What will you give Keira Knightley for her birthday?

...apart from 33 spankings, which Fassy has already claimed.

The Linking Cure

Incredible Suit is on the Goswatch to detail four upcoming chances for Ryan Gosling to continue his awesomeness into 2013.
Collider Great news for Viola Davis fans - a second lead role cometh. (Of course she had to make it happen herself.) She'll produce and star in a biopic about the first African American elected to the Texas senate. It's based on the Mary Beth Rogers book Barbara Jordan: An American Hero.

Vanity Fair has a gallery of backstage photos of film/theaters stars in their dressing rooms by Simon Annand including beautiful shots of Rachel Weisz, Tom Hardy, Daniel Craig and Cate Blanchett.
Flavorwire 40 of the best lines from Mad Men's Don Draper (Jon Hamm) or his writing team, rather. Someone make this into a super cut please. One my my all time favorites is:

You don’t cover for me. You manage people’s expectations."

In Contention on the ongoing success and controverseries surrounding Asghar Farhadi's amazing Oscar winner A Separation.
Kenneth in the (212) thinks Rosie's interview show on Oprah's new network is great. Apparently she and Sandra Bernhard talked King of Comedy quite a bit. Ugh, love that movie. (Damnit does this mean I have to DVR another show?)
Boston Review a former president of the American Psychiatric Association reviews A Dangerous Method. Interesting review and it takes time to detour into the theatrical production of "The Talking Cure" (the play that preceded the movie) wherein Ralph Fiennes starred in what became the Michael Fassbender role.
ioncinema oooh, the first photos I've seen from Laurence Anyways the new Xavier Dolan picture. This one stars the wonderful Melvil Poupaud as a man who decides he wants to be a woman.

Today's Must Read
Moviefone's Mike Ryan calls a "John Carter" in 50 states to see if they're seeing John Carter this weekend. Insane, funny, awesome.

7 Things Viggo Mortensen Should Be Chewing On That Aren't His Shirt

Have you seen the new cover of NY Time's Style Magazine starring "grungy antihero" Viggo Mortensen? Viggo is one of my all time favorite actors as I was just recently saying to David Cronenberg so I'm always happy to see him but this photo -- I seriously thought it was an old magazine cover from when he was like 25 until I remembered that he wasn't famous till he was like 37.

Seven Things Viggo Mortensen Should Be Chewing On That Aren't His Shirt

1. More roles as good as Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method
2. The ear of the person who photoshopped this. Viggo makes 50something hot so don't take that away from the 50somethings of the world!
3. The scenery in more prestige movies; get that Oscar role, wherever it is.
4. Diane Lane's everything in a screen reunion. They were so nsfw hot together.
5. His own decisions about who he'll vote for as Actor and Actress on his own Oscar ballot... I mean who to vote for besides Fassy & Keira. 
6. His paintbrushes. Paintbrushes should always have teethmarks in them. Have you seen his art? 
7. Maria Bello's vajayjay in A History of Violence. Time to watch the cheerleader scene again! 

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Curio: David Cronenberg in 1988

Alexa here.  While I anxiously await getting out to see A Dangerous Method, I've been busying myself reading all the reviews, interviews (including Nathaniel's) and accompanying discussion of how un-Cronenbergian the film is.  Well, he's been accused of that before, hasn't he?  The first time I recall it happening was with one of my personal Cronenberg favorites, Dead Ringers, which, at the time, seemed to break from his previous, more pure genre films. Then, after reading in a recent interview that he attempted adapting Dead Ringers for television (yes, please!), I decided to dig up this old issue of American Film I've held onto, mostly for the Cronenberg interview it contains.  Here are some excerpts from the piece, written by Owen Gleiberman, which is an interesting read today, given the trajectory Cronenberg's career has taken since.

[As for the upcoming Dead Ringers], "I think it's a departure in the way it's perceived and the way I'm perceived. It's like doing a more intricate dance on the high wire but it doesn't feel like so much of a departure to me creatively, because I feel I'm dealing with the same themes I've always dealt with," Cronenberg says.

In a sense, what Cronenberg has done is bring the genre of bodily horror into the post-Freudian age. His most prominent innovation (it's linked to the gooey verisimilitude of his special effects) is making the sexual and fear-of-disease subtexts of studio horror films explicit, self-conscious, stripped of the reassuring distance of fantasy...If just about every Cronenberg film has hinged on the proverbial split between mind and body, with the body taking on a hideous life of its own, in Dead Ringers a human personality is itself divided into warring parts. "This is not a horror film. This is a relatively straight drama. I don't have a lot of trickery to hide behind."

