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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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italkyoubored

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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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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
PIPER LAURIE & BETTY BUCKLEY TALK 'CARRIE' DEATHS
ALSO: 'CARRIE' AT HALLOWEEN ALL NIGHTER IN LONDON; PODCAST DISCUSSES 'CARRIE' & FEAR
It's Halloween season, which means it's time for Carrie discussions and screenings all over the place. At Vulture last week, nine actors spoke to Jennifer Vineyard about their big death scenes in famous horror movies. Two of those actors were Piper Laurie and Betty Buckley, who kicked off the article by talking about their deaths in Carrie:
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Betty Buckley:

We all gathered to watch each other’s death scenes, and we’d go out and party afterwards to celebrate that a character had been bumped off. But in the days before that, the whole prom construction took quite a while. This contraption they built for Ms. Collins’s death scene was a basketball backboard that was on a pendulum. There was a foot of balsam wood that would take the hit against the body. They planned it so that we shot four takes with the pendulum falling and then stopping it right before it hit me. That was very scary. So what you’re seeing on film is not acting at all. I’m absolutely terrified because they had not tested out the machine. So they didn’t know [if] they calculated the balsam properly in terms of the amount and, you know, [if they] could stop it on a dime right before it hit me. Thankfully, it worked. We were all absolutely terrified.

My stunt lady was dressed like me with a wig and everything. They put her in the shot and she took the hit. But it didn’t hurt her, and thankfully, Brian [De Palma] told me to watch the movements she made and to duplicate those. They removed her from the contraption, inserted me again, and I then imitated all her behavior when she took the hit, and they shot the close-up of my dying. I had [fake] blood in my mouth that I was supposed to vomit out. They just give you a swig, then you spit it out and they bring you water.

In the several takes of my death scene, Brian’s direction to me was: Squirm like a bug on a pin. So I squirmed like a bug on a pin, and then I was supposed to vomit out the blood. He wanted different sounds as I was dying. So, one scene, my scream ended up sounding like a musical note. It was really quite silly. We were all laughing about that.

[Re: Buckley's scream that ended up sounding like a musical note-- do you suppose that might have been where De Palma got the idea for the "Coed Frenzy" girl's scream in the shower, which sounds like a musical note and cuts to John Travolta laughing at it?]

Piper Laurie, speaking to Vulture's Jennifer Vineyard:

They built a steel vest that I wore under the gown, and on that vest were several small blocks of wood. Wires attached to the wood that went through small holes in my gown. The wires were, like, 15 feet long and stretched across to where the prop man was, or the special-effects man was. This was done in slow motion, you know, the can opener or the knife or whatever coming at me. There was no way they would injure me, moving at such a slow pace. It was hard not to laugh, watching this instrument bobbing along at me like that, slowly. It just looked ridiculous. But, of course, it had quite a different look than it did at the end. Just before we were to start shooting [the death scene], I met Brian outside, we were both on our way to the restrooms, and I said, “Brian, I have an idea. Instead of having just a death scene, just doing it straight, I’d like this to be a really joyous experience for Margaret White.” He said, "Great.” So that’s what I did.

I did not actually do the scene, the dialogue part, before the actual instrument attack. But the moment just before I kill Carrie, I didn’t rehearse that. I wanted the moment to be as raw as possible. I think it was an underlying element of how I thought of Margaret, her religion, her attitude about her daughter, and the fact that she considered her daughter menstruating horrible. And the fact that I sounded like I was having a very long orgasm ... I never spelled that out to Brian, I just did it. Part of that I actually played, but I suspect that in editing they extended that vocally longer than I actually did it. But I had such a good time shooting that scene.

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HALLOWEEN ALL NIGHTER IN LONDON
Four horror classics make up the Halloween All Nighter that begins at 11:45pm Friday night (Halloween night, October 31st) at London's Electric Cinema. The program begins with Carrie, followed by The Shining. After an early-morning breakfast break, the program concludes with Rosemary's Baby, followed by The Wicker Man.

