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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
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musical recording
sessions, the final
mix or the color
timing of the
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Listen to
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De Palma/Lehman
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De Palma/Lehman
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De Palma developing
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"a horror movie
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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
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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.
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Wednesday, July 10, 2013
OLIVER STONE PRESENTS 'SCARFACE' SCREENING
AT KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL LAST WEEK
Oliver Stone was at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival last week, where he received a Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Stone presented several of his films, including an "Ultimate Cut" of Alexander, and Scarface, for which he wrote the screenplay.

Stone posted the following about the fest on his Facebook page:
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Wonderful week long film festival. Was honored with the lifetime achievement award and was able to show "Alexander: The Ultimate Cut" in a large hall with wonderful projection. The film played out well for the first time. The Shanghai Film Festival projection was too dark almost by two full stops of exposure. Also able to show Chapter. 3 & 10 of "Untold History of the United States" to a very responsive young crowd.

They also screened "Scarface" (1983) at a packed screening of 1,500 people. The film doesn't feel dated. In fact, it seems slower, and was more able to concentrate on the acting of Al Pacino and wonderful supporting cast. Kudos to Miriam Colon and Robert Loggia. Also showing "Wall Street."

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In other Scarface happenings, a 36-minute video has been popping around the internet during the past few days. It seems to be the same video from the Scarface DVD special features. The video, broken down into three parts and posted to YouTube, was embedded in a post at The Playlist the other day, along with a terrific 1983 De Palma interview segment from The Movie Channel that was embedded here a couple of years ago.

Posted by Geoff at 12:26 AM CDT
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Monday, May 6, 2013
R.I.P. MARIO MACHADO
L.A. NEWS ANCHOR HAD ROLES IN SEVERAL FILMS, INCLUDING 'SCARFACE'


Mario Machado, seen at left in the above still from Scarface, died Saturday in California of complications from pneumonia, according to the Los Angeles Times. He was 78. Machado had roles as anchormen or TV interviewers in several other films, including, most memorably, in the RoboCop series of films. The L.A. Times obituary notes that Machado "had been ill for some time with Parkinson's disease."

Posted by Geoff at 6:50 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, May 6, 2013 6:51 PM CDT
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Sunday, March 24, 2013
R.I.P. JAROSLAV 'JERRY' GEBR
ARTIST HAD LONG HOLLYWOOD CAREER, WORKED ON 'SCARFACE'


Deadline reported this week that Jaroslav “Jerry” Gebr, a highly sought-after artist who worked in film and television for over 50 years, passed away last month at the age of 86, after a long illness. It was during his time at Universal Studios that Gebr, according to Thomas Gebr, worked on Brian De Palma's Scarface, presumably painting the portrait on display in the still above. Gebr may have done more than just portrait work on Scarface, as well, since he could mimic many styles, and also did murals, story boards, and various types of illustrations. He was still at Universal when De Palma and Al Pacino re-teamed for Carlito's Way at that studio.

Gebr is said to have been commissioned to paint replicas of beloved works of art for many in Hollywood. "They’d put the originals in safe storage and hang Jerry’s versions on the wall," his son-in-law Kevin McMahon told Deadline. "Nobody could ever tell the difference."

In 1966, Gebr painted a full-scale replica of Michelangelo´s Sistine Chapel for the film Shoes of the Fisherman. That same year, he created paintings for the pilot episode of his friend Rod Serling's Night Gallery (for which the Deadline obituary states that Gebr is perhaps best known). Gebr also did the memorable Norman Rockwell-ish titles and story chapter works for George Roy Hill's The Sting. According to Gebr.art, he painted a western scene on a semi-truck trailer in Smokey And The Bandit, and completed portrait work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "and all works delivered within a film production window of one to two weeks." Gebr also worked on David Lynch's Dune, and Robert Wise's The Sound Of Music, among countless others.


Posted by Geoff at 12:14 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, March 24, 2013 12:16 AM CDT
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013


Posted by Geoff at 7:22 PM CDT
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Sunday, March 17, 2013
'SPRING BREAKERS' HAS 'SCARFACE' ON REPEAT
WILMINGTON: LIKE OLD-STYLE SOFT-CORE PORN BLENDED WITH TEEN-SLANTED 'SCARFACE' PASTICHE


In Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, which was shot by frequent Gaspar Noe cinematographer Benoit Debie, James Franco's plays a meth dealer who, while showing his new spring break girls around his crib, boasts about having everything he needs, including Brian De Palma's Scarface on repeat. Here are some of the reviews:

Michael Wilmington, Movie City News
"It may be the apotheosis or culmination of all the Korines: a picture that starts off, as many have noted, like an arty Girls Gone Wild video, inflated to Hieronymus Boschian or Pieter Brughelian Beach Party proportions, and ends up doing a riff on the Al Pacino-Brian De Palma 1983 Scarface, mashed up into Charlie‘s Angels gone homicidal...

