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Domino is
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straight-forward"
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us to reexamine our
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but metaphysically"
-Collin Brinkman

De Palma on Domino
"It was not recut.
I was not involved
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mix or the color
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final print."

Listen to
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De Palma/Lehman
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De Palma/Lehman
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"a horror movie
based on real things
that have happened
in the news"

Supercut video
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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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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

From a BBC Toronto round-up:

British director Peter Strickland arrived for his first Toronto with his art-house horror movie Berberian Sound Studio, fresh from receiving five star reviews in the UK.

With the film poised to go international, he was plunged into a non-stop round of meetings and interviews.

"Toronto reminds me of school trips to Minehead where you're in some place new and exciting," he told me. "The only problem is you can't escape from the teachers."

At a different stage of his career, Brian De Palma was also working hard. Drumming up interest in his erotic thriller Passion - currently without a distributor in the US or UK - the Scarface and Carrie director held court with the air of a man looking on the bright side on working away from the studios.

"The studios would rather work with young directors they can control," the veteran film-maker said. "They don't want someone like me being old and crotchety and demanding final cut."

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More interview and review links to come later today...

Posted by Geoff at 11:49 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, September 13, 2012 7:12 AM CDT
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VIDEOS FROM TIFF 'PASSION' PREMIERE
RACHEL ANSWERS THE QUESTION: "WHAT WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT SCENE TO ACT?"
[Looking at De Palma] "There's a scene where I have a panic attack. Which I was very very worried about. I'm very glad that you edited around it, [laughter from the crowd] because you make me look like a very subtle actor, [laughs] instead of the one who was having a meltdown on the set when everyone was genuinely worried about my sanity that day. Rightfully so. But I was probably most nervous about making that truthful. But no one will ever know..."



RACHEL ON MAKING 'PASSION': "IT WAS VERY CREATIVELY SATISFYING"
"It was a lot of fun. Brian gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted to do. It was very creatively satisfying."



DE PALMA TALKS ABOUT WHY HE COMES TO THE TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL EVERY YEAR
"I'm interested in new directors, new locations, new cinematographers, interesting ways to tell stories, and I come here to try to see the new movies every year because I'm an interested spectator, just like everybody else that goes to the movies."


Posted by Geoff at 7:49 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 8:17 PM CDT
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Tuesday, September 11, 2012




Posted by Geoff at 7:56 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 12:36 AM CDT
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DE PALMA ON RACHEL'S SHOCKING IMPROV LINE
AND MORE DETAILS ON: CASTING THE LEADS; KIMBERLY PEIRCE; 'HEAT' REMAKE
Tribute.ca's Bonnie Laufer posted a video interview with Brian De Palma today, and he shared a couple of fun stories about making Passion that had him laughing as he spoke. [Possible mild spoilers here] Providing examples about how Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace sort of took control of building this relationship on screen, De Palma talks about how, after "annihilating" Isabelle (Rapace), Christine (McAdams) comes up to her and says, "Why don't we just kiss and make up?" After laughing a bit, De Palma continues, "And Noomi grabs her like a Mafia Don, sending someone to his death, and really kisses her! I said [putting head in hands], 'Oh, my God'." De Palma told Laufer that was a "Wow" moment, and then continued, "There was another scene which I don't think you can use on your television program. When she [Christine/Rachel] comes in the room to confront Dani... [laughing thinking about it] When she comes in and says, 'We all know what you're after. You're after Isabelle's'-- now my line is 'ass' [the way De Palma wrote it]. Rachel came in and said, 'You're after her cunt.' [A gasp from Laufer] And I went, 'Holy mackerel.'"

"Our little Toronto girl's got a mouth on her," said Laufer, which got De Palma laughing some more. Earlier in the interview, De Palma discusses how he came to cast the two leads. He said another director was considering Rapace for a movie he was making, and Rapace had sent a few DVDs to him. De Palma was watching some of them, and found her really interesting. "She could be dangerous, and vulnerable, and scary." De Palma said that Rapace and McAdams are represented by the same manager, and somebody mentioned Rachel and his eyes lit up: "Rachel!?! Absolutely!"

