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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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« June 2009 »
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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
Bart De Palma
Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
Betty Buckley
Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
Blow Out
Blue Afternoon
Body Double
Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
Boston Stranglers
Bruce Springsteen
Cannes
Capone Rising
Carlito's Way
Carrie
Casualties Of War
Catch And Kill
Cinema Studies
Clarksville 1861
Columbia University
Columbo - Shooting Script
Congo
Conversation, The
Cop-Out
Cruising
Daft Punk
Dancing In The Dark
David Koepp
De Niro
De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
Demolished Man
Dick Vorisek
Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
Edward R. Pressman
Eric Schwab
Fatal Attraction
Femme Fatale
Film Series
Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
George Litto
Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
Havana Film Fest
Heat
Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
Jack Fisk
Jared Martin
Jerry Greenberg
Keith Gordon
Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
Lithgow
Magic Hour
Magnificent Seven
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Mission: Impossible
Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
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Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
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NYFF
Obsession
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Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
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Passion
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Phantom Of The Paradise
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Predator
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Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
Robert De Niro
Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
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Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
Snake Eyes
Sound Mixer
Spielberg
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Stepford Wives
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Taxi Driver
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The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
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Thursday, June 4, 2009
DE NIRO TALKIN' 'BOUT SISTERS
EARLY DE PALMA SCRIPTS PART OF DE NIRO COLLECTION
Austin's University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center recently opened to the public a treasure trove of film materials donated in 2006 by Robert De Niro. The materials cover De Niro's career from the 1960s to 2005, and includes several De Palma-related items that make a trip to Austin a necessity. One of the most startling discoveries among the collection (which I haven't yet seen) is a screenplay for Sisters, written by De Palma and Louisa Rose, with De Niro's notes included. The screenplay is circa 1970, the same year De Niro starred with Sisters' Jennifer Salt in De Palma's Hi, Mom!.

Speaking of the latter, the collection also boasts several scripts associated with that project, which began life as a screenplay by De Palma and Chuck Hirsch titled "Son Of Greetings." The De Niro collection contains the latter screenplay, also with the actor's notes, as well as an annotated typescript of the original story by De Palma and Hirsch. Also most likely related to that project is an original film treatment (circa 1970) by De Palma titled "Home Movie," which includes one single note written by De Niro. De Palma would go on to make a film titled Home Movies in 1979-80, but this treatment seems more likely something like the David Holzman's Diary-inspired section of Hi, Mom! that ended up transformed into the film we have today. But who knows-- perhaps when we visit the museum and look at the collection, we'll find something entirely different.

THE WEDDING PARTY & THE UNTOUCHABLES
Also in the collection is an undated shooting script for De Niro's first film, The Wedding Party, complete with De Niro's notes. There is also a June 1964 calendar marked out with scenes from the project. There is also an early and incomplete draft of David Mamet's screenplay for The Untouchables, again with De Niro's notes, as well as a version dated July 22 1986, and subsequent revisions from September and October. There are also several photographs of Al Capone with De Niro's notes, and two copies of Neil Elliott's My Years with Capone, one of which is annotated by De Niro. There are also Untouchables-related production materials, including make-up/hair continuity, wardrobe polaroids, publicity materials, a premiere invitation, and a copy of John Kobler's 1971 book Capone with Mamet's handwritten notes throughout the text.

Also included in the collection are production photographs from Hi, Mom!, and publicity flyers and photographs from Greetings. Oh, and a couple of other gems of interest: two correspondences from De Palma to De Niro, along with notes from Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Frankenheimer, and several outgoing letters from De Niro. View the preliminary inventory list right here.

DE NIRO CHANNELS SPRINGSTEEN
And finally, the real reason I chose the above image from Taxi Driver: according to the Daily Express, Clarence Clemons, who coached De Niro on how to play saxophone for Scorsese's New York, New York, recently told the New York Daily News that De Niro got the famous "You talkin' to me" line in Scorsese's Taxi Driver from Bruce Springsteen. "[De Niro] had been to one of our concerts," said Clemons, "and the audience was yelling out 'Bruce!' In those days, Bruce would stop onstage and say, 'You talkin' to me?' De Niro was kind of channeling him."


Posted by Geoff at 12:04 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, June 4, 2009 1:57 AM CDT
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009
MORE ON KINATAY FROM TARANTINO
TRANSLATION OF FRENCH METRO ARTICLE
The Philippine Entertainment Portal posted an article yesterday that provided a full translation of what Quentin Tarantino had to say about Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay, for which Mendoza was awarded Best Director at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Here is the translation from Metro France, provided by PEP's Jocelyn Dimaculangan:

Metro France: You know already [all the good things] that people say about Inglorious Bastards. Quentin Tarantino remains one of the biggest cineastes of his generation. A well informed cinephile also, who has spent much time in Cannes theaters these past few days...

