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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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De Palma interviewed
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italkyoubored

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De Palma a la Mod
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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
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Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
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Bill Pankow
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Cop-Out
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Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
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Wednesday, July 15, 2015
AUDIOVISUAL ESSAY ON 'BLOW OUT'
FOCUS ON LINKS/CONTRAST BETWEEN ZAPRUDER FILM & WATERGATE TAPES; ALSO ARGENTO/HITCHCOCK/ANTONIONI

That Synching Feeling from Insane Horizon on Vimeo.

In the audiovisual essay above, That Synching Feeling, Yusef Sayed focuses on the way that Brian De Palma's Blow Out is concerned with synching sound and vision, and how two key references (the Zapruder film and the Watergate tapes) each lack either audio or image, respectively. Along the way, Sayed also includes riffs on three films that strike him when thinking about Blow Out (read about those below or in Sayed's accompanying tumblr text). Don't expect to find any references to Chappaquiddick or The Conversation here, but what is here is rather interesting, nonetheless. Here is an excerpt (all but the first two paragraphs) from Sayed's essay (or read the entire essay at the Insane Horizon tumblr) :

"Jack Terry’s desire to prove beyond question that Governor McRyan was murdered depends on his ability to reconcile image and sound; to succeed where the Zapruder film and the Watergate tapes failed; to provide as full an account of the event as possible, to resolve as many unanswered questions as he can. But does truth really exist at the point of sychronisation? The irony is that Jack himself makes his living by fabricating reality, dubbing heterogenous audio onto low budget exploitation films. This paradox is what structures That Synching Feeling. The eyes and ears must strive to put things into place.

"It draws upon two key cinematic influences, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up (1966) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) and source materials relating to the political events described. It handles these different materials in a way that reflects the techniques of Jack’s own working practice. Sound is aligned precariously with image and at times it will fool the viewer. We are displaced from one reality to another, as we are in the opening moments of Blow Out when the slasher pic we are immersed in is suddenly revealed to be the film that Jack is currently foleying for.

"The essay calls for the viewer to question what they are seeing and what they are hearing, to notice a detail that might stick out – a punctum, in Barthes’s term – a sudden puncture, that impacts on our senses and creates meaningful engagement with the matter at hand. All the while it aims to put all the pieces together into a meaningful whole; to create a pattern; to create resonances; to reconstitute a stable order amidst the violence and lies, with attention to shot composition, camera movement and gesture, aural echoes.

"Surprising connections are also presented, of a sort that might thrill a conspiracy theorist – or an auteurist, seeing links, intentional or not, among the works of their favourite directors in an attempt to root out some sort of consistent voice: There’s the fact that Jack is an audio specialist who finds himself in the middle of a political murder; that a professional drummer named Steve Barber heard police radio frequency recordings from Dealey Plaza, released on a ‘paper record’ with an issue of Gallery magazine in 1979, and was prompted to develop his own view on the assassination of JFK; that a drummer, too, is at the centre of another murder mystery, Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) – directed by Dario Argento, whose style bears intriguing similarities with some of De Palma’s best work – moments of which echo Blow Out; that Jackie Kennedy’s last words to her husband were 'Jack, can you hear me?' a line of dialogue which also appears in Blow Out.

"That Synching Feeling is intended to enter the world of the film and to immerse the viewer in the shifting realities, the doubts, the history, the fabrications, secrets and the melancholy that it evokes."


Posted by Geoff at 8:22 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, July 16, 2015 1:02 AM CDT
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Tuesday, July 14, 2015
LEGUIZAMO 'BIG INTERVIEW' WITH DAN RATHER
DISCUSSES WORKING WITH DE PALMA, PENN, PACINO - AIRS JULY 14 ON AXS TV
John Leguizamo will be the guest on the July 14 episode of Dan Rather's The Big Interview, which airs on AXS TV. According to a press release posted at Monsters & Critics, "multi-talented actor, producer, comedian, and writer John Leguizamo talks about working with Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brian DePalma and Al Pacino; studying method acting; fist-fighting with Patrick Swayze in full drag; his troubled relationship with his father; and his career goals."

Posted by Geoff at 4:09 AM CDT
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Monday, July 13, 2015
MICHAEL RAUCH HAS DIED
WAS FIRST ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ON 'DRESSED TO KILL', 'SUPERMAN'
Michael Rauch, who worked as first assistant director on Dressed To Kill, passed away July 2 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer, according to The Hollywood Reporter's Mike Barnes. Rauch was 69.

Prior to Dressed To Kill, Rauch worked as assistant director on Richard Donner's Superman (which featured Margot Kidder), Robert Markowitz' Voices (which featured Amy Irving), Jonathan Demme's Hitchcockian thriller Last Embrace, Martin Brest's Going In Style, and Marshall Brickman's Simon, the latter of which included William Finley in the cast.

After Dressed To Kill, Rauch went on to a successful career as a film and television producer, and was an executive at Showtime for 15 years, according to Barnes. "Born in Troy, N.Y.," Barnes adds, "Rauch graduated from New York University with a major in art and landed a spot in the DGA trainee program, where he learned the business on The French Connection (1971) and The Godfather (1972).


