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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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« May 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

Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Snake Eyes
a la Mod

Mission To Mars
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
Country Cinephile

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
Bart De Palma
Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
Betty Buckley
Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
Blow Out
Blue Afternoon
Body Double
Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
Boston Stranglers
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
Daft Punk
Dancing In The Dark
David Koepp
De Niro
De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
Demolished Man
Dick Vorisek
Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
Edward R. Pressman
Eric Schwab
Fatal Attraction
Femme Fatale
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
Icarus
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
Jack Fisk
Jared Martin
Jerry Greenberg
Keith Gordon
Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
Lithgow
Magic Hour
Magnificent Seven
Mission To Mars
Mission: Impossible
Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
Nancy Allen
Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
Noah Baumbach
NYFF
Obsession
Oliver Stone
Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
Parties & Premieres
Passion
Paul Hirsch
Paul Schrader
Pauline Kael
Peet Gelderblom
Phantom Of The Paradise
Pimento
Pino Donaggio
Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
Raggedy Ann
Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
Robert De Niro
Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
Scorsese
Sean Penn
Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
Snake Eyes
Sound Mixer
Spielberg
Star Wars
Stepford Wives
Stephen H Burum
Sweet Vengeance
Tabloid
Tarantino
Taxi Driver
Terry
The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
Toronto Film Fest
Toyer
Travolta
Treasure Sierra Madre
Tru Blu
Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
Untitled Ashton Kutcher
Untitled Hollywood Horror
Untitled Industry-Abuse M
Untouchables
Venice Beach
Vilmos Zsigmond
Wedding Party
William Finley
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Saturday, May 14, 2016
'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH VILMOS ZSIGMOND'
REVIEWS FROM CANNES; ALSO, QUOTES FROM AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER TRIBUTE ISSUE
Reviews are beginning to come in from the Cannes Film Festival of the new documentary, Close Encounters With Vilmos Zsigmond, which features interviews with Zsigmond, John Travolta, and Nancy Allen, among others. In an interview posted at Festival de Cannes, the film's French director, Pierre Filmon, is asked how he managed to get Zsigmond, a master behind the lens, to sit in front of his camera. "There was a lot of pressure," Filmon answers. "The images had to be up to the mark, the timing had to be right; everybody had to give their utmost. In terms of format, there were interviews, meetings, discussions, informal moments of life, cut together with movies illustrating Vilmos’ career, chosen for their graphic power and to correspond with what we were talking about at the time. It’s like a game of ping-pong between images from the past and what we were experiencing that particular day with Vilmos."

Twitch's Jason Gorber writes of the film, "From the opening shot where the subject is adjusting the lighting, tweaking the seating height, futzing with back illumination and checking the camera's gamma, you know that Close Encounters With Vilmos Zsigmond is not an everyday documentary. But Vilmos Zsigmond isn't your everyday cinematographer, either, and in this one scene you can see him take a decent shot on digital video and make it just a bit more...perfect."

Gorber concludes, "As a survey of the man's work it's near complete, as what has resulted in being a memorium to a legend the film is even more vital. By capturing the man in his many environments - a hot pool, overlooking Budapest, sitting in a screening room - one gets the sense that we're meeting a genuine article, one both humble and yet proud of his accomplishments. As a warts-and-all take on the man's work it may falter, as a perfectly encapsulated close encounter with a giant of the last half century of film it's a priceless testament."

The Hollywood Reporter's Jordan Mintzer writes that the film "uses an extensive interview with the director of photography, shot in 2014 on the occasion of a Paris retrospective, as the starting point to explore Zsigmond’s prolific and impressive career. Alongside the humble-sounding cameraman, who recounts various anecdotes in an accent thick enough to cut with a meat cleaver, a host of other colleagues and collaborators – including John Boorman, Peter Fonda, Jerry Schatzberg, Darius Khondji, Haskell Wexler, Bruno Delbonnel and Vittorio Storaro – speak inspiringly about how Zsigmond influenced both their own work and a major period in American filmmaking that we now call the 'New Hollywood.'”

AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER WEXLER/ZSIGMOND TRIBUTE ISSUE FROM APRIL
The April 2016 issue of American Cinematographer featured a cover story tribute to "ASC Legends" Haskell Wexler and Vilmos Zsigmond. The articles consisted of remembrances from many who worked with both cinematographers. Here are some excerpts in which Zsigmond's work with Brian De Palma are discussed:

After discussing working with Zsigmond on Heaven’s Gate, which he says was intense, hard work, camera assistant Michael Gershman tells AC, “Blow Out was a hard film as well. But I never saw Vilmos get down when we were working. He was always positive. And I think that the idea that he was always creating beautiful images—he thrived on it.