Is there a film that you've particularly liked since you arrived?

"I can't really speak about the other films in competition because if I mention two, they will ask me why I didn't mention two more! But if there is one that I would gladly defend, it's Kinatay by Brillante Mendoza because it seems [to be] receiving the worst critics up to now. But me, I found it extraordinary."

Precisely, what is your critique [of the film]?

"For a film that puts you in the witness position, I believed it from the beginning to the end, an impression strengthened by the fact that the story is told in real time. The situation is at the same time horrible and ordinary, almost boring. And it is rather crazy that such a thing could be boring! In some aspects, Kinatay reminded me of Casualties Of War, the film of Brian De Palma. We are witnesses of a murder of this prostitute in Manila, a "disposable" being, if we refer to the world she lives in. And the filmmaker [makes] us aware of her humanity, showing her pain. I also adored the flight in the car, in the dark, exciting because we can make out the forms and the sounds."

Do you still go as often to the movies?

"From age 17 to 22, I was filling up a detailed list of all the films I would see in a year. I was averaging 197 to 202 per year and at that time I was broke! I am doing much less today. In real life, my own movies get in the way and one has to be a journalist to see so much!"


Posted by Geoff at 11:55 PM CDT
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Monday, June 1, 2009
HARPER TO SPEAK IN L.A.
BETWEEN SCREENINGS OF SUSPIRIA & PHANTOM
Jessica Harper, who was "introduced" in Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise (1974) before going on to star in Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977), will speak in between screenings of the two films Friday, June 12, at The Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles. The Drive-In parking lot theater offers admission for $30 per car, or you can reserve a seat inside the theater for $8 per person.

Posted by Geoff at 9:57 PM CDT
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Sunday, May 31, 2009
"FAMOUS FIRSTS" - GREETINGS
BLOG REVIEWS EARLY DE PALMA FILM

Roderick Heath at Ferdy On Films takes a long look at Brian De Palma's Greetings, offering a critical essay that takes into account De Palma's later career works, as well as other early low-budget films from the same time period, such as Francis Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now, and Arthur Penn's Alice’s Restaurant. Heath writes, in part:

To be fair, Greetings’ budget was rock bottom, even lower than Penn’s and Coppola’s films. It is a counterculture document, but in a ground-level, distracted, self-critical fashion, attentive to the sights and sounds of its era, yet more caught up in analysing new habits in perceiving the world. It’s also a cinephile’s work that bears relation, in a way, to the films of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, with its three heroes as screwball foils interacting with a specific environment, surviving, and contending with the forces that assail them. Nonetheless, the film does have a specific political and social idea to communicate. It’s not found in scenes such as when Lloyd encounters a zealous radical magazine seller, or in the draft-dodging hijinks. Lloyd’s paranoia, Jon’s fetishist interest in realising voyeuristic fantasies, and the way these tendencies cross-pollinate in efforts to capture the obscured truth on film reveal the leitmotifs of De Palma’s career. It’s easy, for instance, to point to Lloyd’s constant citation of Blow-Up and his general obsession with assassination and political skulduggery and note that both inspired Blow Out (1981).


Posted by Geoff at 1:03 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 31, 2009 1:05 PM CDT
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Friday, May 29, 2009
RAIMI ADMIRES CARRIE...
BUT SAYS HAND-OUT-OF-GRAVE SCENE NOT HOMAGE

A couple of days ago, the Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer interviewed Sam Raimi, whose new film Drag Me To Hell opens today. Schaefer asked Raimi whether a scene of star Alison Lohman extending her hand from a muddy grave was an homage to the final scene in Brian De Palma's Carrie. Raimi said that while he admires both the film and the novel by Stephen King, there was no such homage meant. Meanwhile, DVD Talk's Jason Bailey loves the film, and compares Lohman's work in it to Nancy Allen:

Much of the success of the picture rides on Miss Lohman, who is really getting away with something here; she manages to be both utterly sincere and in on the joke, without tipping her hand either way. It's a tart, kicky performance, the kind of work that Nancy Allen used to do so well in those old Brian De Palma movies.


Posted by Geoff at 8:29 PM CDT
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
ARMOND WHITE ON ZABRISKIE POINT
AND HOW ANTONIONI'S FILM INVENTED THE "CINEGASM"

Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, one of several films that have had a profound influence on the cinema of Brian De Palma, finally gets a proper DVD release this week. Armond White's review in the New York Press goes into the influence of its grand finale:

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.”


