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De Palma a la Mod

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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:

Domino is
a "disarmingly
straight-forward"
work that "pushes
us to reexamine our
relationship to images
and their consumption,
not only ethically
but metaphysically"
-Collin Brinkman

De Palma on Domino
"It was not recut.
I was not involved
in the ADR, the
musical recording
sessions, the final
mix or the color
timing of the
final print."

Listen to
Donaggio's full score
for Domino online

De Palma/Lehman
rapport at work
in Snakes

De Palma/Lehman
next novel is Terry

De Palma developing
Catch And Kill,
"a horror movie
based on real things
that have happened
in the news"

Supercut video
of De Palma's films
edited by Carl Rodrigue

Washington Post
review of Keesey book

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Exclusive Passion
Interviews:

Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario

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AV Club Review
of Dumas book

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« May 2009 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


Enthusiasms...

De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
of the 7th Art

The De Palma Touch

The Swan Archives

Carrie...A Fan's Site

Phantompalooza

No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Snake Eyes
a la Mod

Mission To Mars
a la Mod

Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule

Movie Mags

Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!

Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy

The Big Dive
(Blow Out)

Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site

The Phantom Project

Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
Fan Page

The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

Astigmia Cinema

LOLA

Cultural Weekly

A Lonely Place

The Film Doctor

italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

Medfly Quarantine

Not Just Movies

Hope Lies at
24 Frames Per Second

Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
Country Cinephile

So Why This Movie?

Obsessive Movie Nerd

Nothing Is Written

Ferdy on Films

Cashiers De Cinema

This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

Every '70s Movie

Dangerous Minds

EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
Love, Dr. Jones!

The former
De Palma a la Mod
site

Entries by Topic
A note about topics: Some blog posts have more than one topic, in which case only one main topic can be chosen to represent that post. This means that some topics may have been discussed in posts labeled otherwise. For instance, a post that discusses both The Boston Stranglers and The Demolished Man may only be labeled one or the other. Please keep this in mind as you navigate this list.
All topics  «
Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
BAMcinématek
Bart De Palma
Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
Betty Buckley
Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
Blow Out
Blue Afternoon
Body Double
Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
Boston Stranglers
Bruce Springsteen
Cannes
Capone Rising
Carlito's Way
Carrie
Casualties Of War
Catch And Kill
Cinema Studies
Clarksville 1861
Columbia University
Columbo - Shooting Script
Congo
Conversation, The
Cop-Out
Cruising
Daft Punk
Dancing In The Dark
David Koepp
De Niro
De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
Demolished Man
Dick Vorisek
Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
Edward R. Pressman
Eric Schwab
Fatal Attraction
Femme Fatale
Film Series
Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
George Litto
Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
Havana Film Fest
Heat
Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
Jack Fisk
Jared Martin
Jerry Greenberg
Keith Gordon
Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
Lithgow
Magic Hour
Magnificent Seven
Mission To Mars
Mission: Impossible
Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
Nancy Allen
Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
Noah Baumbach
NYFF
Obsession
Oliver Stone
Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
Parties & Premieres
Passion
Paul Hirsch
Paul Schrader
Pauline Kael
Peet Gelderblom
Phantom Of The Paradise
Pimento
Pino Donaggio
Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
Raggedy Ann
Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
Robert De Niro
Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
Scorsese
Sean Penn
Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
Snake Eyes
Sound Mixer
Spielberg
Star Wars
Stepford Wives
Stephen H Burum
Sweet Vengeance
Tabloid
Tarantino
Taxi Driver
Terry
The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
Toronto Film Fest
Toyer
Travolta
Treasure Sierra Madre
Tru Blu
Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
Untitled Ashton Kutcher
Untitled Hollywood Horror
Untitled Industry-Abuse M
Untouchables
Venice Beach
Vilmos Zsigmond
Wedding Party
William Finley
Wise Guys
Woton's Wake
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Sunday, May 31, 2009
"FAMOUS FIRSTS" - GREETINGS
BLOG REVIEWS EARLY DE PALMA FILM

Roderick Heath at Ferdy On Films takes a long look at Brian De Palma's Greetings, offering a critical essay that takes into account De Palma's later career works, as well as other early low-budget films from the same time period, such as Francis Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now, and Arthur Penn's Alice’s Restaurant. Heath writes, in part:

To be fair, Greetings’ budget was rock bottom, even lower than Penn’s and Coppola’s films. It is a counterculture document, but in a ground-level, distracted, self-critical fashion, attentive to the sights and sounds of its era, yet more caught up in analysing new habits in perceiving the world. It’s also a cinephile’s work that bears relation, in a way, to the films of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, with its three heroes as screwball foils interacting with a specific environment, surviving, and contending with the forces that assail them. Nonetheless, the film does have a specific political and social idea to communicate. It’s not found in scenes such as when Lloyd encounters a zealous radical magazine seller, or in the draft-dodging hijinks. Lloyd’s paranoia, Jon’s fetishist interest in realising voyeuristic fantasies, and the way these tendencies cross-pollinate in efforts to capture the obscured truth on film reveal the leitmotifs of De Palma’s career. It’s easy, for instance, to point to Lloyd’s constant citation of Blow-Up and his general obsession with assassination and political skulduggery and note that both inspired Blow Out (1981).


Posted by Geoff at 1:03 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 31, 2009 1:05 PM CDT
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Friday, May 29, 2009
RAIMI ADMIRES CARRIE...
BUT SAYS HAND-OUT-OF-GRAVE SCENE NOT HOMAGE

A couple of days ago, the Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer interviewed Sam Raimi, whose new film Drag Me To Hell opens today. Schaefer asked Raimi whether a scene of star Alison Lohman extending her hand from a muddy grave was an homage to the final scene in Brian De Palma's Carrie. Raimi said that while he admires both the film and the novel by Stephen King, there was no such homage meant. Meanwhile, DVD Talk's Jason Bailey loves the film, and compares Lohman's work in it to Nancy Allen:

Much of the success of the picture rides on Miss Lohman, who is really getting away with something here; she manages to be both utterly sincere and in on the joke, without tipping her hand either way. It's a tart, kicky performance, the kind of work that Nancy Allen used to do so well in those old Brian De Palma movies.


Posted by Geoff at 8:29 PM CDT
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
ARMOND WHITE ON ZABRISKIE POINT
AND HOW ANTONIONI'S FILM INVENTED THE "CINEGASM"

Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, one of several films that have had a profound influence on the cinema of Brian De Palma, finally gets a proper DVD release this week. Armond White's review in the New York Press goes into the influence of its grand finale:

Zabriskie Point is part of Warners’ Directors Showcase package bringing back such overlooked films as John Boorman’s very fine Beyond Rangoon and Hal Ashby’s Looking to Get Out, but Antonioni’s masterpiece has already had notable influence: Bruno Dumont misunderstood and disgraced it in his horror-show/parody Twentynine Palms but Brian De Palma paid great tribute in The Fury. Daria’s affair with businessman Rod Taylor is repeated in De Palma’s John Cassavetes/Amy Irving finale where moral and generational conflict literally explode. It was Antonioni’s idea to unleash his heroine’s frustration while critiquing the spiritual emptiness of materialist excess.This still-amazing and thoughtful sequence (volatile yet measured and thematic) invented the “cinegasm.”


Posted by Geoff at 12:27 PM CDT
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
LITHGOW GOES SERIAL FOR DEXTER
AND REMINDS KEN TUCKER OF BLOW OUT
John Lithgow has signed on to play a serial killer on the fourth season of Showtime's Dexter. According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, Lithgow has been cast as "Walter Simmons, an unassuming suburbanite who has been living a dual life as one of America’s most prolific and deadliest serial killers." Ausiello continues, "When the mad man (who is dubbed the 'Trinity Killer' because he always kills in threes) relocates to Miami, Dexter becomes obsessed (or inspired?) by his efficient killing methods and ability to evade capture for almost three decades." Ausiello's fellow EW blogger (and author of Scarface Nation) Ken Tucker is naturally reminded of Lithgow's creepy opportunist serial killer in Brian De Palma's Blow Out.

Posted by Geoff at 11:42 PM CDT
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009
KINATAY REMINDS TARANTINO OF DE PALMA
FILM WINS CANNES DIRECTOR PRIZE FOR MENDOZA

Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza won the Best Director prize Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival for Kinatay. The film was hated by some (Roger Ebert suggested that it is the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival), but according to a report at Inquirer.net, Quentin Tarantino called it "extraordinary," telling the French newspaper Metro, "I’d gladly defend Kinatay … it reminded me of Brian De Palma." Kinatay (the title translates to "slaughtered" or "butchered" in English) follows a young policeman as he agrees to join an unnamed operation with a shady friend. The job turns out to be the kidnapping, rape, and butchering of a drug-money-indebted prostitute by a gang of men, some of which are senior members of the police force.

Tarantino surely saw similarities between Kinatay and De Palma's Casualties Of War, where the audience is driven to identify with a soldier who finds himself caught up in a kidnap-rape-and-murder situation that he feels helpless to do anything about. Mendoza opens the film (which I haven't seen) with the young man's wedding, and these daytime scenes are shot in 35mm. The night of the horrifying mission is shot in HD, as Mendoza, according to his press notes, attempts to show that "like the character, the city of Manila is full of mystery. It becomes a totally new character at night."

In the press notes, Mendoza presents his film as a Christian morality experience (the prostitute is named Madonna) that he states was based on a true event that he heard about first-hand from a criminology student. Mendoza wanted the audience to feel, like the young man, "trapped as both victim and accomplice." Screen Daily's Mike Goodridge wrote in his review of Kinatay, "Offering audiences no relief or redemption, it is perhaps most notable for its daring in attempting to capture the moment a young man crosses the line into irrevocable evil."

