10 October

Exclusive Photos from the Set of History of Violence!

David Cronenberg is currently shooting his new movie, A History of Violence. During September 13-17 the crew was shooting in Millbrook, Ontario with actors Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello. In the movie, the place will be called Millbrook, Indiana (USA). A user aliased thatisit who lives nearby, served as an extra in the movie and in addition to bringing reports, was kind enough to bring some nice and exclusive photos from the location (the Mazda is his vehicle with fake Indiana plates) including photos of Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg themselves! Notice also that the Canadian post office was changed to a US post office, with a fake zip code. Thanks a lot, thatisit. Further shooting took place September 27-28 in the mall of Tottenham, Ontario with actors Maria Bello and Ed Harris. September 29 was one day of shooting in a studio. After that, shooting continued in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which was the last "on location" shooting before going back to shoot at the studio. Some more paparazzi photos of Viggo Mortensen in Toronto, taken on September 2, can be found here. Put mouse on photo to read description. Click to enlarge.

11 October

New Message Board

In a hope to make the site a little more interactive, I decided to put up a new message board. It will allow you to discuss this site, Cronenberg, movies in general, music and any other subject you can think of. Please feel free to suggest (on the Plasma Pool forum) anything you can think of to make the board or this site better. Or just introduce yourself by dropping a line on the Introductions forum. It all depends on your participation! For the moment the board doesn't support mail, so you won't get replies notifications. I'll try to find an SMTP server I can use to enable this. >> The Plasma Pool Message Board <<

7 October

Mel Brooks Writing Spaceballs Sequel

In the September 2004 issue of Playbill magazine there is a Q&A with director/writer/actor Mel Brooks about the upcoming movie, The Producers (2005) - which is based on the recent Broadway play, which is itself based on Brooks' original The Producers (1968). When asked if he'll be in the cast he had the following to say: Playbill: Will you have a role in it [The Producers]? Mel Brooks: It's doubtful, but I'm writing myself back into the Spaceballs (1987) sequel that I'm now writing, so you haven't seen the last of my face. Why another Spaceballs? It wouldn't feel right have anyone else play Yogurt and the first one was the best experience I've had making a movie since Blazing Saddles (1974). Playbill: When can we expect that? Mel Brooks: Best case scenario: a week before the new Star Wars opens. Worst Case Scenario: a year after the new Star Wars opens. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) opens in the US on 19 May 2005.

4 October

Peter Greenaway Online Q&A

For your reading convenience, I've prepared yesterday's Online Q&A with director Peter Greenaway. All the questions and answers appear in one clean page with an index. I also translated into English the questions that were asked in Hebrew. You can find it all in the Interview section.

3 October - Peter Greenaway Special

Special: Peter Greenaway Visiting Israel

Director Peter Greenaway is visiting Israel to present his Tulse Luper Suitcases trilogy. On Friday he gave a 3-hours lecture at the Haifa 20th International Film Festival and tomorrow he'll be at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Below are more details about his visit - some of his words at the lecture on Friday, and an online Q&A, including a question asked by yours truly, concerning - what else - the work of director David Cronenberg.

Peter Greenaway: The Lecture in Haifa

[In the following, I'm translating back into English some quotes, in Hebrew, that were translated from English...] Greenaway talks about "the near and inevitable death of the cinema genre" and claims that "the cinema language is wasted on cinema" and that "the last two decades are disappointing, but I'm sure that the future, due to the digital revolution and the technological evolution, will be more thrilling". Greenaway defines his Tulse Luper Suitcases project as a manifest of his fear of this death of cinema, but also his great excitment about the cinematic media with its technological splendor. Greenaway opened the lecture with the sentence "It's the duty of every media to reinvent itself all the time" and later referred even to director Martin Scorsese: "Even the honorable american director Martin Scorsese produces time after time the same chronology, the same contents, the same observations of good and evil, and in some respect the same characters from their psychoanalytic aspect. Movies today are cheered for meticulous observation of reality and not for creation. The audience has changed and the technology has changed, and today, if we want to preserve the cinematic experience - we'll have to shake it a little". He adds: "Cinema has become inaccesible because of its distribution method, but luckily we have the DVD that makes the cinematic product more accesible, even though this is not the same experience. I'm not bothered that the cinema moves from the theatre to the home media, since this is not a social experience, but an experience that demands focus and turns its viewer into an island in the dark".

Q&A with Peter Greenaway

Earlier today, Peter Geenaway conducted a 2-hours online Q&A on Ynet (which is the extremely popular official site of one of Israel's biggest newspapers). You can read all the questions and answers on this page. Although some of it is in Hebrew, most of the questions were asked in English, and all of Greenaway's answers are written in English - click the "answer" links to read them. One of the questions presented to him was asked by yours truly. Naturally, I asked him about the work of David Cronenberg. Here it is: Question - DonkeyKong: Hi Peter, Thank you for your work. My favorite movie of yours is A Zed & Two Noughts (1985). I've seen it many times and also saw you referred to it in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (2003). I'm a big David Cronenberg admirer [put here some shameless advertisement for The Plasma Pool and a personal invitation for Greenaway ]. In addition to some mutual themes and interests, I'd be happy to know your opinion about his work. Answer - Peter Greenaway: [I'm not sure if Greenaway typed it himself or let someone type it for him, so I just left it as is, with the mistakes] i was certainly at one time interested in the david cronnenberg films and you might be amused by an anecdote that after i showed a Z and two noughts, at the toronto film festival david sat me down in a hamburger bar and questioned me for 2 hours about that film. and 8 months later he made a film called dead ringers which is about twinship, mutilated females and human mutation . if you've seen both films, you'll understand the purpose of my anecdote. i admired cronnenberg for the risky subject matter he entertained, based for the most part on his own ideas but laterally i have not been so interested because he seems now to be in the business of simply illustrating sensational novels.