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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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« July 2012 »
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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

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a la Mod

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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
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Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
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Columbo - Shooting Script
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Cop-Out
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Dionysus In '69
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Dressed To Kill
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Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
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Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
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Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
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Keith Gordon
Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Magic Hour
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Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
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Murder a la Mod
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Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
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Redacted
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Wednesday, July 4, 2012
HAWKEYE COMIC BOOK 'VERY FRIEDKIN, EARLY DE PALMA'
ALSO, 'ROCKFORD FILES', SAYS CO-WRITER FRACTION
Marvel Comics introduced Hawkeye into its line of movies in its currently playing Marvel's The Avengers, and now they are getting ready to launch the character's newest comic book series. Matt Fraction, who is on the new book's creative team along with David Aja, talked to Comic Book Resources about the series last April, saying he was looking at classic crime and urban adventure stories from film and television, as well as comics. "If I could put the Stephen J. Cannell logo at the end of every issue I would be happy," Fraction told the site, "and David Aja recently sent me this amazing piece of music. He said, 'Here's the soundtrack to our first issue.' It's Dizzy Gillespie and Lalo Schifrin from a record they did together called 'Free Ride' and it is great. The whole record is full of car chase music. So this series is very William Friedkin and early Brian De Palma. 'Rockford Files.' It's an early '70s urban grit story. You almost expect Hawkeye to come around the corner and bump into Power Man and Iron Fist from 30 years ago."

The first issue of Hawkeye will be published August 1st. Interiors from the book can be seen here.

Posted by Geoff at 3:38 PM CDT
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Tuesday, July 3, 2012
STRANGE PLEASURES IN BRAZIL THIS WEEK
'BODY DOUBLE', 'OBSESSION', 'DRESSED TO KILL' INCLUDED IN CINEMA FEST
Cine Humberto Mauro in Brazil kicked off a show titled "Strange Pleasures" last night (July 2nd) with David Cronenberg's Crash, followed by David Lynch's Blue Velvet. The show continues through Monday (July 9), with works from Brian De Palma, Pedro Almodóvar, and Roman Polanski, among others. De Palma's Body Double screened tonight, along with Almodóvar's Matador and Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. De Palma's Dressed To Kill and Obsession are also part of the fest, as is Polanski's Bitter Moon. Cronenberg's Videodrome will close the fest on Monday, following a second screening of Body Double.

Posted by Geoff at 11:09 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, July 9, 2012 7:08 PM CDT
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Wednesday, June 27, 2012
'DRESSED TO KILL' TO SCREEN AT FESTIVAL PARIS
FRESH PRINT SCREENS SATURDAY, AS PART OF 'EMERGED FROM THE SUMMER' SECTION
Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill will screen this Saturday at the Festival Paris Cinema, which runs from June 29 through July 10. Dressed To Kill is part of the festival's regular "Emerged From The Summer" section, which focuses on essential masterpieces that have been unjustly ignored. A fresh print has been created for the event.

Posted by Geoff at 11:24 PM CDT
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Saturday, June 23, 2012
'PEOPLE LIKE US' COMPARED TO 'BLOW OUT'
AND 'BLOW-UP', 'CONVERSATION' -- ALSO: MOVIE GEEKS' CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON 'BLOW OUT'

Indiewire's Emma Bernstein begins her review of first-time director Alex Kurtzman's People Like Us by setting up the lineage from Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, to Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, to Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Bernstein writes about how each film used cinematography to get into its main character's mind, adding, "The three films were alike in their genre and premise as well, each a crime thriller centered on a character’s discovery of something hidden within the materials associated with his line of work. Alex Kurtzman’s new film, People Like Us," she continues, "shares the technical prowess of these films, employing supreme sound and visual techniques to create subjectivity. However, an increasingly rote storyline and adherence to syrupy sweet romantic comedy tropes leaves a murky aftertaste: a schmaltzy tearjerker masquerading as a psychological thriller." Bernstein never goes into detail about a possible link with the new film regarding any kind of recordings, photos, or films that the main character might use to try and figure out a puzzle, but perhaps the image above from People Like Us involves a similar sort of link. We may have to wait and find out when the film is released this Friday (June 29).

In her closing paragraph, Bernstein states, "The films from Antonioni, Coppola, and De Palma were groundbreaking both because they were able to build their stories and their characters via technical means as well as written words, and because the techniques used were radical in and of themselves. While People Like Us honors the visual and aural achievements of its predecessors well, it never manages to align its script with its images and sounds as successfully, leaving an audience with pleased eyes but discontented minds." Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy states, "As overcranked as it is -- the film is directed as if it were an action drama, with two or three times more cuts than necessary -- People Like Us has a persuasive emotional pull at its heart that's hard to deny."

TONY MACKLIN'S CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON 'BLOW OUT' & 'THE VERDICT'
Yesterday's edition of the Movie Geeks United podcast featured host Jamey DuVall and critic Tony Macklin discussing Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (including a nice lengthy discussion of screenwriter David Mamet) and De Palma's Blow Out. They discuss, among other things, De Palma's nods to American history in Blow Out's imagery, the contrast between appearance and reality that permeates the film, and the devastatingly ironic ending.

Posted by Geoff at 6:55 PM CDT
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Friday, June 22, 2012
A GREAT IDEA...


Posted by Geoff at 8:54 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, June 22, 2012 8:56 PM CDT
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Thursday, June 21, 2012
NEW 'PASSION' PIC SURFACES
GOOD OLD-FASHIONED PUBLICITY SHOT FROM WILD BUNCH

The above publicity shot from the set of Brian De Palma's Passion has appeared on the Wild Bunch international sales site. Without getting into any spoilers, the image shows that De Palma has surely made some tricky changes to the Love Crime story, which should keep those that have seen the Alain Corneau film on their toes.

