Lucky Brits can get their hands on ‘Cosmopolis’ DVD and blu ray already! While the rest of us wait for our copies, here’s a great review from Phil on Film. We’ve excerpted a bit for you but be sure to check out the full write-up HERE.
How do you make this story cinematic? Engaging? Relatable? If you’re David Cronenberg, you do it by staying incredibly faithful to the source material.The result is a film that has a tone and rhythm unlike any other, and it takes a while to get on the movie’s wavelength. The actors deliver their often-cryptic dialogue in a strangely stilted, affectless manner, and in this respect the casting of Robert Pattinson was a masterstroke by Cronenberg. The actor who shot to fame by playing a vampire here plays Eric Packer as a man who seems just as bloodless. As he sits in the back of his limo and is informed of the money that his company is haemorrhaging, he displays no concern and barely any interest. What do you get the man who has everything? All Eric wants is a haircut, which is why this opulently designed vehicle is crawling across a Manhattan that has been locked down for the President’s visit and the funeral of a rapper.The ExtrasI was disappointed to find no commentary from David Cronenberg on the disc because he’s one of the best movie talkers in the business. Instead, we have half an hour of interview soundbites, but you can skip them and go straight to Citizens of Cosmopolis, a behind-the-scenes documentary that is just as long as the film itself. Exploring every aspect of the production, this feature offers some fascinating insights into how the film was made and allows us to watch this master filmmaker at work on set. Even if the film wasn’t excellent, I’d recommend checking out the Cosmopolis DVD and blu-ray just for this documentary, which is one of the best extra features I’ve seen on a disc in years.
Check the side bar for links to buy or preorder ‘Cosmopolis’.
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Cosmopolis - The Movie Fansite. Film by David Cronenberg starring Robert Pattinson 
Looks like I may have to order the UK Blu-ray, since our cinema release date has gone from Nov 1 to never-in-a-million-years. 😦
Oh that sucks, sorry to hear that. 😦 Let me know when you do see it so we can chat.
Thanks for this info–I will add the British version to my German one in order to see “Citizens.”
I don’t know where else to put this, but I would like to mention for those who are interested in the themes of Cosmopolis the book as well as the movie: I have just read Robert Harris’s thriller The Fear Index. All the way through I asked myself whether Harris had read DeLillo (very throroughly) or just shared the Zeitgeist. The main character is a sociopath physicist-computer genius who starts his own “algorythmic hedge fund” and becomes a multi-billionaire. He lives in Geneva (because he first worked at CERN), has a huge modern house, an artist wife (she perpetuates ultrasonic body images on glass plate sculptures) whom he manages to alienate. He has a sinister security expert, a team of brilliant nerds, and a stalker-assassinator. The words “horror and despair” appear in the text, as does the Icarus image. Rather than Einstein and Marx, Darwin, Bill Gates, and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) provide the intertextual quotations. The plot is much more conventional and the language more accessible than those of Cosmopolis, but one gets a
look inside the “complex” and sees exactly how the stock market crash is created. The system foresees the future, and the hero actually “succeeds” in transferring his mind from his body (which gets mutilated) into a perpetually self maintaining electronic alternative universe. This novel will also be filmed, by Paul Greenglas (sp.?). That should make for another interesting comparison.
Sounds like an interesting book! I like comparing and contrasting, lol, I’ll check it out. Are you on Goodreads by any chance? I’m Debb24601 over there.
The documentary does sound amazing. I’m really looking forward to that.
To date I’ve avoided any film featuring Robert Pattinson (biting people), but this one had me intrigued (especially as he doesn’t bit anyone). The film has been described as: pretentious, self indulgent, cold, cynical, philosophical, incoherent, complicated, demanding, bizarre, unconventional, nonsensical and dialog-heavy. If (like me) you look at these as positive points, this could be a film for you. If you’d rather see: giant robots, lovesick vampires or effeminate pirates, *maybe* this isn’t your thing – who knows…
David Cronenberg tends to go for something more abstract and off-the-wall, which he has succeeded in doing here. Would possibly also appeal to fans of David Lynch.