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De Palma a la Mod

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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 2016 »
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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

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a la Mod

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a la Mod

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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

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italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

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Hope Lies at
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EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
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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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Columbo - Shooting Script
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Cop-Out
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Dionysus In '69
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Frankie Goes To Hollywood
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Genius of Love
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Laurent Bouzereau
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Mod
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Redacted
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Sunday, January 3, 2016
VILMOS ZSIGMOND HAS DIED
UPDATED - NANCY ALLEN FB POST - "A GREAT ARTIST AND A GENTLEMAN"
Vilmos Zsigmond has passed away. He was 85. According to an initial report by Variety's Carmel Dagan, Zsigmond's business partner Yuri Neyman said that the legendary cinematographer died January 1st. Zsigmond shot four films for Brian De Palma over four decades: Obsession (1976), Blow Out (1981), The Bonfire Of The Vanities (1990), and The Black Dahlia (2006), the latter of which gained Zsigmond his fourth Oscar nomination (he won for his first nom, for Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in 1977).

I hadn't heard this before, but Dagan states that in an interview, "Zsigmond professed dissatisfaction about working with Spielberg; despite having many good ideas for the look of the film, he felt like nothing more than a glorified cameraman. He never worked with the director again." Dagan continues, "He picked up an Oscar nom for [Michael Cimino's] The Deer Hunter (1979), which he considered one of his finest achievements. Though the film was critically panned, Zsigmond’s work on Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate was equally strong. He brought a documentary style to the film musical The Rose, directed by Mark Rydell, which led to the Scorsese documentary about the Band, The Last Waltz. Another high-water mark for Zsigmond was De Palma’s 1981 thriller Blow Out."

In 1992, Zsigmond directed the feature film The Long Shadow. In recent years, he made three films with Woody Allen, and also shot several episodes of NBC's The Mindy Project.

"IF YOU PLAY EVERYTHING IN CLOSE-UPS THEN YOU MIGHT AS WELL JUST READ THE BOOK"

In a 2014 interview with Filmmaker Magazine's Kaleem Aftab, Zsigmond was asked about when it is frustrating to work with a director. "If the director doesn’t like long shots and doesn’t like establishing shots and everything is based on words and dialogue and he wants to play everything up in close-up and use it that way, that’s no fun for me," replied Zsigmond. "I really think a movie should be visual, if the visuals are not good then I’m not interested. If you play everything in close-ups then you might as well just read the book. If you really want to have dialogue and just talk, talk, talk, there is no reason to go to the movie theater."

When asked what was the most difficult shot he had ever achieved, Zsigmond responded, "I don’t know what is the most difficult shot. But a difficult shot is to do something like at the start of Bonfire of the Vanities, the opening shot which is going on five minutes with a Steadicam, going from a basement, up an elevator, getting out of the elevator, going along the hallway until you end up a thousand feet away from where you started. That is all in one shot. If it works that’s great, it’s good for a film. The closer a film looks like reality and real life, the better it is." Asked how much planning went into that shot, Zsigmond said, "A whole day. One day of rehearsing and lighting and then the next night we were shooting at least ten times and one of them turned out good."

JAMES GUNN TRIBUTE: 'THE LONG GOODBYE' & 'BLOW OUT' ARE "TWO OF MY FAVORITE FILMS EVER"


Posted by Geoff at 2:40 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, January 3, 2016 6:47 PM CST
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Saturday, January 2, 2016
AMAZINGLY STYLISH INCIDENTAL BABES

Posted by Geoff at 11:38 PM CST
Updated: Saturday, January 2, 2016 11:39 PM CST
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Thursday, December 31, 2015
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Posted by Geoff at 9:25 PM CST
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
VIDEO: 'CARLITO'S WAY' GRAND CENTRAL THEME
PATRICK DOYLE THEME PERFORMED BY THE BRUSSELS PHILHARMONIC @ WORLD SOUNDTRACK AWARDS IN OCT
On October 24, 2015, Patrick Doyle received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent. The Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by Dirk Brossé, performed a selection of Doyle's work, including the "Grand Central" theme he composed for Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way (watch/listen to the performance in the video above).

On choosing Doyle for the award, artistic director of Film Fest Gent, Patrick Duynslaegher, had said, "This year’s focus of the 42nd Film Fest Gent will be on British Cinema, so Patrick Doyle was the ideal candidate to grant the Lifetime Achievement Award to, during the 15th World Soundtrack Awards. Anyone who can still recount hearing Doyle’s score for Kenneth Branagh’s debut film Henry V in 1989 for the first time, knows that back then a great composer was born. Ever since, Patrick Doyle has been a close collaborator with Mr. Branagh and always gave a deeper musical layer to all of his films including the Shakespeare adaptations (Henry V, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Love’s Labour’s Lost). The immensely versatile Doyle enriched the films by Robert Altman, Ang Lee, Chen Kaige, Alfonso Cuarón and Brian De Palma (one of his greatest scores was for Carlito’s Way) with his alternating tragic, noble, triumphant and romantic compositions. With his work on blockbusters such as Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire he certainly proved his talent working on spectacular Hollywood action and adventure films."


Posted by Geoff at 11:57 PM CST
Updated: Thursday, December 31, 2015 4:55 PM CST
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015
TWEET: 'ASHES & DIAMONDS' / 'BLOW OUT'

Posted by Geoff at 11:57 PM CST
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Monday, December 28, 2015
TWEET: 'HATEFUL 8' CH. 6 AS DE PALMA HOMAGE

Posted by Geoff at 1:54 AM CST
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Sunday, December 27, 2015
TWEET: CHRIS WILLMAN - 'SISTERS'

Posted by Geoff at 1:06 AM CST
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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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