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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:

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
in the ADR, the
musical recording
sessions, the final
mix or the color
timing of the
final print."

Listen to
Donaggio's full score
for Domino online

De Palma/Lehman
rapport at work
in Snakes

De Palma/Lehman
next novel is Terry

De Palma developing
Catch And Kill,
"a horror movie
based on real things
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
of Dumas book

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« January 2014 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
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De Palma discusses
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The Filmmaker Who
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Jim Emerson on
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Scarface: Make Way
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Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
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The Carlito's Way
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italkyoubored

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De Palma a la Mod
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Entries by Topic
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.
All topics  «
Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
BAMcinématek
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Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
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Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
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Blue Afternoon
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Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
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Bruce Springsteen
Cannes
Capone Rising
Carlito's Way
Carrie
Casualties Of War
Catch And Kill
Cinema Studies
Clarksville 1861
Columbia University
Columbo - Shooting Script
Congo
Conversation, The
Cop-Out
Cruising
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Dancing In The Dark
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De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
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Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
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Eric Schwab
Fatal Attraction
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Film Series
Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
George Litto
Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
Havana Film Fest
Heat
Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
Jack Fisk
Jared Martin
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Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Magic Hour
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Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
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Murder a la Mod
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Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
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Palmetto
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Parties & Premieres
Passion
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Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
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Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
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Sisters
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Saturday, January 18, 2014
LEGUIZAMO TALKS 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
AND EDELSTEIN ON CRUDE PROPAGANDA OF 'LONE SURVIVOR', LACKS ART OF DE PALMA, FULLER, SPIELBERG
In 2011, we posted a video of John Leguizamo talking to ABC's Good Morning America about getting slapped by Sean Penn during take after take of a scene being shot for Brian De Palma's Casualties Of War. That video appears to be indisposed, but Contact Music's Michael West this week posted some quotes of Leguizamo discussing the situation. "I was a Latin guy," Leguizamo is quoted as saying, "and everybody would tell me to stay out of the sun so I could pass... for white... and I audition for this movie and I got the part of Corporal Murphy and then we get to Thailand and I go, 'Ok, shoot, there's a lot of sun; I forgot to put sunscreen on and I get really dark,' and they demote me - to Corporal Diaz... I was mad dark. Sean Penn is a sergeant and we kidnap this Vietnamese girl and we gotta gang rape her and my character refuses and Sean's gotta slap me into submission, and of course, Sean doesn't believe in stage combat because he's too method for that shit, so he's slapping me for real. We're on the 13th take and my face (is) out to here and you can't even understand the dialogue I'm saying and Brian De Palma's going, 'We have to do it one more time, John, it was out of focus.' So it's 'whack' and 'whack' and I'm about to quit and then they cut the scene out of the movie. I twitch every time he (Penn) comes near me."

EDELSTEIN ON 'LONE SURVIVOR'
Meanwhile, Peter Berg's Lone Survivor is a massive hit at the box office. Vulture's David Edelstein opens his review of the film by stating that "Berg’s film of Marcus Luttrell’s memoir Lone Survivor is frankly worshipful: It celebrates sacrifice and sanctifies agony. In an early training montage, Berg lingers on the young Navy SEALs’ sinewy limbs and ripped torsos, marveling (in slo-mo) at their ability to endure pain with manly, near-miraculous stoicism. The prep for war is itself a near-death experience, and it’s transmutational. These ordinary American guys — guys’ guys with pretty wives and loving families — are reborn as supermen.

"Luttrell, played onscreen by Mark Wahlberg, was the only SEAL standing (barely) after a 2005 Afghanistan mission to assassinate a murderous Taliban warlord went wrong. Nineteen Americans died, and Berg uses every cinematic weapon in his arsenal to make you feel each bullet as it rips through the warriors’ bodies, defiling young flesh that he has previously hallowed. The Taliban fighters take single shots to the head or chest and are dead before they hit the ground; the SEALs stay up, eviscerated but seemingly invincible. It is only the Alamo-like imbalance of forces that finally brings them down, and even then their deaths are 'good.' They’re radiant as they take their last, shallow breaths. War has ennobled them.

