Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website.
Here is the latest news:

De Palma a la Mod

E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com

De Palma Discussion
Forum

-------------

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

-------------

Exclusive Passion
Interviews:

Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario

------------

AV Club Review
of Dumas book

------------

« November 2010 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

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
Mission To Mars
Mission: Impossible
Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
Nancy Allen
Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
Noah Baumbach
NYFF
Obsession
Oliver Stone
Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
Parties & Premieres
Passion
Paul Hirsch
Paul Schrader
Pauline Kael
Peet Gelderblom
Phantom Of The Paradise
Pimento
Pino Donaggio
Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
Raggedy Ann
Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
Robert De Niro
Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
Scorsese
Sean Penn
Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
Snake Eyes
Sound Mixer
Spielberg
Star Wars
Stepford Wives
Stephen H Burum
Sweet Vengeance
Tabloid
Tarantino
Taxi Driver
Terry
The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
Toronto Film Fest
Toyer
Travolta
Treasure Sierra Madre
Tru Blu
Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
Untitled Ashton Kutcher
Untitled Hollywood Horror
Untitled Industry-Abuse M
Untouchables
Venice Beach
Vilmos Zsigmond
Wedding Party
William Finley
Wise Guys
Woton's Wake
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
RSS Feed
View Profile
You are not logged in. Log in
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
ANGIE'S VOICE WAS DRESSED UP...
RUTANYA ALDA SUPPLIED ORGASMIC DUB IN TAXI CAB SCENE


It is well known that Brian De Palma used a body double for Angie Dickinson's opening shower scene in his 1980 film Dressed To Kill. Now old school De Palma regular Rutanya Alda has revealed that she provided the orgasmic vocals for Dickinson's character, Kate Miller, as she is ravished by a stranger in a taxi cab. Alda, who appeared in several early De Palma films (Greetings, Hi, Mom!, and The Fury), was the guest of honor November 19th at the New York Film Academy Screening Room, where she took part in a Q&A hosted by New York filmmakers Bryan Norton and Joe Zaso. The video above, featuring clips from several of Alda's films, was played at the start of the evening. The video concludes with the aforementioned scene from Dressed To Kill, with a note of trivia superimposed that reads, "As favor to Brian De Palma, Rutanya dubbed Angie Dickinson's hilarious moans of pleasure in this scene from DRESSED TO KILL." Jed Central has a brief account of the evening.

There have been other known or rumored instances of voice dubs in De Palma films. Dressed To Kill features another familiar voice as "Bobbi," the alter ego of Michael Cain's Dr. Elliott, voiced by William Finley, and heard within the diegesis of the film only on an answering machine. It is rumored that Helen Shaver dubbed the voice of Deborah Shelton in De Palma's Body Double (which would mean, perhaps, that Shaver's is the voice of passion in that film's "yes/no" make-out scene just outside the tunnel). Charles Durning provided a voiceover dub for the opening interrogation scene in Scarface. And finally, Amy Irving provided a favor to De Palma by dubbing the voice of the young Vietnamese-American woman played by Thuy Thu Le in the final scene of Casualties Of War. After all this dubbing, it is interesting to watch Shelton show off her lip-synching abilities in this commercial (circa early 1990s) below: 


Posted by Geoff at 11:39 PM CST
Updated: Wednesday, December 1, 2010 7:19 AM CST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Sunday, November 28, 2010
R.I.P. THE UNTOUCHABLE LESLIE NIELSEN

Posted by Geoff at 9:51 PM CST
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post
Thursday, November 25, 2010
HOME MOVIES SOUNDTRACK ON CD
AS DONAGGIO APPEARS AT DE PALMA EVENT IN ROME
Well, just a week after the news about the Kritzerland release of the complete Pino Donaggio score to Brian De Palma's Carrie, Varese Sarabande has announced a limited edition release of the soundtrack to Donaggio's second collaboration with De Palma, Home Movies (thanks to Randy!). This release, which features all of the same tracks as the original vinyl release, is limited to 1000 copies, and is expected to go fast, so if you want one, don't hesitate.

