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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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« January 2015 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


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De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
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The De Palma Touch

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Carrie...A Fan's Site

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No Harm In Charm

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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

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Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
Fan Page

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Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

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italkyoubored

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So Why This Movie?

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EatSleepLiveFilm

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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
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Becoming Visionary
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Bill Pankow
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Books
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Cannes
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Columbo - Shooting Script
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Cop-Out
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Dionysus In '69
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Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
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Happy Valley
Havana Film Fest
Heat
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Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma  «
Iraq, etc.
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Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Murder a la Mod
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Raising Cain
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Redacted
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Sisters
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Sunday, January 25, 2015
'LET THE RIGHT ONE IN' PLAY ADDS 'CARRIE' TOUCH
THEATER CRITIC SAYS IT WILL SHOCK NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU'VE SEEN DE PALMA'S FILM


The Wrap's Robert Hofler posted a review tonight of the National Theatre of Scotland's stage version of Let The Right One In, now playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. In his opening paragraph, Hofler writes, "For those veteran theatergoers who saw Paris but didn’t visit the Grand Guignol before it closed shop in 1962, the new stage adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel and screenplay Let the Right One In is a must-see. Stage director John Tiffany offers some superb reincarnations of the bloodsucking and bloodletting that distinguishes Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 vampire film, and he adds another grizzly touch, inspired by Brian De Palma, that will shock no matter how many times you’ve seen Carrie."

Posted by Geoff at 11:57 PM CST
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Saturday, November 1, 2014
ELECTRIC YOUTH PLAYLIST
INCLUDES A COUPLE OF TRACKS FROM DE PALMA FILMS
Last month, I posted a link to Austin Garrick's top 10 Criterion releases, which included Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Earlier this week, Entertainment Weekly posted a playlist created by Electric Youth, the Toronto duo made up of Garrick and Bronwyn Griffin. Their collaboration with College, "A Real Hero," was used prominently in Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive. They couldn't help but cap off their playlist with that track, but they also included a couple of tracks from De Palma films-- here are those two choices, with the duo's comments:

Debbie Harry – “Rush Rush” (from Scarface)
[Number 2 on their list was Giorgio Moroder's "Chase Theme" from Alan Parker's Midnight Express] "Credit on this one as well to Moroder, who produced the entire soundtrack for De Palma’s Scarface. Debbie Harry and Moroder collaborated on the amazing American Gigolo OST/Blondie classic “Call Me” as well, but this one is our fave from the two."

Pino Donaggio – “Telescope” (from Body Double)
"Another great song from another great Brian De Palma movie, this one from our favorite, Body Double."


Posted by Geoff at 5:25 PM CDT
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Thursday, October 30, 2014
REVIEWS: DAN GILROY'S 'NIGHTCRAWLER'
Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice
"As sociopathic self-starter Louis Bloom, Gyllenhaal has refashioned himself as a version of the Tony Perkins of Psycho, an Adam's apple with a sick, brilliant mind attached. Gyllenhaal is the polestar of Nightcrawler — just as he's fixated on the grisly crimes and accidents of his city, we can't look away from him. That seems to be part of writer-director Gilroy's design. He's infused Nightcrawler with a number of ideas, free-floating through the movie like fireflies: Gilroy takes on the news media's lust for increasingly prurient stories and graphic news footage, the way crimes against white people take precedence over anything that happens to a person of color, and the downside of citizen journalism in a world where everyone wants to be a star. But on the strength of Gyllenhaal's performance, Nightcrawler works best as a character study. It's chilling, but also wickedly funny and strange, like a good, dark Brian De Palma joke — in short, it's everything the stolid and humorless Gone Girl should have been."

Katherine McLaughlin, The Arts Desk
"First-time director Dan Gilroy sets his grisly and blackly funny satire of modern media practices and the American dream on a seedy night-time LA canvas which oozes style, and recalls the aesthetic of Brian De Palma's Body Double and more recently Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. Jake Gyllenhaal turns in an incredibly convincing performance as a sociopath – repellent enough to sit alongside Travis Bickle and Patrick Bateman – who is grasping ruthlessly for success in the vilest of ways. Gyllenhaal's character is a petty thief turned self-taught freelance cameraman who makes his money from trawling the streets at night, searching for the most gruesome accidents to sell to the local news channels. His sunken eyes and pale complexion add to his unnerving presence, and while Gilroy's film may not say anything particularly original, Gyllenhaal's committed turn ensures a skin-crawling experience."

Brian Formo, Crave Online
"And while an 'it bleeds it leads' tv news critique has been done numerous times, Gilroy has his sights set on a film that’s more Brian De Palma than Network."

Simon Reynolds, Digital Spy: "5 movie antiheroes to watch before experiencing Nightcrawler's Lou Bloom"
Rupert Pupkin, Tony Montana, Suzanne Stone, Tom Ripley, Patrick Bateman.


Posted by Geoff at 1:27 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, October 30, 2014 10:44 PM CDT
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Monday, October 20, 2014
'WHIPLASH' MAKER CITES SCORSESE & DE PALMA
Damien Chazelle, who wrote and had originally planned to direct the De Palma-esque Grand Piano, is getting consistently great reviews for a new movie for which he is the writer/director, Whiplash. Chazelle tells RedEye Chicago's Matt Pais that Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma are among the directors who inspired Whiplash. "In a sense," Chazelle tells Pais, "obviously the influences in this movie are a lot of old filmmakers and Scorsese and De Palma, but the people who actually really get me off my ass and actually motivate me to, ‘All right, [bleep] it, I gotta do some work’ are the young people, the people in my generation who are doing great [bleep]." The two younger directors Chazelle mentions by name are Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) and Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild).