"A lot of Spring Breakers is shot and shaped like old-style soft-core porn show– even to the old cheapo porn trick of repeating some scenes and lines over and over. It’s blended with what plays like a teen-slanted ‘83 Scarface pastiche. But, as long as Franco is on screen, it’s a good movie, and there’s also something crazily compelling about the scenes of that huge outdoor dance-a-thon. The ending is beyond ridiculous, and not funny enough to save things. And the four femme stars could have used better parts and better lines, but what the hell. The movie‘s credibility vanishes after the restaurant robbery scene anyway, which is shot flashily, in a Gun Crazy-style single take. But as the man says, who needs credibility? Just pretend…"

David Edelstein, Vulture
"Spring Breakers switches gears midway through with the arrest of these bacchanalians (bikinis behind bars!) and the arrival of James Franco as a flamboyant meth dealer with silver teeth and red-tinted cornrows. He watches them go before a judge and, enraptured, bails them out. 'Sprang break … Sprang break … ' he intones, attempting to lull us with his sexy outlaw incantations. In his lavish manse, he shows off his arsenal, invokes Scarface, and says, 'This is the fuckin’ American dream, y’all.' Every one of Franco’s lines could be the prelude to a rap song too moronic for airplay. 'Sprang break ... Sprang break … ' I wanted to spring-break his silver teeth, but at least he’s more committed here than in his other movie on screens now, Oz the Great and Powerful — a Disney production."

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
"Already swollen with girl-on-girl flirtation, criminal fantasy and naive dreaminess, the movie explodes into Tampa Bay–set skankitude, where our leads are never out of bikinis, even when flung in jail for trashing a hotel room. They’re bailed out by Alien (James Franco, more alive than ever in the film’s only actual performance), a cornrowed, heavily armed wanksta rapper who nakedly desires them for his posse.

"It all plays out in a final flourish of DayGlo Scarface wish fulfillment, and you can’t really believe what you’re watching. Alien—and Korine—tell us it’s the American dream come true, and even if you resist going there with them, the have-your-cake-and-fling-it-too stupidity is breathtaking. It takes some kind of cracked artistry to put coeds in hot-pink ski masks and have them twirl around to a Britney Spears ballad toting machine guns. Spring Breakers is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad—and radical it is."

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Too bad the movie itself is rarely as outrageous as he is. The promise of nudity and girl-on-girl action among Disney hotties Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical), Selena Gomez (Wizards of Waverly Place) and Ashley Benson (Pretty Little Liars) is just a porny tease. Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson), Faith (Gomez) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, the director's wife) are merely college BFFs yearning for a spring break. Everyone but Faith (she's into Christian studies) agrees to rob a local chicken shack to finance a Tampa getaway. Here's your chance to hear the chirpy Hudgens say, 'Give me your motherfucking money or I'm going to shoot your fucking brains out.' And they're off.

"Alien laps them right up. At his crib, where bongs and blow are plentiful and Al Pacino's Scarface plays on a continuous loop, the coeds live the dream. Violence looms in the form of Archie (Gucci Mane), Alien's gangsta enemy. No sweat. When Alien isn't going down on a gun barrel in a homoerotic domination game, he sits at his poolside piano and croons Britney Spears ballads to the girls, who wear pink ski masks and dance around waving AK-47s."

Katie Calautti, Comic Book Resources
"Sure, it has the aesthetic of a Girls Gone Wild video mashed up with Scarface (and there’s certainly a portion of the film’s audience that will be all too happy to take it at that face value), but deep beyond its epic one-liners, brazen nudity, omnipresent drug use and stylized scenes of criminal activity, there’s a core that reveals an all-too-terrifying truth about the desensitization of youth and the moral quandaries it presents...

"That is to say, after watching Spring Breakers, you’ll have Britney Spears and Skrillex stuck in your head on a loop, you’ll quote (and re-quote, and re-quote) James Franco’s dialogue (his crooning repetition of 'spring breeeeeeak' will haunt your nightmares), you’ll never watch High School Musical the same way again, you’ll feel the crushing urge to view Scarface on repeat, you’ll realize you’re inadequately prepared (abdominally speaking) for swimsuit season, and you’ll suffer the after-effects of an onslaught of so much perverse and perverted imagery that you’ll want to disinfect yourself by taking a bath in (and swallowing shots of) tequila."


Posted by Geoff at 11:51 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, March 23, 2013 11:25 PM CDT
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Wednesday, December 5, 2012
RUMOR: NEW 'SCARFACE' TO BE MEXICAN
FACT: 'DONNIE BRASCO' WRITER PAUL ATTANASIO HIRED TO REWRITE SCREENPLAY


This past October, Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr. posted the news that Universal had hired Paul Attanasio to rewrite David Ayer's original draft of the new Scarface film being produced by Marc Shmuger and Martin Bregman. Fleming wrote that "the film is not intended to be a remake or a sequel. It will take the common elements of the first two films: An outsider, an immigrant, barges his way into the criminal establishment in pursuit of a twisted version of the American dream, becoming a kingpin through a campaign of ruthlessness and violent ambition. The studio is keeping the specifics of where the new Tony character comes from under wraps at the moment, but ethnicity and geography were important in the first two versions."