'MEAN GIRLS'
De Palma told the Winnipeg Free Press' Michael Oliveira that "Rachel McAdams is a fantastic actress. I've been watching her for years, but especially thought she'd be good for this part because of seeing her in Mean Girls. She really did an incredible job of playing this very manipulative executive." Oliveira writes that while Rapace has a nude scene, most of the sexual content in the film is subtly implied. "I didn't think (gratuitous sexuality) was necessary," De Palma told Oliveira. "It is erotic but it isn't really explicit." Regarding his lead actresses, De Palma said, "They were not afraid to do anything, basically. They felt very secure and confident in what they were doing and I just gave them the space to interact as exciting and dramatically as possible. They would do it all kinds of different ways and I was sort of led by what was happening."

KEY IDEA FROM CORNEAU FILM
Back to Laufer's video interview, De Palma said the key idea from the Alain Corneau film is this: "The worst thing one woman can do to another is humiliate her in public." Laufer asks De Palma about Kimberly Peirce's upcmoming Carrie remake, and De Palma talks about how he has no problem with filmmakers doing remakes, just like plays are constantly reworked. He also reminds her that his Scarface is a remake of a very good Howard Hawks film, and, later, relays a funny story from the making of his version. Back to Peirce: De Palma says he met her in Paris around the time Boys Don't Cry was released, and that they used to go to the theater together around seven or eight years ago.

'HEAT' REMAKE BEING RESET IN NICE, FRANCE
Asked what he is working on next, De Palma tells Laufer about the remake of Heat, "a lost movie of the seventies that was written by William Goldman that Burt Reynolds was in. And I think the first day of the shoot, Burt Reynolds slugged the director, so it didn't come out very well. In any event, it's in a casino town, it's about an enforcer. Jason Statham's going to do it, and we're resetting it all in Nice."


Posted by Geoff at 7:13 PM CDT
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RACHEL MCADAMS & ELI ROTH AT TIFF VARIETY STUDIO
ROTH CAUGHT A SCREENING OF 'PASSION' EARLIER THIS WEEK
Rachel McAdams and Eli Roth are pictured here from earlier today (Tuesday) at the Variety Studio at TIFF. McAdams did participate in an interview while there, so hopefully this means she will be on the Variety & Ortsbo Live In Toronto broadcast along with Brian De Palma tonight at 7pm eastern. Roth, meanwhile, caught a screening of De Palma's Passion earlier this week, according to The Canadian Press. Roth is at the Toronto fest to promote a new film he co-wrote and appears in, Aftershock, but told Nick Patch, "All I want to do in my free time is see movies. It's such a tease. It's torture, actually, to know that these movies are playing in theatres and you can't go see them." Roth also managed to catch screenings of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

Posted by Geoff at 5:36 PM CDT
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NOOMI PASSIONATE ABOUT 'REDACTED'
"IT WAS BURNING IN ME, AND I COULDN'T LET IT GO. IT GOT INTO MY DREAMS... IT'S A VERY HONEST MOVIE ABOUT THE WAR, AND WHAT WAR MAKES PEOPLE BECOME"

Posted by Geoff at 12:24 AM CDT
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Monday, September 10, 2012
DE PALMA HAD IDEA INSPIRED BY 'INCEPTION'
BUT ABANDONED THAT WHEN HE FOUND AUSTRALIAN COMMERCIAL ONLINE
The picture here is from Toronto on Monday, but the interviews in this story happened at Venice. First, the picture: Brian De Palma at the Hollywood Reporter's TIFF Video Lounge.

Now, the interviews from Venice. De Palma discussed technology and the internet as a source for visual ideas with Loud Vision's Francesca Magini. De Palma mentioned that for the commercial created by the executives in Passion, he had originally come up with an idea inspired by Christopher Nolan's Inception. Here is the passge from the interview:
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I find it fascinating, the possibility of developing visual forms through the use of new technologies. In "Redacted" all the narrative forms had originated from the web. In this case, the very idea of the commercial is taken from a true story that I found on the Internet: there was a video shot by two girls, one had a cell phone tucked in her back pocket that filmed everyone who turned to look at her ass. This video has been a huge success, especially because it seemed to have been completely made by amateurs. It turns out that the girls were, in fact, two executives of an advertising company and that the video was a real commercial.

