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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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« July 2011 »
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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
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Taxi Driver
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The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
DE PALMA CHAPTER IN 'SHOCK VALUE'
UPDATE: NEW INTERVIEW WITH ZINOMAN AT COMPLEX

After getting my hands on a copy of Jason Zinoman's new book, Shock Value (see earlier post here), I immediately skipped to the chapter on Brian De Palma, which is titled "He Likes To Watch." This chapter makes the book an essential read for anybody interested in De Palma's work. The chapter is put together with the help of new interviews with De Palma, William Finley, Jared Martin, Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon (pictured here from De Palma's Home Movies), Betty Buckley, Amy Irving, Lawrence D. Cohen, Tina Shepard, and, if I'm not mistaken, Steven Spielberg, and perhaps Stephen King (having not read the entire book yet, I skimmed but could not find any official acknowledgment of who provided new interviews for the book, but based on the way they're worded, I'm pretty sure Zinoman uses a couple of brand new quotes from Spielberg).

In this chapter, De Palma says that he couldn't see before what he sees clearly now: that the reason his films repeatedly feauture a character who fails to save somebody is because that was how he felt when his little brother, Bart, was all torn up over their parents marital woes. De Palma helped his mother get a divorce by spying on and eventually catching his father in the middle of a tryst with his nurse (De Palma later called the photos he snapped his first film). But he could not save his brother from the pain of the situation. And it is De Palma who sees now that this is the source of the heroes' consistent plight in his own films.

Hence, Zinoman argues, De Palma's films are much more invested in autobiographical elements than most (critics and fans alike) have given them credit for, and he points out the irony that De Palma's most confessional film, Home Movies, is hidden as a zany comedy that hardly anyone has seen or even heard of. Zinoman goes so far as to show how De Palma himself relates to the character Kate Miller in Dressed To Kill. While it may be a stretch when Zinoman tries to link to the above De Palma narrative by suggesting that Kate is a character who tries to save herself from a dead-end marriage, he is spot on that Kate goes to the museum and does essentially what De Palma used to do at museums: pick up a member of the opposite sex. Zinoman concludes that, far from the usual misogynistic reading of Kate Miller (who has an adulterous affair and symbolically "pays for it" with her death), De Palma is quite sympathetic to the character. Zinoman stops there, but I would add that by designating Kate's son, Peter (again played by Gordon), as De Palma's obvious surrogate in the film, the sympathy toward Kate is corroborated.

The chapter's main focus is on De Palma's Carrie adaptation, although Zinoman nicely leads up to that film by moving from the aforementioned divorce story, through De Palma's formative college years, and his early film work. Through descriptive passages, Zinoman relates how an experience De Palma had while sitting in the audience at a performance of Dionysus In ‘69, which he was preparing to film in split-screen, led to an idea for the key prom sequence in Carrie. Zinoman also delves into how the film departed from King’s novel, and a volley between Buckley and Irving over which of their characters should survive Carrie’s massacre (throughout filming, it was not known who would be the one to survive).

All in all, a terrific chapter full of new information that fills in some major pieces of the De Palma puzzle. I said that this book is essential to any research on De Palma, and in that respect, I would put it on a shelf along with The Film Director As Superstar by Joseph Gelmis, The Movie Brats by Michael Pye and Lynda Myles, Brian De Palma by Michael Bliss, The De Palma Cut by Laurent Bouzereau, Double De Palma by Susan Dworkin, The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon, Brian De Palma: Interviews, edited by Laurence F. Knapp, Brian De Palma, entretiens avec Samuel Blumenfeld and Laurent Vachaud, and Les mille yeux de Brian De Palma by Luc Lagier. There are other great books out there that feature insightful analyses of De Palma’s work, but the books mentioned above include interviews and provide priceless bits of information useful to anyone studying the films of Brian De Palma.

UPDATE: ZINOMAN SOUGHT OUT INTVS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW THEM BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS
Today (Monday, July 11 2011) Complex posted Matt Barone's interview with Zinoman, who says he wanted to get the stories behind these films that haven't been told before:

The biggest challenge for me, though, was…. There’s a really excellent and dedicated sect of horror press that covers every single one of these movies all the time. There are so many wonderful blogs, and, seeing the response to my book, it’s hard not to be impressed by how smart all these people are. So one of the biggest challenges was: Wes Craven has been interviewed thousands of times, so how do you get him to recreate what it was actually like in the early ’70s to make The Last House On The Left, in a way so that it’s not him repeating the same stories that he’s told over and over again?

So, my goal with this book was to root it in reporting. There are definitely criticisms in it, and I have a strong point-of-view, but I wanted to really tell a story. I wanted it to read like a narrative, with these horror directors and writers as the main characters. and I wanted it to be rooted in original reporting. I found that spending long periods of time interviewing them was very helpful. Talking to a lot of people who don’t usually get interviewed was also key, like supporting actors, family members, people who went to school with these directors, childhood friends.

I tried to really look at sources from back in that time; I didn’t want to talk to people who are higher-level fans or made movies starting in the ’90s or later. I looked at it more as, “Who knew Brian De Palma before he was famous? Who went to college with him?”; Wes Craven’s wife from back before he made The Last House On The Left. Those people I found were excellent sources; they had firsthand knowledge of what was going on, that wasn’t informed by the fact that they’ve been telling the same stories for thirty years. Often times, I got a fresher perspective talking to those people, and once I talked to those people I went back to Craven and De Palma, joggled their memories with the stories I’d heard, and then I got all-new memories from these filmmakers.


Posted by Geoff at 11:17 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, July 11, 2011 7:19 PM CDT
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'THE ULTIMATE HITCH COOKBOOK'

Hitch from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.


Posted by Geoff at 11:40 AM CDT
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Wednesday, July 6, 2011
NEW BOOK LOOKS AT MODERN HORROR
'SHOCK VALUE' AUTHOR MAKES CASE THAT DE PALMA'S FILMS ARE HIGHLY PERSONAL
A new book on modern horror films that officially comes out tomorrow (Thursday, July 7th) has been getting quite a bit of pre-release web publicity this week. In the book, Shock Value, New York Times writer Jason Zinoman looks at the way horror movies changed in the 1960s, moving through the early 1980s, and, according to reviews, blasts several myths about these films and their makers along the way (notably citing "the problem with Psycho," and how these filmmakers responded to that "problem"). See reviews from Drew Taylor at the Playlist, Joe Meyer, Bookgasm's Rod Lott, and Johnny at Freddy In Space, who says he'll never look at a De Palma film the same way again. That's apparently because Zinoman begins his discussion on De Palma by relating the story about how as a teenager who wanted to impress and help out his mother, De Palma spied on his father (a doctor), and caught him cheating with his father's nurse. Zinoman, it is said, links this story to De Palma's films in a way that he argues makes them highly personal, and not the cold exercises in pure style they are often mistaken for. NPR's Fresh Air posted an audio interview, as well as an excerpt from the book.

Posted by Geoff at 11:55 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, July 8, 2011 6:50 AM CDT
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Monday, July 4, 2011
DAUGHTERS AND DOLLS
THE RAGGEDY ANN FILES, CONTINUED...

Back in 2003, I posted the above stills, which had been sent in to me by Manuel from Spain. Each set shows a curiously large Raggedy Ann doll in a girl's bedroom, each placed prominently enough as to be no mistake in prop or set direction. The Sisters shots are interesting, as they show the feminist-figure Grace infantilized, back in her bedroom in her mother's house, answering a detective's questions with a programmed response that nobody can make any sense of. The shots from Raising Cain show the doll looming large over Amy's bedroom, perhaps foreshadowing the presence of Margot, looming as the guardian of the kidnapped children.

A couple of days ago, while looking through the set of screen shots from the upcoming Obsession Blu-Ray over at DVD Beaver, I noticed something in one of the shots that I had never noticed before: a small Raggedy Ann doll belonging to another girl named Amy, also kidnapped...

I quickly thought about other girls' bedrooms on display in De Palma's films, and set my DVD player in motion to check them out. I found no Raggedy Ann dolls in Gillian's bedroom in The Fury, nor in the girl's bedroom in Femme Fatale. In the comments below, JF says they spotted a Raggedy Ann in Carrie, so I double-checked, and spotted that one, as well. I also discovered another little Raggedy Ann doll, shown in two separate scenes, in The Untouchables...

So, taking the four films' diegetic timelines into account, we have Raggedy Ann dolls in four separate decades: the 1930s (The Untouchables), the 1950s (Obsession), the 1970s (Sisters), and the 1990s (Raising Cain). I'm not sure what these dolls mean, but they are a minor, yet intriguingly consistent, presence in De Palma's work.


Posted by Geoff at 2:16 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, August 31, 2013 9:13 PM CDT
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Sunday, July 3, 2011
'DRESSED TO KILL' BLU-RAY SEPT 6
SAME DAY AS 'SCARFACE' BLU-RAY
September 6 will be a big day for De Palma fans who have a Blu-Ray player, as two early De Palma classics are released that day. FOX and MGM announced this past week that they will release Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill on Blu-Ray September 6th, with all the same extras as the regular DVD a few years ago. Earlier this year, Universal announced its Scarface Blu-Ray, also for September 6th. Judging by the cover of Dressed To Kill, shown here, the Scarface date may have had a lot to do with FOX's strategy to release Dressed To Kill on the same date (re: "From the director of Scarface).
(Thanks to Paul and Christopher!)