“Vilmos would say, ‘Michael, Michael, there are no rules, Michael! You can do whatever you want to do!’ That’s something that stayed with me as I became a cinematographer. The only rule is that there are no rules.”

Mike Sowa, colorist on The Black Dahlia: “I had the honor of grading Vilmos’ first digital-intermediate feature in 2006. Grading The Black Dahlia will forever be one of the highlights of my career. One memory that stands out was the time Vilmos invited Laszlo Kovacs to the DI theater. There I was, in between two absolute legends in the business. With great enthusiasm and wildly animated gesturing, Vilmos explained to his dear friend how exciting it was to have such wonderful grading tools available in this new world of digital.”

Stephen Pizzello (American Cinematographer editor-in-chief and publisher)
“When I was covering Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia for the magazine, Vilmos invited me to a DI session at EFilm. Upon arriving, I was happy to see his lifelong ‘brother from another mother,’ Laszlo Kovacs, sitting at the timing desk, just hanging out and keeping his best friend company. Laszlo’s health was declining by then, and he seemed to be nodding off, but never underestimate the vigilance of an accomplished cinematographer. At one point, as Vilmos was scrutinizing a scene, Laszlo must have opened an eye, because he suddenly sat up and warned, ‘Careful, Vilmos—that shot is a little soft.’ Vilmos squinted, looked at the screen a bit more closely and croaked, ‘Uh-oh—I think he’s right! I’ll have to talk to Brian about that.’ Laszlo settled back into his seat, and we soon heard him snoring, but he had his pal’s back.”


Posted by Geoff at 11:56 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 15, 2016 12:07 AM CDT
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Friday, May 13, 2016
TWEETS - RECALLING THE SET OF 'SNAKE EYES'

Posted by Geoff at 2:46 AM CDT
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CZECH MAG 'FILM A DOBA' - FOCUS ON DE PALMA
CURRENT ISSUE FEATURES ESSAYS ON DE PALMA & HIS WORK, NEW INTERVIEW WITH DONAGGIO


Brian De Palma is the focus of the new issue of the quarterly magazine Film a doba, which has a still from De Palma's Sisters on its cover. The issue includes a new interview with Pino Donaggio by Jan Švábenický, as well as several essays: "Double View Brian De Palma" by Rudolf Schimera, "The Sixties - the Emergence of Poetics" by Jan Křipač, "Hitchcock à la De Palma" by Milan Hain, "Not a Gangster Like Gangster. Scarface vs Carlito's Way" by Jana Bébarová, "Snake Eyes on the edge of eccentricity: analytical notes on the poetry of Brian De Palma" by Radomír D. Kokeš, and "Hidden intensity. John Lithgow in Brian De Palma" by Michal Kří̀.

Posted by Geoff at 2:24 AM CDT
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Wednesday, May 11, 2016
REVIEW OF 'THE RESPONSIVE EYE'
"A SLY COMMENTARY ON THE STATE OF THE ART WORLD IN THE '60S"


While looking up information on Brian De Palma's documentary short about The Responsive Eye, I came across a terrificly insightful review by Robert Ham, posted at Network Awesome three years ago. Here's an excerpt:
Say whatever you want to about the school of painting and design known as "op art"...you've already been beaten to the punch by the vox populi caught on camera by Brian De Palma in 1966.

In fact, the majority of the director's documentary account of the opening of the titular Museum of Modern Art exhibit dedicated to perceptual art -- art that, as John Lancaster put it, played with "the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing" -- is given over to commentary from both artists and spectators about the effectiveness of pieces by Bridget Riley, Josef Albers, and Alexander Liberman. In their collective view, the work was deemed everything from stunning to nauseating. Or, as one interviewee says during the film: "I don't think it's art."

Any other director would have stuck with curator William Seitz and psychologist Rudolph Arnheim as they took them on a tour of the exhibit, teasing out their own interpretations of the art. Instead, De Palma turns the whole piece into one of the wittiest films of his oeuvre as well as a sly commentary on the state of the art world in the '60s. It's a neat trick, and one that he pulls off using the strongest part of his visual arsenal at the time: editing.

