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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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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.
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Friday, February 23, 2024
LANDON TO MAKE 'DROP' - 'THIS IS MY LOVE LETTER TO DE PALMA'
UPCOMING FAST-PACED THRILLER FROM DIRECTOR OF FREAKY & HAPPY DEATH DAY
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/happydeathdayset.jpg

Pictured above is director Christopher Landon with Jessica Rothe on the set of the 2017 film Happy Death Day, a film I enjoyed very much. I also really liked Landon's Freaky from 2020, which starred Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn. Deadline's Justin Kroll reports today that Landon will direct "a fast-paced thriller" titled Drop, with Meghann Fahy attached to star.

On his twitter-X page this afternoon, Landon himself posted, "Finally get to announce this one. I’m so excited to work with such a talented group of people. This is my love letter to DePalma."


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, February 24, 2024 12:02 AM CST
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Sunday, January 14, 2024
DE PALMA & LYNCH REFERENCES IN UPCOMING DEBUT NOVEL
REFERENCES TO DE PALMA & LYNCH STREWN THROUGHOUT
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/changnovel.jpg

Publishers Weekly's Matt Seidel includes an upcoming novel by Abraham Chang in an article headlined, "Writers to Watch: 10 Promising Fiction Debuts, Spring 2024" -
Describing his days as a 20-something singer-songwriter in New York City during the 2000s, Abraham Chang riffs on Wordsworth’s famous dictum about poetry being emotion recollected in tranquility. “I didn’t have that tranquility,” he adds, “so I was just getting my feelings out.”

888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers (Flatiron, May), Chang’s ebullient debut, is anything but tranquil. Praised by Flatiron v-p and editorial director Zachary Wagman for its “infectious energy,” the novel follows Young Wang, a Chinese American coming of age in late-1990s Queens, N.Y., who views the world through his idiosyncratic brand of numerology. A helpful glossary explains the properties of various numbers from one to 888 according to Chinese tradition and/or Young’s personal taste (19, an example of the latter case due to its significance in Stephen King’s oeuvre, stands for “GOOD”).

Young learns to embrace the inherent chaos of the world from his globe-trotting uncle and his gleefully coarse girlfriend. Each chapter begins with a “soundtrack,” and Chang, a first-generation Chinese American who grew up on a “constant diet of Western pop culture,” strews references to films by David Lynch and Brian De Palma throughout, hoping to please the “pop culture geeks who are going to catch every Easter egg.”


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
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Monday, November 27, 2023
MONDAY TWEET - LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, BASICALLY
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tweetleave1.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 10:25 PM CST
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Sunday, October 29, 2023
LIKE MELVILLE'S 'LE SAMOURAI' REIMAGINED BY BRIAN DE PALMA
REVIEWS OF DAVID FINCHER'S THE KILLER FROM KEITH AT THE MOVIES & VARIETY
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/killer2.jpg

Keith Garlington, Keith and the Movies:
The Killer” has a cool and alluring style but with a gritty veneer. It’s as if Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai” was reimagined by Brian De Palma. The action comes in spurts and often leaves indelible impressions (Fincher shoots one of the best hand-to-hand fight sequences you’ll see). And it’s all accentuated by yet another simmering score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

But perhaps most appealing is how Fincher embraces and subverts genre expectations. From one angle he has delivered a pretty straightforward hitman movie. But as you look closer you see the markings of a filmmaker with more on his mind. They’re markings that go beyond mere craftsmanship and execution (although those things are critical). And ultimately that is what sets this film apart. “The Killer” will show in select theaters on October 27th before streaming on Netflix November 10th.


Owen Gleiberman, Variety:
Just watching Fassbender do push-ups in his black rubber gloves wires up the atmosphere. At one point, the door of the WeWork office opens. And when the killer puts music on his earbuds (the Smiths’ “Well I Wonder”) to get into his groove, it becomes the needle drop as homicidal pop-opera soundtrack. The target arrives, and as we watch him move about the apartment, the film generates the hypnotic tension one remembers from “The Day of the Jackal” or certain moments in Brian De Palma films. We realize that the chemistry of cinema hasn’t just put us in the killer’s shoes — it has put us on his side. We want to see him do the deed.