A couple of clips from Kinatay can be watched at YouTube. Click here to access the Cannes press notes. IFC's David Hudson has links and quotes from several other reviews.


Posted by Geoff at 12:19 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 12:22 AM CDT
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
SCARFACE IN THEATERS THIS SUMMER
AS ONE OF UNIVERSAL'S FIVE DIGITAL REISSUES
Brian De Palma's Scarface will be rereleased in digital theaters August 25th, as Universal rolls out five Cinema Classics between now and November. The other four films being reissued are: Spartacus (June 9), The Blues Brothers (July 28), The Thing (John Carpenter's version) (September 15), and National Lampoon's Animal House (November 2). Empire has a nice trailer for the series at its website, and we thank the Swan Archives for the news!

Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, May 25, 2009 12:01 AM CDT
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Saturday, May 23, 2009
HANKS: DE PALMA IS 'MOST UNCOMPROMISING FILMMAKER'
"BOTH IN A GOOD WAY AND A BAD WAY"
The June 2009 issue of Empire celebrates the 20th anniversary of the British film magazine with guest editor Steven Spielberg. Tom Hanks is interviewed in the issue by assistant editor Ian Freer, who notes to Hanks that his first Empire cover was for The Bonfire Of The Vanities in 1991. Hanks has some very interesting things to say about the film:

That's a very interesting thing because, when we were making it, that movie was huge. We couldn't make a move anywhere in New York City. Everyone was talking about it: "They took this book that had entered into the national consciousness and now they're making a film out of it and everybody is miscast!" Everybody was miscast, me particularly. Brian De Palma deals with iconography more than filmmaking. He is the most uncompromising filmmaker-- both in a good way and a bad way-- that you'll ever come across. This is the guy who made Scarface. Motherfucking Scarface. So his take on it was just one of those things. You can't take a book like that, that has changed the way people talk and think-- Masters Of The Universe, Styrofoam peanuts, and $900,000 a year and still going broke-- and change it into a palatable movie, or alter the thrust of what the source material is talking about. It may not translate in a way that is going to work.

(Since I could not find a scan of the Empire cover mentioned above, I dug up this American Cinematographer cover from the same period.)


Posted by Geoff at 11:19 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, May 23, 2009 11:22 PM CDT
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Friday, May 22, 2009
ALMODOVAR'S NEW FILM INSPIRED BY DE PALMA, OTHERS
BROKEN EMBRACES PREMIERES IN CANNES

According to Bloomberg's Farah Nayeri, Pedro Almodovar cites Roberto Rossellini, Luis Bunuel, Sergei Eisenstein, and Brian De Palma as sources of inspiration for his latest film, Broken Embraces, which premiered in Cannes this week. The film, which takes its title from an episode in Rossellini's Voyage To Italy, stars Penelope Cruz in a film noir that Nayeri was not crazy about, although she does say it is, "as usual, a visual feast."

"ALMODOVAR'S VALENTINE TO CINEMA"
Screen Daily's Barry Byrne says Broken Embraces will thrill Almodovar's fans, and further cites some noir references within the film:

Devilishly clever and shrewdly cast with a stable of Almodovar regulars, the storyline casts a particularly gorgeous Cruz as an actress struggling to escape the suffocating constraints of the aging millionaire lover who has bankrolled her career. The film is awash with references to the noir genre, Italian neo-realism and even to Almodovar’s own quirky oeuvre. Stylistic nods to films including Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place and Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful form part of Almodovar’s valentine to cinema.


Posted by Geoff at 11:57 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, May 23, 2009 12:34 AM CDT
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
LIFE SENTENCE FOR GREEN


Photo and article courtesy the New York Times:

A jury in Kentucky sentenced a 24-year-old former soldier to life in prison without parole on Thursday for raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her, her parents and a younger sister in Iraq.

The verdict spared the defendant, Steven D. Green, death for a crime that prompted Iraqi demands for retribution and raised questions about Army oversight of its most combat-stressed forces.


Posted by Geoff at 7:49 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:50 PM CDT
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M2M AND THE 'MISSING LINK'
BLOGGER COMPARES DE PALMA'S ALIEN TO DE PALMA'S CARRIE
While I definitely don't agree with his statement that Brian De Palma's Mission To Mars is "not worth seeing," Christopher Campbell's comparison of the alien in that film to the blood-soaked Carrie in De Palma's earlier film is somewhat inspired:

Even if the Flintstones were around earlier than we thought, this wouldn’t necessarily prove Creationists right. In Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars there is another sort of missing link that people tend to dismiss along with the theory that aliens impregnated the “virgin” Mary. This is the link between life on Earth and prior life, from elsewhere, which seeded our planet. The Martian at the end of the movie (sorry if this is a spoiler — the movie isn’t worth seeing anyway), who isn’t so much our ancestor as our trillionth cousin thrice removed, is kind of creepy but also kind of sexy in a blood-soaked Sissy Spacek sort of way (this is the director of Carrie).


Posted by Geoff at 12:00 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:45 AM CDT
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