WWII, SPIES, LESBIANS, A POSSIBLE TRANSVESTITE... AND MYSTIQUE?
Meanwhile, Spout's Christopher Campbell, inspired by the release of the new X-Men film, has produced a list of "10 Mutants Who Need an X-Men Origins Movie." Campbell mentions that a previously mentioned Mystique movie, preferably directed by Brian De Palma, is still their first choice. Of that potential movie, Campbell wrote:

X-Men Origins: Mystique” would be very cool, because Raven Darkholme is such a fascinating villain. Her solo film should be set during WWII in her days as a spy and feature her lesbian partner, Destiny (or hetero partner if you subscribe to the theory that Mystique was born a man and has been disguising herself primarily as a woman “as the ultimate in transvestism”). Brian De Palma should probably direct this spin off, since it’ll kind of be like a cross between “Mission: Impossible” and “Femme Fatale.”

Of course, Rebecca Romijn, who played Mystique in the original X-Men films, was De Palma's Femme Fatale. While a younger actress would undoubtedly have to be cast in such a prequel, it would be exciting to see De Palma mixing it up with these elements within the WWII genre. The only problem with that is, the new films have altered the timeline to where Raven would be a toddler during WWII. Even so, perhaps Vaughn and Bryan Singer should give De Palma a call...

DREW TAYLOR: "IF BRIAN DE PALMA HAD DIRECTED A SCRIPT BY RICHARD KELLY"
After Source Code premiered at SXSW last month, The Playlist's Drew Taylor posted a mostly positive review of the film. "And while the movie is very much a suspense piece," wrote Taylor, "with prolonged sequences of edge-of-your-seat tension that bring to mind what would have happened if Brian De Palma had directed a script by Richard Kelly, it has an incredibly romantic heart—one that is perhaps a little hokey at times, but a heart nonetheless."

BURGER'S "FRACTAL ZOOM"
In the interview with Macauley, Burger discusses some of his visual ideas for Limitless:

...we were trying to do it in a way that was fresh, with things we hadn’t seen before. The Matrix’s bullet time, that frozen moment, would have been fantastic for this movie. But it’s so overused — it’s in the most basic Channel 9 news bumpers. Speed ramping or time-lapse, racing through the city at high speed — I love all that, but I can’t go there either. It’s just been used too much. So, instead of rushing through the city, I came up with this idea of a fractal zoom. It’s like you are rushing through the city streets but not at high speed — you are at an infinite zoom, moving relentlessly at real time but faster than everyone around you. Nobody could figure out how to do it until, after shooting, we brought on this company called Look Effects. This great guy Dan Schrecker was able to figure out how to execute this idea that I had. Some people were like, “Well, that’s not related to the flipping numbers [a visual idea Burger discussed previously in the interview], which isn’t related to the burned-in thing,” and I was like, “They’re all related, because there’s a physical nature to all of them.” I didn’t want [these effects] to feel digital. I wanted them to feel physical, that in his mind they are really happening.

Richet’s enterprising handle on the material Killer Instinct is a work of veneration and compulsion comparable to the better films of Brian De Palma (Scarface, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Carlito’s Way). Like a French Tarantino, Richet is clearly a filmmaker who loves movies and moviemakers. Over the course of these two films, he pays considerable respect to, among others, William Friedkin, Peter Yates, Michael Mann, Luc Besson and Michael Bay.

Dale goes on to suggest that the film's comparisons to The Godfather and GoodFellas are perhaps overstated:

Such comparisons actually do the film a bit of a disservice. Though driven by a euphoric narrative that undeniably belongs to mainstream English language cinema, Killer Instinct and to a lesser extent its sequel is actually awash with homegrown influences. The sequences set in late-50s Paris could have been lifted from Henri Georges-Clouzot’s brilliant 1947 dockside thriller Quai des Oefevres and the spirit of Jean Gabin, most notably in Michael Carné’s moody 1938 deserter-on-the-loose drama Le Quai des Brumes which shadows every frame and crooked turn of Cassel’s ratty mouth.

COZZALIO: ORPHAN'S BEGINNING AND ENDING RECALL DE PALMA
Meanwhile, Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule was reminded of De Palma twice while reviewing Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan, currently in U.S. theaters. Cozzalio was jolted during the opening of the film, writing, "I had to fight the urge to bolt from the theater during this opening sequence. And had Collet-Serra continued to operate in this weirdly dissociative style of De Palma-tinged surgical theater of horror, who knows how much I could have/would have taken?" Cozzalio also hints that the surprises in store in the final stretch of Orphan place "the movie in the vicinity of one of Brian De Palma’s great sick jokes," as the audience most likely will not see what's coming.

NEW HARRY POTTER FILM PAYS HOMAGE TO CARRIE
Finally, in a review of the new Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Kevin Maher at the Times Online states that the final act contains "a fantastically cheeky homage to Brian De Palma’s Carrie." Guess now I'll have to go check it out...

SPEAKING OF BLOOD SIMPLE
According to Screen Daily, Zhang Yimou will direct a remake of Blood Simple, which "will be set in a Chinese noodle shop in desert, rather than in a Texas bar."