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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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« June 2014 »
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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
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Treasure Sierra Madre
Tru Blu
Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
Untitled Ashton Kutcher
Untitled Hollywood Horror
Untitled Industry-Abuse M
Untouchables
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Tuesday, June 3, 2014
'BLOW OUT' IN AUSTRIA, WITH 'BLOW-UP', 'UP & OUT'
AT ALBERTINA MUSEUM; ALSO, ARTWORK IN PHILLY REMINDS CRITIC OF 'BLOW OUT'


The great image above, showing Brian De Palma overseeing John Travolta during the shooting of a scene in Blow Out, while Vilmos Zsigmond crouches below the camera, showed up at The Auteur's Tea Room this past February.

Blow Out will be screened this Thursday at Austria's Albertina Museum, as part of an exhibition revolving around Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up. The latter film will be screened after Blow Out, and the night of screenings will conclude with Christian Marclay's Up and Out, which juxtaposes the images of Blow-Up with the soundtrack from Blow Out. The films are part of an overall Blow-Up exhibit which includes stills from Antonioni's film, along with "photographs illuminating the cultural and artistic context of the film production, London of the Swinging Sixties," according to the Albertina web site.

(Thanks to Rado!)

Meanwhile, The Philadelphia Enquirer's Edith Newhall visited a Jon Manteau exhibition, titled "Philadelphia Historical Artifacts," and ends her article with the following:

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The second time around, I accepted that I could not take in absolutely everything in this show and that allowing for the occasional serendipitous encounter might be the best approach. The individual works that make up wall-mounted rows of dozens of postcard-size painted digital scans of Philacentric photographs, which at first I'd found almost off-putting in their multitude and abundance of Philly references, turned out to be consistently clever and affecting. I came across my favorite pieces (besides the painted carpets) on the wall of the back office: three ink-jet prints of views of Philadelphia from the 1970s (I.M. Pei's Society Hill Towers among them) poured with house paint that simultaneously reminded me of Gene Davis Franklin's Footpath, painted on the Parkway in 1972, and Brian De Palma's Blow Out.

Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 4, 2014 2:49 AM CDT
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Sunday, June 1, 2014
'PHANTOM' 40TH IN HOLLYWOOD, JULY 30TH
PAUL WILLIAMS, JESSICA HARPER, GERRIT GRAHAM IN PERSON, MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED

Posted by Geoff at 12:47 PM CDT
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Wednesday, May 28, 2014
TARANTINO ON COUNTING DOWN TO 'SCARFACE'
"WHEN DE PALMA WOULD COME OUT WITH A NEW MOVIE, I WOULD COUNT DOWN THE DAYS"


Thank you to Antonios for sending us the link to the video above, in which Quentin Tarantino speaks at a press conference last week at the Cannes Film Festival. At about the 9:27 mark, while answering a question about dealing with pressure amidst expectations of each new film he makes, Tarantino mentions how, when he was younger, he would wait with heightened anticipation for each new Brian De Palma film. Vulture has a pretty good transcription of what Tarantino said, but the video above shows that certain points were left out (such as when Tarantino talks about how he would have "Scarface dreams," he adds that that was easy to do, having seen the original Howard Hawks movie). Anyway, here's the excerpt from Vulture:

When asked if he finds it harder and harder to top himself as he gets more famous and established, Tarantino said it's not something he thinks about. "Frankly, it’s not a pressure I ever feel because, to me, that should always be there. I want people to expect a lot from me. I want people waiting with great expectation for my next movie." It makes him feel connected with directors he grew up idolizing. "I mean, when Brian De Palma would come out with a new movie, the whole first two weeks before the movie opened, I would count down the days. That week before Scarface opened, that was Scarface Week. You know, 'Six more days to Scarface!' 'Five more days to Scarface!' I’d have Scarface dreams ... And then the new De Palma movie would open. I’d go see the first show, the first day, and no one could come with me. I had to see it by myself. Then I’d ruminate about the film all day long and then I’d go to see the midnight show that night, and then I could actually have some friends with me. That kind of excitement for a filmmaker is one of the things that keeps filmmaking alive, and vital, just like in Bob Dylan’s time waiting for Bob Dylan’s next album. Or in Norman Mailer’s time waiting for his new novel. I don’t consider that pressure. I consider that a luxury, that I actually have people who like my stuff and are waiting for the new one. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The opposite of what you’re talking about is I’m making a movie and no one gives a damn and it opens up and no one cares. That would be horrible."