Meanwhile, earlier this month (on November 9th), Donaggio was a special guest at Cinema Detour's celebration in Rome of De Palma's 70th birthday. The event was a presentation of the recently published Italian study, The Writing Of The Gaze: The Cinema of Brian De Palma, edited by Massimiliano Spanu and Fabio Zanello. Four of the book's authors were in attendance: M. Deborah Farina ("De Palma Underground: The Independent Production"), Domenico Monetti ("Sound and Vision: Images With Sound in Blow Up"), Diego Mondello ("Scarface and His Followers"), and Edvige Liotta ("Shapes of Utopia: Notes on Mission to Mars"). The evening concluded with a screening of De Palma's award-winning short Wotan's Wake, a rare treat in Italy (and in the U.S.!).

Posted by Geoff at 12:51 AM CST
Updated: Thursday, November 25, 2010 2:40 AM CST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Thursday, November 18, 2010
ROMAIN DESBIENS' SHORT FILM

If you've been thinking things have been quiet over at Virtuoso Of The 7th Art lately, now you know why-- webmaster Romain Desbiens has been busy making a short film of his own. Frénésie (which translates into "Frenzy," although Desbiens says there is no link with Alfred Hitchcock's film) is a comically disturbing Polanski-esque trip into the absurd. Desbiens says he took a bit of inspiration from Brian De Palma with some high-angle shots, and a nod to Dressed To Kill in the subway scene. Desbiens had hoped to submit Frénésie as part of a French festival of short films in December, but battles with the producer of the film will keep it underground for now.

Posted by Geoff at 12:02 AM CST
Updated: Thursday, November 18, 2010 10:59 AM CST
Post Comment | View Comments (3) | Permalink | Share This Post
Monday, November 15, 2010
TRUE CARRIE SOUNDTRACK UNEARTHED
LIMITED EDITION OF DONAGGIO CLASSIC TO SHIP IN DECEMBER
Kritzerland has announced a limited release of a newly unearthed complete soundtrack to Brian De Palma's Carrie, which was scored by Pino Donaggio. The soundtrack includes all of Donaggio's cues as used in the film, as well as the two songs he wrote and recorded for the prom sequence. The other pop songs used in the film (two songs heard on the radio while Billy and Chris are in Billy's car, and another song played by the band at the prom) were unavailable to Kritzerland. The label's web site explains the discovery of the original material, and the history of the original soundtrack's release:

United Artists released the soundtrack album on LP. It was an odd presentation in that almost all of the music was from the film’s second half, save for the main title sequence (which was repeated verbatim at the end of the album). The album ran thirty-five minutes. That LP was released twice on CD – first by Ryko (with dialogue snippets included to pad out the running time), and then by Varese Sarabande (with the dialogue snippets gone). Ryko used the album master, and the Varese was a clone of the Ryko release (the pop songs used in the film were not available to them or to us).

For this very special release, we are pleased to say that our detective work paid off in spades – we found 13 reels of the original session masters and they included the entire score, about twenty-five minutes of never-before-released score cues. Since both film and score are iconic, it was the greatest kind of discovery we could have made.

So, it is with great pleasure that we offer for the first time the complete score to Carrie in film order. We also found two instrumentals of the songs, which we’ve included as bonus tracks. Additionally, on CD 2 we offer the original album, newly remastered for this release.

This release is limited to 1200 copies only. The price of this special 2 CD set is our usual one CD price – $19.98, plus shipping. Additionally, we are offering a special deal with the purchase of this release. Go to the item page and click on the link to find out about it.

CD will ship the third week of December – however, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early).


Posted by Geoff at 11:37 AM CST
Updated: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:39 AM CST
Post Comment | View Comments (10) | Permalink | Share This Post
Saturday, November 6, 2010
JILL CLAYBURGH DIES
OSCAR-NOMINATED ACTRESS BATTLED CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKEMIA

Jill Clayburgh, who starred as the bride in Brian De Palma's first feature The Wedding Party, died Friday at her home in Lakeville, Connecticut, according to the Hollywood Reporter. She was 66 years old, and had been quietly battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia for 21 years, according to her husband, David Rabe, speaking to the Associated Press. At Sarah Lawrence College in the early 1960s, Clayburgh met and dated De Palma, where they made The Wedding Party with mentor Wilford Leach. The film also featured Robert DeNiro, William Finley, and Jennifer Salt. In an interview for Sarah Lawrence College's alumni magazine in 2007, Clayburgh explained how she steered herself toward the theatre, and, eventually, films:

I did theatre because I hated gym. It wasn’t like now, when everybody is thinking about what they’re going to be. I went to an all-girls’ school in New York City and the theatre was at the boy’s school, so I went there to hang around with the boys – not because I thought, ‘I’m going to be ACTRESS.’ It let me get out of horrible gym, but it was no great, overwhelming drive to act. And then I got very tall and I kept getting the boys’ parts and I didn’t like that. So I stopped acting.