"I’m not being snarky or ironic when I say to Marcus Luttrell, 'Thank you for your service.' It’s important to separate the men described in his book from their depiction in movies like Lone Survivor, which is crudely written, rife with clichés, and leaves out anything that would transform a piece of propaganda into a work of art akin to Samuel Fuller’s The Steel Helmet, Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War, or Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan."


Posted by Geoff at 4:11 PM CST
Updated: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 12:21 AM CST
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Friday, January 17, 2014
COSTNER STEPS INTO 'SEAN CONNERY ROLE'
COMPARES PLAYING MENTOR IN NEW 'JACK RYAN' FILM TO CONNERY'S IN 'THE UNTOUCHABLES'
Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh, and Chris Pine conducted a press conference recently for Branagh's new film, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, wherin Costner talked a lot about Sean Connery's role as mentor in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, and how that informed Costner's own mentorship role to Pine's Jack Ryan in the new film. ScreenCrave's Damon Houx has a good transcription of the press conference. Here are the related Costner excerpts:
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Kevin, you were originally going to play Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. I was wondering if you were already well versed by the time you came in to play the mentor role to Jack in this film?

Kevin Costner: The mentor role is always that ‘what can you offer a younger man, what can you offer a younger woman.’ That thing is in your level of experience, and so that by definition is the mentor if you have a level of experience. If you read it on paper, that’s the role that was meant for me. It was inhabited perfectly. Chris did his role, and what I liked about it was that I wasn’t just a person at a desk on a phone going, “Get the hell out of there. What the hell are you doing? Well, you need to do it faster.” Kenneth was able to say, “Wait a second. I want to incorporate some of your skill set into this where even though I’m a stupid-visor (laughs), if you would, a supervisor here, that I could take the gloves off so to speak and become involved and bring a physical presence and team up with him at the right moment. I thought that was unusual for the mentor role. Usually they’re back in Washington or they’re in a big, giant control room. In this instance, we were always fairly close together and trying to sort it out a little bit together. And, as the movie progresses, you see that he just possesses a lot of intuitive skills, whether it’s being out of set, how to survive or to process a lot of information in a very quick way, which I actually asked him a couple of times to slow down, remembering that I’m in another century. (Laughter)

...

Mr. Costner, at the end of the film, you refer to Jack Ryan as something of a Boy Scout, which reminds me of a number of your most famous roles, perhaps specifically Elliot Ness. I was curious how does it feel to suddenly step into the Sean Connery role?

Kevin Costner: I think the smarter directors do this a lot of times. They’ll take a supporting role and they’ll put a leading man in it because they either know how to inhabit the screen or inhabit it and nowhere was it better than when Sean Connery came in and played the little Irish street cop and you realized how formidable he was. I remember telling Sean at the time, I said, “Sean, this has got enough meat on the bone that you could win the Academy Award.” And Brian (De Palma) could have easily cast any character actor to bring up that Irish brogue or whatever that you would do, but he said no. He went arguably to the biggest star, the biggest star I’ve ever worked with in my life as I think Sean Connery was, to play this. And I think what happens is then he just knows how to hold onto the screen. And so, I have a feeling that that might have been swirling around in this genius’ head over there with what he wanted to do with William Harper.

I love the way you talked about your character and that he was a mentor. Was it easier to mentor in 1984 than in 2014? Was 1984 an easier time for an old shoe to tell a new shoe what to do and what the pitfalls were?

Kenneth Branagh: I think if there’s openness of communication, then the timing doesn’t really matter. And sometimes the mentoring doesn’t really happen directly. It just happens intuitively. I certainly found that working with Kevin on this. There were a lot of things that went on. I was so grateful to have a master director on the set. There are just lots of moments where effortless…not advice…nothing so sort of obvious as advice, but just shared communication about things, a conversation about how a moment in a scene might go or how things might be approached which just came out of an honest collaboration.

If that honesty of communication exists, whether it’s 1984 or 2014, I think it’s quite marvelous actually. And watching these two together was great as well in terms of just when people trust each other and when they’re very good at what they do and when their egos are at the service of the better idea and what is right for the scene. When you see that kind of generosity at work, it really is a thrilling thing to be part of and actually that cuts across age. It doesn’t mean old or younger. I’ve learned a lot from people much younger than me as well as people much older than me. So I think it’s about honesty and generosity, and we were lucky to be in an atmosphere on this project across this table as it were where that was at work.

