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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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« December 2015 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


Enthusiasms...

De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
of the 7th Art

The De Palma Touch

The Swan Archives

Carrie...A Fan's Site

Phantompalooza

No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

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The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

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a la Mod

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a la Mod

Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule

Movie Mags

Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!

Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy

The Big Dive
(Blow Out)

Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site

The Phantom Project

Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
Fan Page

The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

Astigmia Cinema

LOLA

Cultural Weekly

A Lonely Place

The Film Doctor

italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

Medfly Quarantine

Not Just Movies

Hope Lies at
24 Frames Per Second

Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
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So Why This Movie?

Obsessive Movie Nerd

Nothing Is Written

Ferdy on Films

Cashiers De Cinema

This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

Every '70s Movie

Dangerous Minds

EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
Love, Dr. Jones!

The former
De Palma a la Mod
site

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
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Books
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Carlito's Way
Carrie
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Columbo - Shooting Script
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Conversation, The
Cop-Out
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De Palma (doc)
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Dionysus In '69
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Dressed To Kill
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Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
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Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
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Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
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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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Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
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Rotwang muß weg!
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Sisters
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Sunday, December 20, 2015
GUILLERMO DEL TORO TWEETS ABOUT 'BLOW OUT'
AND SOME FOLLOWER THINKS HE KNOWS HOW "DERIVATIVE" THE FILM SUPPOSEDLY IS (OF COURSE)


Guillermo del Toro posted a thoughtful tweet last night about Brian De Palma's Blow Out, and follower B.J.Boogie did the opposite with his response: "yeah but it's part Blow-Up and part The Conversation ... way too derivative and not as good." Really? Is that pretty much all Blow Out is? Just a mix of those two movies, eh? Boy, you really get it, don't you? Wow, you must have watched with eyes wide open at the film's opening faux slasher film parody, and the premonitory split-screen work of the opening credits, and, hmm, wait, where is the Yardbirds sequence in Blow Out? And, hmm, was there an ice-pick murder in either of those other films...? I can't quite... the serial murders as cover-up... which of those two movies does that come from? How about the experience of media as presented in the film, manipulated by various parties to inspire false ideas about what is really happening? What about the use of color in Blow Out, how does that relate to those other great films? And, wait a minute, did either of those older films reference the Chappaquiddick incident, or is that just one more real life event that makes De Palma's film even more derivative? And what about De Palma's claim that he was inspired to make Blow Out when he found that scraps of a great masterpiece, Lawrence Of Arabia, were being used as garbage filler while he was doing some sound editing. Well, that just takes us back to the film "as a meditation on the cannibalistic nature of art," now doesn't it? But you know, for some people, acknowledgement of and the furthering of great works such as Blow-Up and The Conversation (instead of ignoring the work that has come before you) will always just be, simply, derivative.

Posted by Geoff at 1:02 PM CST
Updated: Monday, December 21, 2015 12:26 AM CST
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Thursday, December 17, 2015
PETER BRADSHAW LINKS 'CARRIE' TO 'HATEFUL 8'
YET THE THRILLER IS DISTINCTIVELY TARANTINO, SAYS CRITIC
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw posted a five-star review of Quentin Tarantino's new film, The Hateful Eight, calling it an "old-fashioned three-hour masterpiece." He also mentions a strong resemblance to Brian De Palma's Carrie:

"The Hateful Eight are snowed in together like Agatha Christie characters in a country house, or indeed the Big Brother house," states Bradshaw in the review. "But unlike an Agatha Christie story — but very much like, say, Reservoir Dogs — there is no notional authority figure to exert control over everyone. The only authority is violence and superior firepower, or the superior firepower of talk — the threat of violence. Everyone is armed of course, and there are other weapons to hand, and the mere presence of criminals with bounties on their heads creates a market force in favour of violence. The pre-violence tension, including the scattershot N-bombing, is unbearable, and coolly sustained by the dialogue. It is itself a kind of violence and leads to a quite extraordinary climax just before the Intermission. That, along with the Overture, is part of the film’s old-fashioned furniture.

"There is a little of Sergio Leone and the classic pulp westerns of Elmore Leonard, and as a big drama in a little place it could almost be a Sam Peckinpah version of a swearified Harold Pinter. Later, for obvious reasons, it will look like Brian De Palma’s Carrie. But this movie is just so utterly distinctive, it really could be by no-one else but Tarantino. The inventive, swaggering dialogue is what drives it onward: quintessentially American. (I continue to think that Inglourious Basterds [is] the weakest of Tarantino’s films because he strays away from the American wellspring.) And The Hateful Eight repeats a classic trope from Reservoir Dogs: the idea of being in unbearable pain from a gunshot wound, but still talking, still being a threat. There is a horrible kind of black-comic heroism in continuing to threaten and crack wise while being in the same kind of unbearable agony you are planning to inflict on someone else. 'Thriller' is a generic label which has lost its force. But The Hateful Eight thrills."

