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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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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


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De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
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Carrie...A Fan's Site

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No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

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and the Infield
Fly Rule

Movie Mags

Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!

Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy

The Big Dive
(Blow Out)

Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site

The Phantom Project

Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
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The House Next Door

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Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

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italkyoubored

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EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
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The former
De Palma a la Mod
site

Entries by Topic
A note about topics: Some blog posts have more than one topic, in which case only one main topic can be chosen to represent that post. This means that some topics may have been discussed in posts labeled otherwise. For instance, a post that discusses both The Boston Stranglers and The Demolished Man may only be labeled one or the other. Please keep this in mind as you navigate this list.
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Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
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Cop-Out
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Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Monday, February 22, 2016
EBERTFEST: NANCY ALLEN TO PRESENT 'BLOW OUT'
35MM PRINT WILL SCREEN AT FEST IN APRIL, FOLLOWED BY ON-STAGE DISCUSSION


A 35mm print of Brian De Palma's Blow Out will screen at this year's EbertFest, with Nancy Allen in attendance. Allen will present the film, and participate in an on-stage discussion and Q&A following the screening. Blow Out was announced today as EbertFest revealed several films that will be screened at the 18th annual edition of the festival, which runs this April 13-17 in Champaign, Illinois. The fest had previously announced that it will open with Crimson Peak, with Guillermo del Toro in attendance. The other four films announced today are The Third Man, Northfork, Force Of Destiny, and the 1925 silent film, Body & Soul. Six more films will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Back when Roger Ebert started this festival back in 1999, he called it "Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival," and focused on films that he didn't think had received their fair share of exposure or discussion. Blow Out might have fit that festival description quite well back then, even coming a few years after Quentin Tarantino brought renewed attention to the film by talking it up as one of his favorites and casting John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, etc., etc. These days, however (and thanks in no small part to Criterion), Blow Out is widely seen as De Palma's best film. Yet picking it for Ebertfest still highlights the fact that the film really does remain somewhat overlooked in the grand scheme of things, perhaps as a Travolta film (in the shadow of Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, Grease), and also as a De Palma film (in the shadow of more, shall we say, dazzling works such as Carrie, Scarface, or The Untouchables).

The blurb in the Ebertfest press announcement reads:

Roger Ebert considered “Blow Out” to be Brian De Palma’s finest film. From his review of “Blow Out”: “’Blow Out” stands by itself. It reminds us of the violence of ‘Dressed to Kill,’ the startling images of ‘The Fury,’ the clouded identities of ‘Sisters,’ the uncertainty of historical ‘facts’ from ‘Obsession,” and it ends with the bleak nihilism of ‘Carrie’.. But it moves beyond those films, because this time De Palma is more successful than ever before at populating his plot with three-dimensional characters.”

Posted by Geoff at 6:00 PM CST
Updated: Tuesday, March 1, 2016 2:45 AM CST
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Sunday, February 21, 2016
MORRICONE: DE PALMA MADE RIGHT CHOICE
IN DECIDING WHICH PIECE OF MUSIC TO USE FOR 'UNTOUCHABLES' COURTROOM CLIMAX


Ennio Morricone recently discussed a handful of his film scores with Entertainment Weekly's Madison Vain, and included a story about The Untouchables:
For the unforgettable final scene of Brian De Palma’s gangster epic, in which Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) brings Al Capone (Robert De Niro) to justice, Morricone presented nine possible options. As he remembers it, he hoped De Palma would choose any of them except the seventh—which, of course, is exactly the one the director wanted. “In the end, he was absolutely right,” the composer says. Celebratory music is a rare mode for Morricone, who favors more hypnotic, moody creations. “But De Palma chose the piece that was most like [the ending]—it showed the triumph of the police over the bad guys.”

Posted by Geoff at 11:54 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, February 21, 2016 11:58 PM CST
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Wednesday, February 17, 2016
'CARRIE THE MUSICAL' - BEST OF 2015 LISTS
RNH.COM ROUNDS 'EM UP FOR US
RNH.com ("Rodgers And Hammerstein") has rounded up a list of links to various "Best Of" lists for 2015 musicals and shows from Los Angeles and London that included Carrie The Musical. You can go to the page to find the links, along with quotes such as, "A powerful, poetic score brought Stephen King’s 1974 horror novel to life," "Immersive and enjoyable," and, "A stunning and moving adaptation of Ste[ph]en King's coming-of-age novel."
(Thanks to Lawrence!!)

