La Furia Umana

Didier Truffot / Brian De Palma avec Rudolf Arnheim

Benjamin Léon / L’écran dans l’écran : Notes sur le plan-séquence chez Brian De Palma

Daisuke Akusaka / Farce in slow motion

Eirik Frisvold Hanssen / To look, to respond: vantage points and mixed media in Brian De Palma’s 1960s and 2000s

Raquel Schefer / The Early Politics of Brian De Palma

Alain Hertay / Hi, Mom ! ou les simulacres

Julien Oreste / Two Sisters. Brian De Palma & Douglas Buck

Jessica Felrice / Dread And Time Travel

Covadonga G. Lahera / Efectos personales: la huella de Some Came Running en Blow Out

Carlos Losilla / Naturaleza uerta. A propósito de Dressed to Kill

Fredrik Gustafsson / Body Double

Kim Nicolini / The World Is Yours: Tony Montana’s Paradise Pie in Scarface

Nicole Brenez / L'impossible au sérieux

Sigismondo Domenico Sciortino / Dell'inevitabile e del multimediale

Adrien Clerc / Quand les corps font écrans

Guillaume Rouzaud / Au-delà de la suture

Ricardo Adalia Martín / La cuestión humana. Cinco apuntes sobre Passion

Louis Daubresse / Passion pour le Tout-Image

Toni D'Angela / Il testo im-possibile : Passion

Monica Munoz Marinero / John Litghow, a imagen y semejanza

The issue also has a section of essays about Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause.

Throughout the article, Knight keeps a running focus on autobiographical elements in De Palma's films, citing, for instance, Jason Zinoman's profile of De Palma for the book Shock Value in his entry on Dressed To Kill (#4). Knight's top three De Palma films are (#1) Blow Out ("the ending... solidifies Blow Out as De Palma’s bonafide masterwork"); (#2) Phantom Of The Paradise ("a careening bullet of pop art"); and (#3) Body Double (a "cinematic explosion meant to intoxicate those who are as in love with form as its director").

Also in Knight's top ten are a couple of surprises: Snake Eyes at number six, Mission: Impossible at number eight, and The Black Dahlia at number nine. De Palma's latest film, Passion, ranks at number 17. Of the latter, Knight writes, "There’s something to be said about De Palma’s choice of setting for the Berlin ad office — a towering building made entirely of glass. Not only does it feel like an on-the-nose visual representation of the 'ceiling' all female employees face as they navigate the current corporate climate, but also a metaphor for the lack of transparency all of these characters share. While we the audience can see through the walls of this crystal shrine to capitalism, each character holds up a shield of deception to stop the other from seeing their next move. It’s a brilliant bit of location scouting, as De Palma yet again finds a perfect way to convey an idea without using a single word."

At the bottom of Knight's list is Raising Cain, which Knight feels is hurt by De Palma's seeming lack of interest in that type of thriller at that point in time. And he has The Untouchables at number five, writing of the latter, "This is pulp on an epic, exciting level that takes both balls and chops in equal quantity to pull off."

Cole's number one choice is Carlito's Way ("De Palma’s swooning movements and intense close-ups have never been more gracefully used to draw out the human from the generic and stereotypical," Cole states, "and no other De Palma film offers so great a fusion of form and content.")

One of the more surprising choices is Cole's ranking of The Black Dahlia at number five. "Unfairly maligned upon its release," Cole explains, “The Black Dahlia represents the best fusion of the director’s classical eye and postmodern deconstruction since Carlito’s Way. Body Double shows ‘80s cinema inexorably linked to pornography, but this postwar vision of Hollywood finds sets from silent masterpieces reused to film porn, cast with a never-ending supply of exploited small-town dreamers. L.A. Confidential remains the standard for James Ellroy adaptations for its tediously safe aesthetic and narrative structures, but it is The Black Dahlia that truly sinks into Ellroy’s noxious world, the swirling torrents of chauvinist supremacy, xenophobia and capitalist opportunism that powers the film industry as much as the city around it."

Two other films from the 2000s made Cole's top ten: Femme Fatale (#7) and Mission To Mars (#8).

Cole's dismissal of The Untouchables (#21) seems wrong all over the place.