The posters and ads for “The Killer,” a Netflix movie that’s premiering at the Venice Film festival, feature a terrific tagline: “Execution is everything.” The pun is crystal clear in its cleverness, yet there’s a third layer of meaning to it. For just as the killer’s execution of his job depends on coldly calibrating every moment (no empathy, no mistakes), Fincher has made “The Killer” with more or less the same attitude. The film is based on a French graphic novel, written by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon, that was published in 12 volumes starting in 1998. And as staged by Fincher, from a meticulous bare-bones script by Andrew Kevin Walker (who wrote Fincher’s “Se7en”), the film is all about its own execution. It’s a minimalist nihilist action opera of procedure.


Posted by Geoff at 11:31 PM CDT
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Friday, October 27, 2023
'SUITABLE FLESH' REVIEW SEES INFLUENCE OF DE PALMA & GORDON
"SPLIT SCREENS, CAMERA SWIVELS, COMPOSER STEVE MOORE'S PINO DONAGGIO-LIKE SCORE"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/suitablefleshposter.jpg

Robert Abele at the Los Angeles Times reviews Joe Lynch's Suitable Flesh:
Giggles have always had their place in the enjoyment of horror, whether tacked onto the end of a prolonged freakout or as a nervous placeholder that acknowledges a silly premise before we fully get owned by terror and blood.

But Stuart Gordon, who died in 2020, believed real laughs belonged in true horror, like a complementary energy source, as his gore-ific cult hits “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond” proved. It’s fitting that he’s the dedicatee at the end of director Joe Lynch’s body-possession lark “Suitable Flesh,” since it’s a mostly amusing throwback to Gordon’s brand of blackly comic grisliness, starting with the fact that it’s also an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation (of his 1937 short story “The Thing on the Doorstep”), written by frequent Gordon collaborator Dennis Paoli, and starring the late director’s mainstay Barbara Crampton (also a producer) in a prime role.

Just as prominent in Lynch’s shout-out sweepstakes, however, are the naughty-peekaboo trappings of Brian de Palma’s violent melodramas, which initially take pride of place here as Heather Graham’s institutionalized, wild-eyed psychiatrist Elizabeth Derby spins a tale from her padded cell to her doctor friend Daniella (Crampton) about a malevolent force trying to get her. (Another connection: We’re in the same Miskatonic med school where “Re-Animator” was set.)

Days prior, an anxious young patient named Asa (Judah Lewis) had come to Elizabeth with a tale of being the target of body possession, complete with an in-session seizure and instant change to a more arrogant, suggestive, darker personality. Later, during sexy time with her horny, ignored husband (Johnathon Schaech), a vision of Asa briefly takes over Elizabeth’s mind. Since Elizabeth wrote the book on mind/body splits (there’s always a cutaway to a thick tome as proof), her way of helping means getting more involved. She visits the creepy house where Asa lives with his father (Bruce Davison), who appears angrily haunted as well, and soon the corporeally hungry, lascivious force takes over Elizabeth too.

In her possession scenes, Graham has great fun dialing down her golden-girl shine and ramping up a smirking, predatory air, a refreshingly parodic twist on years of sexpot-role survival in a male-dominated industry. Too bad the weak body-swapping farce she’s given to play isn’t worthy of her gameness, a missed opportunity to fuse Lovecraft, Blake Edwards and Paul Verhoeven. Lynch does exhibit a winking fondness for the sax-scored signposts of ‘90s cable eroticism, but it’s not always clear what’s intentionally funny about these style tags.

Meanwhile, the De Palma-fication — split screens, camera swivels, composer Steve Moore’s Pino Donaggio-like score — doesn’t really add anything except make one wish to be more authentically inside the premise’s nightmare ride (which De Palma was so expert at) rather than observing a fan’s riff. Much more enjoyable are the parts where Gordon’s influence is prominent, especially the splattery transference-apalooza at the psych ward, where the story catches up to where it all started and we know what we’re laughing and wincing at. Crampton’s genre-burnished authority is particularly disarming here, juggling the preposterous and the believable as memorably as she did in Gordon’s madness-and-mayhem classics.


Posted by Geoff at 11:10 PM CDT
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Tuesday, October 3, 2023
'ORIGIN OF EVIL' REVIEWS MENTION DE PALMA, CHABROL
DIRECTOR SEBASTIEN MARNIER: "I DON'T DESERVE THAT - HE'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE FILMMAKERS"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/origin2.jpg

"Succession meets Brian De Palma in this delicious family-fortune thriller from France, directed by Sébastien Marnier." So reads the subheading of Beatrice Loayza's positive review of The Origin Of Evil in The New York Times. The Independent's Lindsey Bahr interviewed Marnier for a profile piece:
Like many French filmmakers before him, Sébastien Marnier fell in love with cinema through Hollywood movies. Thrillers like “Basic Instinct,” “Fatal Attraction” and “Single White Female” made a big impact on him as a teenager. They were exciting, usually featured strong and dangerous women at the heart of them and, of course, they were sexy, which at 14 or 15 was a “really big deal,” he laughed in a recent interview.

“American cinema is really the foundation of my cinephilia,” Marnier said through a translator. “What I like to look for is finding that feeling that American film gave me when I was a teenager, but making a truly French film with those feelings. So how do I take the inspiration that I felt as a teenager from those emotions to make a truly French film that is taking place on the French territory?”

With “The Origin of Evil” he wanted to pay homage to those films and put them within a distinctly French context. Influences range from Claude Chabrol to “Parasite.” A playful mixture of genres, it’s scary at times, but also funny, offbeat and, yes, sexy, as Stéphane, who is in a romantic relationship with a volatile imprisoned woman, navigates the personalities in her father Serge’s (Jacques Weber) orbit: His spendy wife Louise (Dominique Blanc), his daughter George (Doria Tillier) who is angling to push him out of the business, a jaded granddaughter (Céleste Brunnquell) and their unfriendly maid (Véronique Ruggia).

Though the origin of this story comes from a very personal place — Marnier's mother, who made contact with her father later in life — he hopes it has broader commentary on issues affecting modern France.

“I think ‘The Origin of Evil’ talks about the end of a certain French society, the end of a powerful patriarchy, the end of a super-rich right wing dominant class, especially in the Riviera, a very rich class that was anti-Semitic and extremely powerful,” said Marnier. “And it’s in this confrontation of two worlds that we find a tension that France, is really experiencing at the moment. There’s something very French, I think, in the way the film captures the class struggle.”

It’s also a film where no one is quite what they seem, and it keeps you guessing and second guessing until the very end. Instrumental in this was the casting of Calamy.

“She has something that’s quite rare in French cinema, which is that she’s very beautiful and sexy, but on the other hand, she’s also banal in the good sense of the word. She’s really the woman next door,” Marnier said. “And because of things like ‘Call My Agent!,’ we like her. We have an empathy for her.

"If I had cast Isabelle Huppert, we would know right away that she was going to kill everybody,” he added.

Stéphane, it should be said, does not “kill everybody,” but she has her dark secrets too.

Of that De Palma comparison, Marnier deflects. It is, he said, much too much. “I don’t deserve that,” he said. “He’s one of my favorite filmmakers.”

He’s mostly just excited that after a few films, he’s finally got one that’s playing in American cinemas too.

“It’s really moving and beautiful,” he said. “My other films were released on platforms in the U.S., but to be released theatrically is a great gift.”


Here are some more review clips:

Craig D. Lindsey, Nashville Scene:

The Origin of Evil is practically two hours of Sébastien Marnier declaring that Brian De Palma is one of his favorite filmmakers.

The French director works many of the psychological-thriller legend’s tricks into his psychological thriller: overhead shots, slow dissolves, split-screen sequences. Hell, the movie even begins with the camera lecherously roving around a women’s locker room, much like the salacious opening sequence from De Palma’s Carrie, set in a girls’ locker room.

Like in most De Palma thrillers, we also have a mysterious female protagonist. Stéphane (Laure Calamy) is a fish-plant worker who gets reacquainted with her wealthy father (Jacques Weber), whom she didn’t grow up with. Of course, when she visits the old man at his swanky (and cluttered) Mediterranean mansion, she’s greeted by a family who’s just as off-putting as she is. The business-minded daughter (Doria Tillier, gloriously icy) wants Stéphane gone the minute she meets her, while the chain-smoking matriarch (a vainglorious Dominique Blanc) is too busy being a compulsive shopaholic to incite much animosity. The business-minded daughter’s daughter (Céleste Brunnquell) is mostly around taking pictures, hoping to escape this poisoned clan she’s unfortunately bound to by blood.

With the old man ailing after a stroke and the fam ready to carry on his business without him, Stéphane — who’s ready to do anything for her daddy — has come along at the right time. Of course, we learn in the second hour that Stéphane, who has a girlfriend (Xavier Dolan regular Suzanne Clément) in prison, has some hidden motives of her own.