His use of jump cuts into dialogue from the interviews echoes the itchy movement of his debut feature The Wedding Party. In that film, he hearkens back to the work of directors like D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, not to mention the French New Wave filmmakers who were using the same artistic tricks: overly-caffeinated pacing and quick edits between two competing scenes.

With The Responsive Eye, many of the same storytelling devices are brought over to the documentary format. De Palma jumps between the discussions of Seitz and Arnhelm, and the reactions of people at the opening night event. They go by so quickly that the effect is as sometimes disorienting as the art on the walls of MoMa. They are short jabs of punch lines and little visual gags (the woman in an evening gown bending repeatedly at the knees to catch the "movement" of a piece she is looking at).

It's also important to look at the people that De Palma and his camera crew choose to interview for the film. They are an absurd bunch: the bespectacled child who declaims that he wouldn't put the art in his home, the woman dolled up for the night in a completely striped outfit ("The tights are from Macy's, and the dress is from Bloomingdales"), the drunken woman being held aloft by her husband saying, "I loved it," and the coup de grace, the caricature of an English nobleman at the very end, complete with a haughty air about him. And a monocle.

The only people you are meant to take seriously, it seems, are the artists behind the work. In that camp, you get Mon Levinson showing off how he creates the illusion of movement with his pieces, and discussing at the end how excited he was to see it. Best, though, is Josef Albers, who kvetches loudly about how long it has taken his work to be appreciated.

Albers may have a point, but it brings up one of the underlying issues of this film and this exhibit. As Marc Campbell on Dangerous Minds points out, Responsive Eye was "the first significant exhibit of optical art synchronous with and in some cases arising out of the early days of psychedelic culture." i It's amazing, really, that no one in the film addresses this fact. I think De Palma knew that going into the project, and although he doesn't press the issue, the point is simple: these folks just don't get it.

That kind of attitude was De Palma's whole mindset at this early stage of his career. The work he was doing before and after this documentary kicked against the ideas of Hollywood filmmaking. Beyond The Wedding Party, he helped create the two Godardian, politically-driven films, Greetings and Hi Mom!, and the slapstick slasher flick Murder a la Mod. Why would anyone expect him to make a dull documentary about an art exhibit?


Posted by Geoff at 11:58 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, May 12, 2016 12:08 AM CDT
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Tuesday, May 10, 2016
'DE PALMA' AT BERKSHIRE FEST CLOSING NIGHT
JUNE 5TH SCREENING FOLLOWED BY BAUMBACH/PALTROW DISCUSSION w/GREGORY CREWDSON
Jake Paltrow and Noah Baumbach will be on hand (and on stage) immediately following a June 5th screening of their new documentary, De Palma, which is the closing night film of this year's Berkshire International Film Festival, which runs June 2-5 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The discussion will be moderated by artist Gregory Crewdson. According to a Page Six item, Brian De Palma and Wes Anderson were among several celebrities who attended Crewdson's "Cathedral of the Pines" photography exhibition this past January at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City. "Known for his cinematic images," states Page Six's Ian Mohr, "Crewdson will make his debut as a film director with an adaptation of the book The Deepest Secret."

Posted by Geoff at 11:58 PM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 12:08 AM CDT
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Sunday, May 8, 2016
SUNDAY TWEETS - 'THANK YOU, MR. ACAVANO!'



Posted by Geoff at 6:54 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 8, 2016 7:01 PM CDT
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Saturday, May 7, 2016
'PHANTOM' TO SCREEN AT THE MAJESTIC IN DALLAS
PARTLY FILMED THERE, BUT NEVER SCREENED; ONE OR MORE STARS FROM FILM TO ATTEND
INCLUDED ALONG WITH 'DE PALMA' DOC AT OAK CLIFF FILM FEST, JUNE 16-19

This past week, it was announced that Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise will be included in the line-up of this year's Oak Cliff Film Festival, which takes place in Dallas June 16-19. The screening is a homecoming of sorts: parts of Phantom were filmed at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, but the film has never played there. That will change on Friday, June 17, when Phantom will screen at the Majestic, "with an expected appearance by one or more of the film’s stars," according to a press release. "New Hollywood" is the theme for this year's Oak Cliff Film Festival, which will also include a screening of Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's De Palma documentary (specific date/time to be announced).

