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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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« September 2018 »
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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

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Fly Rule

Movie Mags

Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
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Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy

The Big Dive
(Blow Out)

Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
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Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
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The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

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A Lonely Place

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italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

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Obsessive Movie Nerd

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This Recording

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De Palma a la Mod
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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?
BAMcinématek
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Cannes
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Carlito's Way
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Cop-Out
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Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
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Hi, Mom!
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Print The Legend
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Redacted
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Saturday, September 15, 2018
JOHN C. REILLY - HUMOR, DRAMA, 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
"HE'S A FUNNY CHARACTER WITHIN A VERY SERIOUS MOVIE"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/heysarge2.jpg

John C. Reilly sat down for several interviews last week at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote Jacques Audiard's The Sisters Brothers, which Reilly stars in (with Joaquin Phoenix) and also co-produced with his wife, Alison Dickey. At least two of those TIFF interviews have led to some discussion about Reilly's film debut in Brian De Palma's Casualties Of War (which Sony has just released on Blu-ray for the first time, but not with the extended director's cut). Here are a couple of links and excerpts:

David Edelstein, Vulture

When you hear stuff like this, you can understand why directors liked working with Reilly right from the beginning and why Sean Penn, of all people, suggested De Palma give Reilly a lead role in Casualties of War. “I think Sean saw something that I always aspire to be,” says Reilly: “Guileless.”

The Casualties story is amazing. After graduating from the Theatre School at DePaul University, Reilly worked at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, then flew to Thailand to be a “day player” in De Palma’s war film. When a supporting actor was fired, Reilly got a bigger part. After flying home to the U.S., he learned another actor had been fired and De Palma and Penn wanted him back to play one of the leads. He’d missed the last flight of the day going west across the Pacific, so he flew, he says, “across America, across the Atlantic, over to Asia, and then down back down to Bangkok,” where he was promptly whisked to the set, given a haircut and a costume, and escorted to a rice paddy, where he had to pretend to snooze and be jarred awake.

I ask what he thinks they saw in him, and he tells me about the days in “a weird conference room” in a Thai hotel: “It’s full of guys trying to out-impress each other, because Sean sets a high bar. The two guys that got fired were doing that shit: ‘I’ll out-Method you. I’ll outdrink you after work. I’ll fucking say something insulting to you because you think you’re such a fucking hotshot actor.’ I’m like, ‘Guys, What are you doing? Are you insane? You can’t say that to that person. Aren’t we trying to put on a play?’ ”

“A play,” as in what he was doing in Chicago, where actors who pull out-Method-you shit don’t last. “You’re not going to get discovered in Chicago,” he says, “the way you might in New York or L.A., so that takes some of the pressure off. You’re part of an ensemble. You’re there to play.” In that Bangkok hotel, he says, he was ready to do anything. “I’d go nuts. I’d read not just my part but an old Vietnamese man or whoever wasn’t there. ‘Have John do it,’ they’d say.” Penn was so taken with Reilly’s gung ho spirit that he recommended Reilly for parts in We’re No Angels (1989) and State of Grace (1990). As a bonus, on Casualties Reilly met Dickey. She was Penn’s assistant.


Mike Ryan, UPROXX
Speaking of more relevance, you’re never going to admit to this, but it felt like you were making a statement in this movie. I looked and 26 of your first 27 movies were dramas.

That never occurred to me. When my wife read me that part of that review, I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing. I should start using that line: Well, I made 26 before I did any comedies!”

I feel like you’re on screen going, look, I can carry a drama Western, how about that?

You know, the truth is, I don’t really have to remind people. My work has a lot of variety to it and the last few things I’ve done haven’t been comedy. And even though, like you say, the first 26 movies I did were not necessarily thought of as comedies, but I was often a funnier character. Even my first movie, Casualties of War, he’s a funny character within a very serious movie.

That was on TV the other day and I was shocked when you showed up in it.

Yeah, it was the first time I was on an airplane! The first time I left the country. It was a surreal time.

Your first director was Brian De Palma.

I know, Sean Penn and all these people. The thing is, I would never lecture an audience (over not being remembered for dramatic work).

