De Palma’s incredible one-take intro to Santoro and his sleazy existence shows us arounds corridors, up and down escalators down to ringside. It’s dialog-heavy, incredibly complicated in its staging and so exciting to watch.

One of Santoro’s best friends, Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise) sits alongside him on ringside seats. When a shot rings out and a powerful figure sitting near Santoro is now dead, the event erupts into anarchy.

Santoro and Dunne immediately sweep the area and round up the suspects. Who took the shot, why did they do it and is there one person responsible for the public assassination? How do you solve a murder that takes place in plain sight with “14,000 eyewitnesses?”

Because it’s De Palma, the expected Hitchcock visuals and themes are present. However, even with those aspects in place, there are more neo-noir themes on hand, as well as De Palma doing Robert Altman taking on “Rashomon.”

There’s a McGuffin about Air Guard Missile Tests but the core of the film is Santoro’s belatedly finding a moral center in a corrupt world.

De Palma is once again exploring media manipulation and distraction through large-scale diversion. It could be interpreted as political satire as just flat out American social commentary.

De Palma is dipping his toe into the “Blow Out” (1981) pool once more. “Snake Eyes” is a smaller film than De Palma’s anti-commercial, challenging tour de force of the original “Mission: Impossible” (1996) but still made with a bravado showmanship to match the work of his leading man.

“Snake Eyes” isn’t an action movie but a thrillingly staged mystery, which made it an odd attraction during the summer of 1998. Coming off of his back-to-back blockbusters of “Con Air” and “Face/Off” and the surprise hit of “City of Angels” earlier in the year, Cage was on a roll that lasted for years.

Playing Santoro, Cage is on fire from his first entrance. The character simmers down as the discoveries of the investigation become increasingly grave. Cage is not being over the top but playing a brash, inhibition-free jerk whose lack of a moral center changes drastically in a single evening.

There is no convincing naysayers who loathe any period of Cage’s work, whether it’s his early post-“Peggy Sue” choices, his commercial breakthrough after winning the Oscar, or the on-again-off-again era of wild creative peaks and valleys he’s currently in.

Cage always takes big swings and is rarely (if ever) accused of being subtle.

Nevertheless, the actor’s willingness to give nearly every project he takes on an above and beyond approach, giving it his all when the movie itself may not need or deserve it, has made him one of my favorites.

Alongside his incredible turn in Werner Herzog’s off-the-wall “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009), this is my favorite of his “big” performances.

In both cases, the initial bravado of the characters masks the moral rot beneath, as both characters find a form of redemption but, in the end, haven’t entirely reformed their wicked ways.

The shot of a bloodied bill and the final, painful look Santoro gives it, says everything about the character and how far he’s come. It’s the film’s most important shot and solidifies the film’s neo-noir identity.

Are there other films from your career you’re especially proud of?

I don’t know. “Rio Bravo” is one that just holds up no matter when. “Dressed to Kill,” I would like to have been in it just a little bit more before they knocked me off.

Audiences have embraced that film more in recent years. How was Brian De Palma to work with?

He was great and he [allowed] no fussiness. It was hard work because he was a very serious filmmaker, and then he took on serious subjects, so you have to do it that way. But he was a master director — oh, my God.

A life well-lived is best directed by doing what you love with people you love. And my father, Edward R. Pressman — a film producer, jazz lover, student of philosophy, constant reader and Dodgers fanatic who would have turned 80 on Tuesday — had a life filled to the brim.

On Jan. 17, in the last moments of my father’s life, his family and his company, which has always been family to Ed, surrounded him. We listened to “Gassenhauer,” the theme of Badlands, my father’s fourth film as a producer. He looked so peaceful and beautiful.

Earlier, on this last day, we watched Phantom of the Paradise. I’ve always been in awe of that film. The joy and chaos that is in each frame; the music that, like old souls, lasts forever. You can feel the way that Ed and director Brian De Palma were experimenting together, pushing cinematic boundaries while also not knowing where the boundaries lay.

The film begins with the song, “Goodbye Eddie, Goodbye.” The lyrics read, “We’ll remember you forever, Eddie, through the sacrifice you made. We can’t believe the price you paid for love.”

What sticks with me is love. My father really loved a lot. He didn’t have to say a lot. I could feel it in the slightest curl of his smile or the gesture of his hands. He loved his family. He loved my mother, Annie. He loved film. He loved working. He loved his company. He loved the Hollywood and independent film community.

In remembering my father, a lot of people speak about his determination. When he committed to a film he never gave up. I think a lot of that strength came from his childhood. His family and childhood friends shared a lifelong bond that gave him the strength to never be afraid.

Norman Reynolds, the British production designer and art director who won two Oscars for his work on Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, has died.

Reynolds, 89, worked as art director on Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977 and took over from John Barry as production designer for the sequels.

Steven Spielberg previously said Reynolds was the "creative core" of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films.

"He possessed that rare combination of humility and utter genius," he said.

Reynolds' notable design work included Yoda's planet of Dagobah, the carbon freezing chamber in which Han Solo was encased in carbonite and The Emperor's throne room.

The latter was reimagined as part of a destroyed Death Star in The Rise of Skywalker in 2019.

His influence on the Star Wars universe is still seen today with many of his designs incorporated in the look of the Disney+ series, The Mandalorian.