Posted by Geoff at 4:46 PM CDT
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Wednesday, June 20, 2012
R.I.P. ANDREW SARRIS
The influential film critic Andrew Sarris passed away today at the age of 83. While Sarris was not exactly a fan of Brian De Palma's films, he often had positive things to say about them to go along with the bad. His favorite De Palma film was Mission To Mars. His least favorite appeared to be Dressed To Kill, for which he wrote two reviews, the second of which served as a rebuttal to Pauline Kael's and David Denby's positive reviews. The debate over Hitchcock and De Palma was played out between these reviews by Kael and Sarris. In his great new book, Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma And The Political Invisible, Chris Dumas uses the Sarris/Kael reviews of Dressed To Kill as a sort of springboard into his attempt to "reposition De Palma in regard to Hitchcock." (I'm currently reading that book, and will write more about it later.)

This passage from the conclusion of Sarris' 2007 review of De Palma's most recent film, Redacted, sums up his general views on De Palma's cinema: "Mr. De Palma, now 67, has camped on the darker side of existence for most of his 40-year, 38-film career. The horrors of Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980), Blow Out (1981), Body Double (1984), The Untouchables (1987) and Raising Cain (1992), among his more successful works, seem to have anticipated the current craze for morbidity in our entertainments. Still, my favorite De Palma effort is his much underrated Mission to Mars (2000). The point is that he didn’t need Vietnam or Iraq to explore the evil depths to which human beings can descend when the opportunity arises. In this respect, the horrors of war simply multiply the horrors of so-called peacetime."

Posted by Geoff at 6:00 PM CDT
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Tuesday, June 12, 2012
WES ANDERSON: DE PALMA IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES
"THE MOST SOPHISTICATED VISUAL STYLE OF ANYBODY"

In the video above, the Hollywood Reporter's Todd Gilchrist sits down with Wes Anderson, and suggests to the director that his new film, Moonrise Kingdom, seems the most Stanley Kubrick-inspired film he's done, in terms of some of the techniques used. Anderson acknowledges that Kubrick is one of his favorites, but responds that when he is making a movie, he isn't consciously aware of what he is "stealing everything from." He goes on to name other influences: Roman Polanski, John Huston, Martin Scorsese, and Orson Welles. "They're guys whose way with the camera I feel like I’m always taking something from," Anderson says in the video. A bit later, the following exchange takes place...
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Todd Gilchrist: You’ve created such a singular and identifiable body of work. Have you ever thought about, or have you ever been offered sort of the opportunity to apply the style that you’ve created for yourself to maybe a more conventional sort of storytelling structure? I mean, look at, you know, Brian De Palma, maybe doing a commercial movie and then doing something that’s very uniquely his. Have you thought about flirting with those kinds of projects?

Wes Anderson: Well, Brian De Palma is a very interesting one. You know, Brian De Palma is one of my favorite directors ever, and such a… the most sophisticated visual style of anybody. And [his] way with a camera. But I think in a way, Brian De Palma is somebody who can take a giant, complicated action sequence, and say, “I know precisely how to execute this,” and he can do it in a way that is completely his, and yet is highly effective as a, you know, suspense and as… [waving his arms] understanding the space and how this action is occurring. And, you know, I’m a completely different kind of moviemaker. The basic crucial talents of that, that Brian De Palma has, are exactly what I lack. Probably.


Posted by Geoff at 12:21 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 12:22 AM CDT
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Sunday, June 10, 2012
MUNICH FEST TO HONOR MELANIE GRIFFITH
FOUR-FILM SHOWCASE, PLUS WORLD PREMIERE OF THRILLER 'THE GRIEF TOURIST'
Melanie Griffith will receive the CineMerit Award at this year's Munich Film Festival, which runs June 29-July 7. The award honors outstanding personalities in international cinema, according to Variety's Ed Meza. Griffith will appear in person on July 3 to accept the prize, and also attend the world premiere of her new thriller, The Grief Tourist, from British director Siri Krishnamma. That film is about a nightwatchman who, as a hobby, takes week-long vacations to grief tourist locations where serial killers have left their mark. Griffith plays a café waitress named Betsy. The Munich fest will also include a showcase retrospective featuring four of Griffith's films: Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, Mike NicolsWorking Girl (for which Griffith was nominated for a best actress Oscar), Mike FiggisStormy Monday, and Fernando Trueba's Two Much. It was on the set of the latter film that Griffith met her husband, Antonio Banderas, in 1995. Griffith made a big splash in Brian De Palma's Body Double in 1984, but she doesn't make her entrance into that film until almost the halfway mark, which is probably why it is not included in the brief retrospective. She also appeared in De Palma's Bonfire Of The Vanities.

Posted by Geoff at 10:42 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, June 10, 2012 10:46 PM CDT
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Friday, June 8, 2012
1978 VIDEO INTERVIEWS FOR 'THE FURY'
DE PALMA, YABLANS, IRVING, SNODGRESS EACH SIT DOWN WITH AUSTIN'S CAROLYN JACKSON
The Texas Archive of the Moving Image includes a collection of on-camera interviews conducted by Austin TV personality Carolyn Jackson. Among the videos in this collection are four conversations that appear to have been part of a press junket for The Fury in 1978, featuring director Brian De Palma, producer Frank Yablans, and actresses Amy Irving and Carrie Snodgress. De Palma explains how they shot many of the special effects sequences in the film, and Yablans mentions The Demolished Man. I cannot seem to get these videos embedded here, but go to each of the following links to watch them:

Brian De Palma
Frank Yablans
Amy Irving
Carrie Snodgress

Posted by Geoff at 12:28 AM CDT
Updated: Friday, June 8, 2012 7:04 PM CDT
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