De Palma a la Mod

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Film Fest Items of Interest

KOEPP & HOLLAND AT TORONTO, HURT LOCKER IN VENICE

David Koepp's latest film as director, Ghost Town, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival tomorrow. While the new film, which Koepp cowrote with John Camps, shares certain supernatural themes with Koepp's previous directorial outings, this one is a comedy that stars Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, and Téa Leoni.

Also premiering at the Toronto fest this weekend will be two new films featuring Brian De Palma's step daughter, Willa Holland. Holland stars alongside Colin Firth and Catherine Keener in Michael Winterbottom's Genova, and also stars with Susan Sarandon in John Stockwell's Middle Of Nowhere. Holland will also appear on TV's Gossip Girl this fall.

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker will also appear at Toronto, but it makes its world premiere today at Venice. At the Venice press conference today, according to Variety, Bigelow said of the film, "My interest was to give this conflict a human face, and to enable the audience to actually experience what a soldier experiences, based on personal observation from the battlefield." Screenwriter Marc Boal described the film as "primarily observational, as opposed to polemical." Boal added, "It's almost a dirty little secret of war that, as horrible as it is, there are some men who through the intensity of the experience come to find it alluring."

Posted by Geoff at 11:41 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, September 8, 2008 9:09 AM CDT
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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Howell on The Hurt Locker

The Toronto Star's Peter Howell has an early review of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, in anticipation of the film's screenings at this year's Toronto International Film Festival September 8 and 10 (prior to that, Bigelow's film will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this Thursday, September 4th). The Hurt Locker was written by Mark Boal, whose 2004 Playboy article Death and Dishonor was the source for the Paul Haggis film In The Valley Of Elah. Howell states that with this new film, Bigelow "can add titan of suspense to her laurels. If you can sit through The Hurt Locker without your heart nearly pounding through your chest, you must be made of granite."

Howell begins his review by stating, "Just when you think the battle of Iraq war dramas has been fought and lost, along comes one that demands to be seen – if you can handle the raging adrenaline. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker strips the Iraqi conflict of politics and brings it right down to the garbage-strewn pavement, where lives are saved through skill and nerve but lost through bad luck and malevolence." Elsewhere in the review, Howell writes, "Testosterone flows non-stop and so does blood, but these macho men are just getting the job done. In so doing, they reveal much about themselves and also deliver some home truths about the Iraqi quagmire. This is no message movie, yet insights abound."

Posted by Geoff at 1:00 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, September 8, 2008 9:09 AM CDT
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"CRAZY DENTAL SURGERY"
NO DE PALMA AT MONTREAL FEST
The New York Post's V.A. Musetto finally received a confirmation Sunday morning from the festival press office that Brian De Palma would not be coming to the Montreal World Film Festival to conduct a master class after all. "The reason," writes Musetto, "according to the festival: 'Crazy dental surgery.'" Meanwhile, John Griffin posted yesterday at the Montreal Gazette Ciné Files blog that De Palma's master class "was one of the biggest draws of the line-up" at this year's festival. "But neither date nor venue were ever confirmed," writes Griffin, "and despite various rumours - work, illness - his no-show remains a mystery." Griffin hoped to find out more at a Saturday dinner with the fest's publicity corps.

Posted by Geoff at 10:14 AM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 12:43 PM CDT
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Saturday, August 30, 2008

MUSETTO WAITS FOR DE PALMA
AS HUPPERT RECEIVES SPECIAL AWARD AT MONTREAL FEST

In a blog entry posted this afternoon, New York Post critic V.A. Musetto says that he is still waiting for Brian De Palma to show up at the Montreal World Film Festival, and is beginning to doubt that De Palma will even show up at all (the festival continues through Labor Day Monday). Although Musetto writes that no site has been named for De Palma's master class, the usually reliable Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette has stated that the master class will take place at the Imperial Cinema.

Meanwhile, Isabelle Huppert (pictured above by Sylvain Legaré, courtesy of the Montreal World Film Festival) arrived in Montreal earlier this week, where on Thursday she received a special award for her exceptional contribution to the cinematographic art. Huppert interviewed De Palma in 1994 for Cahiers du Cinéma.

