UPON THE RELEASE OF 'RAISING CAIN' IN 1992
Updated: Friday, August 12, 2022 7:28 PM CDT
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Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website. Here is the latest news: |
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E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com
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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
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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De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002
De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006
Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule
The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold
Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!
Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy
Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site
Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
DISC ONE - 4K BLU-RAY:DISC TWO - BLU-RAY:
- NEW DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- NEW Audio Commentary by Film Critic and Author Maitland McDonagh
- Optional English Subtitles
- NEW Strictly Business - Interview with Actress Nancy Allen
- NEW Killer Frames - Interview with Associate Producer and Production Manager Fred C. Caruso
- NEW An Imitation of Life - Interview with Actor Keith Gordon
- Symphony of Fear - Archival interview with Producer George Litto (2012)
- Dressed in White - Archival interview with Actress Angie Dickinson (2012)
- Dressed in Purple - Archival interview with Actress Nancy Allen (2012)
- Lessons in Filmmaking - Archival interview with Actor Keith Gordon (2012)
- The Making of Dressed to Kill - Documentary (2001)
- Slashing Dressed to Kill - Featurette (2001)
- Unrated/R-Rated/TV Rated Comparison: 2001 Featurette
- An Appreciation by Keith Gordon - Featurette (2001)
- Archival Audio Interview with Actor Michael Caine (1980)
- Archival Audio Interview with Actress Angie Dickinson (1980)
- Archival Audio Interview with Actress Nancy Allen (1980)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:10)
- 7 Radio Spots
- Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
When some people brush De Palma aside, they usually cite his reliance on other movies to make some of his magnum opuses. Yes, it's easy to see De Palma riffing on Hitchcock. Dressed to Kill takes sequences from Psycho and liberally borrows plot beats. Body Double takes the plot from Rear Window and adds in some Vertigo as well.He borrows the title of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup and the plot of Coppola's The Conversation for Blow Out. And The Untouchables' finale is a clear homage to the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin.
Because he does this, many people have labeled him as "unoriginal." That's not remotely the case. De Palma can see the story so well that I think, like a great jazz artist, he likes to riff. While we laud people like Quentin Tarantino for doing this, I think we need to remember that De Palma was a pioneer. He studied classical Hollywood and found the parts he thought he could update.
Here's Clark's section about one of those nominees, Ula Pontikos:
RUSSIAN DOLL (Netflix, “Nowhen,” Season 2, Episode 1)Ula Pontikos didn’t shoot any episodes of the first season of “Russian Doll,” but she was behind the camera for every episode of Season 2. “I’ve never slotted into somebody’s work,” said the U.K.-based Pontikos, who took inspiration from mood boards and storyboards created with the directors, along with Douglas Hofstadter’s 2007 self-referential nonfiction book “I Am a Strange Loop.” “I love deconstructing the script, and part of the challenge as a cinematographer is to really figure out what the world is.”
In Season 2, the free-spirited Nadia (cocreator Natasha Lyonne, who also wrote and directed this episode) takes a subway ride back to 1982 in a new adventure that eventually finds her retracing her family’s Holocaust legacy, often while existing in the body of her pregnant mother (Chloë Sevigny), which she discovers in a mirror effect at a pivotal moment in this episode. “We really did not want to do that on a green screen,” Pontikos said. “Part of the charm of this project is to kind of make it quite lo-fi and fun.”
“Nowhen” is complete with subway scenes that span different decades, all shot in three and half days with a myriad of cost-saving techniques and with visual nods to films close to that era, including Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out” and Alex Cox’s “Sid & Nancy.” “I spent hours walking around the Lower East Side trying to figure out, on a limited budget, how we could have a key light source and yet not lose that quality of that tungsten light, which is so dominant in the ’70s and ’80s,” Pontikos said.
Along with Herzog's novel The Twilight World, the article mentions Michael Mann's Heat 2, David Koepp's Aurora and Cold Storage, Quentin Tarantino's novelization of his own film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and, of course, Are Snakes Necessary? which was written by Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman. Here's a brief excerpt from Zenou's article:
But what may appeal most to filmmakers is the autonomy that comes with writing. Charles Ardai, De Palma’s publisher at Hard Case Crime, thinks this ultimately explains why so many filmmakers turn to novels: “It’s enormously appealing to a director or screenwriter to generate a piece of art solitaire. This is a way to go from being one of an ensemble, even the most important one, to being a soloist.” Koepp concurs, adding “everybody on a movie is an assistant storyteller”. A novel is “more fulfilling because it’s more yours”, he says, “there are no other opinions to consider”.And then there is the absence of budgets and shooting schedules. Herzog, in typically vivid style, likens the filming process to “open-heart surgery”, which must be completed “under limited time conditions”. While publishers can be stalled, film shoots, like operations, are ruthlessly unforgiving. “You cannot do open-heart surgeries stretching out over two weeks,” Herzog says. “You have to do it in half a day, otherwise the patient is going to be dead.”
Prior to her career as an actress, Mary Alice was a teacher in Chicago. In 1967, she moved to New York, taking parts in theater, film, and television. In 1974, she starred in the PBS movie The Sty of the Blind Pig. In the 1976 film Sparkle, which was inspired by Diana Ross and the Supremes, she played Effie Williams, "the single mom raising daughters played by Irene Cara, Lonette McKee and Dwan Smith," as Mike Barnes puts it in The Hollywood Reporter. Mary Alice appeared in episodes of various TV series throughout the years, and in 1977, she acted opposite Morgan Freeman in Cockfight at the American Place Theater in New York. According to theNew York Post obituary by Erin Keller, Mary Alice "played Bostic, a dorm director, in the Cosby Show spinoff for two seasons in the 1980s. In those years, she also portrayed Ellie Grant Hubbard in All My Children. Her performance as Rose in the 1987 production of August Wilson’s Fences earned her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. In 1992, she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for I’ll Fly Away."
Three years after winning the aforementioned Tony Award, Mary Alice portrayed the key role of Annie Lamb, the mother of the boy injured in the hit-and-run accident that lay at the center of The Bonfire Of The Vanities. That same year, according to The Hollywood Reporter obituary by Mike Barnes, "Alice played Nurse Margaret opposite Robin Williams and Robert De Niro in Awakenings, directed by Penny Marshall", and also "the family matriarch dealing with a disruptive guest (Danny Glover) in Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger."