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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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« April 2012 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


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De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
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The De Palma Touch

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Carrie...A Fan's Site

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No Harm In Charm

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Fly Rule

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Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
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Jim Emerson on
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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
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The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
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FilmLand Empire

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A Lonely Place

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italkyoubored

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So Why This Movie?

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Ferdy on Films

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This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

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EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
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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.
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Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
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Cop-Out
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Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Laurent Bouzereau
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Print The Legend
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Sunday, April 29, 2012
MORETZ: DE PALMA'S 'CARRIE' ONE OF BEST MOVIES EVER
SAYS NEW VERSION WILL BE MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL, LIKE 'BLACK SWAN'
Coming Soon's Silas Lesnick got to discuss the upcoming remake of Carrie with Chloe Moretz, who is taking on the lead role in Kimberly Peirce's new version. Here is what Moretz had to say about the Brian De Palma version, and the new take on it:

I start that June 1st... It's going to be very well done. I don't want to jinx it, but [Peirce] is a genius, genius, genius director. I would never do it with someone that I don't trust. I trust her more than a lot of the directors I've worked with. She's the right woman for the job.

I'm actually not looking at the original, even though De Palma's movie was one of the best movies ever made. It's completely iconic and I'm proud to be able to be doing a retooling of it. We're kind of going off the book. It's darker and much more psychological. More Black Swan. You're really looking into her mind and it really looks into the relationship of Margaret and Carrie. It's set in modern time, so it's a lot different.

Lesnick got Moretz to talk about the clothes her Carrie will be wearing: "It's something that's very different from me. It's an out of body thing. I'm becoming a totally different person for it. I'm letting go of all of my self-esteem issues and just kind of going into it. You have to."

And finally, the article delves into the fan-made poster art pictured here:

Although shooting won't begin for another month, Moretz and Peirce have already been impressed with the outpouring of fan support and, in particular, the fan-made poster pictured above. Designed by Pierre-Luc Boucher, the teaser was posted to his Deviant Art page and soon found its way to Peirce.

"That was a cool poster!" Moretz laughs. "Kim sent that to me. She said, 'Oh my god, you've got to look at this. It's really, really, really cool!' We both felt so pumped. Now we're chomping at the bit to get in there."


Posted by Geoff at 6:28 PM CDT
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Saturday, April 28, 2012
'CARRIE' REMAKE TO USE 'FOUND FOOTAGE' FORMAT
AS JULIANNE MOORE GETS CLOSER TO TAKING ON MOTHER OF A ROLE
A month after Chloe Moretz was announced as the lead in MGM's new version of Carrie, Deadline's Mike Fleming reports that the studio has made a formal offer to Julianne Moore to take on the role of Carrie's mother, Margaret White. Meanwhile, according to Peter Hall at Movies.com, MGM's CEO Roger Birnbaum visted his alma mater, the University of Denver, this week, as a guest in the school's film history and production classes. During one of the talks, Birnbaum specifically used the phrase "found footage" while discussing the new version of Carrie, which is being directed by Kimberly Peirce, with a screenplay by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa that is said to cling closer to Stephen King's novel than Brian De Palma's film version. Hall explains nicely how the found footage format would tie in with the novel:

Now, before you get out your anti-found footage pitch forks, this shouldn't be that surprising. King's original novel is interspersed with various "official" documents recounting what happened on Carrie's deadly prom night (a writing technique called epistolary, which is basically the literary equivalent of found footage), so if Aguirre-Sacasa's script is indeed going back to the source material, the film focusing on "interviews with the survivors of the prom incident" makes perfect sense. It also doesn't necessarily mean Carrie will be filled with first-person POV found footage as we traditionally know - though the person who posted the recap did confirm to us that Birnbaum specifically used the words "found footage" - but is simply using recorded interviews as a framing device much like the book used newspaper clippings, which actually means Peirce's film will have more in common with the 2002 made-for-TV Carrie movie starring Angela Bettis than De Palma's film.

Posted by Geoff at 4:15 PM CDT
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Friday, April 27, 2012
DONAGGIO TO RECEIVE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
AT 12TH WORLD SOUNDTRACK AWARDS IN OCTOBER
Variety reports that Pino Donaggio will receive the 12th Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's World Soundtrack Awards, an event which takes place on the closing night (October 20) of Belgium's Ghent Film Festival. The festival runs October 9-20. A selection of Donaggio's music will be performed at the event by the Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by Dirk Brosse, accompanied by film clips. During the event, composer James Newton Howard will also be honored with a concert in which he will conduct the Brussels Philharmonic along with Brosse. Donaggio is best known for the many scores he has composed for the films of Brian De Palma, beginning with Carrie in 1976, and continuing this year with Passion.

Posted by Geoff at 12:44 AM CDT
Updated: Friday, April 27, 2012 5:20 PM CDT
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Thursday, April 26, 2012
'PASSION' UPDATES
KAROLINE HERFURTH FINISHED HER PART TODAY DESPITE SICKNESS
Karoline Herfurth posted on her Facebook page that she finished up her final day on the set of Passion today, but not without some complications. If you go to her Facebook post linked above, be aware that she provides a spoiler in her post. Here is what she wrote in the post, with the spoiler part left out:

That´s the hard part with beeing an actress, that even when you're sick you can´t stay home but the shooting schedule has to stay as planned. So right on time for my most important scene in the whole script I get a cold that makes me not able to speak. But I had to speak! A lot! And in english!! Horror!... That was my last day of shooting! HOLIDAYYYY!!! :-)

Meanwhile, the IMDB page for Passion has added Alexander Yassin to the cast list as a Concierge.


Posted by Geoff at 9:21 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, April 26, 2012 9:23 PM CDT
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
AMOS VOGEL DIES AT 91
SCREENED EARLY DE PALMA FILMS AT NY'S CINEMA 16 FILM SOCIETY
The Hollywood Reporter reported today that "Amos Vogel, creator of the influential Manhattan avant garde film club Cinema 16 and co-founder of the New York Film Festival, died Tuesday in his apartment off Washington Square Park. He was 91." At Cinema 16, Vogel, who has been called the ultimate cinephile, juxtaposed films the way filmmakers such as Eisenstein collided images. In the documentary named after his seminal book, Film As A Subversive Art (which can be viewed here), Vogel explained, "When I showed five or six films on the Cinema 16 program, they were always selected from the point of view how they would collide with each other in the minds of the audience. On one program there would always be an abstract film, a scientific film, an avant-garde film and a political documentary, because my intention at all times was to subvert audience expectations by showing such diverse and different films on one and the same program." Cinema 16 was founded in 1947 by Vogel and his wife, Marcia.

In the 2005 book A Critical Cinema 4: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, Jim McBride (David Holzman's Diary) was asked by author Scott MacDonald if he used to go to Cinema 16. "I was a member for a couple of years, I think," said McBride. "When I was at NYU, Brian De Palma, who I knew from the neighborhood, was making these little 16mm movies and getting them shown at Cinema 16, which I thought was kind of amazing. I remember going to see Woton's Wake [1962]. We did see some interesting stuff at Cinema 16. Certainly Maya Deren, but I'm not sure what else. In those days, anything you could see was a plus."

The Hollywood Reporter article quotes Martin Scorsese: "If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel. Amos opened the doors to every possibility in film viewing, film exhibiton, film curating and film appreciation. He was also unfailingly generous, encouraging and supportive of so many young filmmakers, including me when I was just starting to make my first pictures. No doubt about it — the man was a giant." In 1963, Vogel founded the New York Film Festival with Richard Roud.


Posted by Geoff at 11:58 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, April 28, 2012 4:19 PM CDT
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STATHAM TALKS DE PALMA & 'HEAT'
"WE'RE GOING TO DO THE BEST WE CAN WITH IT"
The Playlist's Drew Taylor spoke briefly with Jason Statham at a recent press junket for Boaz Yakin's Safe, which opens Friday. Taylor made sure to ask Statham about his connection to Brian De Palma, who had earlier been developing Parker, which Statham wound up signing on for and filming with director Taylor Hackford. De Palma will direct Statham in a remake of the Burt Reynolds movie Heat later this year. "I met De Palma in New York and, you know, he's one of the living legends," Statham told Taylor. "Scarface is one of my top five movies of all time, so the chance to work with that kind of quality is something I never saw happening. It just happens to be an old movie from the past and we're going to do the best we can with it."

When asked by Taylor what drew him to make Safe, Statham said, "It sounded like something that maybe people would want to go see." Statham then elaborated on how he approaches such decisions. "The whole purpose of doing these films is, 'Would you want to go see these films? Do you think anyone else would?' And 'Would it be a good experience?'" Taylor calls Safe one of Statham's better films. Salon's Andrew O'Hehir feels that Safe is perhaps the most authentic of recent thrillers that "partake of a ’70s-flavored dystopian and/or paranoid vision." Aware of the upcoming Heat remake, O'Hehir suggests that Statham "seems on course to becoming a modern-day [Charles] Bronson or Burt Reynolds."

Statham seems like he will be a great match for De Palma. The actor, who loves to do his own stunts, fights, etc., told Ivan Solotaroff in the April 2012 issue of Details about his disdain for special effects. "Fahkin' hate green screen," Statham is quoted as saying. "Pay significant amounts of money never to do it again. You cannot fake adrenaline." Sounds like an actor tailor-made for De Palma's brand of No Net Productions and long, continuous, choreographed takes.


Posted by Geoff at 10:38 PM CDT
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PAUL WILLIAMS AT NASHVILLE FEST THURSDAY
FOR CLOSING NIGHT SCREENING OF 'PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE'
Paul Williams will be at the Nashville Film Festival Thursday night (April 26th) for a closing night screening of the Stephen Kessler documentary Paul Williams Still Alive. Showtime is at 7:15pm. Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise screens at the fest tonight.
(Thanks to Nashville Scene's Jim Ridley!)

Posted by Geoff at 9:47 PM CDT
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Monday, April 23, 2012
SPACEK BIO DUE MAY 1ST
'CARRIE' EXCERPT IN CURRENT ISSUE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
The Sissy Spacek memoir My Extraordinary Ordinary Life will be published on May 1. The book was written by Spacek with Maryanne Vollers. The current issue of Entertainment Weekly (the summer movie preview double issue with Batman and Catwoman on the cover) includes an exclusive excerpt from the book in which Spacek tells the story of working on Brian De Palma's Carrie. There's not really anything new here that hasn't been told elsewhere (Spacek having to convince De Palma she was the right choice for Carrie; De Palma explaining to Spacek that discovering the blood in the shower should be like getting hit by a mack truck; husband Jack Fisk helping her grasp the right sense of shock by describing how he got run over by a car, etc.), but it is told in a clear and compelling narrative, filtered by Vollers. The excerpt concludes with this:

The script called for all the high school girls to be partially nude as they romped around the locker room at the end of gym class-- a fantasy scenario that only a man could dream up. Some of the girls were balking. That is, until we all watched the rushes from my shower scene.

I had it written in my contract that I would not appear fully nude on screen. But that was a trick of the editing room; the camera saw everything. Every time Brian shot another take of the shower scene, the clapper board was placed in front of me. And each time the board was pulled away, the camera was right where my contract said it couldn't be. Now, I'm not a shy person-- you can't be in this business!-- but by the time the rushes were over, I didn't know if I should laugh or crawl under my chair. I decided to laugh.

"Thanks a lot, Brian!" I said, as sarcastically as I could.

After that, Brian later told me, the female cast members stopped complaining about their topless locker scene.

Spacek is interviewed about the memoir at The Hook. The book is also likely to have stories about making De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, as Spacek worked as a set designer on that film with Fisk, who was the production designer on Phantom, and the art director on Carrie.


Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 12:07 AM CDT
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Sunday, April 22, 2012
FINLEY MEMORIAL SERVICE DETAILS
AT THE SWAN ARCHIVES
The Swan Archives News Page has a post with details about the passing of William Finley last weekend, as well as a memorial service which Finley's wife, Susan, dubbed a "celebration of Bill's life." Gerrit Graham, Jessica Harper, and Jared Martin were among the ten friends and family members who spoke at the celebration. Martin read letters of condolence from Brian De Palma and Richard Schechner, and Finley's son, Dashiell, read letters sent by Edgar Wright and Guillermo del Toro. There was also a slide show set to Finley's performance of Faust from Phantom Of The Paradise. The slides included family photos as well as images collected from the span of Finley's career. More details can be found on the Archives' News Page, including a version of the statement read by Harper that she modified specifically for the Archives, and a photo of De Palma in a tuxedo filming William and Susan's wedding back in 1974, a month before Phantom was to open in theaters.

Posted by Geoff at 10:06 PM CDT
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
'PASSION' FILMED OVERNIGHT AT MARGAUX
THIS PAST THURSDAY GOING INTO FRIDAY MORNING

According to the notice in the Instagram image above (posted by henninx), filming for Brian De Palma's Passion was to have taken place at Berlin's Margaux Restaurant from 6:30pm this past Thursday, April 19th, until about 5am the next morning. The notice provides details about traffic and parking during the filming times.

Posted by Geoff at 9:18 PM CDT
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