Meanwhile, Alex Withrow at And So It Begins... posted his top 5 De Palma films, placing Snake Eyes at number 5. "I am fully aware that this is not a sentiment shared by many people," writes Withrow, "but I fucking love Snake Eyes. I love how Nicolas Cage just barely keeps it together (which is to say, barely keeping zany Cage at bay), I love the insanely long tracking shots (which is to say, I appreciate De Palma doing his best to hide them via digital technology), I love Gary Sinise stepping as far away from Lt. Dan as he can, the double-back narrative, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s perfect music – everything. 'You got snake eyes. The house wins.'" Blow Out tops Withrow's list, with Body Double in second place.

And finally, The Artifice's Vic Millar serves up "A Beginner’s Guide to Brian De Palma." Millar explains, "With an impressively daunting body of work consisting of almost 30 films dating as far back as the 1960′s, Brian De Palma is a director than can be a bit difficult to dive into. De Palma’s new film Passion hits theaters on August 30th and is already available on VOD platforms, and it really is a return to form for the director who has stumbled with his last few outings. In Passion, De Palma not only has a chance to deploy many of his favorite visual signatures, but it also provides him with the opportunity to return to some of the subject matter he frequently enjoys exploring. Because of this, it’s worth looking back at De Palma’s most important films to identify how he’s used these themes and tricks throughout his lengthy career. If you’re a novice when it comes to Brian De Palma’s work, these six films are the perfect place to start."

Millar suggests: 1) Blow Out, 2) Carlito's Way, 3) Body Double, 4) Carrie, 5) Mission: Impossible, and 6) Phantom Of The Paradise. "A joyously weird musical-horror hybrid," says Millar of the latter, "Phantom of the Paradise finds De Palma at his most wacky and experimental. With a mash-up plot drawing from The Phantom of the Opera, Faust, and Dorian Grey, this movie follows a scarred and deformed masked man who haunts the Paradise Theater to get revenge on the musician who stole his work. As if the popping music and tragic characters weren’t enough, De Palma loads the film with startling amounts of violence and cultural satire. This movie shows off how gleefully excessive De Palma can be. Look at one key scene halfway through the movie: De Palma uses one of his favorite techniques, splitting the screen down the middle to show us two images at once. On one side, we follow a car with a ticking bomb in it being pushed onto the stage during a performance. On the other side, we see a band called the Juicy Fruits rocking out to the applause of the crowd. Partly a Touch of EvilThe Beach Boys, this scene sums up everything there is to love about Brian De Palma. Who else could give us film references, mounting tension and violence, and ironic musical numbers not only in the same scene – but in the same frame?"

Meanwhile, today The Chicago Reader's Drew Hunt posted his top five picks for best De Palma films (part of his "Weekly Top Five" series), and there are at least a couple that you might not expect. Here they are:

1. Blow Out
2. Sisters
3. Femme Fatale
4. Greetings
5. Snake Eyes

Both articles include great explanations of the critics' choices, so be sure to check those out, too. I have my own top five De Palma films:

1. Blow Out
2. Carrie
3. Phantom Of The Paradise
4. Femme Fatale
5. Dressed To Kill

Tell us your top five in the comments below.

Meanwhile, Hollywood Outbreak's Greg Srisavasdi, in posting about the upcoming release of De Palma's Passion, added a SoundCloud clip from a radio interview De Palma did at a press junket for Femme Fatale. In the clip, De Palma says: "Well, I'm very influenced by music, so I tend not to listen to it very much at all. Because it too emotionally kind of grabs me. And when I make movies I have to, you know, listen to a lot of orchestral music to figure out what... the composer should write. So I tend to keep away from listening to music. You know, I live in an apartment that has literally nothing much on the walls. I can't be... I'm best in some kind of motel room with nothing around me, because those kinds of things influence what's going on in my head. So I don't tend to expose myself to stimulus like that."

Arrow's Blow Out Blu-Ray is out tomorrow, and DVD Beaver's Gary Tooze has provided a very helpful comparison between it and the Criterion edition that came out two years ago. He says the picture is a little brighter on the Arrow edition, which definitely holds its own against Criterion's. However, as each one has its own bevy of wonderful extras, it seems more than worth it to own both.

Meanwhile, Tomas Lucien has posted an audiovisual remix of Carlito's meeting with Lalin from Carlito's Way that gets pretty crazy towards the end.