Posted by Geoff at 10:17 PM CST
Updated: Friday, February 19, 2016 5:02 PM CST
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Monday, February 15, 2016
SO, I WAS WATCHING 'TOOTSIE' THE OTHER DAY...
AND COULDN'T HELP BUT THINK OF MARGO, GUARDIAN OF THE CHILDREN

Posted by Geoff at 11:54 PM CST
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Sunday, February 14, 2016
SCORSESE RECALLS 1973 NEW YORK CITY
MARQUEE IMAGE IN 'VINYL' PILOT CALLS BACK TO 'DEEP THROAT' DAYS
The pilot episode of HBO's Vinyl is directed by Martin Scorsese, who created the series along with Mick Jagger. The pilot, essentially a new two-hour Scorsese picture, begins with its main character, Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) scoring some drugs on a New York street before being shaken by rowdy partiers into abandoning his car to follow them via some sort of Dionysian impulse into a building where the New York Dolls are performing to a crowd of rabid fans. Finestra observes motionless, but drugged-out impressed as the band has the crowd eating out of its hands. A little later in the movie (actually, after the story has flashed back a handful of days prior to its opening), Finestra is riding in a car and spies the marquee of a movie theater showing a double feature: Deep Throat and The Devil In Miss Jones.

"IT OPENED UP THE SOCIETY"

With the latter scene mentioned above, I couldn't help but be reminded of Scorsese's mention about going to see Deep Throat with Brian De Palma in the 1970s. The following is from page 116 of Richard Schickel's book, Conversations With Scorsese, during a discussion of Scorsese's Taxi Driver:

Schickel: The woman—a society campaign worker—is attracted to Travis because he’s so out of her league, as it were. Her Junior League, I guess. Which makes this notion of taking her to a porn movie—

Scorsese: Oh! I know. Well, you have to remember, a lot of people don’t remember now, but at that time, they were trying to make porn acceptable, with Deep Throat and Sometimes Sweet Susan, and pictures like that.

Schickel: I went to a few of those.

Scorsese: It was okay to go with a girl. But Brian De Palma and I went to see Deep Throat, and he said, Look at the people around us, it doesn’t feel right. There were couples. I said, You’re right. We should be with all these old guys in raincoats. It was a wonderful kind of hypocritical thing that was happening—it opened up the society.


Posted by Geoff at 11:57 PM CST
Updated: Monday, February 15, 2016 12:23 AM CST
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Saturday, February 13, 2016
JOSH FRIEDMAN'S TWITTER 'ASK ME ANYTHING'
'BLACK DAHLIA' SCREENWRITER ON THE LONGEST SCRIPT HE EVER WROTE, MORE





Posted by Geoff at 6:43 PM CST
Updated: Saturday, February 13, 2016 6:43 PM CST
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Thursday, February 11, 2016
VIDEO: UNBOXING CARLOTTA'S 'BODY DOUBLE' SET

Posted by Geoff at 6:09 PM CST
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Wednesday, February 10, 2016
ON DE PALMA'S 'FEMME FATALE' & 'PASSION'
"DOUBLE VISION" COLUMN NOTES HOW THE TWO FILMS "RHYME WITH EACH OTHER", DREAM IMAGERY & LOGIC, ETC.
Dim The House Lights began an “occasional column” this week called “Double Vision,” and the second installment finds Ross Birks linking Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale with his most recent feature, Passion. “If you’re going to pair up two Brian De Palma erotic thrillers,” Birks writes, “nine times out of ten you’d go for Dressed to Kill and Body Double. Upon recently revisiting De Palma’s canon for the umpteenth time, however, I found a better pairing: Femme Fatale and Passion. Made ten years apart these two films showcase a late-career De Palma returning to the genre he helped define with a newfound enthusiasm and experimentation."

In between writing about the two films, Birks notes how Raising Cain, made ten years prior to Femme Fatale, "foreshadows what De Palma would explore" in these two later works. "In that film," Birks writes, "John Lithgow plays Cain, a psychologist suffering from multiple personality disorder and De Palma constantly shows us the world from Cain’s POV in each of his different guises making reality increasingly difficult to pin down. The same can be said for the final act of Passion. After being accused of murder, Isabelle (Rapace) appears to regress into her own consciousness. De Palma teases the audience with multiple fake outs and double fake outs, sometimes never clarifying what is real and what isn’t."