Despite their fixation on disease, Cronenberg's films have dealt explicitly with sexuality as far back as They Came From Within. "It was very important that my twins are gynecologists. Somehow, it was the idea of two men forming a perfect unit that excluded everybody else. The twins share not only one woman in particular sexually, but they share their understanding of women and their study of women...I identify with all my scientists and my doctors, because I think what they are and what they do is very similar to what I do. And then I've always been very fascinated with how abstract elements, whether it's spirituality or sexuality, relate to physical elements of our life, which is to say, genitalia and brains and things like that."

"I think [Dead Ringers] really relates to all intense relationships in which things happen that have the potential to become liberating on one level but suffocating on the other level. And I think at that point you're talking about marriage, you're talking about parents and children. The twins become a metaphor for all those things."

[Editors' Note: In a moment of totally unexpected synchronicity, Nick's Flick Picks has also just written a piece on Dead Ringers (1988). Even if you haven't seen that Cronenberg masterpiece, you'll want to read it if you have any interest in the process of critics awards voting and the out-of-the-box choices various organizations make, only very occassionally, when it comes time to name the "Best". -Nathaniel]

David Cronenberg on A Dangerous Method & the "Parallel Universe" of Oscar

Cronenberg hard at work on "A Dangerous Method"I met the great filmmaker David Cronenberg one morning this fall shortly before a screening of his latest work at the New York Film Festival. His new film A Dangerous Method, which just opened and will be expanding throughout the month in theaters, is a historical drama about the birth of psychoanalysis. In the film Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and his protege Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) are torn apart over idealogical differences and Jung's treatment of a young woman named Sabina (Keira Knightley).

Cronenberg in person was talkative, articulate and fascinating. He was even good natured about the sordid topic of Oscar (incredibly the reknowned auteur has never been nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe or even a DGA prize!).

His ease with conversation might surprise people who only know him through his often unsettling films. The night before our interview I'd been at a party and when I casually mentioned I'd be interviewing Cronenberg the next day I heard the strangest funniest responses: "Don't get in a car with him!" "Don't let him touch your portals!" and so on. Other amusing warnings followed as if he were a frightening character from his movies.

I relayed this to Cronenberg as icebreaker when we sat down...

Nathaniel: Do you find that people regularly have odd conceptions about you based on your films? 

DAVID CRONENBERG: Well, you know, I haven't done horror films for a long time so it's strange that it's sticky. I've talked about this before but Marty Scorsese told me he was terrified to meet me -- we did meet and became very good friends many years ago -- but he said he was terrified and then shocked to see that I looked like a Beverly Hills gynecologist. And I said 'You were afraid to meet me? You're the guy who made Taxi Driver?!'

a small sampling of his often deeply troubling films

It was a long time ago. But he had seen Shivers and Rabid and maybe The Brood and he found them incredibly overwhelming and terrifying. He of all people should know and I suppose if Marty could make the same mistake...

The relationship of an artist to his art is a complex one. It's not one to one. It's not like you make romantic comedies therefore you are romantic and fun. On the contrary we know that most comedians are really nastily, hostile, spiteful vindictive people.

Nathaniel: Does your work ever scare you then, when you see it back?

CRONENBERG: I don't normally watch it. I can't watch my movies as though they're movies. They're documentaries of what I was doing that day. I'm the last person to be able to tell you objectively what my movies do or don't do.

Nathaniel: As an auteur you obviously have had recurring thematic elements Do you think about your past work when you're working on something new?

CRONENBERG: No. I completely don't. That's why if someone should say, it has happened, that A Dangerous Method doesn't feel like a Cronenberg film. I don't know what they're talking about. I mean, I know what the cliches are. But to me, they don't realize that the first movie I made was about a psychiatrist and his patient. It was a short, my first film. So for me this is business as usual. To me that just reveals their ignorance. I'm not saying that in a vindictive way but it just means they don't really know my work or understand it. That's the way I feel.

Nathaniel: It's actually very much like your work in terms of the concerns. You've done a lot of films that had psycho-analytic elements. Did you ever worry that this was maybe too on the nose, given that? Like you're going back to the womb or the source of it all.

CRONENBERG: No, No. It's exciting to do that!

[MORE AFTER THE JUMP: including his collaboration with Viggo, awards season lottery tickets, and the modern trend of directors tinkering with their old movies.] 

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