So begins Daniel Hrncir in his review of Phantom Of The Paradise, posted the other day at Full Circle Cinema. After delving into the plot of the film, Hrncir continues:

I’ve probably already given you the wrong impression of what I think is Brian De Palma’s best. The plot itself may seem like a downer if it was not for the film succumbing to sheer excess. What a concept for our twentieth-first-century streaming age, where everything has a standard of quality, but not a twinge of soul. Hollywood, so wanting to please the greatest numbers, forgoes the opportunity to challenge its audiences. Meanwhile, De Palma spends every minute challenging his audience with a spectacular mess. And in doing so, Phantom of the Paradise becomes something truly great.

At one moment in the film, Winslow plants a bomb beside a performance of bikini-glad girls and beach boys to get back at Swan. And I tell you what, I laughed. Not because I condone terrorism, but that these surfer teens go up in flames and Swan does not even react. Once again, De Palma employs his split-screen technique in this scene and it’s chaotic, to say the least. Voices off-stage clash with the performance itself in a manner befitting The Velvet Underground’s ‘The Murder Mystery’. And even if you evenly split your eyes between both scenes simultaneously, you still wouldn’t be able to grasp the buzzing activity. You would have to split your ears to catch it all too. But that is okay. It is okay for a movie to trip you up, to confuse or confound you. More movies need to do that.

It would be remiss of me not to mention some of Phantom of the Paradise‘s sweeter moments. Yes, there are blood and guts for the hard rock fans, but much to be had for the sentimental Carpenter fans too. I must confess that I am a Jessica Harper fan, and some of my favorite moments come through with her performance as Phoenix. I had no clue that she could sing, and neither did Winslow and his discovery of her at an audition. Again, excess.

Her performances of ‘Special To Me’ and ‘Old Souls’ do nothing to further the plot, and yet I am so captivated by these moments. They remind me so much of why I fell in love with movies in the first place. I guess it all feels so real in its amateurishness. Nothing about her dancing or singing feels blocked or scripted to tedium like in a Lin-Manuel Miranda production. At the outro of ‘Special To Me’, Harper lets it all loose with a dance off-stage, only to walk back exorcised of her need to move and groove. I wouldn’t even call it particularly good dancing, but that is beside the point. Her sheer confidence makes it a higher art, with an authenticity that goes beyond what the written script calls for. Disney only wishes it could capture such magic.

"Benny's music, when it arrived from the sessions in London, was astounding to me. The main theme was based on the universal child's singsong playground taunt, nya-nya nya-nya nyaahh-nyaahh. His deranged version of this melody included metallic sounds; tubular bells struck with hammers, which suggested knives; and also Moog synthesizers howling a kind of demented accompaniment. The effect is immediately unsettling, even overwhelming. Variety's review of the film would later say that 'Herrmann's score would make blank film compelling.'"

Two days ago, Meg Shields shared a few words about the title sequence from Sisters, as it was included at number seven on Film School Rejects' "10 Best Opening Credits Sequences in Horror Films"...

Featuring cinematography by accomplished Swedish medical photographer Lennart Nilsson, the opening sequence to Brian De Palma’s Sisters is an unnerving melding of the satanic and the sacrosanct: two fetuses, rendered alien, imposing, and devilish under Nilsson’s macro lens. As the titles roll and the embryonic humans loom, the aural anxiety is ratcheted up to a fever pitch thanks to the shrieking strings of Bernard Herrmann, whose plinking, swooping score endows each close-up image with an uncanny sense of monstrosity. A montage of sinister fetus close-ups is the perfect way to kick off a film at the intersection of Hitchcock, giallo, and the psychosexual sci-fi fare of David Cronenberg. Sisters embodies essential 1970s genre film wickedness. And what could be more wicked than endowing the unborn with a palpable sense of menace?

These two shots, Scarface on the left and Carrie on the right, move via slow zoom, from a seemingly positive atmosphere, into a face reflecting something dark on the horizon. Michelle Pfeiffer's Elvira comes at the end of the "Push It To The Limit" montage of Tony Montana making his moves - the music, which up to this shot has been upbeat, takes on an increasingly dark, ominous tone as the camera moves into Elvira's face, which may or may not be looking into a mirror. It will be Elvira who eventually says, "Can't you see what we're becoming, Tony? We're losers."

Meanwhile, Miss Collins is genuinely positive about helping Carrie envision herself going to the prom, and as the camera zooms past Carrie to focus on Miss Collins, there's a sense that she is also reflecting on her own days in high school, leading, finally, to concern - about Tommy and Sue's intentions in having Tommy ask Carrie to the prom. The scene cuts to Sue and Tommy in Miss Collins' office, and we hear Miss Collins' angry voice from there as we linger for a moment on this final reflection in the mirror.

More details were provided by Cine Series' Pierre Siclier, here with the help of Google Translation:

A newly restored Master on DVD and Blu-ray

Released in a 113-minute cinema version, Casualties of War also received a 121-minute Director's cut version. These two versions will be combined in a collector's edition Blu-ray / DVD, which will be offered on December 1st by Wild Side.

