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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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« March 2014 »
S M T W T F S
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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
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Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
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Blue Afternoon
Body Double
Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
Boston Stranglers
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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
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Dancing In The Dark
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De Niro
De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
Demolished Man
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Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
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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
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Keith Gordon
Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Magic Hour
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Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
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Murder a la Mod
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Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
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Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
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Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
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Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
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Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
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Monday, March 17, 2014
MORRICONE ON 'THE UNTOUCHABLES'
SAYS DE PALMA WASN'T ORIGINALLY KEEN ON COMPOSER'S UNION STATION MUSIC
Ennio Morricone recently talked to the New York Times' Robert Itomarch about several of his best-known film scores, including The Untouchables:
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THE UNTOUCHABLES, directed by Brian De Palma (1987). The composer said he enjoyed Mr. De Niro’s "dramatically comic” take on Al Capone in this factually squishy retelling of that mobster’s takedown by Eliot Ness. In the film, Capone takes a baseball bat to the noggin of an employee who doesn’t put team first, and scenes like that didn’t put off Mr. Morricone. “He killed people in a very spectacular way,” he said.

Mr. De Palma had already finished the film when he showed a cut to Mr. Morricone, asking him specifically to come up with something for the “triumph of the police” at the end. The two got on well, but the director originally wasn’t keen on the music Mr. Morricone created for one of the film’s best-known scenes, a two-minute sequence in which a baby carriage, complete with a sweet-faced child, rolls down the steps of Union Station in Chicago in the middle of a heated gun battle.

“He didn’t want that music,” Mr. Morricone recalled. “Later he gave an interview and said that he thought that the music for that scene was perfect, so he must have rethought the whole idea.”

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Posted by Geoff at 11:46 PM CDT
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Sunday, March 16, 2014


Posted by Geoff at 11:19 AM CDT
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Posted by Geoff at 11:14 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, March 16, 2014 12:37 PM CDT
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Posted by Geoff at 11:09 AM CDT
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Saturday, March 15, 2014
WOULD YOU CONSIDER THE CINEMA OF THE UKRAINE?


From the beginning of an article by Rob Nelson in today's Minnesota Star Tribune:

"Early in Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible reboot from 1996, a flight attendant offers a selection of videotapes to Jon Voight’s mysterious spy team leader, who, sitting in first class, drolly replies that he prefers the theater.

“'Would you consider the cinema of the Ukraine?' the attendant asks. The agent accepts the 'Ukrainian' tape, whose secret message concludes with the news that the tape will self-destruct in five seconds.

"It probably wasn’t De Palma’s intent to say that Ukrainian cinema is dangerous, although the nation’s current crisis should remind us of the perils of knowing about the art and culture of a country on the brink of war mainly through a brief reference in an 18-year-old Hollywood blockbuster.

"Fortunately, a handful of Ukrainian films — two of them certified classics of world cinema — are widely available for streaming on demand."

(Nelson then goes on to describe four notable Ukranian films available for streaming: Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Earth, Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Pavla Fleischer's The Pied Piper of Hutzovina, and Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy.)


Posted by Geoff at 8:02 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, March 15, 2014 8:04 PM CDT
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'DRESSED TO KILL' DCP PROJECTION TONIGHT IN NY

Posted by Geoff at 11:38 AM CDT
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Friday, March 14, 2014
'OPEN WINDOWS' PREMIERES AT SXSW
SASHA GREY: INSPIRATION WAS MORE 'BLOW OUT' THAN 'REAR WINDOW'
With Grand Piano and now Open Windows, Elijah Wood seems to be working on a string of thrillers inspired by Brian De Palma. The latter film had its premiere at South By Southwest yesterday. Back in 2012, as he was getting ready to shoot Open Windows, director Nacho Vigalondo told Screen Daily's Melanie Goodfellow, "Just as in Brian De Palma’s Blow Out, the girl is captured. The hero will have to use every means at his disposal to discover where she is, and rescue her from the villain before its too late.” Vigalondo's 2007 film Timecrimes is said to be a variation on De Palma's Body Double. Judging by the trailer, Open Windows appears to have elements of Body Double, as well.

Sasha Grey, who co-stars with Wood in Open Windows, once joked that she was making Body Double 2, as she modeled herself for the lenses of Richard Phillips in the John Lautner chemosphere house, used prominently in Body Double. Grey tells The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern that Open Windows was inspired more by Blow Out than Rear Window:
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Marlow: Back to Open Windows, it seems to combine the voyeuristic Rear Window conceit with the whole “cam girl” phenomenon, which has really transformed into a huge sub-industry in the porn world.