Latino Review's El Mayimbe took the "keeping under wraps" part of that paragraph as a challenge, and claims to have discovered, via unnamed sources, that the new Tony "is actually Mexican and the remake takes place in the world of drug cartels." We shall see.


Posted by Geoff at 11:52 PM CST
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Tuesday, October 16, 2012
MORE VIDEOS FROM DE PALMA/BAUMBACH TALK
DE PALMA ON FIGURING OUT WHAT WAS BOTHERING PACINO FOR 'SCARFACE' SCENE


"I went back and I was watching what was going on with the rehearsal, and then I figured out, by watching Al [Pacino] move around, I could see that the room was too small. It was something as simple as that. You know, he wanted to have that big table, so he could move around it. You know, and sort of push himself around in the chair, and have Robert Loggia come toward him. And what we actually did is, I said to Nando [Ferdinando Scarfiotti], the set designer, 'Build it four times bigger.' That's what we did. We went back and shot the scene three weeks later, it was this huge space. Because we had all these character actors there, and they didn't have enough space to move around. And it seems so simple when I tell you now, but unless you've actually witnessed this stuff happening, it's quite something."

DE PALMA HAD THE 'DRESSED TO KILL' ART DIRECTOR "BASICALLY DUPLICATE" HIS SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT

PROBLEM FOR EVERY ARTIST: HOW MUCH OF YOURSELF TO REVEAL IN QUEST FOR TRUTH


Posted by Geoff at 12:06 AM CDT
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
OLIVER STONE 'SCARFACE' Q&A ON FACEBOOK
FRIDAY THE 13TH, 5PM EASTERN

Posted by Geoff at 5:57 PM CDT
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Sunday, June 3, 2012
PFEIFFER ON BEING CAST IN 'SCARFACE'
SAYS HER READING SHOCKED DE PALMA, WARY ABOUT BOTHERING WITH THE STAR OF 'GREASE 2'

One key interview figure missing in Playboy's "Making of Scarface" article last December was Michelle Pfeiffer, who played Elvira in the 1983 Brian De Palma film. The June 2012 issue of Empire features an interview with Pfeiffer that fills in that gap quite nicely. In contrast to the odd bit in the Playboy article in which an unnamed source claims that De Palma "manipulated her brutally" during filming, Pfeiffer says herself in the Empire interview that De Palma "was really lovely." The interview covers Pfeiffer's entire career, and after discussing the actress' early role in Grease 2, the interviewer segues into Scarface...

Empire: [Grease 2] almost stopped you getting the part in Scarface. Brian De Palma was reluctant to see you because of that film, right?

Pfeiffer: He was. I knew that. The casting director, Alixe Gordin, if it weren't for her, Brian wouldn't have seen me.

Empire: How did you win him over?

Pfeiffer: It was just one of those days where I happened to give a good reading and I think he was so shocked because I don't think he expected anything good to come out of my mouth. So Brian was on my side, but Al (Pacino) was a little tougher.

Empire: So how did you get Al on side?

Pfeiffer: I think it was my screen test. It was a tremendously long audition process. It went on for months. I had to keep coming back and back and back. The more I came back the worse I got because I was so nervous and I was inexperienced. Fear is the most destructive thing for an actor. So I don't blame Al for being unimpressed with me, because I kept getting worse every time I came in. Finally I think Brian had to say, "It's not going to work," because I was just bad. But he was really lovely and I was sort of relieved because they were putting me out of my misery and I just couldn't go through it anymore. So I went about my merry way and then got a call: they wanted to screen test me. And I was like, "Oh no." I was so convinced I didn't have a shot at it that I just let go and I relaxed and showed up and it went really well -- much to everyone's surprise -- and I could tell it went well. Also I made Al Pacino bleed. I cut his hand smashing [a plate].

Empire: That's a way to make sure you're remembered.

Pfeiffer: Exactly. Although, of course, it wasn't deliberate.


Posted by Geoff at 10:15 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, June 3, 2012 10:18 PM CDT
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Thursday, March 29, 2012
'SCARFACE' TO SCREEN AT MIAMI OCEANSIDE MANSION
STEVEN BAUER, PEPE SERNA, ANGEL SALAZAR TO APPEAR AT APRIL 13 EVENT

The above oceanside mansion in Miami will be the site of an outdoor benefit screening of Brian De Palma's Scarface on Friday, April 13th. Scarface actors Steven Bauer, Pepe Serna, and Angel Salazar are all expected to attend. According to a Press Release, the screening event will be "a benefit and silent auction for ArtesMiami, Inc., the South Florida non-profit organization dedicated to developing South Florida as a cultural center with a special focus on Hispanic culture." The event will also cap the inaugural Hispanicize 2012 National Latino Film Showcase. The winners of the showcase's best feature length and short film prizes will be presented at the Scarface benefit event. According to Hispanicize, "A special Golden Ticket Social Media Contest will be held at Hispanicize 2012 for 25 select tickets to the cinematic event."

Posted by Geoff at 11:26 PM CDT
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