It would be funny if you did. “Look, people…”

“You forgot!” No, because the truth is, I actually feel really grateful to audiences. Because actors often get stereotyped into things and it’s not their fault. It’s often because an audience wants people to be a certain way. They find you really appealing when you play this kind of role and they want that over and over again. And I feel really lucky and grateful that, over the years, the audiences allowed me to be all these different things. So even though certain kinds of moviegoers might know me for comedy, it just depends what you’re into. At this point, I’ve made almost 80 movies or something. So the chance is that I’ve made some kind of movie that you like at some point in my life.


Posted by Geoff at 7:46 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, September 15, 2018 7:48 PM CDT
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Friday, September 14, 2018
NEW 'SISTERS' CRITERION CAPTURES AT DVD BEAVER
TEAL TINT CAUSING CONTROVERSY IN MANY RECENT CRITERION RELEASES; DVD BEAVER DIGS IT
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/sistersarrowcriterionblu.jpg"I am getting used to the new colors and appreciate the vibrancy and texture," states Gary Tooze at DVD Beaver. Tooze has captures from the upcoming Criterion Blu-ray edition of Brian De Palma's Sisters, and the comment above, regarding the tendency of recent Criterion releases to have a sort of teal tint, comes from Tooze's review of the upcoming release (October 23rd). You can visit the link above to see comparisons between the previous Criterion DVD release, Arrow's Blu-ray edition from 2014, and the new Criterion Blu-ray. Meanwhile, here's what Tooze writes about the new edition at DVD Beaver:
Criterion - Region 'A' Blu-ray - September 2018 - The Criterion is advertised as a "New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Brian De Palma". The differences with the 2014 Arrow 1080P are, surprisingly, extensive. The Criterion is in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio (as opposed to opened-up 1.78:1 of the UK rendering), showing more information on the sides and less on the top and bottom. It also shows much more grain and has some unpleasant teal/green infiltration that some may not appreciate. Colors do shift - jackets/suits that were blue on the Arrow shift to a more grey palette. Colors, like reds, are generally deeper and richer - flesh tones are warmer with a tinge of orange. It, likewise, has a max'ed out bitrate and I was expecting both to offer a similar presentation. I like the appearance because of the advanced texture and on the 65" OLED it diffuses the teal/green cast... but every system may be different. I am getting used to the new colors and appreciate the vibrancy and texture.

Also a linear PCM mono (24-bit) track. The lossless easily handles the effects and the typical powerfulc score by the great Bernard Herrmann (Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, Cape Fear, The Magnificent Ambersons, Taxi Driver, The Wrong Man, etc. etc.). It sounds the same as the Arrow according to my crusty ears. There are, also, optional English (SDH) subtitles on the Region 'A' Blu-ray disc.

Criterion add new supplements from their own 2000 DVD. There is a new, 24-minute, interview with actor Jennifer Salt (intrepid Grace Collier in Sisters) and she talks about being at school, meeting De Palma and how she got the role in the film etc. There are 27-minutes worth of interviews from 2004 with De Palma, actors Bill Finley and Charles Durning, editor Paul Hirsch, and producer Edward R. Pressman and the director is always thoughtful and attentive. You can watch the film with 1.5 hours worth of an audio discussion from a 1973 with De Palma at the American Film Institute. It can be a shade hushed but the director's fans will appreciate its inclusion and his observations. We get a 9-minute appearance from 1970 by actor Margot Kidder on The Dick Cavett Show, a length slideshow photo gallery and 3.5 minutes of radio spots. The package has an essay by critic Carrie Rickey, excerpts from a 1973 interview with De Palma on the making of the film, and a 1973 article by the director on working with composer Bernard Herrmann.

We always are in favor of different packages - it's great to have choices. The Criterion Blu-ray promotes reflection on their director-approved image and offers rewarding new extras. This film gets better each time I see it. Recommended!


Posted by Geoff at 8:19 AM CDT
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Friday, September 7, 2018
MUNCH'S 'JEALOUSY' & DE PALMA'S 'BLOW OUT'
FRIDAY TWEET JUXTAPOSES EDVARD MUNCH, VON STROHEIM, BERGMAN, DE PALMA
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/blowoutjealousymunch.jpg

The above set of images was tweeted today by Tiger Studio, with the following caption:
Jealousy

#painting & #Cinema

Jealousy (1907) Edvard Munch
Blind Husbands (1919) Erich von Stroheim
Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
Blow Out (1981) Brian de Palma


Posted by Geoff at 5:52 PM CDT
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Tuesday, September 4, 2018
DE PALMA'S 'CARRIE' DEEPLY AFFECTED ARI ASTER
'HEREDITARY' WRITER/DIRECTOR "HAD A VERY HARD TIME SHAKING THOSE IMAGES"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carriebulgingeyes.jpg

Ari Aster, the writer/director of Hereditary, tells South China Morning Post's James Mottram that Brian De Palma's Carrie was the first scary movie that "deeply affected" him. "I found the images were not leaving me and that really stuck with me for years,” Aster tells Mottram. "Sissy Spacek covered in blood with her bulging eyes … I had a very hard time shaking those images. It was definitely a film I was thinking about as I was writing this."