Who was your greatest mentor?

Kenneth Branagh: My greatest mentor was the guy who was the principal of the drama school I attended. For the first six or seven pictures I made, he was on the movie as the acting coach. To give you a quick example of what he did for me, he was a very sensitive English guy. We were making a film of Hamlet. I was doing the To Be or Not To Be soliloquy. I was very nervous. I said to him that day, “Look, this is the acting Olympics here. I’m doing the most famous speech in Western dramatic literature. If you have any notes for me, I’d like them very early on, please.” So we started doing it. I did Take 1. I said, “How was that?” and he said, “I don’t have anything to say.” I did Take 2 and Take 3 and he did not have anything to say. I said, “Look, I think I’m getting it. I’m going to call this a print very shortly.” He said, “I think you should do another one.” I said, “Do you have anything to say?” He said, “Not at the moment.” So we get to Take 6 and I said, “Hugh, I think we might have it. Do you have anything to say?” He said, “Well, yes, yes, yes. The rhythm of it, absolutely extraordinary. The understanding of the language, fantastic. The pacing of it, marvelous. The timing of it, really extraordinary.” I said, “What’s the problem?” He said, “I simply don’t believe a word you’re saying. I would have absolutely no sense of the man. It’s safe. It’s acting. It’s showing off. You really have to do another one.” So a guy with those balls that close to me, it was very helpful. He was my greatest mentor.

What about you, Kevin? Who was your greatest mentor?

Kevin Costner: I tell you, I think an honest exchange is never out of mode, and it will be just as practical in 1984 as in the year that we’re dealing with. This is a business that’s pretty interesting. Unlike a lot of businesses, you get up in the morning and you have breakfast with the people you work with all day. You have lunch with them and you have dinner with them. The nature of acting, if you think you put three minutes of film in the can a day, that means you’re spending an enormous amount of hours getting to talk about people’s lives and their families. There are a lot of things that go on, on a set.

In terms of mentorship, it was probably Sean. He was a leading man. He carries himself as a man. I remember a big scene with De Niro and everybody, and we were all talking, and he finally told me, (mimicking Connery’s accent) “Mr. Ness.” I said, “What?” He said, “Sit down.” And I said, “Sit down right now?” And he said, “Yes. Just sit. It’s going to be a long day.” He just talked about not artsy fartsy stuff. He talked about sometimes just practical shit, like “It’s going to be a long day. Sit down. You and I are going to sit here and we’re going to watch, and when it’s our turn, we’re ready.” So, what better advice could one man give another on something so practical that I hate to use.

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Posted by Geoff at 1:36 AM CST
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Thursday, January 16, 2014
DEL TORO INTERVIEWS PAUL WILLIAMS
FOR ARROW'S 'PHANTOM' BLU-RAY; COMPLETE SPECS REVEALED
The not so bad news is that Arrow Video's Blu-ray release of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise has been delayed one week, to February 24th. The wonderfully awesome news is that the reason for the delay, according to The Swan Archives' News page, is because a 72-minute interview between Paul Williams and Phantom-fan Guillermo del Toro had to be delayed, and was finally shot "just a couple weeks ago on location at del Toro's man-cave," according to the Principal Archivist. "In addition to that brand new interview," reports the Archivist, "the extras on the Arrow disk will include a new featurette (scripted by our Principal Archivist, and utilizing our Swan Song Fiasco footage) discussing the last minute changes made to the film as a result of the claims brought by Peter Grant, which you can read more about, if you're so inclined, on our Swan Song Fiasco page. The disc will also feature all of our collection of deleted footage and outtakes, run together from beginning to end, available for the first time in a hi def transfer (which Arrow made directly from our archival camera negatives and interpositives). Arrow has licensed Deborah Znaty's terrific "Paradise Regained" featurette, which was first released on the Opening DVD in 2006, the "Carte Blanche" interview with costume designer Rosanna Norton, and William Finley's faux advertisement for the Phantom action figure, also from the Opening disc. Arrow is also using Randy Black's backstage photographs (which Mr. Black had unearthed specifically for the Swan Archives a few years ago, and which appear in lower resolution on our Production page). And, the collector's booklet that accompanies the disk contains some writings by our Principal Archivist, as well as new writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth. In addition to our deleted footage, Arrow borrowed our radio spots, and will be stocking the release with the original trailers as well. In terms of technical features, the disc will showcase the film in 1080p with the original uncompressed stereo soundtrack (PCM) and a 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, as well as, for the first time anywhere, an isolated music and effects soundtrack (so that you can hear the incidental music without dialogue playing over it!)."