Spielberg asked Reynolds to work as production designer for Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, for which he won his second Oscar.

In a 1996 American Cinematographer article by Benjamin B, Reynolds discussed working with Stephen Burum on Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible:

Like an IMF mission, the production of the film was a race against time, shooting on location in Prague and London, and on sets built within the vast Pinewood Studios soundstages. However, the film's British production designer, Norman Reynolds, notes that the film's European locales merely enhance its essential spirit. "Mission: Impossible is an American action film, in the best sense of the term," he says.

Reynolds, who earned two Oscars for his memorable design work on Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, is well-positioned to comment on the relationship between the production designer and the cinematographer. “The designer [helps to set] the picture's tone in visual terms. Now that's apart from the cameraman, who obviously has the ultimate control in that area, because he can make it dark, light, colored or whatever. So what we designers do is very much in the hands of cameramen. I certainly stay in touch with the cameraman as much as I possibly can.

“While we were in Prague, Steve was obviously very involved in location scouting and preparing things, so there were times when he and I were separated. But when we moved to the studio, I involved Steve as much as possible in the set design. It was quite selfish really, because the easier I made Steve's job, the better the film was going to look. We liked working together, and that's really the name of the game."

In planning their visual design, Burum and Reynolds referred solely to the script and not at all to the television series. In fact, Burum confesses to having never really watched the TV show. "I remember a little from college, but I never got a chance to see an entire episode," he admits.

Following the natural divisions of the script, Burum created a different lighting approach for the missions in Prague, Virginia, and on the TGV train, producing a visual diversity and rhythm that enriches the film. The cinematographer summarizes the three moods he sought to evoke as "old Europe, America and new Europe."

...

The high-tech CIA computer room set is a good example of the collaboration between production designer Reynolds and Burum. Reynolds drew his inspiration from his previous set designs in Star Wars to create a space that was also a self-contained soft light source. This futuristic white room is a seamless integration of luminescent plexiglass panels with dozens of photofloods and 216 diffusion behind them. The effect is an expanse of shadowless whiteness. To ensure the purity of the white light, Burum overexposed the panels by about three stops to "burn out any color. It's an old photographic trick: if you want to get rid of oversaturation, you overexpose, and if you want heavy saturation to get a weird color, you underexpose."

Cruise wore a black outfit to retain contrast and sharpness in the extremely soft light. Burum says that much of the suspense in Mission: Impossible was created by trapping the protagonists in confined spaces. "Throughout the picture, the characters are stuck in airplanes, in elevator shafts, in air-conditioning ducts. There's no place to hide. If you get caught in a tunnel and there's somebody coming, you have no way out — it's that feeling of being completely vulnerable at all times."

Brett tweets, "Air is the last movie I expected to feature the most iconic bit of Pino Donaggio’s score for Body Double, one of my very favorite pieces of music movie ever, for the shoe reveal." And in a review posted today at JoBlo, Chris Bumbray concludes, "All in all, Air really is a terrific package, with Affleck having a ton of fun telling this story. It definitely has one of the best soundtracks of the year, with the needle drops running the gamut from Bruce Springsteen to 'Axel F'. Affleck even repurposes Pino Donaggio’s main theme to Brian De Palma’s Body Double to complement the Tangerine Dream music. It’s a nice touch in a movie that’s full of them."

Film Music Reporter has the lowdown:

The full list of music cues featured in Ben Affleck’s biographical drama Air has been revealed. While the film doesn’t have a credited composer, Paul Haslinger (Underworld, Halt and Catch Fire, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter) appears to have contributed a few original music cues, credited in the end titles as I Want to Sign Him and Sneaker AnthemRunning Out of Tim. The movie also features tracks from multiple 80s scores by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream (which Haslinger was a member of in the late 80s), including Running Out of Time & Through the Dark/Run Across the Street from Miracle Mile, Shop Territory from Firestarter, Jerry’s Decision [Ed. note: a comment at that site states this is not a Tangerine Dream track] & To the Head of the Class from Three O’Clock High, Love on a Real Train from Risky Business and Breathing the Night Away from Heartbreakers. Harold Faltermeyer’s music from Beverly Hills Cop and its first sequel makes an appearance in a couple of scenes. Other score cues featured in the movie include Leave Atlantic City from Desperately Seeking Susan (by Thomas Newman), JP Brenner Emerges from Raw Deal (by Christopher Boardman), Votes for Women from Suffragette (by Alexandre Desplat), Closing from The Times of Harvey Milk (by Mark Isham), The Girl from Flinch (by Miami Nights 1984) and a track from Pino Donaggio’s score from Brian De Palma’s Body Double.

Andrea von Foerster serves as the music supervisor of the movie, which also features numerous 80s hit songs, including Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, My Adidas by Run DMC, Legs by ZZ Top, Sister Christian by Night Ranger, Ain’t Nobody by Rufus & Chaka Khan, All I Need Is a Miracle by Mike + The Mechanics, Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper and Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen. Air starring Matt Damon, Affleck, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Messina, Chris Tucker, Marlon Wayans, Matthew Maher, Jay Mohr, Julius Tennon centers on the game-changing partnership between a then rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division. The drama will be released in theaters nationwide on April 5 by MGM/Amazon Studios.