Evil is basically a tribute to eat-the-rich thrillers made by French filmmakers. (De Palma, who has famously divided his time between New York and Paris, is considered an honorary Frenchman.) Along with De Palma, you also get whiffs of Claude Chabrol and René Clément, two Frenchmen who have done adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley — which should tell you exactly what you’ll get with this flick. Fans of Succession may also get a kick out of the so-deranged-it’s-funny family politics that pop off when Stéphane arrives. Weber’s devious, ambiguously depraved dad certainly gives Brian Cox’s Logan Roy a run for his money in the piece-of-shit-patriarch department.


Rob Thomas, The Cap Times:
Then that big twist happens, and “Origin of Evil” becomes a deliciously wild thriller in the vein of Brian De Palma or the late French suspense filmmaker Claude Chabrol, as we try to figure out who is really manipulating who.

Marnier tightens the screws of the plot as things unravel, using attention-calling filmmaking techniques to heighten the suspense, like sudden zooms and organ music on the score by Pierre Lapointe. He even deploys split-screen views in a clear De Palma homage, at one time breaking the screen into five points of view.

Calamy keeps us guessing as to Stéphane’s motives, concealing layers of complexity beneath her seemingly guileless exterior. And Blanc is a riot as the Norma Desmond-esque Louise, who wears expensive furs to the breakfast table and seems to be enjoying the skullduggery in her house almost as much as the audience is.

Watching “The Origin of Evil,” we keep changing our minds about who we should be rooting for, but in the end just root for a good time at the movies. And we certainly get one.


Clayton Dillard, Slant:
Sébastien Marnier’s The Origin of Evil is a thriller with scant thrills but plenty of echoes of better, more explosive works. It opens with a slow-motion tracking shot of young women inside a locker room in various states of undress, but rather than land on a showering teenager being horrified by her womanhood, as in Brian De Palma’s Carrie, the camera stops on the upturned face of Stéphane (Laure Calamy). It’s a naked allusion and nothing else. To wit, the film’s later, recurring use of split-screen—another staple of De Palma’s voyeuristic cinema—exudes a visual anonymity, as if Marnier were working from a checklist.

Previously:
Ballet of pretense & double-dealing: two reviews of The Origin of Evil

Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 12:15 AM CDT
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Thursday, August 17, 2023
OLMO SCHNABEL WATCHED SCORSESE, DE PALMA, CASSAVETES
SON OF JULIAN SCHNABEL MAKES DIRECTORIAL DEBUT WITH 'PET SHOP DAYS'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/petshopdays1.jpg

"Sex, crime and fish tanks converge" in Pet Shop Days, writes Variety's Matt Donnelly. The film marks the directorial debut of Olmo Schnabel, son of Julian Schnabel. Here's more from Donnelly's article, which includes an exclusive clip from the film:
“This is the perfect New York story in that anything can happen,” Schnabel said. “That’s how it was growing up. You meet a complete stranger, you’re enamored or infatuated with them, and then two weeks later you realize they’re completely different.”

Schnabel co-write the script with [Jack] Irv and Galen Core. Dark and handheld, Schnabel said he wanted to reference to the grit of ‘80s or ‘90s films to compliment the escalating trouble his boys find themselves in. The director sent an early cut of the movie to Martin Scorsese and prayed he would give feedback, only to have the icon come on board as an executive producer.

“I watched his films, Brian De Palma’s films, Cassavetes’ films, I thought that the movie was very grounded in other New York stories. When I heard that he liked it, I thought, okay, I might as well ask him and see what he says and he kindly he kindly accepted my offer. I’m forever grateful to even be associated with him.”


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Tuesday, June 20, 2023
'BRIAN DE PALMA IS A HUGE INSPIRATION FOR ALL THIS'
"BUT LOOK," SAYS THE WEEKND, "WE'RE PLAYING WITH GENRES WITH THIS SHOW"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/1stepisode0.jpg

Variety's Jem Aswad asks The Weeknd (a.k.a. Abel Tesfaye) about the current HBO series The Idol, of which Tesfaye and Sam Levinson are co-creators, along with Reza Fahim. Levinson has directed each of the three episodes that have been released so far. Here's a portion from the Variety article:
Have you been discouraged at all by the negative reaction “The Idol” has received from some quarters? Or was that something you expected?