Posted by Geoff at 12:27 PM CDT
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
LITHGOW GOES SERIAL FOR DEXTER
AND REMINDS KEN TUCKER OF BLOW OUT
John Lithgow has signed on to play a serial killer on the fourth season of Showtime's Dexter. According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, Lithgow has been cast as "Walter Simmons, an unassuming suburbanite who has been living a dual life as one of America’s most prolific and deadliest serial killers." Ausiello continues, "When the mad man (who is dubbed the 'Trinity Killer' because he always kills in threes) relocates to Miami, Dexter becomes obsessed (or inspired?) by his efficient killing methods and ability to evade capture for almost three decades." Ausiello's fellow EW blogger (and author of Scarface Nation) Ken Tucker is naturally reminded of Lithgow's creepy opportunist serial killer in Brian De Palma's Blow Out.

Posted by Geoff at 11:42 PM CDT
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009
KINATAY REMINDS TARANTINO OF DE PALMA
FILM WINS CANNES DIRECTOR PRIZE FOR MENDOZA

Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza won the Best Director prize Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival for Kinatay. The film was hated by some (Roger Ebert suggested that it is the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival), but according to a report at Inquirer.net, Quentin Tarantino called it "extraordinary," telling the French newspaper Metro, "I’d gladly defend Kinatay … it reminded me of Brian De Palma." Kinatay (the title translates to "slaughtered" or "butchered" in English) follows a young policeman as he agrees to join an unnamed operation with a shady friend. The job turns out to be the kidnapping, rape, and butchering of a drug-money-indebted prostitute by a gang of men, some of which are senior members of the police force.

Tarantino surely saw similarities between Kinatay and De Palma's Casualties Of War, where the audience is driven to identify with a soldier who finds himself caught up in a kidnap-rape-and-murder situation that he feels helpless to do anything about. Mendoza opens the film (which I haven't seen) with the young man's wedding, and these daytime scenes are shot in 35mm. The night of the horrifying mission is shot in HD, as Mendoza, according to his press notes, attempts to show that "like the character, the city of Manila is full of mystery. It becomes a totally new character at night."

In the press notes, Mendoza presents his film as a Christian morality experience (the prostitute is named Madonna) that he states was based on a true event that he heard about first-hand from a criminology student. Mendoza wanted the audience to feel, like the young man, "trapped as both victim and accomplice." Screen Daily's Mike Goodridge wrote in his review of Kinatay, "Offering audiences no relief or redemption, it is perhaps most notable for its daring in attempting to capture the moment a young man crosses the line into irrevocable evil."

A couple of clips from Kinatay can be watched at YouTube. Click here to access the Cannes press notes. IFC's David Hudson has links and quotes from several other reviews.


Posted by Geoff at 12:19 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 12:22 AM CDT
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
SCARFACE IN THEATERS THIS SUMMER
AS ONE OF UNIVERSAL'S FIVE DIGITAL REISSUES
Brian De Palma's Scarface will be rereleased in digital theaters August 25th, as Universal rolls out five Cinema Classics between now and November. The other four films being reissued are: Spartacus (June 9), The Blues Brothers (July 28), The Thing (John Carpenter's version) (September 15), and National Lampoon's Animal House (November 2). Empire has a nice trailer for the series at its website, and we thank the Swan Archives for the news!

Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, May 25, 2009 12:01 AM CDT
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Saturday, May 23, 2009
HANKS: DE PALMA IS 'MOST UNCOMPROMISING FILMMAKER'
"BOTH IN A GOOD WAY AND A BAD WAY"
The June 2009 issue of Empire celebrates the 20th anniversary of the British film magazine with guest editor Steven Spielberg. Tom Hanks is interviewed in the issue by assistant editor Ian Freer, who notes to Hanks that his first Empire cover was for The Bonfire Of The Vanities in 1991. Hanks has some very interesting things to say about the film:

That's a very interesting thing because, when we were making it, that movie was huge. We couldn't make a move anywhere in New York City. Everyone was talking about it: "They took this book that had entered into the national consciousness and now they're making a film out of it and everybody is miscast!" Everybody was miscast, me particularly. Brian De Palma deals with iconography more than filmmaking. He is the most uncompromising filmmaker-- both in a good way and a bad way-- that you'll ever come across. This is the guy who made Scarface. Motherfucking Scarface. So his take on it was just one of those things. You can't take a book like that, that has changed the way people talk and think-- Masters Of The Universe, Styrofoam peanuts, and $900,000 a year and still going broke-- and change it into a palatable movie, or alter the thrust of what the source material is talking about. It may not translate in a way that is going to work.

(Since I could not find a scan of the Empire cover mentioned above, I dug up this American Cinematographer cover from the same period.)


Posted by Geoff at 11:19 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, May 23, 2009 11:22 PM CDT
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