The rest of the Archivist's news post is worth reading for its details about how the Archivist was holding on to the outtakes and deleted scenes, in the hopes they could be used for a special edition just like this. "We attempted on numerous occasions to get in touch with Criterion," states the Archivist, "but they never responded. We made sure that both Brian De Palma and (Phantom editor) Paul Hirsch knew that we had the footage. We told Mr. De Palma that we'd be happy to deliver it to him should he so request; he told us that we should just hang on to it, and that the materials were better off in the Archives' hands. Mr. Hirsch told us that if anyone wanted to try to restore the film using our footage, he'd be happy to help."

Here are the complete specs for Arrow's Phantom, as posted at Blu-ray.com:

Special Features:

  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the feature, available in the UK for the first time!
  • Original uncompressed Stereo PCM / 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio options
  • Isolated Music and Effects soundtrack
  • Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
  • Paradise Regained – A 50 minute documentary on the making of the film featuring director Brian De Palma, producer Ed Pressman, the late star William Finley, star and composer Paul Williams, co-stars Jessica Harper and Gerrit Graham and more!
  • Guillermo Del Toro interviews Paul Williams (72 mins, 2014)
  • The Swan Song Fiasco: A new video piece exploring the changes made to the film in post-production
  • Archive interview with costume designer Rosanna Norton
  • William Finley on the Phantom doll!
  • Paradise Lost and Found: Alternate takes and bloopers from the cutting room floor
  • Original Trailers
  • Radio Spots
  • Gallery of rare stills including behind-the-scenes images by photographer Randy Black
  • Collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth and an exploration of the film's troubled marketing history by Ari Kahan, curator of SwanArchives.org, illustrated with original stills and promotional material
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by The Red Dress [Amaray release only]
  • Limited Edition SteelBook™ packaging featuring original artwork [SteelBook only]

Posted by Geoff at 5:42 PM CST
Updated: Thursday, January 16, 2014 11:10 PM CST
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'SISTERS' IS A 'FURIOUS WASP'S NEST OF A WORK'
"IS IT OKAY TO WATCH THIS?"
Brian De Palma's Sisters screened in Chicago last night as part of Doc Films' De Palma Retrospective, running Wednesdays through March at the University of Chicago. Cine-File included the screenings (it was shown twice) in the "Crucial Viewing" portion of its weekly guide to alternative cinema. Contributor Kian Bergstrom wrote very enthusiastically about the film:

