De Palma a la Mod

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

'BLOW OUT' & 'DRESSED TO KILL' DVD DETAILS
ANGIE DICKINSON DISCUSSES DTK ROLE SCENE-BY-SCENE; MORE

The Carlotta Films DVD and Blu-Ray editions of Brian De Palma's Blow Out and Dressed To Kill are released in France this week, and Fiction Factory has details (as well as 2-minute teasers) about the new interview segments it filmed and provided for the new editions. "Rag Doll Memories: Nancy Allen on Blow Out" runs 21 minutes. "Black and White in Color: Vilmos Zsigmond on Blow Out," with a running time of 27 minutes, has the cinematographer discussing his work with De Palma on Blow Out, and "that film’s particular challenges, like flashing technique and split diopters," according to the Fiction Family web site. "Return to Philadelphia: George Litto on Blow Out" is an 18-minute interview with the producer.

"Lessons in Filmmaking: Keith Gordon on Dressed to Kill," with a running time of 30 minutes, has Gordon discussing the filmmaking lessons he learned while acting in Dressed To Kill. "Dressed in Purple: Nancy Allen on Dressed to Kill," with a running time of 22 minutes, has Allen talking "about her character, Liz, the costumes designed by Ann Roth, and her co-stars Angie Dickinson, Keith Gordon and Michael Caine. "Dressed in White: Angie Dickinson on Dressed to Kill," which runs 29 minutes, has this description: "Angie Dickinson remembers the shooting of Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill and discusses her role scene by scene." Also on the DTK DVD and Blu-Ray is "Symphony of Fear: George Litto on Dressed to Kill," which runs 17 minutes.

The Blow Out sets also include a 27-minute interview with Pino Donaggio in which he talks about his career as a violinist, then popular singer, and on through his ongoing collaboration with De Palma. There is also a 7-minute analysis of Blow Out by critic Jean Douchet. Both Blow Out and Dressed To Kill include an 8-minute introduction from Samuel Blumenfeld.

Posted by Geoff at 12:25 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, November 24, 2012 10:14 PM CST
Post Comment | View Comments (4) | Permalink | Share This Post

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Posted by Geoff at 12:08 AM CST
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post

Thursday, November 8, 2012

TRAVOLTA & WATERS IN CONVERSATION SATURDAY
TRIBUTE TO TRAVOLTA FUNDRAISER FOR MARYLAND FILM FESTIVAL

The Maryland Film Festival presents "A Tribute To John Travolta" at the MICA Brown Center this Saturday (November 10) at 7pm. The event will raise funds for the festival, and will be highlighted by an "Open Conversation" with Travolta and John Waters, the fifth in the fest's annual "Open Conversations" series. Travolta will also be awarded the MFF "Reel Guy" for achievement in film.

In preparation for the event, director of programming Eric Allen Hatch has been reviewing several Travolta films on the MFF blog, including Blow Out. "Travolta is perfectly cast here," writes Hatch. "Already known as a stylish and dynamic star for his work on enduring favorites such as Grease and Saturday Night Fever a few years earlier, he begins the picture as an easily relatable leading man for the audience. Smooth and sly, he’s also heroic—ready to jump into the mouth of danger to save a stranger—and so it becomes all the more startling when obsession takes over, and his search for the truth recasts him as a figure on the margins."

Posted by Geoff at 7:05 PM CST
Updated: Thursday, November 8, 2012 7:06 PM CST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Friday, October 19, 2012

DOUBLE DOUBLE DE PALMA WEEKEND AT THE AERO
'BLOW OUT' PAIRED WITH 'BLOW-UP', 'DRESSED TO KILL' WITH 'PSYCHO'

The Aero Theatre in Santa Monica has a couple of De Palma-related double features this weekend. Tonight at 7:30 (Friday) is Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, followed by Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Tomorrow night at 7:30 is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, followed by De Palma's Dressed To Kill. In each case, the De Palma film will be screened via DCP, while the Antonioni and Hitchcock films will be screened from 35mm prints.

POST-ELECTION SSCREENING OF 'BLOW OUT' IN DALLAS
Meanwhile, our old friend Bill Fentum informs us that Blow Out, which involves the death of a presidential candidate just prior to an election, will have two screenings the night after the upcoming November election at the Magnolia in Dallas. The screening is part of a series at the Magnolia called "The Big Movie," which normally runs on Tuesday nights. However, since November 6 is election day, it appears they moved the screening that week to Wednesday, November 7.
(Thanks Bill!)

Posted by Geoff at 8:21 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Monday, July 16, 2012

Posted by Geoff at 11:23 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:24 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

BRUCE CAMPBELL RECALLS RAIMI VS. DE PALMA
1981 BATTLE OF "BERZERK" IN NYC ARCADE

The Hollywood Reporter's John Gaudiosi posted an interview with Bruce Campbell today in anticipation of the actor's appearance this upcoming weekend at the San Diego Comic-Con, where he will be promoting the new video game, "The Amazing Spider-Man." Gaudiosi asked Campbell to share a fond video game memory...
------------------------------
Watching Sam Raimi beat Brian De Palma at the game Berzerk in New York City around 1981. It was an arcade called Fascination around 42nd Street and Brian De Palma was working on his movie Blow Out and we were working on our movie Evil Dead in the same building, where you do post production sound. It’s a very tedious process so you always have to get out, go have lunch, go somewhere else. Right around the corner was this video arcade where Sam and I would always go to play Berzerk, Asteroids, some Pac-Man – although Pac-Man was always lame to me. Brian De Palma was playing Berzerk and Sam Raimi came up and challenged him. They played a duel match and Sam kicked his ass. That was probably one of the most fulfilling experiences, watching Sam Raimi kick a young Brian De Palma’s ass in Berzerk.