On the Blu-ray of Hereditary released today, Aster says that two of his main inspirations are Carrie and Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover. He discusses both of those films in a conversation with Scott Macaulay, from the summer 2018 issue of Filmmaker:

Filmmaker: What are some of your favorite horror movies?

Aster: I love Rosemary’s Baby—there are some big nods to that at the end [of Hereditary]. I love Don’t Look Now, which I see this film as being a spiritual sibling to. Tonally, Nic Roeg is somebody whose films made a very serious impression on me from an early age. His sense of the elliptical is really, really fascinating to me. He has this amazing sense for the fragmentary—his films often play like memory. I love, on just the level of atmosphere, The Shining. I really love Jack Clayton’s film, The Innocents. There’s a long list of Japanese horror films that I love, like Kwaidan, Onibaba, Kuroneko, Empire of Passion and Ugetsu. And then, beyond Ugetsu, I just love Mizoguchi a lot. He’s somebody who I’m always thinking about. I was really taken with this brilliant South Korean film, The Wailing. I really liked The Witch. I can say that the goal with Hereditary was to make a horror film that I would want to see. I wanted to make a horror film that would scare me, and I wanted to root it in things that really trouble me and bother me.

Filmmaker: And what are those things?

Aster: What are my fears? [long silence] Just like everybody else, I would say I have fears of abandonment. I have fears of losing my quality of life, my body breaking down. I have fears of, if not abandonment, then losing somebody I care about because of something I have done. Fears of harming somebody in my life, be it intentionally or unintentionally. I have fears that I have no control over, like fears of disaster, which is more of a philosophical problem—like, my glass is half empty. I think a big part of the film is a fear of the intentions of others because, ultimately, it is a film about a conspiracy as seen from the perspective of the unknowing victims of that conspiracy.

Filmmaker: I was going to ask you whether you saw yourself in the teenage son character, but some of those fears you just listed are dispersed among the different characters. Fear of abandonment is referenced by the sister very early on.

Aster: Yeah. I see myself in all the characters, and none of the characters are surrogates for anybody in my family or myself. They’re all total inventions. It was just really important to me that I attend to the family drama first, and that I honor whoever those people were first, and then have all the horror elements emerge from that, and only if those elements were organic to the story and coming out of that dilemma at the heart of the film.

So often I’ll go to a horror film and there will be moments that get to me, and imagery I might find disturbing, but I feel let off the hook. Like, “OK, you get your spike of adrenaline. You go on the roller coaster, and you can leave. Don’t worry about it. You can brush off the experiences.” But the films that really stayed with me as a kid, that really haunted me, upset me—and they were the films I was always looking for and at the same time was always kind of hoping I wouldn’t [find because they] provoked feelings that I wasn’t able to immediately resolve as a kid—had maybe more of a malicious streak. I hated them as a kid because I hated what they did to me.

Filmmaker: Were those some of the ones you mentioned?

Aster: Well, no, actually. All of those I found to be really fun. The films that really upset me, I can’t even put on the list, somehow, because of my relationship to them.

Filmmaker: Can you say what some of them were?

Aster: Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, which isn’t technically a horror film, but it feels evil to me. Brian De Palma’s Carrie—I do love that film, but I saw it when I was 13. It didn’t really scare me while I was watching it, but later I was walking through the house in the dark to get water in the middle of the night, and I kept projecting images from that film onto the walls, which is what happened later with The Cook, The Thief. It was this masochistic thing, where once you’ve done it once, then your mind keeps reminding you to do it again. I’d race to get to my bed, and then I had a hard time going to the bathroom at night or getting water at night for a few years because I couldn’t trust myself to not project those images into the dark. Especially images from Carrie—Piper Laurie chasing her daughter around the house with this giddy, ecstatic smile on her face. That taps into something so primal.