Posted by Geoff at 12:13 AM CDT
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Saturday, July 11, 2015
'PHANTOM' SATURDAY NIGHT IN PORTLAND
Sorry for the late notice, but Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise will be screened from DCP at 9:40 tonight at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. It also screened there last night-- apologies again, if you're in the area and didn't know.

Posted by Geoff at 4:02 PM CDT
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Friday, July 10, 2015
SAYING GOODBYE TO THE DISSOLVE
WEBSITE CLOSES AFTER ALMOST TWO YEARS OF TERRIFIC FILM WRITING & DISCUSSION
After almost two years online, The Dissolve posted a farewell editorial on July 8, by founder and chief editor Keith Phipps (today would have marked the site's two-year anniversary). In the editorial, Phipps made it clear there is no one to blame for the shut-down, other than the "various challenges inherent in launching a freestanding website in a crowded publishing environment, financial and otherwise." Here at De Palma a la Mod, we will miss The Dissolve, not just because the site's talented group of writers were consistent proponents of the work of Brian De Palma, but also for the consistently engaging devotion to cinephilia that bled from the digital pages those writers regularly produced.

Here are some highlights from the De Palma-related articles published by The Dissolve over the past two years:

Passion review by Noel Murray

"With Passion, De Palma is on more familiar ground, using the world of the erotic thriller to note how Skyping, sexting, and tiny pocket cameras are changing behavior, putting everyone in the spotlight and distracting the eye. That’s ultimately what makes Passion a more effective film than the one it’s remaking. While Corneau and Carter were telling a story about what their characters do and don’t see, De Palma is more engaged with what the audience sees. There’s always something to look at in the background of Passion, from the erotic paintings on the walls of Christine’s flat to the video billboards posted around Berlin, and always something eye-catching in what the characters wear, or how they’re posed. The movie is one long game of misdirection, playing tricks on viewers from scene to scene, and showing how easy it is to steer a crowd into missing something important. That’s the real De Palma touch, even more than the operatic overtones and excess."

Scott Tobias interviews Brian De Palma about Passion

The Dissolve: Does it frustrate you as a filmgoer to see the language of a film employed less carefully than that? All that work is elided in a lot of movies.

De Palma: Yes, I would agree. I’m astounded by—whether you’re making a science-fiction movie, a zombie movie, a Star Trek, a Marvel Comics Spider-Man movie—these action sequences that seemingly go on endlessly, without any type of shape or form. So much in action has to do with choreography, and orienting the viewer in where everything is. And I’m amazed all the time that nobody seems to pay much attention to that. So you basically get action and reaction, and it’s like an endless drumming without any shape.

The Dissolve: It seems like they’re trying to make up in sheer, visceral force things that could be done much more elegantly.

De Palma: And obviously, in order to have a crescendo, you have to have some silence. It’s just so simple, but nobody seems to pay much attention to it. They’re basically banging at you constantly. And then in a movie, it’s two hours, too, and then everybody says, “My God, when is this going to be over?” [Laughs.]

Noel Murray's Favorite Scene of 2013: Afternoon Of A Faun, Passion

"Brian De Palma’s Passion starts out as a fairly flat and faithful adaptation of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime, but then after about half an hour, De Palma loosens up and starts making his most visually expressive and delightfully delirious movie since Femme Fatale. In Passion’s best sequence—and one of the best setpieces of De Palma’s formidable career—a ruthless businesswoman played by Rachel McAdams is stalked by a killer on half the screen, while the other half shows her protégée (Noomi Rapace) watching a performance of The Afternoon Of A Faun. The score rises to a peak, and the dancers look directly into the camera, underlining Passion’s theme of misdirection. De Palma keeps pulling viewers’ eyes back and forth, while heightening the tension to the point of distraction. He also calls back to some of his earliest films, like Dionysus In ’69 and Hi, Mom!, where the theater played a central role. Passion isn’t one of De Palma’s top-tier films, but it’s playful and creative, and the Afternoon Of A Faun sequence is a model of how to layer images and move characters with a multiple frames."

Alan Jones investigates why Phantom Of The Paradise was/is Big In Winnipeg

"Regardless, it became a weekly ritual for young Winnipeggers, playing into May of the following year, and encouraging repeat visits. A columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press claimed he had met many people who had seen it 13 or 14 times. 'In many ways, it was almost like a big rock ’n’ roll party for us,' says Carlson. 'At that age, the most subversive thing we might have seen would have been Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo or something.' Perhaps the permissiveness of Winnipeg parents played a role in Phantom’s success, but the film may have also been a generation’s introduction to rock ’n’ roll. For this audience, Williams’ glam rock played as the real thing, their first introduction to 'adult' music, a ripe starting point for a film and musician whose reputation within the city grew with nostalgia and age."