No, no, that very much expected.

I keep waiting for it to shift, like “Dressed to Kill,” the Brian De Palma film (who also directed “Scarface” and “Carrie”), which is very slow in the first half and then suddenly becomes fast-paced and exciting.

Brian De Palma is a huge inspiration for all this, and of course [Paul] Verhoeven [“Basic Instinct,” “Total Recall,” “RoboCop”]. But look, we’re playing with genres with this show, we’re doing exactly what we wanted to do. And none of this is a surprise. I’m excited for everyone to watch the rest of the show.

Here’s a related question: Over the past few years you keep doing all these things to make yourself ugly, between the busted nose and the blood in your mouth for the “After Hours” look and the bloated face in the later phases of it —

And the old man face! [for the “Dawn FM” cover].

And the creepy mask at the beginning of the concerts —

Yes, that’s like the Phantom [of the Opera], gladiator inspired, of course, and Dr. Doom and then [the late, masked rapper-producer] MF Doom.

… and Tedros’ rat tail. What is it in you that makes you want to make yourself ugly?

This is just make-believe. It’s make-believe!

I guess you did the sexed-up and debauched image before? Not being really a sex symbol but —

I don’t think I’ve ever been a sex symbol.

You don’t think so?

No, definitely not. (Laughing)

OK fine. Is there anything I haven’t asked about that you’d like to say?

No, I’m just enjoying this tour and I’m excited to challenge myself and see how we can how we can change the game with the concert films.

“Films”? Are there plans to document the next two phases of the tour?

(Long pause) We’re shooting the inception of something now, which… which I feel like I haven’t been able to do before. So whatever we’re doing now, we’re capturing the genesis of it. So it’ll be an interesting documentary. Is that too vague?

Not for you!


FLASHBACK:
Friday, March 20, 2020
'DRESSED TO KILL' - THE WEEKND'S CURRENT OBSESSION
ALSO, 'TROUBLE EVERY DAY', 'THE COLOR OF MONEY', 'DER FAN'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/weekndparty.jpg
CR Men's Tiana Reid posted a story today about The Weeknd (aka Abel Tesfaye), which mentions a few films the pop star is currently obsessed with:
In 2019, Tesfaye went back to his early days, playing the Trilogy-era version of himself in the Safdie brothers’ film Uncut Gems. “I’ve been following the Safdies for years,” he says, a committed cinephile whose current obsessions include Claire Denis’ carnal thriller Trouble Every Day (2001), Brian De Palma’s neo-noir slasher Dressed to Kill (1980), Eckhart Schmidt’s West German, ’80s horror flick Der Fan, and Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986).

On the big screen, he plays it douchey, “a kind of almost satirical version of myself,” he says. His fictitious double refuses to sing unless he’s in black light. He performs “The Morning” and does lines with a white girl (Julia Fox) who comments on his erection. “He’s going to be major—even though he’s from Canada,” Julia says earlier in the film. The line is played for laughs.

That “even though” is a bigger deal than it seems. Tesfaye was born to Ethiopian immigrant parents and raised in Scarborough, a region east of downtown Toronto, before he dropped out of high school, moving out to Parkdale in Toronto’s west side. For many of the young, black, brown, and poor people in Canada’s most-populous city, Toronto lacks industry connections of all kinds, affordable housing, and creative infrastructures, especially when compared to cities in the United States. In response to his upbringing, along with La Mar Taylor, Ahmed Ismail, and Joachim Johnson, the Weeknd now runs the nonprofit HXOUSE, a “Toronto-based, globally focused think-center” that works with young artists of many disciplines. Global capital obviously floods Toronto through real estate, technology, and development, but in an exorbitantly expensive rental housing market, the lofts of “Lost Music” are unaffordable. A condo company in Tesfaye’s old neighborhood of Parkdale, a 14-story new development, is eerily called XO Condos. Five-hundred-square-foot boxes, currently unbuilt, are being sold for upwards of $600,000 dollars. XO is, of course, also the name of the Weeknd’s record label, which includes Canadian hip hop acts Nav, Belly, and 88Glam.