"After a decade in training," Bergstrom begins, "making movies that are variously interesting (GREETINGS, THE RESPONSIVE EYE), fascinating (HI, MOM!, MURDER A LA MOD), or catastrophic (GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT), De Palma burst into artistic maturity with this astonishingly accomplished and subtle masterpiece. It marks the moment De Palma went from being the geekiest of the American New Wave brats to simply the greatest American filmmaker working, a title he's maintained with an almost unbroken string of subsequent wonders. Like many of De Palma's films, SISTERS is antagonistic towards its audience, barraging us with images of brutality, damaged bodies, damaged people, pushing us uncomfortably interrogating us at all times to defend our continual decision to keep watching. It is as though every segment were structured around a question, asked of the audience, as to whether the upcoming visual offense would finally prove to be too much for us to justify. Is it OK to watch this? would be film's ideal motto, with the emphasis on the question mark. At its heart are the Blanchion twins (in a disarming and mesmerizing performance by Margot Kidder), conjoined at birth but surgically cloven from one another as young women. A young model in New York, Danielle picks up a fellow game show contestant, only to find her erotic trajectory frustrated by her astonishingly creepy ex-husband, Emil. Eluding Emil, the amorous couple finds their way into bed together with the casual revelation that the next day will be Danielle's birthday. But that birthday brings with it not joy but murder as Dominique, the evil twin of sweet-natured Danielle takes control of the narrative. As always with De Palma, though, there's much more at play than there seems. Quick as a knife-strike, he introduces the real main character, Jennifer Salt's Grace Collier, a combative investigative journalist whose apartment overlooks the twins' abode. Desperate to discover who her strange neighbors really are, and what they really did with the body she saw killed there, Grace and a private detective pry into the history of the Blanchions, only to discover that peering to closely into their lives threatens indeed their own very existences. SISTERS moves rapidly through a succession of set-pieces, each extraordinary in stylization, exacting in execution, and monstrous in implication: invasions of privacy, hypnotism, madness, and horrifying errors of judgment. This is a film troubled by doubles, by two detectives, by two policemen, by twins, and also by duplication: the duplication of a person when death strikes, the duplication of an image by the television screen, the duplication of cells within a woman's womb, the duplication of space by the split screen. Many critics of De Palma see him as working in hermetic structures, narratives so precise and specifically and idiosyncratically realized that his films are comprehensible only when we understand them to be entries in grand artistic conversations with his inspirations (Hitchcock, Hawks, Lang, Welles). They miss so much: the nausea the film expresses towards the casual misogyny and power of the mysterious Emil; the fragility of the social world, as easily ripped to shreds as a Grace's thin shirt; the arbitrariness of the normal, broken and shattered by the slightest action. SISTERS is no insular work, pillaging all its best ideas from Hollywood's graying masters, but a living, beating, furious wasp's nest of a work, stable at a distance, but ready to explode with the slightest touch."

Posted by Geoff at 12:45 AM CST
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Wednesday, January 15, 2014
NEW TORNATORE FILM COMPARED TO DE PALMA
'OBSESSION' & 'FEMME FATALE' MENTIONED, AS WELL AS HITCHCOCK


OregonLive's Jeff Baker yesterday reviewed Giuseppe Tornatore's The Best Offer, which opens Friday in Oregon. Baker notes that this is Tornatore's first all-English film. "The movie, shot in Trieste and Prague, looks great and has a soaring score by Ennio Morricone," says Baker. "It wants badly to be a sophisticated Euro-thriller in the Hitchcock tradition. It ends up as a lame Brian De Palma knockoff, more Femme Fatale than Blow Out. The plot twists are telegraphed from one end of the villa to the other, and if you somehow missed something, Tornatore signals it with portentous dialogue or shows it in a flashback." Well, if we happen to love De Palma's Femme Fatale, will we love this movie?

The Chicago Tribune's Gary Goldstein states that "Although writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, Everybody's Fine) certainly puts his own stamp on the intriguing art-world thriller The Best Offer, there's an effective dash of Hitchcock and even a soupcon of 1970s-era De Palma (remember Obsession?) tossed in for good measure."


Posted by Geoff at 1:06 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, February 8, 2014 1:25 AM CST
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Monday, January 13, 2014


Posted by Geoff at 7:52 PM CST
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Friday, January 10, 2014
'PHANTOM' RERELEASE IN FRANCE FEB. 26
AND JANUARY SCREENINGS IN NASHVILLE & CHICAGO
Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, which turns 40 this year, is part of the January line-up at Nashville's Cult Fiction Underground, a theater and lounge located in the basement of Logue’s Black Raven Emporium, according to Nashville Scene's Randy Fox. The film will play there on Saturday, January 18th. Meanwhile, according to The Swan Archives, Phantom Of The Paradise will get a theatrical rerelease in France beginning February 26th, courtesy of Solaris Distribution. Watch the trailer for the French rerelease at the Swan Archives news page. As noted two weeks ago, Phantom Of The Paradise will be screened in DCP as part of Doc Films' De Palma Retrospective in Chicago, which started this week. Phantom screens there January 22nd.

