|
The Fly tickets are now available to be purchased or sold online at Stubhub.com. Where does high art and low art meet? You’d best pose that question to David Cronenberg, the famed cult film director whose visions of insect and flesh-inspired horror have influenced movies for decades now. But while he’s made his name in the world of cinema, he’s branching out into an entirely new field. An opera adaptation of Cronenberg’s best known movie, The Fly, will premiere in September 2008 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Cronenberg directed the opera, and the music was composed by Howard Shore, who was also responsible for the film’s score (as well as many others he’s collaborated on with Cronenberg). There’s a good chance the opera crowd might not be familiar with the gory special effects Cronenberg’s fan base appreciates. For them, this series of articles will be helpful. Each article briefly examines one of the films from the director’s extensive canon. The first on the list? Shivers, the 1976 flick largely considered Cronenberg’s first professional full-length. In truth, "professional" is a relative term, as the movie still has a very fly-by-night, B-movie feel, and while it’s obviously done on a shoestring budget, the ideas are still strong and interesting. They introduce the themes that will recur throughout every Cronenberg film: A fear of brainless life and flesh. In this movie, an apartment complex filled with people is progressively taken over by alien slugs that turn them into drooling, sex-starved drones. Sexuality is another recurring theme of Cronenberg’s, one that’s often treated with equal doses of repulsion and obsession. Here, the sex isn’t as lurid as it is scary. It’s much like a zombie flick in that the various characters can, in fact, spread this "disease," but they do seem semi-rational, if sex-obsessed, while under the influence of the alien slugs. The story culminates with a lone male character running through the building, stumbling across people whose sexuality, usually buried under cultural mores and good taste, is bubbling to the surface. It ends—please not the spoiler warning here—with the lead actor swarmed by the building’s dwellers around an indoor swimming pool. Relenting, they pull him in to their center. The ideas about repressed sexuality are what make this more than a lurid zombie picture. And they establish Cronenberg’s ideas and voice clearly—we’ll hear the same themes repeated in his future efforts. Written by Andrew Good and sponsored by StubHub.com. StubHub sells sports tickets, concert tickets, theater tickets and more to just about any event in the world. Don't miss this Cronenberg classic with The Fly tickets.
Related Articles -
Entertainment, tickets, theater, opera, The Fly, David Cronenberg,
| 
