the multiplex must be destroyed

I’ve been to the cinema a few times. Before the movie they have that ad that looks like a trailer for Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at first but then the picture shrinks and goes all fuzzy and it turns out to be propaganda trying to persuade you to see movies in the cinema rather than on pirate DVD. Curiously, one of their arguments is that in pirate DVDs your view is often obscured by someone in the row ahead going to the toilet. OK, and that’s a reason for going to the cinema, is it? Where that never ever happens? Plus, as Mat pointed out, pirate DVDs are usually of much higher quality than that represented here. The pirate DVD makers should sue the film industry for libel.

I don’t like to go on about films, but A History of Violence is the best thing David Cronenberg’s done since Dead Ringers . Touted as a mainstream movie, it’s still recognizably Cronenberg, looking at violence with the same queasy fascination with which he used to observe the weird bodily eruptions of his earlier films. Vaginas growing in your armpits, that kind of thing. Don’t go and see it though. The mainstream doesn’t deserve this picture: we need to get Cronenberg out of the multiplexes and into hard-to-get-to art house cinemas where they won’t even let you in unless you can prove that you’ve seen all of his other movies (except that one about drag racing). That way he won’t get vulgarly successful and end up making The Pacifier 2.