De Palma a la Mod

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

RODRIGUEZ ON VIOLENCE IN REPO MEN
"MAKES SCARFACE SEEM LIKE THE LITTLE MERMAID"

The Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez shared an interesting story on his blog last week about seeing the new film Repo Men and overhearing a mother tell her son just before the start, "If this movie gets too gross, we're leaving." Rodriguez' blog post continued:

What followed was, quite possibly, the most violent R-rated film I've ever seen - this thing makes Scarface seem like The Little Mermaid - and yet the mother and son remained in their seats, munching happily on their popcorn, bonding over a fun night out at the movies.

Rodriguez surmises that kids today have "an infinitely higher tolerance for gore" than he did in his youth, and also that "the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board has become just as desensitized to violence as audiences." Rodriguez stresses that he doesn't state this as a criticism of the film itself...

I was just struck by how much the film gets away with, while Brian De Palma had to trim the motel room/chainsaw sequence in Scarface repeatedly in order to avoid an X rating. In Repo Men, that scene would qualify as boring character exposition.
I've never thought of myself as squeamish - quite the opposite - but eavesdropping on that mother-son conversation tonight, and then watching the movie that followed, made me feel like a bit of a wuss. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Posted by Geoff at 1:15 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 1:15 PM CDT
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Monday, March 22, 2010

SCARFACE TOPS IMDB-DE PALMA POLL
OBSESSION GETS 46 VOTES AS BEST DE PALMA FILM
The poll below was suggested by a user at the Internet Movie Database, which ran the poll yesterday as part of its "Daily Poll" series. Some of the most interesting (and telling) votes were the non-votes (alas, I wonder how many voters thought Obsession was "that movie with Beyonce"). However, 98 voters would have chosen a De Palma film not offered on the list-- as this is the IMDb, one would think voters would be able to choose from any one of the director's films.

Posted by Geoff at 8:45 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, March 22, 2010 8:51 PM CDT
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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

PARANORMAL DIRECTOR TO BE NAMED "SOON"
PRODUCTION TO BEGIN IN MAY; IMDB LISTS DE PALMA AS DIRECTOR

Ryan Rotten at Shock Till You Drop reported early yesterday that Akiva Goldsman was "close" to being announced by Paramount Pictures as director of the upcoming sequel to Paranormal Activity. Rumors began spreading all over, with some sites actually stating that Goldsman had the job, until Deadline Hollywood's Mike Fleming debunked the rumor, stating that while Goldsman has boarded the project, his role will be as an executive producer, not director. What Fleming's article had in common with Rotten's is that both of them suggest that a director will be in place "soon." Fleming adds that production on the sequel is set to begin in May. Meanwhile, the Internet Movie DataBase is already listing Paranormal Activity 2 as one of four projects that Brian De Palma has in development.

Posted by Geoff at 3:17 AM CDT
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

TOM CRUISE ASKS FANS:
WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIRECT MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE IV?

Tom Cruise is asking fans to name their "dream director" for Mission: Impossible IV, the franchise that Brian De Palma got off to a bang as director of the first installment. Cruise's official blog post states that a director has not yet been chosen, and then runs down the list of directors who helmed the first three films. The little bio for De Palma goes like this:

Known for his psychological thrillers like Carrie and Dressed to Kill, as well as graphic violence in gangster films like Scarface, The Untouchables, and Carlito’s Way, De Palma is often considered to be a member of “New Hollywood” generation of directors along with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola. In Mission: Impossible, De Palma made sure to kick off the franchise with lots of over-the-top action and explosions, including helicopters flying in train tunnels and a restaurant fish tank explosion.

Fans can submit director choices on the blog site, Cruise's Twitter page, or his Facebook Fan Page.

Posted by Geoff at 3:50 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 7:33 PM CDT
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SCARFACE AS HEALTH REFORM STORY

Posted by Geoff at 8:58 AM CDT
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Monday, March 15, 2010

PETER GRAVES DIES
AND SOME STILL BITTER ABOUT M:I LEADER-BECOMES-TRAITOR TWIST

Peter Graves, the actor who became famous for his role as Jim Phelps, leader of the Impossible Missions Force on the Mission: Impossible TV series, passed away over the weekend. He was 83. The tributes are proliferating over the web, and some are still bitter about the big twist in Brian De Palma's film adaptation of Mission: Impossible that turned the "heroic" Phelps into a traitor, embittered by the end of the cold war and the subsequent diminishing of his own power and status. Driven by greed, Phelps sells out his fellow spies and, as leader, directs many on his very own team to their own deaths. Nick Leshi at The Man Behind The Curtain calls De Palma's film a "travesty" because of the Phelps turn, calling it "a slap in the face." Yes it was a slap in the face, and it was meant to be. This kind of treason happens in the real world, and here was a great opportunity to take a character whose work is based on deception, and to show that the world he lives in is not as cut and dry as the old TV series might have us believe. These are spies, through and through. John Woo even toyed with the idea of an evil Ethan Hunt in his sequel to De Palma's film (the villain of that film wears a mask to look like the Tom Cruise character). Mitchell Hadley feels that Graves was right to turn down the role in De Palma's film, writing, "You know, just as fans of the show know, that Jim Phelps would never betray his country. Sure, Jon Voight, who winds up playing the role in the movie, is a good actor, as well as a good patriot in real life. But he’s no Jim Phelps, and both you and everyone else knows it." Voight was a great choice for the role, but Graves really should have taken it (if he was actaully ever asked to)-- it would have been fantastic.