"CARRIE'S REAL DREAD LIES WITH HOW NERVOUS THE CHARACTERS SEEM TO BE ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND THEM"
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Block Bluster podcast at Mind Of The Geek featured a discussion of "Carrie and Fear." The host of the podcast, Tobias Ellis, wrote the following as an introduction:

"Everybody is afraid in Carrie. Even with all the now-iconic shots of a blood-drenched Carrie White destroying her senior prom, Carrie’s real dread lies with how nervous the characters seem to be about the world around them (a true testament to puberty if there ever was one). Carrie – realized perfectly by Sissy Spacek – begins terrified by her own body, then briefly by her own mind until finally embracing her supernatural gifts. Her physical transformation from 'girl' to 'woman' worries the few males around her, and causes Betty Buckley’s Miss Collins to wonder aloud how such a thing should bother anybody, until that makes her nervous at just how different Carrie White might be. Amy Irving’s Sue Snell is afraid of the repercussions her treatment of Carrie might cause, and of becoming the shrill, cruel Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), and does her best – in fumbling, teenage fashion – to make amends. Carrie’s mother, played to Oscar nomination by Piper Laurie, is afraid of her daughter growing up and living in these godless times. And the adults are afraid of her, and whether she might be right.

"Despite all the fear, several characters – including Tommy Ross (William Katt), Sue, and Miss Collins – have the best of intentions for Carrie White, treating her with kindness and sensitivity. Yet, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Carrie – and all its lurid, color-washed agitation – begins with blood, and ends with blood.

"This week, just in time for Halloween, Block Bluster! revisits Brian De Palma’s horror classic to discuss what it means to be afraid, and what Carrie says not so much about scaring the audience, but building an atmosphere of dread reflective of everyday fears. How terrified of the odd kid in school should we be? How terrified of each other should we be? And to help us discuss Carrie and Fear, we welcome back – from the podcasts Film Fodder and Behind the Desk – our good friend Antonio Jones!"


Posted by Geoff at 12:29 AM CDT
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Sunday, October 26, 2014
'CROSS-CUT' VIDEO ESSAY BY DREW MORTON
BEAUTIFULLY EXPLORES CONNECTIONS BETWEEN 'BLOW-UP', 'THE CONVERSATION', 'BLOW OUT'

CROSS-CUT from Drew Morton on Vimeo.


Posted by Geoff at 6:49 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, October 26, 2014 6:52 PM CDT
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Wednesday, October 22, 2014
L.M. KIT CARSON, 1941-2014
'DAVID HOLZMAN' ACTOR, SCREENWRITER, USA FILM FEST FOUNDER
L.M. Kit Carson, who portrayed the title character in Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary so realistically that people thought they were watching an actual documentary, died Monday night at the age of 73, after a long illness, according to Dallas Morning News' Robert Wilonsky. David Holzman's Diary was a huge influence on the early work of Brian De Palma (particularly Greetings and Hi, Mom!). De Palma, McBride, and producer Charles Hirsch had all been friends prior to its completion, and Carson, who McBride credits with much of the language and ideas in the film, fell in with them, as well. From McBride's sessions with Carson, De Palma borrowed the technique of tape recording his actors as they developed their characters and created dialogue. In a passage that works as a nice tribute to Carson, McBride described the process of creating David Holzman to Joseph Gelmis in the latter's book, The Film Director As Superstar:
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The second time around I wrote ten pages, breaking it down into scenes in which I described what happens. Sometimes I wrote some of the monologues. But it was never intended to be spoken. It was intended to be a direction the language would take.

The way it actually happened was that Kit became very absorbed in the idea and really understood it very well. So we became collaborators. I didn't know it at the time, but he had been an actor and had abandoned it.

He and I spent a week together before the shooting. We sat down in a room with a tape recorder-- and I think this is the way Brian (De Palma) got the idea to do Greetings. I would say, "This is what happens in this scene. This is what I want you to say." As you know, most of the film's dialogue is in direct confrontation with the camera.

So I would tell him what I wanted and he would do it. He'd put it in his own words and throw in new things of his own. Then we'd listen to the tape together and I'd tell him: "I don't like this. You missed this. I've got an idea; put this in." He would do it again and together we refined each scene. We didn't transcribe it. We just listened to it, again and again, until we both had a fairly clear idea of what was going to happen when we were actually pointing the camera at him.

It never got down to a word by word situation. And when we started shooting it was always better than it had been in the taping sessions. He always threw in a little zinger for me that he hadn't told me about. Kit's great. We only did, at the most, two takes of any scene. As far as the camerawork is concerned, I had an absolutely clear and vivid idea of exactly what I wanted.

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Carson went on to co-write McBride's 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984, which co-starred Carson's son, Hunter), and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). (The latter film starred Dennis Hopper, who was the subject of a 1971 documentary that Carson co-directed with Lawrence Schiller-- Matt Zoller Seitz goes into loving detail about the film in his obituary of Carson at RogerEbert.com.) In 2003, Carson co-wrote the Melanie Griffith-starrer Tempo. The co-writers were Jeremy Lipp and Jennifer Salt.

