Editorial Product Review: essential video:Jeremy Irons gives another superb and underrated performance in MÂ Butterfly, an elegant adaptation of the Broadway hit by playwright David Henry Hwang. Irons plays a French diplomat in China in 1964 who falls in love with a star of the Beijing Opera, not realizing that the entrancing performer holds secrets that will ruin his life--that the singer is a spy for the Communist government is only the beginning of the diplomat's troubles. Though MÂ Butterfly may seem like a departure for director David ...
Editorial Product Review: :Internal madness is hypnotically externalized in David Cronenberg's Spider, a disturbing portrait of schizophrenia. Adapted by Patrick McGrath from his celebrated novel, this no-frills production begins when 'Spider' Cleg (Ralph Fiennes, in a daring, nearly nonverbal role) returns to his childhood neighborhood in London's dreary East End, where a traumatic event from his past percolates to the surface of his still-erratic consciousness. Released from a mental institution and left to fend for himself, he pursues elusive memories while staying in a halfway house run ...
Editorial Product Review: :'If this picture doesn't make you scream and squirm, you should see a psychiatrist--quick!' shouts the film's trailer. This time the hyperbole is right. David Cronenberg's debut feature, and Canada's first domestic horror film, is an ingeniously engineered slasher of thoroughly modern horror that, like George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, charts a social breakdown by tearing through our most intrinsic taboos. A genetically engineered designer parasite--part aphrodisiac, part venereal disease--created by a modern-day mad scientist escapes into a colorless, self-contained apartment complex ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:You are now entering Interzone, William S. Burroughs's phantasmagorical land of junk, paranoia, and crawly things. Best travel advice: 'Exterminate all rational thought.' In David Cronenberg's superbly shot, unnerving warp on the Burroughs novel, the novelist himself becomes a main character (played in an implacable monotone by Peter Weller), with elements from Burroughs' life--including the shooting of his wife during a 'William Tell' game, and bohemian friends Kerouac and Ginsberg--added to frame the book's wild visions. This is, ironically, a somewhat rational ...
Editorial Product Review: :The Dead Zone is based on a novel by Stephen King, directed by David Cronenberg (Scanners, The Fly) and produced by Debra Hill (Halloween, The Fog). Such a trio of horror vets would be expected to come up with an evening of shocks and gore, but The Dead Zone is a surprise. While it has great atmospheric eeriness and undeniably scary moments, The Dead Zone is at heart a sensitive and thoughtful portrayal of main character Johnny Smith's dilemma. Christopher Walken, king of the ...
Editorial Product Review: :Arguably the best and most personal of director David Cronenberg's early films, The Brood is an extremely unsettling horror film about familial disintegration and emotional trauma taken to a monstrous extreme. Art Hindle (Black Christmas) stars as a man embroiled in a bitter custody struggle with his estranged wife (Samantha Eggar), who is undergoing therapy at psychiatrist Oliver Reed's controversial institute. Reed's treatment causes his patients to give form to their inner conflicts, and Eggar--whose psyche is at the boiling point from childhood abuse ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Love it or loathe it, David Cronenberg's 1983 horror film Videodrome is a movie to be reckoned with. Inviting extremes of response from disdain (critic Roger Ebert called it 'one of the least entertaining films ever made') to academic euphoria, it's the kind of film that is simultaneously sickening and seemingly devoid of humanity, but also blessed with provocative ideas and a compelling subtext of social commentary. Giving yet another powerful and disturbing performance, James Woods stars as the operator of a ...
Editorial Product Review:Description:Welcome to the world of the Scannersa race of humans with telekinetic powers that can wreak havoc beyond your most dreaded nightmare. Writer/director David Cronenberg (The Fly, Naked Lunch) brings the terror closer than ever beforehe brings it right into your mind. Cronenberg is a modern-day horror master whose name fits in easily with the likes of King, Craven and Carpenter...and Scanners, with its spectacular and shockingly realistic special effects, is a startling masterpiece of the genre. When a rogue Scanner of unparalleled power ...
Editorial Product Review: :'If this picture doesn't make you scream and squirm, you should see a psychiatrist--quick!' shouts the film's trailer. This time the hyperbole is right. David Cronenberg's debut feature, and Canada's first domestic horror film, is an ingeniously engineered slasher of thoroughly modern horror that, like George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, charts a social breakdown by tearing through our most intrinsic taboos. A genetically engineered designer parasite--part aphrodisiac, part venereal disease--created by a modern-day mad scientist escapes into a colorless, self-contained apartment complex ...
Editorial Product Review: :Director David Cronenberg's eXistenZ is a stew of corporate espionage, virtual reality gaming, and thriller elements, marinated in Cronenberg's favorite Crock-Pot juices of technology, physiology, and sexual metaphor. Jennifer Jason Leigh is game designer Allegra Geller, responsible for the new state-of-the-art eXistenZ game system; along with PR newbie Ted Pikul (Jude Law), they take the beta version of the game for a test drive and are immersed in a dangerous alternate reality. The game isn't quite like PlayStation, though; it's a latexy pod made ...
Small and light enough for a shirt pocket, Samsung's Helix YX-M1 is a one-stop audio entertainment center with an XM radio, a digital music player, and room for 50 hours of tunes, but it comes up short on battery life.