Posted by Geoff at 4:35 PM CDT
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Saturday, March 13, 2010

"BE BLACK" HOUSE PARTY
TONIGHT AT RECESS IN NEW YORK

Tonight at 7pm, Recess Activities, Inc., an artist development and exhibition organization, presents "Be Black Baby: A House Party In Response to Brian De Palma’s 1970 film Hi Mom!”. The event is being organized by Simone Leigh, along with Sarina Basta and Karin Schneider, as part of CoBra Class (CoBra stands for the Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists) at Bruce High Quality Foundation University. The event is part of a weekly class that is listed on the Recess website as CoBrAnarch Class, in which participants consider "issues such as nostalgia, the mask, collectivity, authorship and cultural appropriation. Conversations begin in response to films and manifest in the creation of props, performance and more filmmaking." Tonight's event begins with performances at 7pm, followed by a dance party from 9pm to midnight. One of the speakers includes film critic David Edelstein, who is, of course, very familiar with De Palma's cinema.

Posted by Geoff at 12:30 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, March 13, 2010 12:33 AM CST
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Friday, March 12, 2010

PARAMOUNT TO UNVEIL NEW DIVISION SOON
INSPIRED BY SUCCESS OF PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
According to Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE, Paramount Pictures is expected to unveil a new micro-budget, grassroots-inclined division today called Insurge. Hernandez hears that Insurge, which is "emerging in the wake of the tremendous success of Paranormal Activity," will be lead by Amy Powell, who was instrumental in shepherding the success of that film. Insurge plans 10 films in its first year at $100,000 each. Somehow, Hernandez got a look at the website for the new division-- at the time of this post you're reading, insurgepictures.com directs back to the Paramount home page. However, according to Hernandez, the website asks, "Aren’t you tired of being fed the same movies wrapped in different paper? We want to find and distribute crazy, unpredictable, and hopefully awesome movies - movies that make you want to line up to see at your local theater with all your friends (and us). Movies that a big studio would never release because they’re too risky, too silly, and they don’t star Sandra Bullock.” The site states its intention to develop an online community that will have some input into the films and their promotion.

Posted by Geoff at 3:45 AM CST
Updated: Friday, March 12, 2010 11:39 PM CST
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Thursday, March 11, 2010

A PROPHET IS THE "ANTI-SCARFACE
ALTHOUGH DIRECTOR AUDIARD LOVES DE PALMA'S FILM

Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, which is now playing in cinemas throughout the U.S., swept the César Awards last month, winning best picture, best director, and best actor (Tahar Rahim). The film, about an Arab who rises up in the Mafia while in prison, was also nominated for best foreign film at this year's Oscars. Audiard told the L.A. Times' Chris Lee last month that he wanted A Prophet "to be the anti-Scarface not because I don't like Brian De Palma's Scarface -- I've seen it five times! But there's not much to like about him, and you cannot relate to a character who is all bad." Audiard elaborated on that point last week to Geoff Pevere at the Toronto Star, saying, "Don't get me wrong, I love Brian De Palma's movie and I love the character of Tony Montana. But the reason that I love him is also the reason I wanted to make a very different kind of film. Tony is a character with no interiority at all. He's all surface. Everything you need to know about him is right there. What about a guy about whom you know absolutely nothing? Whose entire character unfolds as you're watching him. That's the challenge that I was interested in. A character like Tony Montana has no ambiguity about him whatsoever. What's interesting to me is a guy about whom we really know nothing, except for a few hints like scars that appear on his back, but whom we follow as he does things we may not approve of or even understand. We watch him becoming a person. That was the kind of character I wanted to create. And to watch."

Posted by Geoff at 11:22 AM CST
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

SLOAT KNOWS A LOT
BUT "I CAN'T TELL YOU" ABOUT PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 (EXCEPT THAT "IT'S REALLY COOL")

At last week's Independent Spirit Awards, Micah Sloat, who starred in Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity, was asked by MTV News if he knew which director might be stepping up to take over the planned sequel. "I know a lot I can't tell you," Sloat told MTV News. "It's really interesting — the whole director drama with the Saw director. That's been public. All I can tell you is that I'm very excited for the project. It's really cool. It's gonna be really interesting, and it's not going to suck, which most horror sequels you would imagine would. We have money now, but we're staying true to the heart of the movie, to the spirit of it and to the vision."

Posted by Geoff at 1:33 PM CST
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