maps to the stars

I had a “day off” yesterday… I cycled along the Harbourside. I had coffee at the fairly new, and rather nice, Brigstow Lounge Café (just opposite the SS Great Britain). I did a couple of drawings, I took some photographs… and I went to the Watershed cinema to see David Cronenberg’s very strange film “Maps to the Stars”. It’s set in the dog-eat-dog celebrity world of Hollywood – fading actresses (the excellent Julianne Moore plays one of them), spoilt showbiz kids, drug addiction, wannabe screenwriters, guru psychoanalysts … you get the picture. But what initially appears to be a film that satirises of the movie business unravels into a rather weird, macabre and tense two hours that seemed to have a grip on the entire Watershed cinema audience (ok, it was only a Friday afternoon, but…).

The Watershed’s blurb includes this: “We can’t give away too much but, suffice to say, this is a brilliant nightmare of the film that is Cronenberg’s strangest, most deliciously odd film yet…”. Well, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve not previously seen any of his films, but “brilliant nightmare” seems a fair summary!