Posted by Geoff at 12:44 AM CST
Updated: Monday, January 13, 2014 7:54 PM CST
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Thursday, January 9, 2014


Posted by Geoff at 7:34 PM CST
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Wednesday, January 8, 2014
'PASSION' MAKES LISTS OF THREE MORE CRITICS
INCLUDING ADRIAN MARTIN, FOR SIGHT & SOUND 2013 POLL


Last week, we compiled 2013 best movie lists from several critics who placed Brian De Palma's Passion either in their top ten for the year, or otherwise gave it honorable (or, in one case, dishonorable) mention. Thanks to Carsten for directing us to Sight & Sound's lists of the best films of 2013. A few of the individual ballots from critics placed Passion in their top five:

Adrian Martin (Goethe University)

Jealousy
Passion
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Detention
Stray Dogs

Martin also compiled the year's "Ten Best Confrontations" for Fandor's Keyframe blog, and again included Passion, writing, "One occasionally reads nonsense on the order of: 'Brian De Palma is not a director of actors.' The wonderful 'kissing confrontation' in Passion between Christine (Rachel McAdams) and her assistant’s assistant Dani (Karoline Herfurth), undoubtedly improved by the actors from what was in the script, proves otherwise: McAdams’ mock outrage as she rips her shirt open and begins to imagine her sexual harassment complaint–having just forced a kiss onto the (at this stage) helpless minion–is an hilarious expression of the power relations elsewhere expressed, in a much darker key, by the film."

Sergio Angelini (British Universities Film & Video Council)

Blue Jasmine
Broken
Hyde Park On Hudson
Passion
Rigor Mortis

"Brian De Palma refashioned Alain Corneau's Love Crimes into the criminally neglected Passion, a sly and inventive take on narcissism in the PR industry that includes a typically audacious use of split screen."

Matthew Thrift (Critic)

Norte, The End Of History
12 Years A Slave
To The Wonder
It's Such A Beautiful Day
Passion

See also: 'PASSION' ON MORE TOP 10 LISTS FROM 2013


Posted by Geoff at 12:08 AM CST
Updated: Monday, February 16, 2015 12:37 AM CST
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Thursday, January 2, 2014
'PASSION' - 2013 YEAR-END LISTS AND MENTIONS

As we transition into the new year, several 2013 year-end lists of best and worst movies have, of course, included Brian De Palma's Passion. Here are some of them:

Editors and Contributors at La Furia Umana 

1.  Leviathan
     The Canyons
3.  Camille Claudel, 1915
4.  Passion
     The Immigrant
     To The Wonder
7.  Le Dernier Des Injustes
     Spring Breakers
     Venus In Furs
10. Mille Soleils  
Toni D'Angela, La Furia Umana  

(No order)

To the Wonder

The Canyons

Passion

Flight

The Immigrant

Le dernier des injustes

Mille soleils

Venus in Furs

Norte, the end of History

The Unspeakable Act 
Carlos Losilla, La Furia Umana 
  1. 1.  Passion

  2. 2.  The Immigrant

  3. 3.  Stray Dogs

  4. 4.  Camille Claudel 1915

  5. 5.  The Canyons

  6. 6.  The Master

  7. 7.  In Another Country

  8. 8.  Viola

  9. 9.  To The Wonder

  10. 10. Before Midnight

 Ricardo Adalia Martin, La Furia Umana 
  1. 1.  Alegrías de Cadiz

  2. 2.  L'inconuu du Lac

  3. 3.  Spring breakers

  4. 4.  Passion

  5. 5.  Nobody's Daughter Haewon

  6. 6.  Three Disasters

  7. 7.  Les Saluds

  8. 8.  Viola

  9. 9.  Los ilusos

  10. 10. Mapa

 Aureliano Tonet, Le Monde 

1. La Bataille de Solférino

2. Inside Llewyn Davis

3. Tirez la langue, mademoiselle

4. L’Inconnu du lac

5. Passion 
Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com 
(Listed without numbers) 
Blue Is the Warmest Color
Passion
The Wolf of Wall Street
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
American Hustle
Before Midnight
Gravity
The Bling Ring
Bullet to the Head
"Brian De Palma's remake of the 2010 French thriller Love Crime—detailing the increasingly brutal attempts by co-workers Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace to climb the corporate ladder—wass a sexy and stylish knockout of a film and his finest and most consistent work since his 2002 masterpiece Femme Fatale. Darkly funny, breathlessly exciting and teasingly erotic in equal measure, this was the work of a master director firing on all cylinders and the end results put most other contemporary movies of its type to shame." 
Shawn Stone, Metroland 

1. Gravity

2. Before Midnight

3. The World’s End

4. Fruitvale Station

5. Frances Ha

6. Spring Breakers

7. Blue is the Warmest Color

8. Passion

"Brian De Palma is back, baby! This remake of a French thriller is sleek, sexy and—of course—bonkers."