In 1970, Carson founded, with Bill Jones, what would become the USA Film Festival in Dallas, screening films such as Woodstock and Robert Altman's M*A*S*H. Speaking with Wilonsky in a 1999 article for the Dallas Observer, Carson said, "Back in 1971, the organism started in Dallas with people who were kind of interested in movies but didn't know much about movies. There were no film fests in this country devoted to the American independent film. I said, 'There's no film festival for Marty Scorsese or Brian De Palma, so let's start one, because this stuff is happening and no one is saying this is happening.'"

An article by Gregory Curtis from the June 1973 issue of Texas Monthly (from which the photo of Carson above is taken) catches the last-minute hustle of the first (and what seems to have been the last) United States Festival, for which Carson, having been ousted as director of the USA fest, served as a "special consultant." As the fest disappoints with low attendance (despite the weeklong presence of Vincente Minelli, and other special guests such as De Palma, Salt, and Margot Kidder), Curtis portrays Carson as perpetually enthusiastic and driven to present films that might not otherwise be seen. De Palma, Salt, and Kidder were there to discuss Sisters, following an afternoon screening of the film. Carson moderated that discussion.

Curtis, who found De Palma's film "finally, too repellent to watch," writes, "Kit Carson began the discussion after the film by saying that the Hollywood system was still the most pervasive force in American filmmaking. De Palma, a man with flushed cheeks and snapping black eyes, took up this theme immediately. He didn't want to work in Hollywood. Directors like Francis Copolla (The Godfather) and Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) thought they could maintain their integrity while working there. 'But I don't think you can get in bed with the devil,' De Palma said, 'without having some of it rub off.'"

On his Facebook page yesterday, Paul Schrader wrote, "Kit was among the first 'film' people I knew after coming to LA in 68. We gravitated toward each other. In Feb 1971 (right after the San Fernando Valley earthquake) he invited me to be on the jury (I was critic for LA Free Press at the time) of the first USA film festival in Dallas. Other jury members included Andy Sarris, Manny Farber, Dwight McDonlald, P Adams Sitney, [Rex] Reed, Jay Cocks, Roger Ebert and others I can't remember at the moment. In that week it felt a mission and sense of belonging like never before. Happy Trails, old Pard."

In an article Carson wrote for Film Comment about being asked by Hooper to work on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Carson writes about trying to make it through the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "I first squirmed through it back in 1975 in a tiny, dumpy screening room just below Sunset Boulevard. I was newly exiled from Texas and had known Tobe Hooper as a good documentary filmmaker (Peter, Paul, and Mary in Concert, 71) in Austin but had no way to be prepared for the bite of The Saw. I flat couldn’t take it—neither could Paul Schrader, a curious friend who’d come along to the screening; about midway through the movie we buzzed the projectionist to skip a couple of reels and just show us the end. Whu: this sucker could really hurt you. Post-screening, blinking in the daylight leaning on our cars, Schrader and I tried to figure out what we’d run into."

Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, who were mentored by Carson early in their careers, have written a tribute to Carson at RogerEbert.com. Jeffrey Wells has also posted some remembrances at Hollywood Elsewhere.


Posted by Geoff at 1:24 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, October 26, 2014 6:59 PM CDT
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Monday, October 20, 2014
'WHIPLASH' MAKER CITES SCORSESE & DE PALMA
Damien Chazelle, who wrote and had originally planned to direct the De Palma-esque Grand Piano, is getting consistently great reviews for a new movie for which he is the writer/director, Whiplash. Chazelle tells RedEye Chicago's Matt Pais that Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma are among the directors who inspired Whiplash. "In a sense," Chazelle tells Pais, "obviously the influences in this movie are a lot of old filmmakers and Scorsese and De Palma, but the people who actually really get me off my ass and actually motivate me to, ‘All right, [bleep] it, I gotta do some work’ are the young people, the people in my generation who are doing great [bleep]." The two younger directors Chazelle mentions by name are Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) and Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild).

Meanwhile, in a review of Whiplash, Screen Invasion's Mel Valentin writes, "Credit also extends to Chazelle’s cinematographer, Sharone Meir, who lights both interiors and exteriors like ’70s-set urban dramas and crime-thrillers popularized by Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Brian De Palma (among others)."