Posted by Geoff at 3:35 AM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 3:36 AM CDT
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Tuesday, May 27, 2014
NEW SHORT FILM FROM ROMAIN LEHNHOFF
'USERNAME: CARMEN' INCLUDES A COUPLE OF NODS TO DE PALMA


The upper image above is a shot from the new short film by Romain Lehnhoff, Username: Carmen (the title is a play, of course, on the title of Jean Luc Godard's First Name: Carmen), juxtaposed with a shot from Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill (itself informed by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho). Username: Carmen, which you can watch here, is a comedy created for Welcome To The Other Side, a short film festival contest that asked entrants to create a film of six-minutes or less, that involves the provided synopsis: "Following a misunderstanding, an individual walks into a room of absurdity (or nonsense)." The film also had to take place on May 23, 2014, and include "Un plan à l’envers."

Username: Carmen won Lehnhoff the top prize in the contest in Lille, France. The film is in French, with no subtitles, but you can follow it if you know it involves a guy (a student) who has an essay due the next day about the place of opera in today's music. Desperate, he finds a forum of opera lovers and asks them for help.

Thinking he's being clever while his girlfriend is in the shower, he uses the name "Carmen" as his user name, but finds that the forum is full of horny guys who only want to help "her" if he shares a picture-- he's about to tell them he's sorry, but he is a guy, but they insist on the pic as the only way they'll help "her," so he posts a pic of his girlfriend. After they go gaga over how "pretty" she is, etc., etc., the student gets ticked off by the whole thing, resulting in a hilarious act of rage, which his girlfriend walks in on at the end.

Aside from the above nod to Dressed To Kill, Romain also threw in a "quote" from De Palma's Mission: Impossible -- when the student types in his password, you'll see that the password is "JOB314."


Posted by Geoff at 12:31 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, May 29, 2014 6:55 PM CDT
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Monday, May 26, 2014




Posted by Geoff at 12:46 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, May 26, 2014 12:48 AM CDT
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Sunday, May 25, 2014










Posted by Geoff at 8:36 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 25, 2014 8:43 PM CDT
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Saturday, May 24, 2014
ZSIGMOND HONORED AT CANNES
ACCEPTS PIERRE ANGENIEUX EXCELLENCE IN CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD


Hot on the heels of his retrospective/master class tribute at Paris' Le Grand Action, Vilmos Zsigmond was in Cannes last night to accept the second annual Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens in Cinematography Award. As seen in the picture above, John Travolta was on hand to congratulate Zsigmond backstage. The two worked together, of course, on Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Also attending the event were Catherine Deneuve, John Boorman, and Jerry Schatzberg, among others.

In a pre-award interview at Cannes, Zsigmond was asked by Le Monde's Clarisse Fabre how he had approached the transition to digital camera in the early 2000s. "I had no a priori," Zsigmond replied. "For example, The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma, was shot on film, and then we did the post-production digital. This allowed me to reduce the color and give an impression of black and white. I love digital to 'manipulate' the film: the color with less color! I like black and white, when the shadows are growing."


Posted by Geoff at 6:15 PM CDT
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Thursday, May 22, 2014
SCREAM ANNOUNCES 'PHANTOM' BLU-RAY DETAILS
AND THE FILM SCREENS FROM DCP AT MIDNIGHT THIS SATURDAY AT THE NEW BEVERLY
Scream Factory today released the details about its upcoming Blu-ray edition of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, which will be released August 5th. If you pre-order straight from ShoutFactory ($21.95), they are offering an exclusive 18"x24" poster of the new cover artwork, but only while supplies last. The Scream Factory press release repeats the news that the Swan Archives reported a couple of weeks ago: that there will be two discs included in the package. The first is a Blu-ray of the original movie, along with several new commentaries and new interviews, and the second disc is a DVD packed with special features old and new. Below is the rundown from the press release, but be sure to check the Swan Archives' News Page for a details about where each feature originally appeared.