It [the internet] provides a wealth of information and images. Do you believe this is an opportunity for enrichment or a threat?
I think it is an extremely useful tool; it is like a huge library, and during the making of a film, it's really valuable because it not only allows you to quickly search information on the location, the actors, but also to find inspiration and ideas. You need to choose what is most functional to the story you want to tell. I had several ideas for the ad to be included in the film; originally, I thought of a commercial inspired by "Inception," which I loved: it was an extremely sophisticated and particular idea, but it did not convince me at all. I needed something more concrete and real, so I continued to do research and when I found the video shot by the girls I thought it was perfect and I used it.

"MAKE 3 BATMANS TO MAKE 'INCEPTION'; WE'VE LOST THE BEAUTY OF FILM"
In a Venice interview with Le Monde's Aureliano Tonet, De Palma again referred to Inception, this time in the context of how in Hollywood, you have to make so many films you don't really want to make in order to make that one special one. Here is a passage from the article:

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"In the street, nobody looks at the trees or the sun. We're glued to our screens. For the films in the movie, I was inspired by an amateur clip that was posted on the web in Australia and sex videos shot with smartphones, with a subjective point-of-view."

A reference to the Ponzi scheme indicates, moreover, how these cathedrals of glass are fragile: "The economic crisis does not scare me. Hollywood has always been in crisis," says De Palma, who failed to achieve his last two projects, respectively on the scandals of Jessica Lynch [Print The Legend] and John Edwards [Tabloid]. "I've worked in all genres; I've experienced the triumphs and disasters, the independents and the major studios. Make three "Batman" in order to make Inception, like Christopher Nolan, I have neither the time nor the inclination. A blockbuster, it is primarily a series of endless meetings ... I prefer to shoot in Europe, with small budgets. We lost the beauty of film. I try to find it," sighs the admirer of Steven Soderbergh and Wes Anderson.

Still suffering setbacks he suffered in the 2000s, he keeps a grudge against the press: "As soon as Terrence Malick makes a film, it's a miracle in your eyes ... My films are often misunderstood, probably because I am a very visual director." I dare to ask if Passion, his duet for actresses (Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace), can be read as an insight into the Hollywood psyche: "After seeing the film, my agent told me that it was like attending a day's work in his office," he said, grinning.


Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, September 14, 2012 7:04 PM CDT
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Posted by Geoff at 10:32 PM CDT
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INFLUENTIAL SOUND MIXER BILL DALY DIES
DALY DID UNCREDITED WORK ON 'GREETINGS' & 'HI, MOM!'
Bill Daly, an influential sound mixer who "developed one of the first 'smart' time-code movie slates," according to the Hollywood Reporter, has died at the age of 65. Daly did uncredited work as a sound transferer on Brian De Palma's Greetings, and also went uncredited as a neighbor in that film's sequel, Hi, Mom!. Daly also was the sound mixer for the Dealey Plaza scenes in Oliver Stone's JFK.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Daly was "described by his peers as a 'sound artist' and a 'soundman’s soundman.'" The Hollywood Reporter article explains briefly how Daly developed the time-code movie slates:
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While serving as a location sound coordinator for the filming of the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman 1974 heavyweight boxing match in Zaire known as “The Rumble in the Jungle,” Daly developed one of the first “smart” time-code movie slates (the devices that signal "action!") that would have a huge impact on the business.

The bout was preceded by a three-day concert featuring the likes of B.B. King and James Brown, and the filmmakers wanted to film the concert and fight with multiple cameras -- but not multiple soundmen -- and to be able to sync all the cameras with the multitrack recordings of the music acts onstage. To do this quickly and efficiently, they needed to visually display the time code for the camera, but there were no portable crystal-controlled clocks at the time.

Daly, though, modified a Heuer executive desk clock that had a crystal control and plasma display to DC power and turned it into the first smart slate. He built a series of the devices and used them in Zaire for what would become When We Were Kings, the 1997 Oscar winner for best documentary.

“That clock was probably the most significant impact I’ve had on the business,” Daly said in a 1998 interview with Filmcrew magazine. Daly also used the slates for a Grateful Dead documentary in 1977.


Posted by Geoff at 10:06 PM CDT
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HERE'S TO THE WONDER OF RACHEL


Visit Rachel McAdams Online for more photos of Rachel from tonight's premiere of Terrence Malick's To The Wonder.

Posted by Geoff at 6:51 PM CDT
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