At Sarah Lawrence, I started off concentrating in religion and philosophy, but then I did a summer apprenticeship at Williamstown – it’s a fabulous program that they have – and I just fell in love with the theatre.

I did plays at Sarah Lawrence with Wilford Leach, who subsequently became a director at the Public Theater with Joe Papp, and I also worked with John Braswell. So I had Will and John and Brian De Palma [SLC/M.A. ’64], who was one of our first male students – in fact, he was one of the few men around. He directed and did some of his earliest movies there. I dated him and worked with him. We did a movie called The Wedding Party. It was a collaboration with Will and Brian. John was in it too, and Robert De Niro, who used to come up from the City and do shows at SLC. What Will was doing was so off the radar; it was as if he had his own theatre chemistry lab at the College.

FROM THE WEDDING PARTY TO BRIDESMAIDS
[Clayburgh and De Palma are pictured here from 1976]

Clayburgh went on to appear in several Broadway productions and films, and really made her mark in Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman in 1978, which garnered her first Oscar nomination. The following year, she was nominated again for her role in Alan J. Pakula's Starting Over. These two roles solidified Clayburgh as a symbol of the growing feminist movement in the 1970s.

Clayburgh, Rabe, and De Palma have remained friends throughout the years (as recently as three years ago, Rabe revised a draft of the screenplay for De Palma's still-in-development Untouchables prequel). Clayburgh once dated Al Pacino, with whom she starred in an off-Broadway production of The Indian Wants the Bronx in 1968. Recently, her daughter, Lily Rabe, had been co-starring with Pacino in a Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice (Rabe is taking a week-long leave of absence from the show, which is pushing its official opening night from November 7th to November 15th). Clayburgh had been appearing in several stage productions of late, as well as taking on various film and TV roles, including Nip/Tuck, for which Jennifer Salt was a producer/writer.

Clayburgh can be seen back in theaters later this month when Edward Zwick's Love & Other Drugs opens November 24th. Clayburgh's movie career will perhaps come full circle with her final film role next May, in Paul Feig's Bridesmaids, a comedy in which two women battle to plan their friend's wedding party.


Posted by Geoff at 11:01 AM CDT
Updated: Saturday, November 6, 2010 2:56 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Friday, November 5, 2010
CLUE SUGGESTS CRITERION BLOW OUT
The Playlist's Drew Taylor speculates that a new clue from Criterion hints that a new DVD package of Brian De Palma's Blow Out may be on the way soon. A very welcome idea, as the film has been out of print on DVD for some time now.

Posted by Geoff at 1:51 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (15) | Permalink | Share This Post
Thursday, October 28, 2010
IF IT'S OCTOBER, IT MUST BE CARRIE
SCREENING IN NEW YORK THIS WEEKEND, TOP HORROR FILMS, ETC., ETC.

Brian De Palma's Carrie will screen Saturday night as part of the Film Society Of Lincoln Center's "Scary Movies 4" series in New York this weekend. In the meantime, the film has been mentioned in numerous top horror lists the past couple of weeks, so here is a rundown:

As part of its Film Season 2010, The Guardian has chosen Carrie as the 24th best horror film of all time. The paper's Phelim O'Neill states, "Thanks to [Sissy] Spacek and De Palma, this is one horror film that's as likely to make you cry as it is to make you scream (and it will definitely make you jump, no matter how many times you rewatch that scene)." Wired asked the gang from Fangoria to name the 25 best horror films of all time, and of course Carrie made the un-numbered list. Here is what they said about De Palma's film:

Chris Alexander: Sad, stylish and shocking Brian De Palma-directed melodrama improves upon Stephen King's novel and offers a revelatory performance by Sissy Spacek as a tormented teen cursed with telekinesis. Moving Pino Donnagio score and a head-spinning last reel (and final shot!).

Michael Gingold: Thanks to King and De Palma, countless people don't feel so bad about how their own proms went.

Bekah McKendry: This movie offered a shockingly real depiction of what it is like for girls to come of age in sexually repressive environments ... minus the telekinesis, which, if I had possessed it during my teen years, I would have used to mentally smack up bitches left and right.