DISC ONE (BLU-RAY):

High-Definition transfer of the film
NEW Audio Commentary with Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham and the Juicy Fruits (Archie Hahn, Jeffrey Comanor and Harold Oblong aka Peter Eibling)
NEW Audio Commentary with Production Designer Jack Fisk
NEW Interview with director Brian DePalma (36 minutes)
NEW Interview with Paul Williams talking about the music of PHANTOM (30 minutes)
NEW Interview with Make-up Effects wizard Tom Burman discussing the Phantom Helmet

DISC TWO (DVD):

Paradise Regained – documentary on the making of the film featuring director Brian DePalma, Producer Edward R. Pressman, William Finley, Paul Williams, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham and more… (50 minutes)
Interview with Paul Williams moderated by Guillermo Del Toro (72 minutes)
Interview with costume designer Rosanna Norton (10 minutes)
NEW Interview with producer Edward R. Pressman (15 minutes)
NEW Interview with drummer Gary Mallaber (15 minutes)
NEW Alvin’s Art and Technique – a look at the neon poster (15 minutes)
NEW Phantom of the Paradise Biography by Gerrit Graham - 1974 Publicity Sheet written by and read by Graham (8 minutes)
Alternate Takes (40 minutes) Swan Song Outtake Footage (10 minutes)
Radio Spots
TV Spots
Theatrical Trailer
Still Gallery

'PHANTOM' AT THE NEW BEVERLY SATURDAY
Meanwhile, Phantom Of The Paradise will be screened from DCP at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles this Saturday at midnight.

VULTURE: MICHAEL JACKSON HOLOGRAPH MAKES HIM AKIN TO THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
This past Sunday, the Billboard Awards show on ABC-TV included a Michael Jackson holograph performing one of the songs included on the new posthumous release, Xscape. Today, Vulture's Geeta Dayal posted an essay that, at one point, linked the ghostly Jackson to the Phantom Of The Paradise. Here's an excerpt from Dayal's post:

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Sunday's unsettling hologram performance at the Billboard Awards showed, once and for all, that the thriving Michael Jackson industry doesn’t need Michael Jackson to survive. Jackson is a global corporation, a portfolio of investments — a lucrative moneymaking machine that hums along, with or without a human at the controls.

Xscape — a potpourri of exhumed Jackson demos and discarded tracks, organized by L.A. Reid and fleshed out by top producers including Timbaland and Rihanna hitmakers Stargate — is currently the No. 2 album in the country. While it’s a bit odd to see the King of Pop lagging behind the Black Keys, the current No. 1 act, being second best isn’t too shabby when you’ve been dead for five years. All in all, Xscape — eight “new” songs in total, which go back as far as 1983 — is an admirable effort to make a full meal out of reheated leftovers...

Part of what made Jackson’s holographic performance so bizarre was the song itself: “Slave to the Rhythm,” a song on Xscape that was originally recorded in 1991 during the Dangerous sessions. The song is not half bad, though it’s easy to see why it was kept on the cutting-room floor until 2014. “She’s a slave to the rhythm,” Jackson sings, ostensibly about a woman. “She danced through the night/In fear of her life/She danced to a beat of her own,” Jackson continues urgently, filling in gaps with his requisite “hee-hees” and perfectly placed hiccups. But the song sounds autobiographical — you could think of it as Jackson’s ghost, talking about his own tortured afterlife. Jackson, five years after his death, is a slave to the rhythm — shackled by the corporate interests that refuse to let him rest in peace. He’s the phantom in Brian De Palma’s creepy 1974 classic Phantom of the Paradise — the sad, undead guy in the skintight black leather outfit who forgot that he signed a recording contract in his own blood, who’s now trapped in a recording studio and forced to craft megahits for eternity.

