Not to get morbid or anything, but you're going to miss David Cronenberg when he's gone. He's still working hard at 72, but someday he'll necessarily surrender his flesh, and we'll no longer have his fascinating films to experience every few years. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Hardcore Cronenberg festival presents 10 of his films over 10 weeks (each with two screenings), some of which have not been served well on video and are being presented on rare 35mm prints. Not on 35mm but still vital is his first feature, the 1975 gorefest Shivers, a J.G. Ballard-esque tale of a high rise infested by a sexually transmitted parasite. Unmissable movies presented on film-film include Cronenberg's undeniable 1983 masterpiece Videodrome, in which television is reality and reality is less than television; his obvious 1986 masterpiece The Fly, still the gold standard for how to do a remake right; and his inarguable 1996 masterpiece Crash, a direct Ballard adaptation about automotive fetishists. And be sure to give lube up your game port for eXistenZ, which in a just world would be remembered as 1999's defining film about humanity's relationship with games and virtual reality, and without any eXistenZ Reloaded or eXistenZ Revolutions to muck things up. It›s also his sexiest film this side of Videodrome and even Crash — and that's pretty hardcore.
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