Posted by Geoff at 8:50 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, May 7, 2016 8:51 PM CDT
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Friday, May 6, 2016
NYC - DE PALMA RETROSPECTIVE IN JUNE
AT METROGRAPH; FULL LINE-UP TWEETED BY THE FILM STAGE

Posted by Geoff at 3:03 AM CDT
Updated: Friday, May 6, 2016 3:05 AM CDT
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Wednesday, May 4, 2016
GUADAGNINO'S TOP 10 INCLUDES 'THE FURY'
ITALIAN DIRECTOR OF 'A BIGGER SPLASH' SUBMITTED BALLOT FOR 2012 SIGHT & SOUND POLL

The Film Stage's Jordan Raup celebrates the release of A Bigger Splash this past weekend by highlighting director Luca Guadagnino's top ten films, which he submitted to the Sight & Sound 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time. Listing his films alphabetically, Guadagnino included Brian De Palma's The Fury on his ballot, along with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Fritz Lang's Blue Gardenia, Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma, and Ingmar Bergman's Fanny And Alexander, among five others.

Posted by Geoff at 11:52 PM CDT
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Tuesday, May 3, 2016
'DE PALMA' HOT DOCS REVIEWS
CHRIS ALEXANDER: "THE FIRST AND LAST WORD ON THE MAN AND HIS WORK"
Shock Till You Drop's Chris Alexander posted a highly positive review of De Palma yesterday. "It’s a rapturous gift to the hardcore De Palma admirer, of which this writer is one, loud and proud," states Alexander. "In fact, so smitten was I by this picture, I watched it 3 times in succession. It’s a master class. The first and last word on the man and his work."

Alexander later enthuses that the documentary is "remarkable not just because of its edifying look at an important body of cinema, but remarkable because of just how much the duo get out of the De Palma. I’ve interviewed De Palma, twice. There’s a science to it. He’s guarded. It takes the right questions, the right amalgam of word and gesture to get him to open up; one misstep and he closes down just as quickly. So to see De Palma so light and excited, speaking so freely and candidly is a joy to behold. The man is damn near jovial!

"Mind you, De Palma is masterfully edited, cutting between the chatty director and a flurry of incredible clips from the films themselves (there goes the budget!) and behind the scenes stuff from De Palma’s vaults (love the 8MM footage of Steven Spielberg, De Palma’s former best friend and the director’s ex-wife, actress Nancy Allen, sending love out to their colleague; a beautiful snapshot of a time and place that exists only in myth). So, who knows how hard Baumbach and Paltrow worked to get their mentor into his comfort zone. Either way, they did and it’s amazing.

"DE PALMA will be an orgasmic experience for the faithful. But it is also required viewing for every aspiring director who dreams of making commercially successful product, while still maintaining the pure vision of an artist. Truly, it’s difficult to think of another Hollywood filmmaker who has so deftly managed to make such personal work on such a grand scale."

Jesse Hawken of Torontoist posted a review of the documentary last week, in anticipation of the Hot Docs Film Festival:

This film is a chronological tour of De Palma’s complete filmography, guided by the director himself with a bounty of clips and juicy stories about a career full of fights with actors (he had a tough time working with Cliff Robertson on his first big budget film Obsession), studios (Columbia Pictures wouldn’t let him cast the porn star Annette Haven in his erotic thriller Body Double), and the ratings board (which came to a head when he got an X rating for Scarface after submitting three versions, finally putting all the violence back in). De Palma is candid when discussing the highs and lows of his 50-year directing career: he passed on directing Flashdance and Fatal Attraction; he says he lost his nerve adapting Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of The Vanities; and feels he never made a better film than Carlito’s Way.

The final section of the film is unexpectedly moving as it heads into the director’s decline, which began after his greatest box office success Mission: Impossible, as he got lost in making the visual-effects-heavy Mission To Mars; its spectacular failure at the box office was the end of De Palma’s American career, as he looked to Europe for financing and the years between features lengthened. As illustrated by the clips from his recent, less-consequential works like Passion and The Black Dahlia, De Palma understands, like his hero Hitchcock in the years after Psycho, that his glory days are behind him, that the industry has changed around him, that it gets harder as one gets older.

Directors Baumbach and Paltrow are obviously huge admirers of De Palma’s work, and the film succeeds as a solid testament to his career and importance. This film is a feast for De Palma lovers who may not be so familiar with the smaller, harder-to-see films from earlier in his career, like Greetings, Get To Know Your Rabbit, and Home Movies; conversely, this clip-heavy documentary might not be the best place to start for newcomers to De Palma’s work, as the twists and climaxes to some of his greatest films will be ruined for you, especially the magnificent downer ending of Blow Out.


Posted by Geoff at 1:28 AM CDT
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