Jackson is an unending source of income, spinning out in all directions until the end of time. Like the Star Wars franchise, there will be sequels — and when the sequels are done, there will be prequels. Hundreds of unused songs — demos, outtakes, and other bits and pieces — are said to be in Jackson’s vaults. As holographic technology inevitably improves, the possibilities for live performances in the future will be endless. But perhaps we should leave Jackson be instead of trying to digitally reanimate him for eternity. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith, after witnessing a Darth Vader hologram slay a Jedi, “I can’t watch any more.”

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Posted by Geoff at 5:26 PM CDT
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014
DE PALMA RETROSPECTIVE BEGINS TODAY IN BRAZIL
FREE ADMISSION, 15 FILMS, CRITICS' DISCUSSIONS, & 2-DAY COURSE ON CINEMA OF DE PALMA
Beginning today, the Caixa Cultural Curitiba in Brazil presents a 15-film Brian De Palma retrospective, which runs until May 25th, with free admission. The full program can be read online at issuu.com. The program consists of three films per day, with a focus on De Palma's mostly lesser-known films, although Carrie is included, as well. Today the series opens with Bonfire Of The Vanities, Snake Eyes, and Redacted. Each day's final film will be followed by an audience discussion led by a guest critic. The line-up of critics: Ruy Gardnier, Nikola Matevski, Victor Guimarães, Francis Vogner dos Reis and Marcelo Miranda. In addition, there will be a two-day course on May 24-25, titled "The Cinema of Brian De Palma - Belief in the Suspect Image," conducted by critic Paulo Santos Lima.

The retrospective's curator, critic and filmmaker João Toledo, is quoted at Suplemento Cultural: "Brian De Palma flirts with a grandiose and operatic form of cinema, but also with the vulgarity of its falsity, with the levity of its dreams - and his images collide in this middle ground between the tacky , the caricature, the grotesque and the magical, the sublime, the beautiful."

(Thanks to Renato!)


Posted by Geoff at 1:19 AM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 1:20 AM CDT
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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
'WHEN ANIMALS DREAM' INSPIRED BY 'CARRIE'
DIRECTOR SAYS DE PALMA'S FILM TAKES REALISTIC APPROACH THAT NEVERTHELESS SEDUCES
Jonas Alexander Arnby's When Animals Dream premiered at Cannes yesterday as part of the festival's Critic's Week lineup. Arnby tells Deadline's Nancy Tartaglione that with this film, about a young woman who turns into a werewolf, he and his team "wanted to do a coming-of-age film about a girl who develops from A to B." He further tells Tartaglione that his biggest inspiration for the film was Brian De Palma's Carrie. "It really succeeds in making a realistic approach but still having a universe that seduces you," Arnby said of Carrie.

Here are links to some of the reviews coming out of Cannes:

Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg, Twitch
"This is a tremendous feature debut, haunting and elegaic, while not shying away from violence and sex. There is certainly no subtlety to the film; but then again, werewolves aren't meant to be subtle."

Allan Hunter, Screen Daily
"A teenage girl’s awakening sexuality quite literally brings out the beast in her in When Animals Dream (Nar dyrene drommer), an atmospheric fantasy chiller that marks an accomplished feature debut from director Jonas Alexander Arnby."

Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
"Jonas Alexander Arnby's debut feature is a confident and good-looking work that owes more to the Nordic Noir gloom of Let The Right One In than to the sanitized fluff of Twilight or the comic-book carnage of the Underworld franchise...Initially too slow to share its obvious secrets, When Animals Dream only clicks into full-blooded horror mode in its final act when hairy, scary Marie embarks on a Carrie-style rampage of revenge against the neighbors who previously made her life hell. Stylish but slight, Arnby's debut feature ultimately sticks within werewolf movie conventions, adding little fresh to the form. That said, it should appeal to more highbrow genre fans who like a bit of European arthouse angst with their throat-ripping gore."


Posted by Geoff at 12:26 AM CDT
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