November 10, 2000

10:36 AM

Basic Instinct 2will be directed by David Cronenberg. Paul Verhoeven walked out in disgust after reading the 'sick' script. How low does it go?
posted by john (11 comments total)

In other semi-movie news, Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club writer) has a new book Invisible Monsters.
posted by john at 10:42 AM on November 10, 2000

'Basic Instinct' was one of the worst movies of the 90's but if Cronenberg is directing the sequel maybe it will have his own freaky style.
posted by Mr. skullhead at 10:46 AM on November 10, 2000

Too sick for Verhoeven? More likely not sick enough. He wanted icepicks to shoot out of Sharon Stone's pelvis when she uncrossed her legs.

Give the movie to John Woo. After Sharon Stone beds a victim, she'll take off her face and reveal that she's actually Nicholas Cage.
posted by lileks at 11:34 AM on November 10, 2000

Don't give Cronenberg any ideas about icepick-firing pelvises--but then, he probably already had that in mind.

I'm looking forward to the part where, after a lovingly-shot tryst with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sharon Stone beats Michael Douglas to death with his own cane.


posted by Skot at 12:02 PM on November 10, 2000

BI 1 wasn't that bad. A guilty pleasure of low-brow faux high-brow erotic thriller.
posted by dhartung at 1:06 PM on November 10, 2000

And, for us access queens (you know how numerous we are in MetaFilterland), Basic Instinct is one of only two DVDs with audio description. (T2 is the other, though not the Special Edition – not enough bits left over on the disc after all the crap was added.) Now, why there aren't more such DVDs is a fascinating discussion, which we will leave for another day.
posted by joeclark at 3:00 PM on November 10, 2000

Joe, what do you mean by audio description?
posted by john at 3:37 PM on November 10, 2000

Joe, what do you mean by audio description?

I wish to hell there were a decent simple page online to explain it, like Gary Robson's Captioning FAQ. Audio description: A narrator, working from a script, describes out loud the visual details that are necessary to understand a film via audio alone. (I seem to come up with a different definition every time.) See Descriptive Video Service (which described Basic Instinct) and a few of my own articles, which I can't link to, because, while Jason Kottke and his ilk get away with autobloggatio all the time, I cannot. Try three doubleyous point joeclark decimal org virgule cc dot hypertext markup language.
posted by joeclark at 9:49 PM on November 10, 2000

Neat audio description meta there, joester.
posted by dhartung at 11:17 PM on November 10, 2000

A comment: apparently Verhoeven has his highbrow
defenders in the film community. A notable one is
Jonathan Rosenbaum, who mentions the film in
passing in a review of Hollow Man:

http://www.chireader.com/movies/
archives/2000/0800/000811.html

Rosenbaum argues that the film has held up better
than he originally thought, and that Verhoeven's
misanthropy and eroticism is mistaken for
misogyny. Amazingly, he also notes that
Showgirls has its ardent defenders, including
Jim Jarmusch (in another review, which I can't
find).

Just thought I'd mention it.
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 3:04 AM on November 11, 2000

Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy. Let's try this again. Two useful sources are the so-called Audio Description Home Page (warning: pretentious theatre people at work) and a literature page at the AFB. I've written a few things here and there.
posted by joeclark at 6:45 AM on November 11, 2000