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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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« July 2015 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


Enthusiasms...

De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
of the 7th Art

The De Palma Touch

The Swan Archives

Carrie...A Fan's Site

Phantompalooza

No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Snake Eyes
a la Mod

Mission To Mars
a la Mod

Sergio Leone
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

The Phantom Project

Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
Fan Page

The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

Astigmia Cinema

LOLA

Cultural Weekly

A Lonely Place

The Film Doctor

italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

Medfly Quarantine

Not Just Movies

Hope Lies at
24 Frames Per Second

Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
Country Cinephile

So Why This Movie?

Obsessive Movie Nerd

Nothing Is Written

Ferdy on Films

Cashiers De Cinema

This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

Every '70s Movie

Dangerous Minds

EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
Love, Dr. Jones!

The former
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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Beaune Thriller Fest
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Cannes
Capone Rising
Carlito's Way
Carrie
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Catch And Kill
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Columbo - Shooting Script
Congo
Conversation, The
Cop-Out
Cruising
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De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
Demolished Man
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Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
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Fatal Attraction
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Film Series
Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
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Happy Valley
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Hi, Mom!
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Iraq, etc.
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Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Magic Hour
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Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
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Murder a la Mod
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Phantom Of The Paradise
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Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
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Retribution
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Rotwang muß weg!
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Sisters
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To Bridge This Gap
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Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
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Monday, July 27, 2015
ABOUT THAT MUSIC ON LAST NIGHT'S 'TRUE DETECTIVE'

Previously:
LATEST 'TRUE DETECTIVE' BRINGS DE PALMA TO MIND


Posted by Geoff at 7:47 PM CDT
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LATEST 'TRUE DETECTIVE' BRINGS DE PALMA TO MIND
JOBLO: "MASTERFUL" DE PALMA-STYLE SET-PIECE AT SEX PARTY INVOLVING RACHEL MCADAMS' CHARACTER


Recapping last night's sixth episode of the second season of HBO's True Detective, JoBlo's Chris Bumbray begins with a summary of the episode's plot: "Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) goes undercover at a drug and sex fueled party to find a missing woman with info on Caspere's blackmail tape." Later in the recap, Bumbray writes, "Things get insane in the second half when Ani goes undercover at Mayor Chessani's son's sex party, where the mob imports girls for the town's richest men to have their way with. This whole sequence is amazing, with director Miguel Sapochnik (director of Repo Men) expertly staging the Brian De Palma-style set-piece at the party, with the tension being ramped up to an almost intolerable level. I was literally on-the-edge of my seat, helped by McAdams' wired performance as Ani's drugged and starts to hallucinate that the man who molested her as a child is stalking her, while having to fight off armed bodyguards (with some nifty knife work). The shooting, editing and – especially – the T. Bone Burnett soundtrack here deserve top marks, and I think I even preferred this set-piece to the shootout in episode four. It was absolutely masterful."


Posted by Geoff at 1:00 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, July 27, 2015 7:36 PM CDT
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Sunday, July 26, 2015
SUNDAY TWEET

Posted by Geoff at 2:29 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, July 26, 2015 2:30 PM CDT
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Saturday, July 25, 2015
'SCARFACE' POSTER KEY PART OF 'TRAINWRECK' JOKE
"PLEASE DON'T BE A DORM ROOM... PLEASE DON'T BE A DORM ROOM..."
In the new film Trainwreck, written by Amy Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow, Schumer plays Amy, who makes it clear right from the start that she enjoys casual sex, drinking, and various drugs. Early in the film, she awakens from one boozy night in a bed that is not her own. As she opens her eyes, we see her look around the room, from her point of view, and the first thing she sees is a Scarface poster (from the 1983 film) hanging on the wall. The camera briefly pauses on the poster, in the center of the frame. She verbally notes the Scarface poster and begins muttering to herself as her eyes continue to dart around the room, "Please don't be a dorm room... please don't be a dorm room." It's a quick gag that got a lot of laughs at the packed theater in which I viewed Trainwreck the other night.