Posted by Geoff at 1:21 AM CDT
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Sunday, October 19, 2014
ARMOND WHITE ON 'DEAR WHITE PEOPLE'
SATIRE ISN'T AS SHARP AS 'DETENTION', LACKS RADICALISM OF 'HI, MOM!', BUT HE KIND OF LIKES IT
Armond White, Out
on Justin Simien's Dear White People

"Turns out it’s passive, late-to-politics Lionel—the black gay dude—who represents Simien’s concerns. His evolution counters the old gay-until-graduation truism. Lionel sports a blooming Afro as significant as Dante DeBlasio’s. He’s awakened politically after his sex and writing life disappoint and once he discovers a Halloween party where the white students dress in blackface (based on those at Dartmouth, Penn State, and other campuses). This has a weak comic payoff (except for Coco’s counterintuitive costume choice), yet it brings out the desperation in Simien’s farce structure. Campus turmoil drives Simien’s suffering main characters a bit mad. Simien doesn’t critique them; his imperfect film shares the ideological confusion that has confounded all comedians during the Obama era—from the partisan satirists on Saturday Night Live to those Obama effigies Key & Peele on Comedy Central.

"Working post-Dave Chappelle, Simien presupposes a general racial awareness. Sam states Simien’s p.o.v. when she says 'Satire is the weapon of reason' and 'The job of the counterculture is to attack the mainstream.' Now that identity humor has become mainstream fodder, with subtle insistence on everyone’s assigned roles, Dear White People continues the assumption that everybody understands what gays, blacks, and women want. (A reality-TV subplot goes nowhere except offering the misinformation that '"re-enactment" is a documentary term.')

"Simien observes a lost generation of gays, blacks and women who forget what their protesting forbears fought for. (To wit: Sam frantically proclaims: 'It wasn’t speeches that turned the tide for civil rights, it was the anarchists that got the press'—a terrible reduction of history.) These 'post-racial' youth are shocked to discover there really is no such thing. This sad truth gives poignance to Dear White People's narrative mess...

"Simien’s satire isn’t as sharp as Joseph Kahn’s audacious Detention and it lacks the radicalism of Brian De Palma’s 1970 classic Hi, Mom! with its unforgettable 'Be Black Baby' mockery of white liberal fantasies. In the Obama era, comics have lost the ability to mock their own prejudices. Simien’s efforts cost him the depth of his four main characters—gay Lionel in particular. But I must admit: By movie’s end, Lionel’s confusion is more affecting than at the beginning."


Posted by Geoff at 1:51 AM CDT
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Saturday, October 18, 2014
THE BIRDMAN COMETH
Edge On The Net's Brian Shaer
on Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

"The film will be of particular interest to theater aficionados for its spectacular recreation of backstage at the St. James Theater on Broadway. Watching the film, with Iñárritu's gorgeous long takes and tracking shots that would make Brian De Palma salivate, one sort of has the feeling that he or she is in rehearsal with these folks and anticipating the curtain rising on opening night as much as they are. The milieu of Times Square and the Broadway theaters is essential in bringing this story its authenticity and in capturing the feel of a play in production."

Edgar Wright
"Go see 'Birdman' on the big screen ASAP. An astoundingly executed movie. Has a 'Phantom Of The Paradise' vibe, which from me is HIGH PRAISE."

Posted by Geoff at 11:54 AM CDT
Updated: Saturday, October 18, 2014 11:55 AM CDT
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'PHANTOM' TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT IN SANTA CRUZ
AND 'CARRIE' OUTDOOR SCREENING TONIGHT IN L.A., PRESENTED BY TRAILERS FROM HELL
Sorry for the late notice, but Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise is the midnight movie this weekend at the Del Mar Theatre in Santa Cruz, California. The film screened last night at midnight, and will play again at midnight tonight. The cost is only $6.50, and there are said to be prizes involved.

Meanwhile, tonight in Los Angeles, on the "lush west lawn of Hollyhock House," Barnsdall Art Park Foundation and Joe Dante’s Trailers From Hell present a screening of De Palma's Carrie on a high resolution screen, with a surprise guest on hand to introduce the film. Carrie is the final event of a five-film series called "School Nights." The other four films were School Of Rock, Election, Rock 'n' Roll High School, and Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

For $25 tonight, you get the movie and tasting (3 pours of beer or wine courtesy of Silverlake Wine). The movie-only tickets for Carrie, which went for $10 each, are sold out already. There is, however, free parking, and, according to the web site, "you are welcome to bring your own food, soft drinks, and a blanket; however, NO outside alcoholic beverages will be permitted. No dogs are allowed. Movies start at dusk on top of Los Feliz’s scenic Olive Hill. This fundraiser is a 21+ over event." According to the Barnsdall specific Carrie page, "All profits from the wine tastings benefit Barnsdall Art Park Foundation programs and projects, such as Free Sunday Art Classes for children and families in the community, as well as capital projects like the Monument Sign."