Today, ostensibly, he’s made it. "I feel confident with where I’m taking this [new] record,” he reveals. “There’s also a very committed vision and character being portrayed and I get to explore a different side of me that my fans have never seen.” He says that the first drop, the anti-romance song called “Heartless,” follows where My Dear Melancholy left off. “It was the first song I wrote after that album, so it felt fitting for me to put it out,” he says. “I play a character in the video who becomes compromised and then overcompensates with all the sins that Vegas provides. It’s a great introduction to the next chapter of my life.” In the music video for “Heartless,” set in Las Vegas, this new character, with his Lionel Richie mustache, Herbie Hancock glasses, and a slappy grin, was in fact inspired by Sammy Davis, Jr. in the 1973 film Poor Devil. In one scene, he licks a frog. It’s an all-knowing corniness that can be a bit of a one-note gimmick, its arc to be determined by the forthcoming album.

In the final scene of the video for “Blinding Lights,” which premiered in January, this new jittery nouveau-riche character stares into the camera but also beyond it, blood between his teeth. The look is a mix of Joker and Béatrice Dalle in that aforementioned Claire Denis film he loves so much, Trouble Every Day. After a journey through a hall of mirrors, a good high, a good ass-whooping, it’s hard to tell whether he’s laughing or crying. There’s something funny and something tragic in that ambivalence. This sense that we play characters both louche and garish feels like where we are at the turn of this decade, after years when it seemed no one had a self.


Posted by Geoff at 11:34 PM CDT
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Tuesday, June 13, 2023
THE BRIAN DE PALMA TREATMENT
'BASED ON A TRUE STORY' DIRECTOR CITES DE PALMA, HITCHCOCK, RAIMI, COENS AS INFLUENCES
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/basedon1.jpg

Alex Buono, who directed the pilot episode and the finale of the Craig Rosenberg Peacock series Based On A True Story, is interviewed by Metro Philadelphia's Molly Given:
And you directed the first and last episode of ‘Based on a True Story’?

I directed the pilot and the finale, and I was the directing producer of it—so I was there on set the whole time helping the other directors just to make sure that they understood what the tone of the show was, and visually what we were trying to do. And just to make sure that Craig’s vision for the show was actually happening and that the show didn’t accidentally stray away from it, because he had a really strong vision for it…I was there to just help him make sure that that’s the show that we were making at all times.

What were some of those conversations that you had with Craig when discussing the vision for the series?

When I first met with Craig—it’s funny, he’s Australian and from Melbourne, and my wife happens to be from Melbourne. Weirdly, her parents knew his parents and they worked together, so there was this weird immediate very loose connection. But we bonded a little bit, and then we sort of bonded further just talking about the kinds of films and things that we’re interested in.

We both shared a love of Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and Sam Raimi, and how the [Coen] Brothers or Tarantino or sort of newer filmmakers reinterpret that Hitchcock suspense. I could tell he was really kind of going for Hitchcock in his script, and he and I spent a lot of time talking about what’s the right tone to strike? How Hitchcock is it? Hitchcock has been done a bit in television and it can also feel a little dated, so [it’s more], what can we pull from that visual style?

Then when we talk about Brian De Palma or Sam Raimi, what does that mean to you and what are the sort of visual or the subtextual cues that you can pull from those filmmakers that we love so much?

What visually do we see from those styles then in ‘Based on a True Story’?

I kind of came in pitching a color story for the show. I felt the aspirational world of the show could be told through greens and blues, and Craig had already written in tennis courts and the ocean in the west side and Malibu and all these things that just reminded me of that color scheme.

The other end of the spectrum was a yellower mustards and pinks and a little more colorless. We’ve talked about using the color red as this very strong, controlled [color] and we use it less so that it’s more meaningful. Conceptually the idea—we called it a sunshine noir, [or] a California noir that would be outdoors, but we could still take some of the hard shadows in the contrast and make it cinematic and be purposeful with the camera and think about composition. So, building a set of rules helped the other directors understand really quickly.


De Palma is mentioned in a positive review of the series by Craig Mathieson at The Age:
Let’s clear this up: there are killings and there are aspiring podcasters at the centre of Based on a True Story, but it’s not a Los Angeles transplant of Only Murders in the Building. A comic-thriller both bloody and scathingly satirical about the true crime-industrial complex, the show has none of the giddy joy or daffy camaraderie of Steve Martin’s hit series. It’s about the comic pulsebeat of panic and opportunism, and how satisfying them can open you up to all kinds of unforeseen risks.