Filmmaker: Is that the effect that you want this film to have on your audience?

Aster: I guess so. It’s funny, I screened The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover to the crew before I made The Strange Thing about the Johnsons but not before Hereditary. I was certainly thinking about that film, though, and especially the way that Peter Greenaway plays with artifice. I’ve always had a thing for Brechtian distancing effects. I feel that if they’re done well—if the story and performances are really compelling—then they make the film so much more vivid. Like, for instance, Dogville is a film that I’ll never shake, and I wonder what I would think of it if it were not set on a bare stage. The Cook, the Thief is this really, really monstrous vision of humanity. It’s so clinical, and all the characters are so remote, except for the one who’s the most vile. He’s the one character who is, to a certain degree, charismatic, who has any life, despite the fact that he is absolutely the grossest person ever depicted on screen. Everybody else feels like they are just a part of this tableau that Peter Greenaway is building. He was a painter before he became a filmmaker, and that’s very apparent. Even just down to Sacha Vierny’s very sickly, theatrical lighting, and those dollhouse sets where the colors are very rich but they’re also over rich—the colors themselves are getting sick. I know that film was rated NC-17 for tone. That makes total sense when you see the film because it is just feels evil.

Filmmaker: Your interest in Brechtian distancing effects is evidenced by the first shot of the movie, which sets up the camera as having this pitiless point-of-view on these tiny characters on a stage.

Aster: Yeah, the miniatures were sort of serving as a running metaphor for what’s happening in the film, which becomes very apparent by the end: These are people with no agency who are being manipulated by outside forces, like dolls in a dollhouse.


Posted by Geoff at 11:13 PM CDT
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Monday, September 3, 2018
ÁLVAREZ LÓPEZ ON COLLAGE ASPECT OF 'WOTON'S WAKE'
DE PALMA'S EARLY SHORT FILM "BOILS WITH A FERVENT, CREATIVE, YOUTHFUL VITALITY"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/wotonswakemirrors.jpg

"Collage takes many forms in De Palma’s cinema," states Cristina Álvarez López in her latest Foreplays column at MUBI. "It’s in his taste for mosaic-narratives that merge almost-autonomous plot lines. It’s in the way he fits together disparate tones, genres, and styles of acting. It’s in the play with surfaces and depth, fostered by some of his favorite ‘composite’ images—split screens, materialized memory flashes or mental hypotheses, split focus diopter shots. It’s in his very conception of reality as a complex puzzle that can only be grasped via a laborious reconstruction and rearrangement of the pieces. It’s in the incorporation, mimicking, and merging of different audiovisual formats, textures, dispositifs—TV reportage in Sisters (1972), video-clip and porn advertising in Body Double (1984), images from security cameras in Scarface (1983) or Snake Eyes (1998), screen tests in Murder à la Mod (1967) and The Black Dahlia (2006), YouTube videos in Redacted (2007) and Passion (2012), the reconstructed film in Blow Out (1981), and the photographic collage that closes Femme Fatale (2002).

"Woton’s Wake boils with a fervent, creative, youthful vitality. It’s a product of the multifaceted cultural scene of a particular time and place (the New York of the 1960s). It’s also a low-budget film, made—literally—with De Palma’s own hands. This is, at least in part, what gives Woton’s Wake its collage form, wild and raw, but also thoroughgoing: from the very conception of character and narrative as complex assemblages, to formal choices that privilege operations of fragmentation, cutting, pasting, stitching; from the depiction of mismatching architectures, to the treatment of space as the envelope for pockets of film history—or as the battleground for colliding energies."

Read the rest of Álvarez López' insightful analysis of Woton's Wake at MUBI. "Watched today," she writes, "Woton’s Wake signals a strong tendency in the filmmaker’s career: his investment in collage." You can also watch the short film for free at Vimeo.