Sasha Grey: I think Blow Out was more of an inspiration. But with the cam girl thing, it’s interesting because there were a few girls who did this in the ‘90s when no one was doing it, made millions, and retired. But now, with the advent of Internet porn, people can see professional-quality material online, and now we’re regressing and going back to not caring about the quality. But the fascination goes back to having a connection with the person you’re watching and having this “intimate” experience. It’s a need to satisfy the soul. The Internet has brought us together globally, but also separated us. And people now don’t have that intimacy in their real lives, so they go online.

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Posted by Geoff at 1:45 AM CDT
Updated: Friday, March 14, 2014 1:47 AM CDT
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Thursday, March 13, 2014




Posted by Geoff at 1:28 AM CDT
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Wednesday, March 12, 2014
VIDEO: MAITLAND MCDONAGH ON 'SISTERS'
ARROW'S DVD/BLU WILL HAVE NEW INTVS WITH JENNIFER SALT, PAUL HIRSCH, LOUISA ROSE, JEFFREY HAYES
Bloody Disgusting has an exclusive video of Maitland McDonagh talking about Brian De Palma's Sisters, which will (maybe?) be part of the extras on Arrow Video's upcoming Blu-Ray/DVD edition of the film. McDonagh wrote an essay about De Palma's Dressed To Kill for Arrow's Blu-Ray edition of that film, released last year. There are a couple of curious discrepancies here, though: for one, while the video shows that Sisters will be released April 14, the Arrow website shows the release date as April 28; the other odd thing is that the Bloody Disgusting headline calls the Maitland McDonagh video an "outtake," although the article by MrDisgusting never uses that word once.

In any case, don't get excited-- there does not appear to be any promise that the upcoming release will include outtakes from the film itself. Whether or not the Maitland McDonagh interview is itself an outtake remains to be seen, as she is not listed in the list of extras included in the Bloody Disgusting article, but MrDisgusting does call the video "one of the extras." Here are the extras that are listed:

- Brand new High Definition digital transfer
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation
- Original Mono audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)
- What the Devil Hath Joined Together: Brian De Palma’s Sisters – A visual essay by author Justin Humphreys (47 mins)
- All new interviews with co-writer Louisa Rose, actress Jennifer Salt, editor Paul Hirsch and production manager Jeffrey Hayes
- The De Palma Digest – a film-by-film guide to the director’s career by critic Mike Sutton
- Archive audio interview with star William Finley (excerpt)
- Gallery of Sisters promotional material from around the world
- Theatrical trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
- Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women), Brian De Palma’s original 1973 Village Voice essay on working with composer Bernard Herrmann as well as a contemporary interview with De Palma on making Sisters, and the 1966 Life magazine article that inspired the film, illustrated with original archive stills

Incidentally, in the video at Bloody Disgusting, McDonagh mentions William Castle's Homicidal, contrasting that film's lack of critical attention to the type of attention De Palma's Sisters received upon its release. De Palma listed Homicidal as one of his "Guilty Pleasures" in an article for Film Comment back in the 1980s.


Posted by Geoff at 5:15 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, March 12, 2014 5:56 PM CDT
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Tuesday, March 11, 2014
'FEMME FATALE' CLOSES DE PALMA RETROSPECTIVE
WED. NIGHT AT CHICAGO'S DOC FILMS; ROSENBAUM ENJOYED EVERY MINUTE OF IT
As we've noted several times over the past few months, Doc Films in Chicago has been hosting a Brian De Palma retrospective, running every Wednesday since January 8. The retrospective ends tomorrow (Wednesday) night with two screenings of Femme Fatale. Programmer Dan Wang writes of the film at the Doc Films website: "Beginning with a rapturous set piece at the Cannes Film Festival, and ending with a statement not only of cinematic aesthetics but also of ethics, Femme Fatale is De Palma's most ambitious, vexing, and confounding work. It is also beautiful, drawing from a more vibrant and painterly palette than earlier films. Starring Rebecca Romijn as a jewel thief and Antonio Banderas as an opportunistic photographer, this film calls to be seen and seen again."

And while we're at it, this is a great time to revisit Jonathan Rosenbaum's capsule review of the film for the Chicago Reader:

"Try to imagine a synthesis of every previous Brian De Palma film; you'll come up with something not very different from his first made-in-France movie (2002), a personal project for which he takes sole script credit. I enjoyed every minute of it, maybe because De Palma took such obvious pleasure in putting it all together. If you decide at the outset that this needn't have any recognizable relationship to the world we live in, you might even find it a delight."


Posted by Geoff at 8:37 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 8:38 PM CDT
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