Previously:

TARANTINO HAD 'DJANGO' CREATIVES WATCH 'CARRIE'

BASTERDS CLIMAX CHANNELS CARRIE

MUIR LINKS BASTERDS TO SCARFACE & CARRIE


Posted by Geoff at 11:58 PM CST
Updated: Friday, December 18, 2015 12:24 AM CST
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Wednesday, December 16, 2015
'SISTERS' INCLUDES 'SCARFACE' JOKE
Collider's Sheila Roberts posted an interview today with JASON MOORE, whose new movie, Sisters, opens this weekend, and is not a remake of Brian De Palma's 1973 film.

About midway through the interview is the following passage:
ROBERTS: At the party, Bobby Moynihan does this hilarious Scarface charade which made me wonder if that was a little inside joke or nod to Brian De Palma because he not only made Scarface, but he also made a film called Sisters?

MOORE: (laughing) Wow! No, it wasn’t that. We didn’t go that deep, but I love that you made that connection. We always knew that we wanted Bobby to do that line from Scarface since he was going to do this fake kind of Cocaine drug. That’s where that came from.


Posted by Geoff at 11:58 PM CST
Updated: Thursday, December 31, 2015 12:01 AM CST
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Tuesday, December 15, 2015
TWEETS: EDGAR WRIGHT/GUILLERMO DEL TORO
WITH RESPONSE FROM PAUL WILLIAMS

Posted by Geoff at 2:47 AM CST
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Sunday, December 13, 2015
NEW CD - DONAGGIO, SONGS FOR MOVIES
NEW ORCHESTRAL RECORDINGS INCLUDE "I NEVER DREAMED..." FROM 'CARRIE', "SALLY & JACK"
Quartet Records and Music Box Records are both taking pre-orders for a new Pino Donaggio CD collection being released this week, Canzoni per il Cinema ("Songs for Movies"). The CD contains new orchestral arrangements of Donaggio songs, chosen by the composer himself, including songs from Carrie and Blow Out. Donaggio and film music author Gergely Hubai also provide liner notes in a "lavishly designed 20-page full-color booklet." Here's the rest of the description, as listed on the websites:
For over 55 years, legendary composer Pino Donaggio has been in the forefront of the Italian popular music scene; 40+ years of his career have spanned an impressive line of film scores as well. This orchestral album, Canzoni per il Cinema, is a testament to the composer’s versatility, featuring some of his most popular songs for cinema in brand-new orchestral arrangements.

Recorded with The Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maurizio Abeni, the program—personally selected by Donaggio—focuses on two different types of compositions: it naturally includes some of Donaggio’s most beloved theme songs written for movies (Don’t Look Now, Carrie, Blow Out, Trauma, Cin cin, etc.), but it also includes some of his pre-film-scoring hits that were subsequently used in various films (immortal songs such as “Io che non vivo,” “Come sinfonia” or “Una casa in cima al mondo”). The selection thus comprises not only fan favorites, but also some lesser-known pieces that merit a second look in the decades-spanning career of Pino Donaggio.


Posted by Geoff at 11:38 AM CST
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Friday, December 11, 2015
KENT JONES TELLS WHY NO DE PALMA IN HIS DOC
DE PALMA WANTED TO SAVE WHAT HE HAD TO SAY ABOUT HITCHCOCK FOR PALTROW/BAUMBACH DOC
RogerEbert.com's Patrick Z. McGavin posted an interview last week with Kent Jones, who has a new documentary, Hitchcock/Truffaut, about the meetings between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock that took place across eight days in 1962. Those meetings, of course, led to the book of the same name, which can be found on the bookshelves of film lovers everywhere.

"Brian De Palma is the one conspicuous absence among the group of contemporary directors," McGavin says to Jones midway through the interview. "Did he not want to participate in the film?"

Jones replies, "For a very specific reason, because Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow just did a movie about him. They worked on that film for about four years. I asked [De Palma] and he said he wanted to save what he thought about Hitchcock for their movie. We just showed the documentary [De Palma] at the New York Film Festival. Noah and I are pretty good friends, and we kind of exchanged movies at a certain point and we both were amazed at how much they just talked to each other. That’s what their movie is, just Brian and nobody else. He’s talking about his craft, and he’s talking a lot about Vertigo. In fact, the movie begins with a clip from Vertigo. That seemed like a very compelling reason for [De Palma] to not be in [this] film."

Also at RogerEbert.com, Odie Henderson reviews Hitchcock/Truffaut. Henderson concludes in his review, "One interview subject you might be expecting is missing from Hitchcock/Truffaut. Brian De Palma declined to appear in the film, but he had a good reason. He was busy sitting with Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow for their one-man interview/documentary, De Palma. That film, which is also quite good, would make a great double feature with Hitchcock/Truffaut. Both films feature a director talking to another director about his body of work. The similarities are complementary, and I can think of no better way to waste an afternoon if you love movies."


