Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/07/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, April 7, 2025

Fast Company (David Cronenberg, 1979)

Cast: William Smith, Claudia Jennings, John Saxon, Nicholas Campbell, Don Francks, Cedric Smith, Jody Foster, Robert Haley, George Buza, David Graham, David Petersen, Chuck Chandler. Screenplay: Phil Savath, Courtney Smith, David Cronenberg, Alan Treen. Cinematography: Mark Irwin. Art director: Carol Spier. Film editor: Ronald Sanders. Music: Fred Mollin.

A cheesy racing flick with a low-wattage cast and not much suspense from a surprising director, Fast Company doesn't have much to offer anyone except devotees of David Cronenberg who will try hard (and probably fail) to see signs of auteurship. It's so carelessly put together that at one point you can see that the image has been flopped because the "Goodyear" logo on a character's cap is reversed. The mediocrity extends to a song score by composer Fred Mollin that sounds like it's ripping off "Born to Run" -- Springsteen couldn't be persuaded to provide the real thing.