It starts with wealth: married couple Ava (Kaley Cuoco) and Nathan Bartlett (Chris Messina) see it everywhere, but can’t grasp it. She’s a real estate agent trying to graduate from two-bedroom apartments to luxury homes, he’s the tennis pro at a privileged country club. Ava’s pregnant, but their marriage is adrift on wayward hormones and Nathan’s regrets over a professional tennis career prematurely ended by injury. Her consolation is true-crime podcasts, which Ava devours with forensic dedication.

It’s also Ava who quickly deduces that Matt Pierce (Tom Bateman), the friendly plumber who Nathan is giving lessons to in exchange for much-needed discounted work, is the Westside Ripper, a stab-happy serial killer whose murders get the lurid Brian De Palma treatment. And with money issues looming, it’s Ava who convinces Nathan to threaten Matt with exposure if he doesn’t agree to be the anonymous subject of a tell-all podcast, a proposition both cuckoo and convincing. They should get in first, Ava theorises, before “the girl from Serial turns up!”

Suspension of disbelief is a highwire act in Based on a True Story, but the show benefits from the couple’s risky, short-sighted instincts and some delicious twists – is Matt playing along until he can strike, or committed to the process? When the killer tradie starts demanding creative input the stakes get a blackly absurd charge. That’s exacerbated by the storytelling exploring the commercialised world of true crime podcasts, where successful hosts are quick to profess that they’re doing it for the victims, but also spruik their new merch line.

The show’s Australian creator, Craig Rosenberg (The Boys), can’t always keep the ragged stitching in the plot from showing, but he’s terrific in catching the audience out with unexpected dynamics. Nathan and Matt, for example, actually make for good friends, while Ava pushing Matt reverses the usual idiot husband and cautious wife set-up. “Pressure is a privilege,” she reminds him, before sending him off to an interview session with Matt. Prepping for a serial killer sit-down with a Billie Jean King quote sums up this series.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Monday, June 12, 2023
SCI-FI THRILLER 'MARS EXPRESS' DRAWS FROM DE PALMA
AS WELL AS JAPANESE ANIMATORS - DIRECTOR SEES IT AS PART OF A POP-CULTURE CONTINUUM
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/marsexpress.jpg

Jérémie Périn’s sci-fi thriller Mars Express "serves a heady pop-culture cocktail," according to Variety's Ben Croll, "mixing hard-boiled fiction with science-fantasy comix, riffing on Philip Marlow and Philip K. Dick (with winks to Watchmen and Robocop and oh so many more) with a mystery yarn that places humans and cyborgs on equal footing."

More from Croll's article:

“I wanted to do something a bit more mature, but without being unnecessarily violent or graphic,” Périn explains. “Selfishly, I asked myself what I wanted to see, and those questions led to this type of storytelling with more adult subjects and aesthetic expressions, but not ‘adult’ in the sense of throwing sex and super violence in every direction.”

“This is a world where the robots look ever-more human, and the human characters can access computer interfaces with their eyes,” the director continues. “So I wanted to embed this confrontation between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ within the very mise-en-scene, to blur those codes by mixing in the rules and conventions of live action.”

To translate those impulses into animation, Périn adhered to a live-action visual language, recreating split diopter shots, allowing liquid to drip down the ‘lens,’ and staging shots with wide depths of field and visual distortions in order to play into larger thematic concerns.

When thinking about this sci-fi landscape, Périn drew as much inspiration from Brian De Palma’s work as from the touchstone adult-skewing films from Mamoru Oshii, Satoshi Kon, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Rintaro. If anything, Périn saw clear continuity between both forms.

“Japanese animators brought staging and framing into the mix,” says Périn.

“Historically, to compensate for more limited budgets, the Japanese opted for a slightly more limited animation style, instead focusing on the layout of their shots, creating impactful images that needed less movement to be striking. They accented camera work, made changes in focus and depth of field, tilted the frames and introduced superzooms, [and by doing so] gave world animation greater vocabulary.”

Of course, by way of continuity, the “Mars Express” director sees his film as part of a pop-culture continuum that dates further back than 1988’s “Akira.”

“All those filmmakers were themselves nourished by the particular sci-fi culture that sprung from ‘Heavy Metal’ magazine,” Périn says. “I see the flow from Moebius to Katsuhiro Otomo. They both influenced me, and they in turn looked to earlier aesthetics from other countries, before contributing their own cultural versions of these worlds.”


Posted by Geoff at 10:41 PM CDT
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