Posted by Geoff at 2:29 PM CDT
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Friday, August 29, 2008

MASTER CLASS THIS WEEKEND
AND CURTIS TALKS DE PALMA
New York Post critic V.A. Musetto blogged yesterday that Brian De Palma was to arrive later that day at the Montreal World Film Festival, where the director will give a master class this weekend (so much for Danielle Cauchard's previous statement that De Palma would be in attendance for the entire festival-- De Palma must have had a slight change of plans). In any case, Musetto states that the press office at the fest "has been deluged with calls" about De Palma, but that if all goes well, the critic will have a chance to sit down with the director.

According to Musetto, Tony Curtis had already left before De Palma arrived, which is a bit of a shame, because De Palma may have been able to correct a bit of misinformation regarding De Palma's upcoming project, The Boston Stranglers. Last month, Curtis was interviewed by Neal Justin at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Justin aksed Curtis whether the films he made in the past could be done today. Curtis replied, "I did a movie called The Boston Strangler. Brian De Palma is going to do a remake. What's he going to do? He's probably going to show the strangling. He's going to show these women being torn apart. He's going to show that in his own poetic way." Well, actually, De Palma is not remaking that film, but he is making a film based on a book by Susan Kelly, whose The Boston Stranglers purports to correct the conclusions depicted in the Curtis film (itself based on a book by Gerold Frank). In fact, Kelly's book discusses the Curtis film (directed by Richard Fleischer), which seems likely to be a part of De Palma's story.

Posted by Geoff at 1:59 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, August 29, 2008 5:48 PM CDT
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Bigelow's Hurt Locker
"A thrilling combat film" conjuring John Wayne

From The Economist:

With one exception, films about the Iraq war have done badly in American cinemas. The exception was Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, a fiercely anti-war film made the year after the invasion. Though Disney refused to distribute it, the movie still made a fortune. But the films that came after it have mostly bombed at the box office, a fact that has led film financiers to regard the war with a superstition as potent as that which has actors referring to Macbeth as “the Scottish play”. Why is this so? Persuading audiences to flock to a film about an unpopular war is obviously difficult. Comparisons with Vietnam don’t really work. Television coverage of the Vietnam war was so intensive that Hollywood did not bother to make many films about it while it was going on. (John Wayne’s The Green Berets was released in 1968 as a corrective, it was hoped, to the TV coverage that was turning the country against the war.) But, with Iraq, that situation is reversed. The New York Times has reported that the three major American television networks logged only about 180 minutes of weekday evening reporting on the war in the first half of this year (compared to 1,157 minutes for all of 2007), and that CBS News no longer has a full-time correspondent in Iraq.
Film-makers are trying to fill the gap but their efforts, though worthy, are often depressing—and certainly not designed to pull in 14-year-olds at the mall. The best of the recent lot are Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss (2008), in which a decorated soldier is ordered back to Iraq against his will, and Redacted (2007), Brian De Palma’s re-enactment of an atrocity. The latter film, made with Canadian money, uses faux video clips to tell the awful tale of the rape and murder of a young Iraqi girl by American soldiers. Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah (2007), about a former military cop trying to find out who murdered his son after he returned from Iraq, were both made by studio speciality divisions created for modestly budgeted films, both of which have since been folded into their parent companies, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros...
...Will Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, premiering at the Venice Film Festival, succeed in disarming audience resistance? About a bomb squad defusing “improvised explosive devices” planted by insurgents in Baghdad, it is a thrilling combat film from its first image of a bomb-handling robot racing through the rubble. Then a new squad leader walks in, and the film has a hero. Staff Sergeant William James, played by Jeremy Renner (pictured above), is a wild man addicted to the adrenalin rush of doing the most dangerous job in the world. He is a character who can embody the central myth of American cinema because his job is saving lives, not taking them.
“James is the man who walks down that street in the direction that everyone else is running from,” says Ms Bigelow. “He has an iconic aura. But those traits exert a heavy price.” By making a film about an unpopular war that still gives the audience someone to root for, she may have struck gold. Perhaps the return of John Wayne is what people have been waiting for.

