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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
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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De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002
De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006
Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule
The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold
Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!
Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy
Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site
Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
According to Sci-Fi Blast, J.J. Abrams spoke at a press conference for the DVD release of his Star Trek film last week. The blog quotes Abrams, who directed the third Mission: Impossible film, and who is currently producing a fourth installment, as being shocked to learn that the TV series' original Jim Phelps, Peter Graves, is interested in a part in the new film. "I just got a call that Peter Graves is in great shape, which would be a very bizarre bend in the space-time continuum, for obvious reasons."Abrams also revealed that for the third film, he had wanted to cast Martin Landau, who was the TV show's original master of disguises. "I actually tried to get Martin Landau in Mission 3, in a very small little moment just for fun, and was told that he had no interest in doing it," Abrams said, according to Sci-Fi Blast. "But then, when I met him after the movie came out, it was the greatest thing. We were at this restaurant in New York, for one of the TV up-front parties, and someone introduced me to Landau. They took me over and Martin Landau came over to me, extended his hand and [pretended to lift his face off]. That was the greatest thing I'd ever seen."
Edgar Wright will present a double feature Friday night at London's Prince Charles Cinema. First up will be Nicolas Roeg's classic Don't Look Now, followed by Brian De Palma's Carrie. Both films have brilliant scores by Pino Donaggio. Wright says he is excited, as he has never seen either film on the big screen. On his website, Wright wrote: Nic Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie is a superlative supernatural film with some of the best editing in cinematic history. It’s been an influence on many a film over the years including THE SIXTH SENSE and (yes) SHAUN OF THE DEAD. If you’ve never seen it, don’t miss a chance to see it on a big screen. It’s haunted me since I first saw it one late night on BBC2.
And Brian De Palma’s CARRIE is simply magnificent. In my opinion the best Stephen King adaptation with a simply amazing cast: Nancy Allen, Amy Irving, PJ Soles, John Travolta and two Oscar nominees Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek. Add in De Palma’s amazing visuals with incredible continuous takes, split screen and backwards flashbacks, plus Pino Donnagio’s incredible score and you have a stone cold classic.
I will be on hand too – with maybe some little extra nuggets to show between the films.
MUSIC BOX MASSACRE
Meanwhile, Chicago's Music Box Theater begins its annual Music Box Massacre at 11:59 am Saturday-- 24 hours of horror films, ending with Carrie at 10:15am Sunday morning. Just before Carrie, the one film Stephen King has directed, Maximum Overdrive, will be screened. Stay awake and pass the popcorn.
Romain has posted the poll results of fans' favorite Brian De Palma film, and Blow Out has once again come out on top. The top three films, however, are only separated by a single percentage point. Romain reports that 304 people voted in the poll, and the results are a bit different than the poll run last month for Cinema Viewfinder's De Palma Blog-A-Thon. The Blog-A-Thon poll was less concentrated on De Palma fans, with its contributors presumably being film fans who may or may not consider themselves De Palma "fans." It is also worth noting that while one could only vote for a single definite favorite in Romain's poll, each voter in the Blog-A-Thon poll offered their top three choices.
Brian De Palma's Obsession makes its premiere on Turner Classic Movies tonight at midnight, eastern time. TCM has been running a series on composer Bernard Herrmann every Tuesday in September, and tonight's line-up is of particular interest to De Palma fans, as it highlights some of Herrmann's post-Hitchcock works of macabre suspense. It starts at 8pm eastern with François Truffaut's Hitchcock homage, The Bride Wore Black, followed by Alastair Reid's The Night Digger (10pm eastern), which features a screenplay by Roald Dahl. Obsession follows at midnight, and then the TCM premiere of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver runs at 2am eastern. Then at 4am eastern, TCM is showing the 2004 documentary Scorsese On Scorsese. Time to set the DVR, or take the day off tomorrow.
Years ago, when I was working at Production Arts Lighting, we got a call from Brian De Palma's people. De Palma (who I had encountered before on The Untouchables when working for Bran Ferren) was shooting Carlito's Way, and he wanted a scene entirely "illuminated" by the flash of a (blank) gun. They did some tests, and, if I remember correctly, the gun flash wasn't bright enough, and too short to be adequately exposed on the camera. They wanted to take a big 5K fresnel, and have it respond to the sound of the gunshots. We didn't have a lot of time, so we borrowed a pitch-MIDI converter, ran it through Bars and Pipes on an Amiga, and then I wrote some filters there that would generate MIDI messages for a lighting console, that would fire a dimmer which would then light up the 5K. It was very reliable, but with all that early 90's technology, very slow. We did some gun shots, and by the time everything was captured and processed, and the 5K heated up, it was like a second late. It looked pretty cool but was too slow in general to achieve the desired effect.
The extremely fun De Palma Blog-A-Thon hosted by Tony Dayoub at Cinema Viewfinder closed yesterday with an excellent final entry from Dayoub that juxtaposed Scarface with Carlito's Way. Dayoub begins his essay with a description of his own experiences growing up as a Cuban American in an Hispanic neighborhood in Miami in the late 1970s. He then moves on to describe how Carlito's Way is a "symmetrical counterpoint" to Scarface: I have been working on something for the Blog-A-Thon that nevertheless was not finished in time-- my piece grew after I discovered some things about the films I was writing about that I hadn't picked up on before. As a result, I had to do a little more research (i.e. watch more films), which is great, but I was not able to complete my essay before the Blog-A-Thon ended. But I do thank Tony for giving me the incentive to write this piece in the first place, and I hope to have it completed and posted by early next week.
