David Cronenberg's entire film career is based in body horror, though.

I'm mostly in agreeance with that. I think he has done a couple of basically mainstream movies, but Videodrome and The Fly certainly qualify.

a very large strain of horror movies which depends on buried anxieties about the body.

Oh yes, both personal anxieties and social ones. I always thought it Verrrrry Interestink that in Halloween, Laurie defends herself against the monster with a wire coathanger. In the 1970s, kind of a significant tool, when relating to a woman's body.

David Cronenburg's entire film career is based in body horror, though.

The interesting thing with Cronenberg is that his focus has shifted massively over the course of his career. Where his early stuff was very objective and head-on in exploring body horror, his work slowly shifted to deeply subjective. Around the time after The Fly, he started mostly giving up on the gorey stuff (although, as he has said, him being him means you still get healthy doses of the goopy stuff in NAKED LUNCH and eXistenZ) and exploring how perception of reality alters one's reality (which he first really touched on in VIDEODROME).

By the time you get to SPIDER, you're getting an almost entirely subjective movie about what it's like to be schizophrenic. Still a lot of body issues involved, but almost nothing in the way of special effects or gore.

Anyway, the guys one of my favorite director's, and a great interview subject to boot - very articulate and thoughtful.

You saw that Bats is opening slightly earlier than planned, right?

Oh!

Clive Owen has signed a deal to star in Universal's SF movie Children of Men, to be directed by Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Variety reported. The movie is set in a future in which people can no longer have children, the trade paper reported.

Strike Entertainment's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman will produce the film, which is based on mystery writer P.D. James' novel of the same title, the trade paper reported. Owen (Sin City) will play the guardian o

That might be pretty.

Yes!

In my quest to re-locate the Superbowl spot (now if only I could recall who I promised the link to), I noticed that there are a gazillion new Batman Begins wallpapers at the official site.

I waffled, saved them all, and am now using the Batmobile.

Zaphod Beeblebrox For President music video.

(Not in the film, but funny.)

There's a picture of Viggo and his crew in costume for Alatriste here. -- Look at the gallery, there are also some very pretty pictures of Andalusia.

Well, but within the framework of an honor society, as posited in Reservoir Dogs or in your basic Hong Kong gangster movie, death or even painful death isn't punishment. The point isn't that the cop dies; that's a given from the first frame of the movie. The point is that, before he dies, he confesses his betrayal. At that point in the film, Harvey Keitel is arguably mortally wounded; help on the way; the cop could just keep his mouth shut for another 10 minutes and die with his secret or survive with it; but honesty is too important in that situation.

But do you think it's really presented as moral? For the characters it is, but for the audience? I agree that the same events could be presented as if he's doing something admirable, but I don't think they were. And I'm having trouble articulating it... Playing "The Lime in the Coconut" over the credits seems like a very deliberate attempt to distance the audience from the characters and say, "Boy, that was fucked up, wasn't it?" I don't come away thinking, "At least he died with honor."

Playing "The Lime in the Coconut" over the credits

Oooh. Suddenly the Coke with Lime commercial makes a whole lot more sense.