The double vision of Phantom Of The Paradise by Noel Murray

The devil’s bargains and unsparing satire of Phantom Of The Paradise, a discussion by Noel Murray, Keith Phipps, Nathan Rabin, Matt Singer, and Scott Tobias

(Thanks to Drew!)


Posted by Geoff at 1:03 AM CDT
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Thursday, July 9, 2015
WEDNESDAY NIGHT TWEETS


The Clippers Have Been Inside DeAndre Jordan's House All Day, With Mark Cuban and Dan Fegan Locked Out

Posted by Geoff at 1:29 AM CDT
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Tuesday, July 7, 2015
NEW 'ROGUE NATION' POSTER
This new poster for Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation appeared today on sites such as imgur, Reddit, and Flickering Myth. The source is said to be Tom Cruise's Twitter page, although I don't see it there... In any case, the poster makes an obvious nod to the first film in the series, which was directed by Brian De Palma.

Posted by Geoff at 11:58 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:00 AM CDT
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Sunday, July 5, 2015
'NOW PLAYING' PODCAST - 'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE'
The Now Playing Podcast is looking at each Mission: Impossible film, in anticipation of the fifth film in the franchise, which will open in theaters at the end of July. A couple of weeks ago, they began the series with the initial film from 1996, directed by Brian De Palma. Overall, the group feels that while the film has "problems," they found a lot to like and mildly recommend it. "The problem," according to one of the podcast's three hosts, "is the movie wants to be so coy all the time, it wants to surprise you, that it leaves out too much information, and you end up having to piece things together from not enough footage." If, like me, you don't actually see a problem here, get ready for a trying 84-minute discussion bogged down with comments about how "it would have been easy to fix that" in the script, along with an incessant need to have everything spelled out for the viewer.
(Thanks to Will!)

Posted by Geoff at 3:33 AM CDT
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Saturday, July 4, 2015
JUST SAYIN'


"That was the first time I'd experienced a director shooting long takes like that. I think he was experimenting with the knowledge that he could edit them down or leave them if he wanted. He was shooting no coverage. I've been in long sequences but mostly in action movies, and I don't put Unbreakable in that category. These long takes were revelatory."

--Bruce Willis, discussing M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000) in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly (double-issue #1371/1372, July 10/17 2015).

Posted by Geoff at 3:16 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, July 4, 2015 3:18 PM CDT
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Friday, July 3, 2015
'BODY DOUBLE' ON SONY HD TV SATURDAY
AND A LETTERBOXD USER POSTS A THOUGHTFUL REVIEW
Brian De Palma's Body Double is on the schedule for the Sony Movie Channel this month including a showing Saturday night), while over on MGM-HD, De Palma's Blow Out is programmed throughout this holiday weekend.

Over at Letterboxd, Cameron Morewood recently posted a thoughtful review of Body Double. Here are excerpts from the beginning and end of his review:
"It is difficult to label any one film industry, from its conception to its present day stature, as the greatest of all time. Many, however, would argue that Hollywood has maintained its status as the most extravagant. From the silent spectacles of the roaring twenties to the technicolor marvels of the 1950's, American cinema has always possessed a distinct opulence, a resounding declaration of stature and celebrity. The formula is most commonly associated with Alfred Hitchcock: a leading man, a beautiful woman by his side, and an gaudily enigmatic conflict designed to bewilder audiences far and wide. Thirty years after what most believe to be Hitchcock's golden age, bravura filmmaker Brian De Palma decided to deconstruct this image of Hollywood, and he used the master of suspense himself as the focal point of his refracted image.

"The narrative presented in Body Double is an intentionally and loudly obvious resurrection of Hitchcock's diagram, albeit a resurrection that has been carefully exaggerated and over-sexualized to deliberately twist a knife in the heart of mainstream cinema's blatant exploitations. Jake Scully is an actor who suffers from a severe case of claustrophobia. He is the symbol of the young American discontent to exist in an ordinary aesthetic where his entrance is lethargically greeted with inaudible applause. He is caustically frustrated by the world's inability to accommodate him and continuously distracted by a pumping libido that facilitates a penchant for peeping. Jake Scully, whose tallest ambition is to achieve Hollywood stardom, is De Palm's leading man, his Carey Grant, so to speak...

"So in the end, once the audience has been captivated and subverted, what does De Palma's steamy, self-reflexive thriller amount to? Is it anti-Hollywood? Post Hollywood? I don't think so. Because despite De Palma's stentorian rancor in his illumination of mainstream cinema's implicit misogyny, much of the material in Body Double exhibits a strong, faithful love of both old and new Hollywood. De Palma adores the chicanery and exorbitance of Hitchcock's narrative. He worships the movement and utilization of the camera. He, like many of us, is a lover of cinema. But he does not idealize it either. He sees Hollywood's faults, cinema's imperfections and absurdities. He wraps them all together, the positives and negatives, and meticulously winds them through the world of this film. Body Double is an American movie about American movies and the Americans who enjoy them. It is a shamelessly ostentatious, visually immaculate, textually capacious masterpiece."


Posted by Geoff at 6:42 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, July 3, 2015 6:43 PM CDT
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