In a press release, the publisher writes:

From Obsession to Carlito's Way, from Blow Out to The Untouchables ... Haunted by their past or driven by their integrity, the heroes of Palmiens denounce crimes that others would like to keep silent and come up against systems that crush. Brian De Palma will have had to persevere to transpose to the screen this appalling tale recounted as early as 1969 by journalist Daniel Lang.

The box set, in addition to bringing together the two versions of the film, will offer bonuses that promise to be exciting. Including a twenty-minute interview with Michael J. Fox and a making of that we will scrutinize with attention. As said above, the shooting was quite complicated, in particular because of the difficult relationship between the two main performers. Along with these video documents is added a large-format 200-page book illustrated with rare photos and archives. An object not to be missed.

-FLASHBACK-

Thursday, January 17, 2019

DEL TORO DONATES 35MM 'PHANTOM' PRINT TO NEW BEV
RIAN JOHNSON & EDGAR WRIGHT POST RESPONSES TO GUILLERMO'S TWEET


Earlier today, Guillermo del Toro tweeted the image above with the following message:

I love this film (Phantom of the Paradise) so much that I bought a great 35mm print. I then donated it to the @newbeverly cinema. Hopefully they'll program it soon!

Rian Johnson then responded, "I have never seen this movie and am waiting until I can see it on the big screen. Soooooo....."

And then Edgar Wright jumped in: "But how many times have I gone on about?"

Rian Johnson: "I blame you for all of this."

Edgar Wright: "My first ever programming at the @newbeverly was a double bill of Bugsy Malone & Phantom Of The Paradise with a @IMPaulWilliams Q&A (and a secret midnight of Ishtar). I'm not sure I ever topped it."

New Bevery Cinema to Rian Johnson: "This is very exciting to hear! I can’t imagine a better way to see it for the first time."

(The New Beverly, of course, is owned by Quentin Tarantino, but I don't know who tweets on the New Bev's behalf.)

Aaron Stewart-Ahn, co-screenwriter of last year's Mandy, responded to del Toro's initial tweet, writing, "The Academy archival print is so effin gorgeous and such a highlight of how prints even of films from that era and stocks can hold saturation and inky blacks." Stewart-Ahn also retweeted del Toro's tweet, adding, "One of the most underrated movies ever."

From the responses that followed, it appears that McWeeny had been reading David Koenig's new book, Shooting Columbo. When Kip Stiles tweeted a response about Steven Spielberg having directed an episode, McWeeny responded, "Yeah. He's the one who recommended DePalma to the producers. DePalma was between jobs and liked the show, and he and Jay Cocks had a pitch: what if Truman Capote killed Johnny Carson on live TV?" Which of course brings to mind De Palma's idea, just two or three years earlier, to have Tommy Smothers appear to saw a rabbit in half live on the Johnny Carson show at the end of Get To Know Your Rabbit. (De Palma was fired from that project before he could film such an ending.) The idea resurfaced in 1980, for a potential "comedy" -- Dene at The Story Of Euston Films found the following extract in a Milwaukee Journal profile of De Palma, written by Helen Dudar, and dated April 20, 1980, "a few months before Dressed to Kill was released" --

Previously:
Brian De Palma & Jay Cocks' unproduced 1973 Columbo script discovered

Leguizamo and McFarlane reconnected three years ago at New York Comic Con and started talking about collaborating. Leguizamo was already an Eisner-nominated writer at that point for his graphic novel Ghetto Klown, but McFarlane gave him some tough love on how challenging it is to make a successful comic.

“Just because you are a celebrity does not mean this is just automatically going to work,” McFarlane recalls saying. “You need to deliver a story that people are going to want to read.”

Leguizamo recalls feeling pressure to deliver something McFarlane would approve of.

“It was very sobering talking to Todd. He wasn’t trying to discourage me, he was trying to make me sharper,” says the writer-actor.

As an actor, Leguizamo has worked with acclaimed directors such as Brian De Palma, Spike Lee and Baz Luhrmann and has studied storytelling from them. Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge was a formative experience, with the actor recalling the script was originally a whopping 300 pages. (A two-hour movie generally has a script that runs about 120 pages.)

“We’d read it every Friday, and he kept reducing it until it got to 150. That process became a part of me. I got to write one of the scenes in the movie, which was an incredible opportunity,” recalls Leguizamo. “Brian De Palma, when I did Carlito’s Way, he let me improvise like crazy. There are so many possibilities in a moment. A moment could go anywhere and still be part of the plot and move the plot forward.”

The career-spanning Baumbach/Paltrow doc is terrific, of course, but if you really want to go in-depth with De Palma discussing his career, the Blumenfeld/Vachaud book is the go-to source. As we know, there are several great books about De Palma and his work -- this one fits in with something like Hitchcock/Truffaut, or Matt Zoller Seitz's comprehensive conversation books with Wes Anderson and Oliver Stone. There really should be an English-language translation -- hopefully someone will look into that and make it happen.