Meanwhile, in a review of Whiplash, Screen Invasion's Mel Valentin writes, "Credit also extends to Chazelle’s cinematographer, Sharone Meir, who lights both interiors and exteriors like ’70s-set urban dramas and crime-thrillers popularized by Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Brian De Palma (among others)."

Posted by Geoff at 1:21 AM CDT
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Saturday, October 18, 2014
THE BIRDMAN COMETH
Edge On The Net's Brian Shaer
on Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

"The film will be of particular interest to theater aficionados for its spectacular recreation of backstage at the St. James Theater on Broadway. Watching the film, with Iñárritu's gorgeous long takes and tracking shots that would make Brian De Palma salivate, one sort of has the feeling that he or she is in rehearsal with these folks and anticipating the curtain rising on opening night as much as they are. The milieu of Times Square and the Broadway theaters is essential in bringing this story its authenticity and in capturing the feel of a play in production."

Edgar Wright
"Go see 'Birdman' on the big screen ASAP. An astoundingly executed movie. Has a 'Phantom Of The Paradise' vibe, which from me is HIGH PRAISE."

Posted by Geoff at 11:54 AM CDT
Updated: Saturday, October 18, 2014 11:55 AM CDT
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Thursday, October 16, 2014


Posted by Geoff at 8:24 PM CDT
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Thursday, October 9, 2014
RYAN MURPHY TALKS 'FREAK SHOW'
"WELL, I MEAN, I'M ALWAYS INFLUENCED BY DE PALMA"
Earlier today, I posted about last night's season premiere of American Horror Story, and how the opening scenes appeared to pay homage to Brian De Palma. The show's creator, Ryan Murphy, who also directed last night's episode, discussed the episode with Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack. Stack to Murphy: "The style is so different. The use of split screens really reminded me of Brian De Palma—was he your inspiration?"

Murphy replies, "Well, I mean, I’m always influenced by him, and yes, that is sort of an homage to him in some weird way. But I think this season is unusual in that it’s sort of like a weird cross between Douglas Sirk and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Stack then says, "I’m guessing you brought the Douglas Sirk." Murphy replies, "I did! If you watch this season as compared to last season, the camera barely moves this season. It’s a much more still cinematic exploration, which means our brilliant director of photography, Michael Goi, had a lot longer time to light. Everything had to be much more spot on because you don’t move the camera. But I really wanted it to be wider frames, bigger frames, stiller frames. And I really put much more of an emphasis this season on the production design and the costumes than ever before because it has that sort of Douglas Sirk ‘50s thing to it."

In my earlier post, I also mentioned that the music reminded me of Bernard Herrmann. Murphy mentions a different composer as he responds to Stack's question about how this episode seemed to use less jump cuts and a slower pace overall. "Yeah," Murphy tells Stack, "we’re using some George Antheil music who was a big composer from back then and whose music was used in a lot of ‘50s and ‘60s horror movies. I like paying homage to the early ‘50s and horror movies and back then they didn’t have Steadicam and they didn’t have jump cuts. So we don’t do as much as that. I felt like I wanted it to be in a more eerie world as opposed to a more startling abrupt world."

Later in the article, Murphy talks about how he ended up directing the episode, and the immense work Sarah Paulson put in to portray the twin sisters. A lot of great discussion in there, definitely worth checking out.

Related Posts:
American Horror Story: Freak Show Tips Hat to De Palma
Murphy Says AHS Season Under the Influence of De Palma
Carrie Cues & Echoes of Sisters as American Horror Story Begins Its Second Season


Posted by Geoff at 8:55 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, October 9, 2014 9:02 PM CDT
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'AHS: FREAK SHOW' TIPS HAT TO DE PALMA
OPENING SEQUENCE INTRODUCES CONJOINED TWIN SISTERS, SPLIT-SCREEN VIEWPOINTS, HERRMANN-ESQUE MUSIC
Ryan Murphy has once again directed the season premiere of American Horror Story: Freak Show, and once again he pays homage to Brian De Palma. In the opening sequence of last night's premiere episode, we are introduced to conjoined twin sisters Bette and Dot Tattler, played by Sarah Paulson. The scene features heavily Bernard Herrmann-esque music, and split screens that sometimes show the two sisters' viewpoints side-by-side, but also switches them up in rapid-fire AHS tradition, sometimes showing one twin's face on one side, and what she is looking at on the other. Of course, with conjoined twins, split-screens, and Herrmann-esque music, one thinks of De Palma's Sisters, and that film's Jennifer Salt is one of the producers through all four seasons of American Horror Story.

Two years ago, the premiere episode of American Horror Story: Asylum used actual prominent excerpts from Pino Donaggio's score for De Palma's Carrie, while the story itself had echoes of Sisters (I posted about it here). Murphy specifically told the press that year that the Asylum season was, partly, an homage to De Palma. This year, he has mentioned wanting to pay homage to Baz Luhrmann by having musical numbers throughout that aren't necessarily from the time period in question (the early 1950s). In that vein, tonight's episode included a David Bowie song sung by Jessica Lange.


Posted by Geoff at 1:34 AM CDT
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Monday, October 6, 2014


Posted by Geoff at 7:39 PM CDT
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Sunday, October 5, 2014
'DONT' LOOK BACK' DIRECTOR CITES DE PALMA
MOVIE PREMIERED ON LIFETIME MOVIE NETWORK SUNDAY NIGHT



Posted by Geoff at 10:53 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, October 5, 2014 10:58 PM CDT
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