Posted by Geoff at 1:06 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, August 29, 2008 1:11 PM CDT
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BAUER & SALAZAR PACK SCARFACE SCREENING
IN MIAMI LAST FRIDAY

Steven Bauer and Angel Salazar, who both appeared in Brian De Palma's Scarface in 1983, hosted a packed screening of that film to mark its 25-year anniversary last Friday at Miami's Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. According to a report in the Miami Herald, the screening brought in about 800 fans of all ages. According to the report, Bauer shouted to the enthused crowd, "Feel free to yell out if you know the dialogue. Don't be shy!" Salazar and Bauer have remained friends througout the years. "After all this time, the cast is still pretty close," Salazar said with a wink, according to the Herald. "We still get together and talk about chain saws and machine guns." Bauer discussed the rough road Scarface had upon its initial release. "It's nice to see this kind of frenzy," the Cuban native said, according to the Herald. "For a long time we couldn't enjoy the success because there was a lot of backlash against the movie. The media really didn't take to it." The Herald article concludes with the following passage:

Zach Kosnitzky, formerly of the defunct CBS reality show Kid Nation, is a new fan. He's only 10. "I love Scarface!" joked Zach, dressed in a black zoot suit with an old school gangster fedora. "Just please don't tell my parents I'm here."

Posted by Geoff at 12:44 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, August 29, 2008 1:10 PM CDT
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Monday, August 25, 2008

M:I AT MONTREAL FEST
AS DE PALMA PREPARES MASTER CLASS
While there is still no official word on the exact time of Brian De Palma's master class, the Montreal World Film Festival will screen De Palma's 1996 film Mission: Impossible Tuesday night as part of its "Cinema Under The Stars" program. We'll keep an eye out for any other news...

Posted by Geoff at 10:19 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 5:28 PM CDT
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Friday, August 22, 2008

FARRIS SIGNING IN GEORGIA
FINAL BOOK IN FURY SERIES
Since it's a hot weekend to get out and meet people who have worked on various Brian De Palma films, it can't hurt to add one more. John Farris, who adapted the screenplay of his own novel The Fury for De Palma's 1978 film, will sign copies of his new book Avenging Fury tomorrow (Saturday, August 23rd) at the Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur, Georgia, from 12:30pm to 2pm. The new book is the fourth and final volume in the Fury cycle (officially dubbed the "Fury and the Terror" series). Farris will also sign 50 copies of the book for those who cannot attend the signing-- if you would like one of those signed copies, you need to e-mail the store's owner, Doug Robinson (doug@eagleeyebooks.com), as soon as possible. After collaborating on The Fury in 1978, De Palma recruited Farris to help him adapt Alfred Bester‘s The Demolished Man as a followup project. While the latter was never made, it remains De Palma's dream project to this day.

Posted by Geoff at 10:42 PM CDT
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NANCY ALLEN @ MONSTER-MANIA

AND ANGEL SALAZAR JOINS STEVEN BAUER IN MIAMI
If you're in the Philadelphia area this weekend, you can meet Nancy Allen at the 11th Monster-Mania Con, which runs today through Sunday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Allen, who was once married to Brian De Palma appeared in four of De Palma's films: Carrie, Home Movies, Dressed To Kill, and Blow Out.

SCARFACE IN MIAMI TONIGHT
According to Rene Rodriguez at the Miami Herald, Angel Salazar will join the previously announced Steven Bauer at the Gusman Center 25th anniversary screening of Scarface tonight. Salazar, who played Chi Chi in Scarface, also appeared in De Palma's Carlito's Way. Aside from playing Tony Montana's sidekick in Scarface, Bauer has also appeared in De Palma's Body Double and Raising Cain.

Rodriguez' column today asks, "Where were you on Dec. 9, 1983?" Rodriguez continues:

I was a teenager at the Miracle Twin Theater on Miracle Mile, eluding aggressive ushers rigorously checking IDs and sneaking into the first afternoon screening of Brian De Palma's controversial, R-rated Scarface. Yes, it was a school day. But so much had been written about the film before its release, there was no way I could wait until Saturday or even later that day. Scarface had to be seen immediately.

Read the rest at the Miami Herald. (By the way, there is no longer any mention that Brett Ratner, who snuck onto the Scarface set as a kid and wound up as an extra in the background, will be in attendance at tonight's screening.)

Posted by Geoff at 2:44 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, August 22, 2008 4:09 PM CDT
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