The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots from Kevin B. Lee on Vimeo.

Have a look around the archives for these and much more.

"But then, with little warning, things veer into markedly stranger territory, as the decadent, almost classic melodrama of the film's first two acts suddenly gives way to full-blown theatrical maximalism, with erotic liaisons erupting into garish displays of unholy abandon. The film quickly becomes a catalogue of aestheticized depravity, with Judith's cautionary-tale descent into hedonism expressed as a thick slice of exploitation cinema. From exaggeratedly steamy sex sessions to car windows smashed in rage, from laser-lit dens of nightlife sin to last-minute soap revelations (including an honest-to-goodness AIDS scare), [Tyler] Perry's Temptation appears across its last act more like Brian De Palma's Temptation, relishing the excess to such a pronounced degree that it's hard to tell what's meant to be taken ironically. Like De Palma, Perry embellishes every sensual detail, making a real show of lust and caution, blowing up the emotion and the style in equal measure. It results in a bizarre sort of friction—one that's very much jarring, but in a perverse way also rather mesmerizing—that simultaneously heightens the pleasure of the melodrama while severely reducing its credibility.

"For better or worse, Temptation isn't Good Deeds, though at its core it contains a similar honesty, its form is drastically wilder, careening into a stylistic ostentation at odds with both the heart of the material and the director's body of work. Perry has never been an especially extravagant visual stylist, but he does have a tendency to depict on-screen romance with a warmth and intimacy that borders on sensual (particularly where the steam of a shower is involved). Here that quality comes to practically define the aesthetic, pushed to an extreme that, once the prospect of violence enters the picture, makes it seem ripped from Dressed to Kill. (Because Temptation involves infidelity and stars black actors, it's been compared by some critics to Obsessed, but in terms of look and feel it's much closer to Obsession.) It's never clear, however, whether these over-the-top embellishments are meant to encourage or discourage identification, and it's hard to reconcile the conventional seriousness of the film's first two acts with the ostensible absurdity of its last act. If the point is to expand an already Christian-themed morality play to suitably biblical proportions, the gambit isn't so effective. And if the point, as it often is with De Palma, is to both relish and critique its own showy artifice (perhaps it's a demented vision of infidelity's worse-case scenario?), it isn't apparent how that meta-strategy relates to the apparent earnestness of the beginnings. But in any case, the last-act foray into veritable camp is certainly provocative, a quality with value of its own."

We reported last week that several sites are listing Passion as a "limited release" on June 7th. Earlier this month, Canadian magazine The Gate tweeted that its interview with De Palma would coincide with the film's release in June.

Now, earlier this week, The Film Stage's Nick Newman wrote, "We’ve received word that Brian De Palma‘s Passion, a title anticipated by many around these here parts, is finally coming to U.S. theaters this July, courtesy of eOne." For whatever reason, this particular story was picked up and retweeted all over the place, and now it is widely assumed that Passion will open in July. But this does not explain why so many sites, as mentioned above, specifically list the June 7 date (for "limited release"). It is possible that eOne is planning a slow rollout for the film to spread across the U.S., which would delve into July (and maybe later) in some parts of the country. Or perhaps June 7 is the "limited release" date, and July (sometime in July) will see a wide/wider release. We can only hope. Anyway, back on March 8, one of our sources received word from the Passion publicity firm stating that Passion will be released in the U.S. in June. Perhaps that has been altered or modified since then.