News Archive - March 2003

20 March

On Hold
The Plasma Pool is on hold until further notice.

I'm sorry for all the dedicated visitors and good friends during the existence of this site.

18 March

Gratitude to Cheeky
I wanted to personally thank Cheeky Chicken for her great effort and excellent work on providing some of my favorite and most wanted movies.

You've already seen Something Wild (1986) and most recently, The Bounty (1984). And soon you'll see The Field (1990) and The Falcon and the Snowman (1984).

Hugs and kisses, Cheeky!

17 March

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) - Official DVD
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), which was mentioned here more than once (see July 9, 2002 ; December 22, 2002 ; January 10, 2003) has finally been officially released on DVD.

You can buy it on Amazon for $15.

Some technical specs:
Run Time: 110 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Region: 1 (US and Canada)
Audio: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Extras: Theatrical trailer

Winds of War
As you know, the beginning of the war against Saddam is now just a matter of hours.

The "headquarters" of The Plasma Pool is located in Israel, and more specifically - in the exact area considered most likely to be hit in case of an Iraqi attack on Israel (it's the area that was bombed in the Gulf War).

Like I said before, my plans are keeping this site free from political issues. Still, since the threats of this war are very actual here, I do think it's appropriate to refer to it, but I'm not going to make this into a political debate.

16 March

Spider DVD Released
Ashbrg (neural-surged) refers us to Manga Films, which released the Spider DVD on March 12 in Spain.

Aspect ratio is 1.78:1, and audio is 5.1 channels.

Extras: Trailer, interviews, photo galleries, a short featurette about the shooting and a report about Cronenberg at Sitges.

15 March

Happy Birthday, Dave!
Happy birthday to our favorite director, David Cronenberg for his 60th birthday.

May you have 60 more years of fruitful cinematic creation.

(P.S.: It was a total coincidence that The Plasma Pool was born 5 days before Dave)

11 March

DK's Recommendation: Pi (1998)
Pi (1998) is, without doubt, the best no-budget movie I've ever seen. Directed by Darren Aronofsky with a ridiculous budget of $60,000 - which I first thought was a mistake in the figures, since I Darren Aronofsky couldn't believe such a movie could possibly be made with that amount of money.

Most of the cast and crew later re-united to make Requiem for a Dream (2000) - one of the best movies made in the last few years. Like many others, it was Requiem that made me find Pi. It took Aronofsky only 2 movies to become one of my favorite directors, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for this young and promising writer/director.

The movie stars Sean Gullette, which co-wrote the movie with Aronofsky and Eric Watson. You might recognize him as Arnold (Marion's old partner and shrink) in Requiem. Gullette is perfect in his role and does an amazing job here. It's a shame we don't see his talent in more movies.

Mark Margolis (Mr. Rabinowitz in Requiem) is excellent as Max's mentor and all the other cast is doing a great job too.

Like in Requiem, technical aspect is top-notch: Excellent black-and-white cinematography (Matthew Libatique) and the innovative use of the Snorricam, lightning, editing (Oren Sarch), and music (Clint Mansell, frontman for Pop will Eat itself).

The director's commentary for this movie is fascinating. After hearing it you'd appreciate the effort and heart that were put into this movie a lot more.

Look for guest/cameo appearances by Samia Shoaib (the nurse in Requiem) as Devi, Max's nextdoor neighbor; Clint Mansell (the movie's composer) as the photographer; and Abraham Aronofsky (Darren's father) as one of the men delivering the suitcase at the door.

One last word. While some aspects presented in the movie - such as the Hebrew numerology and mathematical concepts - are correct (that is, the explanations of Hebrew numerology are not made-up; That doesn't mean I actually believe in any of the meanings attached to them), I suggest you to use your suspension-of-disbelief instead of trying to find logic and mistakes in them.

DK's Rating: 10/10 Sean Gullette as Max

Pi (1998)
Director's audio commentary
Trailer 1: Real / Quicktime (6.5MB)
Trailer 2
Music Video (25MB)
Soundtrack
Official Site

10 March

The Plasma Pool is 1 year old
A year has passed since the birth of this site. The Plasma Pool is still alive and kicking . I didn't know it would be running and active after so long.

As most of the other Cronenberg fan sites have ceased updating for months now, I think it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this is now the most updated and active Cronenberg fan site on the net. I guess it fulfills its purpose, since I started it as an answer to the lack of (active) Cronenberg sites on the net. It's great to see the fans, the interest and the participation of people from all over the world.

Now is a good time to finally do what you always wanted to do and didn't find the time... sign the Guestbook

You can always read the site's history in the News Archive (link is at the bottom of the page), starting from the first day of existing as a site. In the FAQ you can read about the site's past (starting as a small page, that became a site a week later) and its future - I still have no idea how long it's gonna last (I came close to freezing it a few months ago and the coming times wouldn't be easy either).

