David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future and Bowie doc Moonage Daydream previewed at CinemaCon

JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray is currently attending CinemaCon in Las Vegas, and he just got out of a very cool two hour presentation that was hosted by Neon. As part of this presentation, he was able to witness a new trailer (it’s not online yet) for writer/director David Cronenberg‘s upcoming body horror film Crimes of the Future – which was introduced by Cronenberg himself! – and also got to watch some CinemaCon-exclusive footage from the upcoming large format (IMAX) documentary tribute to David Bowie, Moonage Daydream!

Visiting Las Vegas for the first time in his life, Cronenberg attended CinemaCon with his longtime producer Robert Lantos, who met Cronenberg when he was screening his film Shivers at the Cannes Film Festival. Their first movie together was Crash, which Lantos described as being “loved by some and equally reviled by others”. Crimes of the Future star Viggo Mortensen has said that Cronenberg first wrote the script a long time ago, and Cronenberg confirmed this at CinemaCon, saying he wrote it twenty years ago. The script was shelved for years until Lantos asked him if he had read it recently. Cronenberg said, “I’m sure it’s irrelevant now.” Lantos disagreed, saying “it’s more relevant now than ever.”

Cronenberg mentioned that he originally wanted to film Crimes of the Future in Toronto, Ontario, but ended up shooting it in the ancient city of Athens, Greece instead – which he feels adds to it.

Here’s how Bumbray described the new trailer, which is supposed to be released next week:

In the future pain has disappeared, but body modification and surgery is art. The painful surgeries the characters do on each other are erotic and painful; very reminiscent of Crash, but with a sci-fi twist. The Neon distributor got a big laugh at the end saying, “Thank you, David and Robert, that was wonderful,” as the footage was absolutely grotesque. Far more so than what we’ve seen in the trailers so far. This is Cronenberg in full body horror mode, with the same sexual vibe you saw in Crash, although this also seems inspired by Videodrome (the sexualization of pain and the voyeuristic aspect) and The Fly (with Mortensen’s changing body that becomes more and more grosteque), which is intentional as Lantos says there’s lots of nods to Cronenberg’s career sprinkled throughout. They didn’t say as much, but it feels like this could be his farewell to horror.

Then it was time for the first look at Moonage Daydream, which is “more of a hallucinatory concert film than a documentary”. The film was directed by Brett Morgan (The Kid Stays in the Picture, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), and at CinemaCon the attendees got to see

a really cool intro set to Bowie’s “Hello Spaceboy”, which serves as the movie’s opining. The song is juxtaposed with footage of Metropolis, Le Voyage dans la Lune, and even the moon launch. It segues into footage of Bowie backstage in his Ziggy Stardust era, and his fans, with the film evoking the nearly religious fervor some of his fans had towards him.

The presentation also featured

a performance of “Moonage Daydream” taken from the film. It was pretty amazing to see in full IMAX, making the movie look like a complete assault on the senses in a lot of ways. It cuts back and forth from various performances of the song, integrated with clips from vintage sci-fi movies like George Pal’s War of the Worlds, iconic Bowie photography, and more. It’s hard to describe exactly what this movie is. It’s not exactly a documentary but I hesitate to call it a concert film either, as it’s a montage of all of Bowie’s influences matched to music. There’s also interview footage, such as Bowie in Ziggy Stardust mode being interviewed on a chat show in the seventies. For a Bowie fan this will be an incredible experience.

Morgen says he’s been a fan of Bowie since he was 11 or 12 and felt Bowie, in a way, gave him permission to be the weird kid that he was – which was a unique concept for 1971. He defied any definition, which makes him pretty contemporary. The film itself is similarly hard to classify. All of the music in Moonage Daydream was remastered from the original recordings in separate 10.1, 7.1, and 5.1 mixes.

Neon will be releasing Crimes of the Future in New York and Los Angeles on June 3rd before giving it a wide release on June 10th. Although Moonage Daydream is an HBO co-production, it is meant for theatres and will be receiving a robust IMAX theatrical run this fall.