As posted yesterday, Carrie also screens at midnight tonight at the Landmark E Street Cinema in Washington, DC.


Posted by Geoff at 11:27 AM CDT
Updated: Saturday, October 18, 2014 12:48 PM CDT
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Friday, October 17, 2014
'PASSION' ANALYSIS AT CLOTHES ON FILM
WITH QUOTES FROM COSTUME DESIGNER KAREN MULLER-SERREAU
Christopher Cole has written a terrifically insightful piece at Clothes On Film about the clothes in Brian De Palma's Passion, with details and quotes from the film's costume designer, Karen Muller-Serreau. Cole is particularly interested in the power dynamics at play in the film. "Ice-blonde Christine is a Grace Kelly lookalike who craves attention," Cole states, "usually wearing the most noticeable colour in the room; the solid colours help her stand out without patterns to get in the way."

Here's an excerpt from the article:
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Muller-Serreau says she wanted to give Rachel a “contemporary Hitchcockian feeling with shapes that have a modern vintage style in bold colours.” Christine begins the film in an ice-blue shirt and palazzo pants combo topped off by a blueberry-vanilla coloured scarf tied artfully around her neck, while Isabelle’s black dress shirt and pants pop against the white walls and light-coloured furniture of Christine’s house. She has to be dominant so she gives the scarf as a gift to Isabelle, wrapping the blueberry-vanilla scarf around Isabelle’s neck; it stands out against her black coat.

The following morning, Christine struts her stuff down the path in her front yard in a double-breasted blood-red overcoat that would scare the bejeezus out of Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964); Christine looks like a spoilt little rich girl about to be chauffeured to private school. If Christine sometimes looks like a child playing dress-up, there’s a scene late in the film where she wears a striking black overcoat worn with a wide-brimmed hat, round sunglasses and teal stiletto sandals. It’s a coat that Muller-Serreau wanted to look like a little girl’s coat, so she based it on a classic child’s coat since Christine’s twin sister died in childhood.

Isabelle, the second-in-command, wears black for most of the film signalling her lack of identity. Since Muller-Serreau didn’t have colour to work with for Isabelle, she gave her shape and texture. There’s a suit jacket with heavy shoulder pads that hint at Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945) and a side-breasted military jacket she wears when she has the upper hand. Her Edith Head hairstyle, fringe and all, helps make her look like she stepped out of an old movie.

One particularly inspiring moment is when an angry, depressed Isabelle at an office reception wears a black dress shirt and pants with a black tie. Underneath the slightly sheer shirt is a black bra. She’s dressed in a stereotypical male outfit, but despite the butch quality of the outfit, she still wants to be desired sexually as a feminine woman. Muller-Serreau says Isabelle’s look was supposed to be a “uniform”, presenting Isabelle as a “soldier” — a soldier who wants to be seen as a sexy woman.

While Isabelle wears only one colour, her assistant Dani wears many colors, and is the only person who threatens Christine’s status as the most colourful person in the room. She often wears animal prints and sometimes pairs it with clashing horizontal stripes. Her costumes are meant to garner attention, like the denim daisy dukes she wears paired with tights and knee-high stiletto boots, and an asymmetrically zipped purple leather motorcycle jacket. However, she also achieves elegance in a violet lace shirt. It’s a look Muller Serreau describes as “feminine and sexy” and that it’s a departure from the “butch lesbian cliché.”

Dirk wears braces with his pinstripe suits and checkered suits; the braces hark back to a much earlier era. His costumes consist of all suits, except for when he wears a tank top in his bedroom post-coital. Lying on a bed, his thin frame is more evident here, making him appear more vulnerable. He confesses secrets while smoking in a cigarette, becoming more feminine in his gestures and voice: he seems to be imitating Christine when he tells Isabelle that the blueberry-vanilla scarf looks better on her. It’s a perfect example of how men are emasculated in this film, and how the characters are much different in private.

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Posted by Geoff at 3:20 AM CDT
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'CARRIE' IN WASHINGTON, DC, FRI/SAT MIDNIGHTS


Brian De Palma's Carrie is the midnight movie Friday and Saturday (October 17 & 18) at the Landmark E Street Cinema in Washington, DC.

Posted by Geoff at 2:10 AM CDT
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Thursday, October 16, 2014


Posted by Geoff at 8:24 PM CDT
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