Posted by Geoff at 3:08 AM CST
Updated: Sunday, December 13, 2015 11:40 AM CST
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Wednesday, December 9, 2015
VIDEO: BRIAN DE PALMA - SPLIT DIOPTER SHOT

Brian de Palma // Split Diopter Shot from Jaume R. Lloret on Vimeo.



Over at Press Play, Max Winter writes of the above video, "Because Brian De Palma is fascinated by the inherently Byzantine nature of human activity, be it war, detective work, murder, or espionage, it makes perfect sense that he would be drawn to the split diopter shot, which uses an attachment that gives equal focus to both close and distant objects. De Palma doesn't want us to miss anything. Even as Caruso sings on stage, the murderous Al Capone sits a matter of feet away from him, in The Untouchables; even as a drone scratches his head in Mission: Impossible, a stealthy thief hangs above him; even as a blond, all-American teen boy sits bored at a classroom desk, a tortured girl writhes inwardly not far away from him in Carrie. What's the effect? It's a tightening in the chest, it's a sense that there's something we missed previously, it's the feeling that something bad is about to happen, or could. This video by Jaume Lloret is a tight visual hymn to De Palma's famed use of the shot--watch it, and see if you don't feel uncomfortable afterwards."

Posted by Geoff at 1:04 AM CST
Updated: Sunday, December 13, 2015 11:44 AM CST
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Tuesday, December 8, 2015
DE PALMA FOCUS IN NORWEGIAN MAG Z
TWO OF THE ARTICLES ARE ONLINE
The new issue of Z, a Norwegian film magazine, focuses on the films of Brian De Palma. Two of the issue's 11 articles are currently available to read online. One of those, It Has Nothing To Do With Satan, Mama by Roskva Koritzinsky, looks at downtrodden youths and supernatural powers in De Palma's Carrie and Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In.

In the other online article (one of four in which a cinéaste "from home or abroad" chooses either three favorite scenes, or a flash from a De Palma film that they find memorable), Andrew Grant looks at scenes that use New York as a backdrop, from Hi, Mom!, The Bonfire Of The Vanities, and Dressed To Kill.

Posted by Geoff at 1:12 AM CST
Updated: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 1:14 AM CST
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Sunday, December 6, 2015
BETTY BUCKLEY CAMEO - LAST WEEK'S 'LEFTOVERS'
DIRECTED BY KEITH GORDON, AS WAS LAST WEEK'S EPISODE OF 'FARGO'


This year's second seasons of HBO's The Leftovers and F/X's Fargo have been two of the greatest seasons of television I've ever seen. It just so happens that last week's episodes of both shows were each directed by Keith Gordon. The Leftovers episode, "Ten Thirteen", featured a significant cameo from another De Palma alumn, Betty Buckley, in it's opening scene. Buckley's character has something to tell her daughter that, without putting out too much in the way of "spoilers," sets off (or strongly appears to set off) what looks to be an explosive climax on tonight's season finale.

Meanwhile, Gordon's episode of Fargo last week, "Loplop", features a heavy amount of split screen work (a running visual style through every episode of the season), a suspenseful pan from a TV screen and then around a character's head, leading to an uh-oh reveal, and a crazy, hilariously outrageous performance from Kirsten Dunst.


Posted by Geoff at 7:21 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, December 6, 2015 7:22 PM CST
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Saturday, December 5, 2015
'PHANTOM' DOC IN THE WORKS
FOCUS WILL BE ON THE FILM'S FAN COMMUNITY FOLLOWING IN WINNIPEG

Phantom of Winnipeg Indiegogo from Malcolm Ingram on Vimeo.



Documentary filmmaker Malcolm Ingram has begun making a film about Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, and its popularity in Winnipeg. According to Deadline's Ross A. Lincoln, "Phantom of Winnipeg will tell the story of that fan community and how it’s still going strong today. Like a concentrated and highly idiosyncratic Rocky Horror Picture Show, the film found in Winnipeg a devoted audience of, weirdly, 9 to 13-year-olds, who bought hundreds of tickets. Phantom actually outsold Jaws in its initial release, and local sales of the soundtrack helped the album go gold in Canada. The film also spawned “Phantompalooza,” a local festival held biannually since 2004. Digging deep into an outsider community and the dynamics of fan culture, Phantom of Winnipeg will present the life stories of the fans who made it happen, the cast and creative team behind the film and their reaction to the phenomenon, and some of the established artists influenced by it."

Ingram and his producer have started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the film. Ingram's first film, Small Town Gay Bar, premiered at Sundance in 2006. His other films are Bear Nation, Continental, and Out To Win.


Posted by Geoff at 7:22 PM CST
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