9. American Hustle

10. Rush 
Patrick Cooper, Bloody Disgusting 
1.   Cheap Thrills
2.   The Conjuring
3.   Drug War
4.   Lord Of Tears
5.   Passion
6.   Prisoners
7.   Savaged
8.   Spring Breakers
9.   Stoker
10. You're Next 
"Brian De Palma took a few years off after The Black Dahlia – that lazy shrug of a film. In 2013 the master craftsman came out swinging with Passion – his best film since 1992′s Raising Cain. He didn’t break any new ground with Passion or reinvent himself – instead he did what he does best: present a sexy as hell Hitchcockian thriller with style out the ass. Honestly, De Palma hasn’t seemed this confident since the ’80s.Passion is basically his thesis film containing all of the elements that have made him one of the best thriller directors of our time. Pretty much 100 percent of the marketing revolved around the Rachel McAdams/Noomi Rapace lesbian stuff, but that makes up such small part of the film. The rest is classic De Palma: style, sex, doppelgangers, and stylish sexy doppelgangers. The final scene is devilishly comforting for what it is. It’s so great to know De Palma is still out there doing his thing." 
Gerard Alonso Cassado, Fotogramas  
1. PASSION
2. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
3. A PERDRE LA RAISON
4. THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS
5. FRANCES HA
6. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
7. URANES
8. THE CONGRESS
9. LAURENCE ANYWAYS
10. YOUR LOST MEMORIES
11. DJANGO UNCHAINED
12. ME AND YOU
13. MAGIC, MAGIC
14. MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL
15. PARAÍSO: AMOR
16. SPRING BREAKERS
17. THE GREAT GATSBY
18. STOCKHOLM
19. MAPA
20. STORIES WE TELL 
Glenn Heath Jr., San Diego City Beat 
"Brian De Palma's kinky Passion" is listed among Heath's "10 superb honorable mentions."
Noel Murray, The Dissolve 
Murray lists Afternoon Of A FaunPassion as his Scene of the year:
"Brian De Palma’s Passion starts out as a fairly flat and faithful adaptation of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime, but then after about half an hour, De Palma loosens up and starts making his most visually expressive and delightfully delirious movie since Femme Fatale. In Passion’s best sequence—and one of the best setpieces of De Palma’s formidable career—a ruthless businesswoman played by Rachel McAdams is stalked by a killer on half the screen, while the other half shows her protégée (Noomi Rapace) watching a performance of The Afternoon Of A Faun. The score rises to a peak, and the dancers look directly into the camera, underlining Passion’s theme of misdirection. De Palma keeps pulling viewers’ eyes back and forth, while heightening the tension to the point of distraction. He also calls back to some of his earliest films, like Dionysus In ’69 and Hi, Mom!, where the theater played a central role. Passion isn’t one of De Palma’s top-tier films, but it’s playful and creative, and the Afternoon Of A Faun sequence is a model of how to layer images and move characters with a multiple frames. 
Anne Billson, The Telegraph  
"The Lana Turner Award for Best Breakdown goes to Noomi Rapace in Brian De Palma's preposterous thriller Passion (so preposterous it went straight to DVD in the UK). Noomi, wearing a career girl trouser suit, is checkmated by her scheming boss-cum-love-rival (Rachel McAdams). In the carpark afterwards, she crashes her Peugot into a vending machine, sets off the sprinkler, kicks the car and sinks to the ground, dripping wet and crying hysterically as the camera rises to capture the scene with a crane-shot. Welcome to Planet De Palma, no relation whatsoever to life as we know it, but packed with more barking mad coups de cinéma than the rest of the year's films laid end to end. It also has the best shoes."
Edward Douglas, Coming Soon  
Douglas places Passion at number five on his "Terrible 25 of 2013" list. 

See also: 'PASSION' ON MORE TOP 10 LISTS FROM 2013


Posted by Geoff at 3:04 AM CST
Updated: Sunday, February 15, 2015 11:36 PM CST
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