Posted by Geoff at 12:38 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, July 3, 2011 12:43 PM CDT
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Saturday, July 2, 2011
'OBSESSION' REGION-FREE BLU-RAY OUT JULY 11
U.K. ARROW VIDEO RELEASE INCLUDES 'WOTON'S WAKE' & 'RESPONSIVE EYE'
DVD Beaver has a review (including several screen grabs) of Arrow Video's Blu-Ray edition of Brian De Palma's Obsession. The region-free package will be released July 11. And what a package-- included on a region-free disc for the first time are two of De Palma's early short films, Woton's Wake and The Responsive Eye (the review says the shorts are "in rough shape," but at least they are there. Also included in the package is an exclusive collector's booklet featuring a new essay on Obsession by Brad Stevens, and Paul Schrader's original, uncut screenplay for the film.
(Thanks to Sergio for the link!)

Posted by Geoff at 4:11 PM CDT
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
WATCH 'DIONYSUS IN '69' ONLINE
COURTESY UBUWEB
UbuWeb, the independent resource that posts materials for noncommercial and educational purposes, has uploaded Dionysus In '69, the split-screen documentary of Richard Schechner's play filmed by Brian De Palma, Robert Fiore, and Bruce Rubin that was released in 1970. Back in March, UbuWeb uploaded De Palma's documentary The Responsive Eye.

Posted by Geoff at 12:15 AM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 12:16 AM CDT
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Monday, June 27, 2011
LARRY KARASZEWSKI ON 'GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT'
AT TRAILERS FROM HELL

Posted by Geoff at 6:14 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, June 27, 2011 6:24 PM CDT
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Sunday, June 26, 2011
'LOVE CRIME' REVIEW
POSSIBLE SPOILERS, IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING

Alain Corneau's Love Crime is teasingly taut and seductively compelling in all the right places. The main tease comes in the form of a mystery wherein the viewer knows that the protagonist is up to something, and the film challenges us, dares us, to try to figure out what the details might be prior to the climactic comeuppance. While watching this film study of "the perfect crime," I wasn't reminded so much of Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder as I was of Kieślowski's Three Colors: White. In both films, the main character begins doing things that at first don't seem like much more than personal ways of coping with recent humiliation and lost love. Only as they keep going on does the viewer begin to realize that every detail of their behavior has been carefully, almost silently planned. This is perhaps a bit less so in Corneau's film, which, as I suggested above, delights in teasing the audience.

There are other teases, as well: a lesbian subtext at one point begins to bubble over before being interrupted at just the right moment, a harbinger of chaos for everybody involved, from the seducer, to the subordinate, and, finally, to the interrupter. Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier are brilliant in their roles-- so good, it's a shame they most likely will not reprise their roles in De Palma's remake. Speaking of that remake, as the film began by taking us right into a work session between the two women at the boss' home, and with the lesbian subtext teasing from the start, I couldn't help but think of how De Palma might begin his remake with the sort of subconscious message from the id he is known for.

In other areas of the film, I could definitely see where De Palma could push the envelope visually, especially with the flashbacks, which Corneau displays in perfunctory black-and-white. Corneau's film has a nice visual motif throughout of Sagnier at her desk-- every time we see her at her desk she is nothing less than compelling, whether she is busy with work, waiting for a lover that never comes, or gazing straight ahead, frozen with alternating fear/regret/vengeance. The sparse soundtrack touches the right notes of unsettled business, leaving the viewer to wonder where the story will go from where it nevertheless ends.


Posted by Geoff at 11:05 PM CDT
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Monday, June 20, 2011
'VIVA RIVA!' DIRECTOR LOVES 'CARLITO'S WAY'
DJO MUNGA NAMES IT AS THE FILM HE WISHES HE HAD MADE

Viva Riva! is an African film about a gangster who makes a big score in the hijacked gasoline trade. The film, currently making its way through select cities in the U.S., was written and directed by Djo Munga. Munga was interviewed by Out Of Africa, who asked him to name his three favorite films, which are: (1) Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America, (2) Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari, and (3) Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way. When asked what one film he wished he had made, Munga replied with Carlito's Way. In the interview with Out Of Africa, Munga says that he used to tell stories through wordless drawings, but now has evolved his storytelling into the cinema, with its dialogues, music, and atmosphere.

Posted by Geoff at 11:12 PM CDT
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