DE PALMA DISCUSSION AROUND THE WEB - MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, CARLITO'S WAY, THE FURY
Earlier this week, Guillaume Zimmer tweeted four video clips from Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible, commenting on the visual storytelling. Check them out here: impossible shot, stunning rack focus shot, a bit of humour, simple yet effective.
Meanwhile, posting a clip from De Palma's Carlito's Way, Cinema Tweets writes, "Brian De Palma’s never received the credit he deserves for his genius as a filmmaker. Overshadowed by his peers that exploded on the scene in the ‘70s, countless directors and actors owe part of their success to De Palma. That includes Al Pacino."
And one more - 1428 Elm's Stephen Rosenberg writes about De Palma's The Fury, with the headline, "You probably haven't seen this '70s Brian De Palma movie that channels Stephen King." Here's an excerpt:
In just premise alone, The Fury feels like it belongs right in the vein of Stephen King’s psychic powers-focused stories of that era, including Carrie, The Dead Zone, The Shining, and especially Firestarter, where a shadow government agency tries to use a pyrokinetic’s powers for their own gain. That’s not to say John Farris shouldn’t get his due for writing the story; he’s no one-hit wonder. Farris has written more than 40 novels over the course of his literary career.The Fury isn’t just good because of its strong, classic horror-sci-fi feel. It’s great to see Brian De Palma’s early fingerprints all over the screen. He has simply always thrived with mystery thrillers, using the camera’s zoom and lighting to increasingly build intensity throughout the scenes.
His split diopter shots and superimposing to showcase Gillian’s psychic abilities are unique and reminiscent of late Hitchcock films, and an early teaser into his best films, like Blow Out and The Untouchables.
At its core, The Fury is just a solid, if not slowly paced, government mystery movie. But peppered between some of the moments that lag are awesome displays of telekinesis, like Robin causing carnival rides to spin apart, or Gillian going full Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone.
(Curiously, Rosenberg describes John Williams's score for The Fury as "unusually uplifting." To me, this is one of Williams' most intense film scores, and not what I would call uplifting.)