POLL RESULTS: RANKING DE PALMA'S FILMS
The last big survey of De Palma fans' favorite De Palma films was done in 2002 by Carl Rodrigue at Le Paradis de Brian De Palma (Romain at Virtuoso of the 7th Art also has one going right now through October 4th). As the Blog-A-Thon ended, so did the Cinema Viewfinder poll, which ended up with 168 votes tallied from users voting for their three favorite De Palma films, in no particular order. Amazingly, the top four titles are the same as the 2002 poll, with the exception that Dressed To Kill was number 2 back then (at Cinema Viewfinder it switches with Carrie and takes the number 3 spot). While Femme Fatale was number 5 all on its own back when it was brand new, it remains number 5 today, although now Body Double has jumped up to tie for the position (the latter was number 9 in 2002). The top ten are further filled out by The Untouchables, Scarface, Phantom Of The Paradise, and Sisters. Here is the entire list:
1. Blow Out
2. Carrie
3. Dressed To Kill
4. Carlito’s Way
5. Femme Fatale/Body Double (Tie)
7. The Untouchables
8. Scarface
9. Phantom Of The Paradise
10. Sisters
11. The Fury/Mission: Impossible (Tie)
13. Casualties Of War
14. Raising Cain
15. The Black Dahlia
16. Obsession
17. Hi, Mom!/Snake Eyes (Tie)
19. Redacted
20. Mission To Mars
21. Dionysus In ‘69
22. Murder a la Mod/Greetings/Get To Know Your Rabbit/Home Movies/The Bonfire Of The Vanities (each received one vote)
27. The Wedding Party/Wise Guys (each received zero votes)
We will see how these votes stack up against Romain's poll in October.
GASPAR NOE'S ENTER THE VOID AT TORONTO
Meanwhile, the Globe And Mail's Rick Groen reports that Gaspar Noé was excited to hear that De Palma was at the Toronto press screening for his latest film, Enter The Void, which features, we hear, the most extreme use of subjective point-of-view camerawork possible, moving from death to womb. Noé and De Palma shared an interesting link in 2002, when each of the films they released that year (Noé's Irreversible, De Palma's Femme Fatale), which were both made in France, featured Jo Prestia as a menacing rapist (although in De Palma's film, Prestia's character is no less than a tool used by the femme fatale to provoke Antonio Banderas' Nicolas into a rage). Here is what Groen posted on Saturday:
So Noé continues in the same bubbly rush: "Someone told me he was in the audience yesterday. At the press and industry screening. So I rushed over and looked at the seats but I couldn't see him." A pause, then he repeats: "Did you see Brian De Palma in the audience for my film?"
Okay, I was there, the theatre was maybe half-filled, and, since poor Noé seems on the cusp of imploring, I'd love to give him the right answer. But. "Um, sorry, I did not see Brian De Palma in the audience. But I was looking up, not around, and I've heard that De Palma, even when he doesn't have a film at the fest, has a history of coming to Toronto anyway just to watch lots of movies, so, you know, maybe he was there."
Noé, who spent several years raising the money for Enter the Void and two more years shooting and editing it and who doesn't yet have a North American distributor for his prodigious labour of love, tries to take heart from that "maybe." And who can blame him?
ATOM EGOYAN'S CHLOE AT TORONTO
The Film Farm, which announced yesterday that De Palma's Tabloid is currently on the company's production slate, produced Atom Egoyan's Chloe, which had its premiere in Toronto Sunday. The film is a "reinvention" of Anne Fontaine' Nathalie..., with an all new screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur), that is said to have more Hitchcockian overtones than the original film. Amanda Seyfried, who also stars in Jennifer's Body, is said to give a breakout performance in Chloe. She and De Palma were spotted by The Star's Rob & Rita at a Toronto party the other day.
OTHER DE PALMA SIGHTINGS
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Stephen Rea spotted De Palma "walking from one screening to another, and then later out in Yorkville, sitting on a rock in a pocket park in his trademark safari jacket, adjusting his iPod." Rea added that "De Palma is one of the fest's annual fixtures." The opening of Rea's post offers an interesting contrast of viewpoints:
And then: What are you looking forward to seeing in Toronto? Are there going to be a lot of stars?
Somehow I can't picture the Homeland Security dude on my return through New York asking me if the new Pedro Almodóvar is as good as All About My Mother.
And finally, Bill Chambers of Film Freak Central tweeted yesterday, "I think I just pissed off Brian DePalma." After someone asked him for more details, Chambers wrote, "It might be too abstract to sum up in a tweet. I should add that my DePalma encounters are always fantastically unpleasant."
A quick post, since I only have a minute-- but here is exciting news via Screen Daily's Denis Seguin, who posted an article today from Toronto about the production slate of Film Farm, the company that produced Brian De Palma's Redacted: This is undoubtedly the formerly untitled political thriller mentioned by Film Farm at Cannes last year (2008). When I asked De Palma what that film was about, he replied, "Sex and Lies on the Champaign Trail."