Posted by Geoff at 6:20 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 6:21 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (3) | Permalink | Share This Post

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

SUMMER SPECIAL - 'BLOW OUT' & SLASHER GENRE

Over the past few months, some terrific writing about the films of Brian De Palma have popped up on blogs and elsewhere, and, well, I'd gotten busy and found it difficult to keep up with it all. So here we are in the middle of summer, and my plan is to go movie-by-movie and post links to these pieces, covering the ones that have slipped through the cracks. But before we begin the movie-by-movie bit, I wanted to kick it off with this great piece on Blow Out by Jesse Clark Tucker, which he posted to his Beyond The Pale blog last March. In the piece, Tucker riffs on Criterion's recent Blow Out package, moving from the significance of the cover art before delving into the film's links with the "slasher" genre. "Look inside the exhaustive booklet, however," Tucker writes, "and you’ll find another representation of Blow Out, linking the film to a more subterranean film culture." Tucker's piece is full of insights into Blow Out, as well as other De Palma films. Enjoy it!

Posted by Geoff at 12:28 AM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink | Share This Post

Thursday, July 5, 2012

NEW THRILLER TAKES CUES FROM 'BLOW OUT', 'PEEPING TOM'
PETER STRICKLAND'S 'BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO' PREMIERED AT EDINBURGH FEST LAST WEEK

The Hollywood Reporter's Neil Young suggests that Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio was inspired by Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Young viewed Berberian at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere last week. Here is an excerpt from Young's review:
---------------------------------------------
The nightmarish side of moviemaking is imaginatively if unevenly dramatized in writer-director Peter Strickland's sophomore effort Berberian Sound Studio, the most critically lauded of the Edinburgh's 18 world premieres. Starring superlative British character-actor Toby Jones in a rare lead role, this UK/Germany co-production follows the misadventures of a timid sound-mixer working on a grisly shocker in 1970s Italy. But while the plethora of sly references and in-jokes will delight genre aficionados and cinephiles, a third-act spiral from queasy dark comedy into more ambitious David Lynch-ish territory will likely leave more general audiences frustrated. The film therefore looks likely to emulate Strickland's Transylvania-set 2009 debut Katalin Varga and enjoy a lengthy festival run followed by small-scale art-house distribution and small-screen sales.

Evidently inspired by such inside-baseball predecessors as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Brian De Palma's Blow Out, Strickland displays intimate knowledge of the lurid Italian 1960s-80s giallo wave of violent thrillers and horrors from the likes of Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martini. Familiarity with these pictures isn't essential to get the gist of what's going on in Berberian Sound Studio, but it certainly helps.
Taken on its own terms, the film works as a character-study of fortysomething, mild-mannered, workaholic Gilderoy (Jones) - first name or surname? - a fish out of water amid these tempestuous southern-Europeans. The film-within-the-film The Equestrian Vortex - directed by the flamboyant Giancarlo Santini (Antonio Mancino) and seemingly modeled on Argento's masterpiece Suspiria - of which we see only the amusingly ludicrous opening-titles. We watch Gilderoy and company, including bad-tempered producer Francesco (Cosimo Fusco), watching the movie - for which the Studio, in accordance with typical practices of the day, provides the entire soundtrack.

Posted by Geoff at 7:20 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

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
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post

Friday, April 13, 2012

ARMOND: 'DETENTION' 360-PAN IS HOMAGE TO 'BLOW OUT'
JOSEPH KAHN FILM ALSO FEATURES BULLY CHARACTER NAMED BILLY NOLAN

Music video and commercial director Joseph Kahn's second feature film, Detention, opens in select AMC theaters today, before moving on to other cities later on. Kahn financed the high school-set, genre-busting film himself, so that he could call all the shots without argument. Detention is aimed at today's teenagers, who Kahn believes are bored by the movies Hollywood generally gears toward them. The film, which features deliberate references to many many films, is Kahn's call for the death of genres. According to City Arts' Armond White, the film includes a 360-degree pan that is an homage to a similar pan in Brian De Palma's Blow Out:

There’s a continuous 360-degree pan through eleven years of pop song totems and teen fads that sneaks up on you as one of the most fantastically detailed set-pieces in modern movies. It’s also an homage to Brian De Palma’s vertiginous 360-pan in Blow Out. Both De Palma and Kahn use their technical aplomb and social acuity to similarly encircle a moral void. Kahn’s De Palma trickery may obscure his own considerable point about cultural overload (also De Palma’s unconscious panic).

Not sure if this is the scene White is referring to, but Kahn describes his favorite sequence of Detention in an interview with Caliber's Katherine Sziraczky:

I like my teen throwback sequence in the movie, where we go through the eras in detention. Who makes throwbacks for teens? Most people assume that teens haven’t lived long enough to recognize a throwback, but that scene shows you how fast society changes for new young people. Things change so fast, hairstyles, music, that little sequence just throws it in your face, this is a whole new world.

Kahn has been promoting the film relentlessly, and also gave interviews to Complex, io9, Fanbolt, and Collider.

In what is surely a nod to Carrie (both the novel and the film), Kahn, who co-wrote the screenplay for Detention, has a character named Billy Nolan, which was also the name of the character played by John Travolta in De Palma's film adaptation of Stephen King's novel.

Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, April 14, 2012 12:49 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink | Share This Post

Newer | Latest | Older

«	November 2012					»

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