Posted by Geoff at 1:45 AM CDT
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Friday, July 24, 2015
VIDEO SCRUTINIZES 'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE'
"EVERYTHING WRONG WITH" SERIES GIVES EXTRA POINTS FOR DE PALMA'S ARTISTRY


The "Everything Wrong With" series looks at Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible in the video above. After two quick "Movie Sins" right at the beginning, the narrator (Jeremy Scott) says, "I'm going to go ahead and knock off five sins because Brian De Palma shows how you can tell a story visually without having to cut to a new shot every second-- he uses the anamorphic format beautifully in this movie, and if you pay attention, you're rewarded." And there's another subtraction of "sins" later on. Also, make sure to watch the end of the video-- after going through the movie, there are some mash-ups of Mission: Impossible with other films, such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.
(Thanks to James!)

Posted by Geoff at 1:26 AM CDT
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Tuesday, July 21, 2015
ORIGINAL 'PHANTOM' FILM MATERIALS FOR SALE
SWAN ARCHIVES READY TO PART WITH ORIGINAL NEGATIVES, ETC., IN EBAY AUCTION IF RESERVE PRICE IS MET
Now that the footage has been made available to fans, and in high-quality formats, the Swan Archives is ready to sell the original outtakes, deleted scenes, and more original materials from Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise. There is an Ebay auction for the materials that ends July 29, with a reserve price that must be met before the auction can be won. Here is the description of the materials from the Ebay listing:
The Swan Archives is parting with its entire collection of original 35mm and 16mm film related to Brian De Palma's 1974 masterpiece, Phantom of the Paradise. Most of this material is ONE OF A KIND.

Among this footage is the material that was borrowed from us and used as the basis of the outtakes and deleted scenes bonus material on the recent bluray editions of the film in the UK (from Arrow Films) and the US (Shout Factory).

You are bidding on:

- Approximately an hour's worth of deleted scenes and outtakes from Phantom of the Paradise on the original 35mm negatives and interpositives, in the original film cans, with the original labeling from the processor, from 1973/1974. Most (but not all) of this footage was used on the Shout/Scream blurays. There are still a few surprises left in there!

- Three 35mm "coming attractions" trailers: one from the first campaign in 1974, one from the second campaign in 1975, and one negative from the first campaign. The negative is pristine, and the positives have very light use.

- 16mm Negatives and separate audio track for 2 60-second TV spots, plus one positive. These are as minty as they can be.

- Original runcards from the processor, as well as dozens of pages of handwritten notes about how to piece the film together, plus dozens of pages of invoices and related correspondence between the processor and the production. You can see much more about the footage on the Swan Archives website, on our Promotion, Production Fiasco, and Production Outtakes pages.

I will pay shipping within the USA. Sorry, I'm not willing to ship this item internationally; I don't want to deal with the customs hassles. If you're outside the USA, maybe you have a friend in-country...I'll be happy to ship it to them.

You're also welcome to pick this item up at the Archives, which is in the San Francisco Bay Area. We're always happy to meet other fans.

This is a piece of cinema history. Sale of this film does not imply any rights in the footage embodied in the film. There is a reserve price on this auction. If the reserve price is not met, the item won't sell. Thanks for looking, and for bidding!


Posted by Geoff at 12:15 AM CDT
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Friday, July 17, 2015
PACINO ON 'SCARFACE' VIOLENCE & CULTURE
"I DON'T SEE THAT AS THE METAPHOR... I THOUGHT IT WAS A SOCIO-POLITICAL STATEMENT"
In an interview with The Independent's Kaleem Aftab, Al Pacino discusses what Scarface is about, as he sees it. Here's the excerpt:
The greatness of his performances mean that sometimes the roles that he has played have taken on lives of their own. This has never been as true as with Scarface, in which he played the Cuban immigrant turned drug baron Tony Montana. The character and the life he lived have become a go-to for criminals, and lauded by a plethora of gangsta-rappers. The rags-to-riches story has been used to glorify violence. Does Pacino feel that his film has impacted culture in a negative way?

“Well I don’t know what to say about that, I don’t know.” But his moment without an opinion is short-lived.

“I look at Scarface and I don’t see that as the metaphor. I see what Brian De Palma was talking about when we made it. It was the crazy Eighties, the decade of avarice, greed and introducing that into the world; greed is good and the whole thing from Gecko in Wall Street. I thought it was a very socio-political statement, which is why rappers took to it. Hip-hop people were so buoyed up on Scarface. I know a lot of people who don’t deal drugs who are inspired by it. It’s about a kind of ingenuity, suddenly coming from the bottom and rising, which is why the original was so inspiring for me. There is something else too that seems to trigger off a certain thing, and that is this sense of his ideals as an outsider.”


Posted by Geoff at 8:08 PM CDT
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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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