While Birks does not leave out mention of the use of dreams in De Palma's previous films, his focus on these three actually makes for an intriguing trilogy, each conveniently ten years apart (it is an odd recent phenomenon that a movie's film festival screening year has become its official year of release: Passion, which played several fests in 2012 but was not officially released in any country until 2013, is referred to in most cases, even the IMDB, as a 2012 film). Each of the three feature long, extended dream sequences in the middle of the film. The dream at the center of Femme Fatale is clearly delineated, yet the whole film comes to seem marked by a transcendent sort of dream logic that feels sprung from multiple dreamers. As such, it does make for a graceful centerpiece in a trilogy that would keep any audience on its toes, as the nightmares from Raising Cain and Passion keep the viewer guessing what is dream, what is real, and by the way, whose dream are we in now?

Birks continues, "Passion‘s centerpiece, at least from a De Palma obsessive’s point of view, is an extended split screen sequence that intercuts a ballet performance with a stealthy murder in the giallo tradition and culminates with Isabelle jolting awake in her bed just as Christine (McAdams) has her throat slashed open. For a time, it isn’t clear if the previous scene really occurred or was just a variation of what actually transpired. From then on the film becomes hyper-real, bathed in expressionistic shadows and Dutch camera angles that are at odds stylistically with the film’s rather composed first hour. Even the story becomes excessively nonsensical with twist piling on after twist to the point of absurdity. The 'it was all a dream' trope has become one of the most groan-worthy in cinema so De Palma’s commitment to it in both Passion and Femme Fatale is all the more daring and admirable. It’s as if he saw utilizing that twist as a challenge in itself and wanted to explore the possibilities. Perhaps if he was subtler about it audiences would have been more receptive (see Mulholland Dr.) but De Palma has never been about subtlety, which is actually one of things I respond to most in his work."


Posted by Geoff at 4:19 AM CST
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Monday, February 8, 2016
CINEMATARY LOOKS AT 'PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE'
FIRST PART OF A SERIES ON DE PALMA, WEEKLY PODCAST
Cinematary, a weekly movie podcast, begins a series on Brian De Palma with this week's episode. The second half of the hour-long episode features Zach, Dylan, Lydia, and Nathan discussing Phantom Of The Paradise. All but one of the four watched De Palma's film for the first time in preparation for the discussion. The discussion is worth listening to, as it becomes quickly apparent that the participants have a smart, invested interest in cinema. While it is disappointing to hear two of them agree in the wrap-up that De Palma "tries" to cram too much into this film, they also have the insight to note that Phantom seems socially and culturally aware of the time in which it was made. At one point, one of the participants states that the thing about De Palma is, "the more you see his movies, the more everything makes sense."

Some of the most interesting comments come from Lydia. When asked to explain her first impressions of the film, she says, "It starts off, and you’re not really sure you’re with it, because it just goes so fast, the plot points, it doesn’t waste any time. But then, I was kind of into it by the time we got to the staging of Faust, and the big performances. I kind of got on board with it, because De Palma has a very specific vision and cinematic goals. I mean, whether or not you like it, it’s very clear he’s an artist, and is able to put what he wants on screen, every second. And I really appreciated that."

Posted by Geoff at 11:49 PM CST
Updated: Monday, February 8, 2016 11:51 PM CST
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Saturday, February 6, 2016
EVERY '70s MOVIE LOOKS AT 'DIONYSUS IN '69'
"AS HEADACHE-INDUCING AS IT IS MIND-EXPANDING"
Today at Every '70s Movie, Peter Hanson looks at Dionysus In '69. "Experimental theater being what it is," Hanson begins, "any document of this offbeat genre is sure to divide audiences. As such, something like Dionysus in ’69 can’t be appraised in only one way. Those with adventurous spirits and an eagerness to see postmodern rethinks of longstanding storytelling conventions will be able to appreciate Dionysus in ’69 as a form of artistic exploration. Concurrently, those who enjoy understanding what the hell they’re watching will lose patience quickly. Even those who seek out Dionysus in ’69 because of Brian De Palma’s involvement are likely to be confounded. The picture has a couple of significant connections to the director’s later work, but he didn’t conceive or singlehandedly helm the piece, [and] the execution is avant-garde in the extreme."

In the concluding paragraph, Hanson focuses on the film's use of split-screen throughout: "De Palma, who shares an 'a film by' credit with fellow NYU students Bruce Joel Rubin (later an Oscar winner for writing the 1990 hit Ghost) and Robert Fiore, employs one of his favorite cinematic devices, split-screen photography. Therefore, the entire 85-minute film comprises two angles of grungy-looking black-and-white images projected side-by-side. As with everything else about Dionysus in ’69, the split-screen effect is as headache-inducing as it is mind-expanding. Incidentally, Dionysus in ’69 received an X-rating during its original release, though its edgiest elements are full-frontal nudity, rough language, and simulated sex."

Posted by Geoff at 5:44 PM CST
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