated R, U.K 15
Sex & Nudity: Moderate
Violence & Gore: Moderate
Profanity: Mild
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Mild
Frightening & Intense Scenes: Moderate

Eno (2024) Japan rated G, U.K. 12A
no reports (yet) from imdb nor https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/1724301

The pre-show, Eno (2024), is English with hard coded English subtitles, from director Gary Hustwit and featuring: Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, and Brian Eno. It is a generative documentary such that the official release randomizes to give 52 quintillion possible iterations, so that no viewing is the same twice, but the version here is fixed to just one of those possibilities. (1h 20m)

Blorping begins @ 4:00pm EDT/20:00 UTC
https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine
Remember: everyone should use a VPN for blorptube and any peertube.

letterboxd

https://letterboxd.com/film/eno-2024/
https://letterboxd.com/film/crash/
https://letterboxd.com/film/crash-1971/
https://letterboxd.com/film/m-butterfly/

movie links

• ~2:30pm EDT/18:30 UTC (pre-show) Eno: https://tankie.tube/w/b5jCac1ijii6PGGjbZtFFN
• 4:00pm EDT/20:00 UTC - Crash: https://tankie.tube/w/rhG8xjq7nva6HZdX46suU9
• break: https://tankie.tube/w/5ZM2LbrDhtkpY5hgskmx8B
• 6:00pm EDT/22:00 UTC - M. Butterfly: https://tankie.tube/w/rDTmZwFQ36UHciZ4ESAPWZ