Sam Zimmerman: I've always been oddly attracted and emotionally drawn to tales of damaged female protagonists, and that can probably be traced back to my extreme love of this film. (P.S. You should see its contemporary spiritual soul mate, May, starring Angela Bettis and directed by Lucky McKee. It's marvelous.)

Greatbong includes Carrie on his list of top 10 horror movies, opining, "What makes Carrie for me a cut above the more famous Exorcist is that while the latter’s shock value lies in its depiction of religious blasphemy (personally which left me cold), Carrie is unique in the way it brings out the horror of school life, the relentless cruelty shown by the cool kids to those socially awkward, a reflection of the essential sadism of human nature." And finally, Obsessed With Film's Dan Owen places Carrie at number 8 in his top 10 horror movies list, stating that "Brian De Palma’s seminal horror is a brilliant piece of work, probably because it takes its time getting you into the mindset of the bullied Carrie."

SPLIT SCREEN AS "CINEMATIC MEAT GRINDER"
One of the best of the recent essays about Carrie was posted by Bryce Wilson at Things That Don't Suck. Wilson writes, "One of the things that has always set De Palma aside from his New Wave contemporaries like Scorsese, Coppolla, Friedkin and even Altman, is here is a man with absolutely no love nor nostalgia for the Catholic Church. It’s not the last bastion of moral clarity; it’s a breeding ground for lunatics." Wilson adds that "never before or since has De Palma’s virtuosity blended so unobtrusively with his subject matter," and uses the split screen sequence as an example:

Take the infamous split screen finale. What has to be the best use of split screen in De Palma’s career (and thus by extrapolation, maybe the best use of the split screen ever). Here he turns it into a kind of cinematic meat grinder. A meat grinder that runs on for a subjective eternity before it finally ends. Perhaps the finest thing I can say about it, is that I always forget that it is inter cut with non split screen shots until I actually watch it.

Daniel Montgomery, apparently viewing the film for the first time, states, "At the outset I expected a revenge fantasy, but the film surprises by how sad it is. There is no vicarious thrill in watching Carrie take her revenge after being humiliated at the prom, because wee see that not all of her victims are guilty. Some were trying to help her. Two classmates seem to have been involved in the plot all along but are revealed to have been sincere, which compounds the tragedy. Their act of kindness was one act too late."

THE LOVED ONES DIRECTOR DIRECTLY INFLUENCED BY CARRIE
Clint Morris at Australia's What's Playing interviewed Sean Byrne, the writer/director of The Loved Ones, who says he was inspired by De Palma's film, among others (including Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre). "The horror films from the 70’s and 80’s are just balls to the wall fun," Byrne told Morris, "and I just wanted to recreate that experience. I was especially inspired by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead and Brian De Palma’s Carrie, as well as Misery and Tarantino and Lynch." Discussing the Australian humor of his new horror film, Byrne told Morris, "I think it’s got its own distinctly wild Australian sense of humour," but then added that "its roots definitely lay with the classic American Cabin in the Woods and Prom movies."


Posted by Geoff at 3:58 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, October 28, 2010 5:20 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
4TH M:I TO BE TITLED GHOST PROTOCOL
CRUISE ANNOUNCES NEW TITLE IN DUBAI PRIOR TO SHOOT
According to Gulf News, Tom Cruise held a press conference in Dubai today, where he was getting ready to begin shooting scenes for the fourth Mission: Impossible film with director Brad Bird. Cruise announced that the title of the new film will be Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. "One of the things I always wanted for the franchise was for it not to have a number afterwards," Cruise said, according to Gulf News. "I’ve never done sequels to films and I never thought of these films as sequels. Paramount has done a great job in coming up with a title, so it’s not going to be MI2, 3, 4: it’s going to be Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. I always felt it should have a title."

Posted by Geoff at 2:50 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
CITIZEN MIDNIGHT SINGS "PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE"
VIDEO FROM JULY SHOWS SAN FRANCISCO ROCKSPLOITATION BAND
Rocksploitation w/Citizen Midnight- | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Last July, we posted about the Rocksploitation midnight movie series at San Francisco's Bridge Theatre, where the band Citizen Midnight played songs before a screening of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise. In the video above, you can hear the band performing an original song they wrote about the film (called Phantom Of The Paradise). In the video, Citizen Midnight's Rob Goblin explains that they took the main riff from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom Of The Opera and turned it into a story about the De Palma film. In the video, you can also see the band perform Somebody Super Like You from Phantom Of The Paradise.

Posted by Geoff at 2:13 AM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Newer | Latest | Older