Emerson discusses a couple of other examples before getting into a discussion of A.O. Scott's review of Sam Mendes' Away We Go, and how the review impressed him so much that he is now hesitant to see the actual film.

Zabriskie Point is part of Warners’ Directors Showcase package bringing back such overlooked films as John Boorman’s very fine Beyond Rangoon and Hal Ashby’s Looking to Get Out, but Antonioni’s masterpiece has already had notable influence: Bruno Dumont misunderstood and disgraced it in his horror-show/parody Twentynine Palms but Brian De Palma paid great tribute in The Fury. Daria’s affair with businessman Rod Taylor is repeated in De Palma’s John Cassavetes/Amy Irving finale where moral and generational conflict literally explode. It was Antonioni’s idea to unleash his heroine’s frustration while critiquing the spiritual emptiness of materialist excess.This still-amazing and thoughtful sequence (volatile yet measured and thematic) invented the “cinegasm.”

[The] closest [director Justin] Lin gets to bliss is the hokey moment Dom psychically imagines a road incident involving his ride-or-die lovematch, Michelle Rodriguez. Lin spins the camera 360 degrees as the past envelops Dom’s consciousness. It updates Brian De Palma’s breathtaking Vision on the Staircase sequence in The Fury, yet nothing else in Fast & Furious justifies such an hallucinatory leap.

I offered to write a symphonic score in a similar vein to Bernard Herrmann because Giallo is a great film that reminds me of the masterpieces of Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma. Herrmann not only composed for Hitchcock, he also wrote the music for two of the best De Palma films, Sisters and Obsession.

Werba also mentions the score for De Palma's The Fury as John Williams' best:

It’s difficult to say which specific film scores I deeply admire. There are many good compositions for films. I would say that each composer has his own best film scores. John Williams wrote wonderful music for Brian De Palma’s thriller The Fury, but it’s not a well-known score.

WES CRAVEN TALKS EXPLODING HEADS
Also this past week, UGO's Jordan Hoffman posted a conversation with Wes Craven in which the two discussed cinema's best exploding head scenes...

[Craven] “Well, nothing beats Cronenberg’s Scanners."

[Hoffman] “I disagree! I think Scanners takes the silver medal and there is one better. John Cassavetes exploding at the end of Brian De Palma’s The Fury.”

Craven seems unsure and simply says, “Mmm.”

I backpedal. “But that isn’t just his head, that is his whole body. But it is the head that flies up at the camera. In slow motion.”

[Craven] “Well, I had a hell of an exploding head I shot for Deadly Friend. It was one of the more spectacular things I ever shot of Anne Twomey’s head, but the studio had us cut it out. It’s out there somewhere in a vault at Warner Brothers never to see the light of day.”

[Hoffman] “Maybe for a DVD release?”

[Craven] “Well, you never know.”

The Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow today discusses Repo! The Genetic Opera. Sragow writes:

This seldom seen, gripping and vibrant science-fiction spy chiller ranks with Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables as director Brian De Palma’s best work. Featuring Richard Kline’s superb cinematography, it constantly delivers punch after punch of fear and suspense.

(Thanks to Randy!)