Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website. Here is the latest news: |
---|
E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com
-------------
Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
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
-------------
Exclusive Passion
Interviews:
Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario
------------
------------
« | October 2013 | » | ||||
S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002
De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006
Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule
The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold
Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!
Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy
Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site
Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
'CARRIE: THE MUSICAL' IN NEW JERSEY
And we have two more productions of Carrie: The Musical to mention, and both are in New Jersey. NENAProductions Theater Project will stage the revised version of the musical for two weekends, from October 25th through November 3rd, at the Jersey Shore Arts Center.
Meanwhile, Mercer County Community College’s Kelsey Theatre will host Pierrot Production's eight performances of the revised version, including two midnight shows, from October 18-27. Two actors, Lindsey Krier and Jenna Scannelli, will alternate in the lead role. "The demands in this highly emotional role are extreme, not just the amount of singing, but the fact that the majority of the singing is high belt,” explains the show's director, Kat Ross-Kline, to MCCC News. “We want to give each girl a chance to perform at her best. They work well together and the cast has been so respectful and supportive of both of them. It has been a neat process to watch as they discover their own version of the character. This is my first attempt as a director to cast in this way.”
(Thanks to James!)
Restoration Supervisor White is quoted, "It's been a great honour to restore The Fury, a truly fantastic film by one of my favourite directors. Its combination of sci-fi, horror and post-Watergate paranoia thriller make it one of the key titles in Brian De Palma's filmography, although some fans may be less familiar with the film due to its poor treatment on home video until now. Thankfully, this new restoration, struck directly from the original camera negative and carefully restored to preserve the full colour palette and subtleties of Richard Kline's masterly cinematography, should reaffirm the film's reputation as one of De Palma's greatest works, as well as a key film in American 1970s cinema. Finally audiences can see The Fury as it was meant to be seen."
The press release also provides new details about one of the Sam Irvin extras included in the set. Irvin was an intern on The Fury, and an assistant to De Palma on Dressed To Kill. In 1985, he made a short film called Double Negative that featured William Finley, which is included as an extra on The Fury Blu-ray. The IMDB's plot description of Double Negative: "Horror film director must plot to steal the negative of his film in order to save it from being destroyed in an insurance scam cooked up by his sleazy producers."
The press release also mentions that Arrow will release restored Blu-ray editions of De Palma's Sisters and Phantom Of The Paradise in 2014.
Cuarón is even more of a romantic than De Palma, if such a thing is possible. He finds all kinds of ways to link survival in space with life on Earth. There, as here, anyone might have reason to feel loneliness, despair, fear, or exaltation, and homesickness — for a place, a person, a planet — is universal. Incidentally, the first person who tries to tell me Gravity is "unrealistic" or "implausible" is going to get a mock-Vulcan salute and a kick in the pants.
Given the amount of balderdash we have to swallow just to get through a typical summer movie season, taking a small leap of faith and imagination with Cuarón should hardly be a problem. Gravity is harrowing and comforting, intimate and glorious, the kind of movie that makes you feel more connected to the world rather than less. In space, no one can hear you scream. But a whole audience can hear you breathe. And that is a wondrous thing.
One of cinema's biggest proponents of the extremely long tracking shot is Brian De Palma, who I wrote about last week. Long tracking shots are a cool idea, but can be very difficult to pull-off without calling attention to the filmmaking. Hitchcock was a fan too; as was Robert Altman; but De Palma's voyeuristic style always best suited the technique in my mind - until Children of Men came along, that is.
Brian De Palma was also behind a widely-derided (but secretly awesome) film which now stands as a noteworthy antecedent to Gravity - 2000's Mission To Mars.
There's a full-on sequence near the beginning of the film which involves a space walk and a desperate attempt to grab on to a satellite. When details about Gravity started emerging, I hoped that it would be a movie-length version of this scene. And it is. In the best possible way.
DONAGGIO TELLS 'PATRICK' DIRECTOR IT REMINDED HIM OF 1ST TIME HE SAW 'CARRIE'
Mark Hartley has directed a remake of Richard Franklin's Patrick, and tells Crave Online's Fred Topel that in preparation, he and his cinematographer Garry Richards watched "all of De Palma’s films, we watched a lot of Argento films," as well as The Legend Of Hell House, The Orphanage, Julia's Eyes, and The Changeling. Hartley also tells Topel about getting Pino Donaggio to compose the score for Patrick:
So all the way through the production of the film, the producer Tony Ginnane was saying, “We need to get a composer on board.” I was saying, “I’m holding out. We’ll finish the film, we’re going to do a cut, we’re going to send it to Donaggio and see if we can get him. Everyone thought it was just a ludicrous idea and that’s what we ended up doing. As I said, one of the great moment of my life is when I got an e-mail back from Pino saying that he loved the film. He actually said that it reminded him of watching a rough cut of Carrie which was praise beyond belief, and was happy to do it.
The score does divide people too because if you’ve got a Pino Donaggio score, why bury it in the mix? I feel you need to have it basically lead the film. I really love it. Scores now are just incessant percussion turned up to 11 and that’s the last thing I wanted for this film. It really is a throwback to Bernard Hermann’s scores.
However, since going into self-imposed exile from the Hollywood studio system following Mission To Mars (2000), De Palma has been working on smaller scale independent productions, many of them based in Europe. A director of his stature no longer has anything to prove, and producers approach him knowing his previous work and, therefore, his quirks and capabilities. Thanks to this freedom, De Palma has been indulging in more playful and challenging cinematic techniques. The 'alternative universe' scenario of Femme Fatale (2002) is a good example of this, where a large section of the narrative is in fact the lead character's premonition, warning her where life will lead if she makes the wrong decision. With Passion, he returns to the initial dream-within-dream concept of Raising Cain and this time goes through with it, seemingly unconcerned if the audience sometimes gets lost. The constant twists, red herrings and false endings are disorientating on initial viewing, but subsequent viewings reveal a precise logic behind these overlapping elements. For example, on revisiting the film it becomes noticeable that images in the dream sequences are marked out by a much heavier blue tint than is used in the remainder of the film. It is clear that De Palma is having fun with the form, and he saves a final laugh for the very end: the screen cuts to black and ‘The End' appears in simple white lettering before the closing credits roll. This title playfully anticipates a collective sigh of relief from the audience: there will be no more bewildering twists and turns. It's over, the viewer can finally relax.