I'm glad to see people enjoying the news, photos, links and my reviews and comments. It means I must be doing something right . Running an organized and updated site on your own is not an easy task. I want to have this opportunity to give special thanks to the active and contributing fans (lead by the always-dedicated Ashbrg (neural-surged)), who make this site even more interesting.

Another issue I'd like to mention. You already know that this site is the work of an Israeli fan. During Israel its entire existence, I never got into politics. It's not a coincidence and it's not because I don't have opinions on these matters. It's because I believe that (some) arts, specifically the work of David Cronenberg, is universal and could be appreciated no matter where one comes from and what political or religious beliefs one holds. It's because I believe that these universal emotions join us together, different people from all over the world. The political issues that Israel faces are very complicated and I understand how sometimes it's easy to see a distorted picture. Although I feel as some kind of a representative of my country and have an urge to discuss and explain some of the issues that are simply impossible to see and grasp from any other place in the world, at the same time I'm certain this was not the purpose of this site. The site meant to be global and enjoyable to people everywhere. It meant to join us all by universal art.

I hope you keep enjoying The Plasma Pool.

Yours truly,

March 7

Cronenberg Interviews
Hedwig refers us to an interesting interview (from Film Journal International) with David Cronenberg, discussing Spider. This interview is from November 2002.

Ashbrg (the real one this time ) refers us to another interesting interview, which is probably more recent. Watch the last 2 questions, about Painkillers: Cronenberg says he's working on a rewrite to the script, which "would definitely be classified as sci-fi"; Robert Lantos wants to produce; They're still struggling for financing.

March 6

Fakers on the Message Board
There are idiots everywhere. This one gets the half-year prize. We didn't have such a no-life idiot on the site since June 14.

What is it all about? The news posted here on March 4 (now deleted) concerning Painkillers is based on a totally fake post that was made in the name of the site's most reliable source, Ashbrg (neural-surged).

The free message board doesn't ask for authentication, so the faker used Ashbrg's name on the board and posted the fake news. Such a thing never happened here before, so I didn't suspect anything.

The real Ashbrg saw the fake post only today and immediately told me about it and posted it on the board. But if that wasn't enough, the faker posted again, saying the announcement about the fake is itself a fake. Yes, some people have absolutely no life...

So, from now on:
1. Every "news item" posted on the message board will be dealt as coming from an unreliable source and won't be posted on the main page.
2. If you want to send news, you'll have to e-mail it directly to me. Since this can be faked too, I'll only trust reliable sources (me and Ashbrg already got a secret way to authenticate ).
3. I'll try to find an alternative to the free message board. A place to post message with logins and passwords.

My apologies for posting a news article based on fake information. That's the first time it happens and I can only hope it won't happen again.

March 3

Spider Review on IMDB
IMDB has "officially" reviewed Spider on its news articles last Friday.

Read the review here.

They are also running an ad for the movie, with links to the photos, trailer and official website.

March 2

Tim Burton's Big Fish
Tim Burton's new movie, Big Fish
has already started shooting in central Alabama in mid-January. The movie, budgeted at $70m, features some familiar faces: Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, Danny DeVito and more. Release date is currently scheduled to late 2003.

Coming Attractions has a nice scoop from an inside crewmembers who reports about the shooting, including a parade scene in which one of the actors will appear to be 3.5 meters tall.

Plot synopsis is on JoBlo's site.

Woody Allen's Anything else
Woody Allen's new comedy-romance, Anything else is currently in post-production and scheduled to have its US release in September 2003.

The movie, budgeted at $18m, tells the story of a struggling artist (Allen) who has an affair with a much younger woman (Christina Ricci), which breaks the heart of her boyfriend (Jason Biggs), and raises the ire of her shotgun-wielding father (Danny DeVito).

Produced by DreamWorks Pictures, which brought us "average-quality Allen" in the last 3 years.

March 1

Site Statistics
Some statistics about the site and its visitors:

• The site contains 1280 files, weighing 17.5MB.
• It currently has about 45 unique visitors daily.
• Most of the known (that also means excluding US) visitors are from (in order, from left to right):

   Sweden Japan UK France Germany Finland Canada Italy Austria Czech Republic Netherlands Belgium Denmark Spain Brazil Israel Estonia Poland Australia Argentina

As always, you can take a look at the News Archive (link is at the bottom of this page) to see the site's history.

DK's Recommendation

The Bounty (1984)

DK's rating: 8/10
DVD | Soundtrack | CD1, CD2


DK's Recommendation

Pi (1998)

More details on March 11.
DK's rating: 10/10
DVD | OST | Download


DK's Recommendation

Carne (1991)

Prequel to Seul Contre Tous
DVD | Download
English subtitles: N/A


DK's Recommendation

Seul Contre Tous
(I Stand Alone) (1998)

DVD | Download
English subtitles: 1 | 2


DK's Recommendation

Something Wild (1986)

DK's rating: 7/10
DVD | OST | Download


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January
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