Posted by Geoff at 6:35 PM CDT
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Saturday, September 1, 2018
VIDEO 'COLLAGE' EXAMINES 'FEMME FATALE' DREAM
EDITED BY CHARLS CHAP, JUXTAPOSING LAURE'S DREAM WITH HER REALITY

Posted by Geoff at 10:13 PM CDT
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Friday, August 31, 2018
ARROW'S DE NIRO/DE PALMA 'EARLY FILMS' BOX, NOV 12
NEWLY-RESTORED FILMS, NEW INTVS - GERRIT GRAHAM, CHARLES HIRSCH, PETER MALONEY, & MORE
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/denirodepalmaarrow.jpg

Today, Arrow Video announced that it will release a Limited Edition Blu-ray box set November 12 (November 13 in the U.S.) called "De Niro & De Palma: The Early Films." The set will include The Wedding Party (new 2K restoration from the original film negative), Greetings (new 2K restoration from original film materials), and Hi, Mom! (new 2K restoration from original film materials). Our old friend Chris Dumas (author of Un-American Psycho) will have a written piece in the set's booklet, and there will be brand new interviews with Charles Hirsch, Gerrit Graham, and Peter Maloney. Also included will be a new (audio?) commentary on Greetings by critic Glenn Kenny, author of Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor. Here are the full details as posted at Screen Anarchy:
NEW UK/US/CA TITLE: De Palma & De Niro: The Early Films (Blu-ray)

Brought together for the first time – and each newly restored – these three films offer a fascinating insight into the early careers of two American cinema’s major talents.

... Release dates: 12/13 November

In 1963, Robert De Niro stepped in front of a movie camera for the first time. The resulting film, a low-budget black and white comedy called The Wedding Party, would take three years to complete, and another three years to be released, but it would also establish a hugely important working relationship for the aspiring actor. One of the filmmakers, long before he became synonymous with suspense thanks to Carrie, Dressed to Kill and other classics, was Brian De Palma. He and De Niro would team up again in the next few years for two more comedies, both with a countercultural bent.

Greetings, the first film to receive an X certificate in the United States, is a freewheeling satire focusing on a trio of twentysomething friends – a conspiracy theorist, a filmmaker, and a voyeur played by De Niro – as they try to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Hi, Mom!, originally named Son of Greetings, returns to De Niro’s voyeur, now an aspiring maker of adult films, for another humorous glimpse at late-sixties society, this time turning its attentions to experimental theatre, cinéma vérité, the African American experience, and the white middle classes.

Brought together for the first time – and each newly restored by Arrow Films especially for this release – these three films offer a fascinating insight into the early careers of two American cinema’s major talents.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• Brand new 2K restoration of The Wedding Party from the original film negative, carried out exclusively for this release by Arrow Films
• Brand new 2K restorations of Greetings and Hi, Mom! from original film materials, carried out exclusively for this release by Arrow Films
• Original uncompressed mono soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing on all three films
• Brand new commentary on Greetings by Glenn Kenny, author of Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor
• Brand new appreciation of Brian De Palma and Robert De Niro’s collaborations by critic and filmmaker Howard S. Berger
• Brand new interviews with Charles Hirsch, writer-producer of Greetings and Hi, Mom!
• Brand new interview with actor Gerrit Graham on Greetings, Hi, Mom! and his other collaborations with Brian De Palma
• Brand new interview with actor Peter Maloney on Hi, Mom!
Hi, Mom! theatrical trailer
• Newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin
• Limited collector’s edition booklet featuring new writing on the films by Brad Stevens, Chris Dumas and Christina Newland, plus an archive interview with Brian De Palma and Charles Hirsch


Posted by Geoff at 10:03 PM CDT
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Thursday, August 30, 2018
PIERS HANDLING ON IDEA OF DE PALMA FILMING AT TIFF
"I WAS AMUSED BY IT. I READ THAT AND THOUGHT, 'THAT'S BRIAN BEING OUTRAGEOUS'"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tiff2014b.jpg

2018 will be the final year that Piers Handling (pictured above from 2014 with Ivan Reitman, Norman Jewison, Al Pacino, Brian De Palma and Barry Levinson) will be in charge of the Toronto International Film Festival. As Barry Hertz writes today at The Globe And Mail, Handling has been TIFF's "director and chief executive for the past 24 years." In a sort of "exit interview" prior to next week's start of TIFF's 43rd edition, the name Harvey Weinstein ("the great unnameable") comes up several times. "The festival wasn’t obsessed with awards," Handling tells Hertz, "but it was increasingly important, and the landscape totally changed in the 90s, as studios got more comfortable using festivals, largely because of the great unnameable, Harvey Weinstein, who revolutionized the way award campaigns were run. Toronto now tees off the award season because it’s basically a free press junket for North American media."

Later in the interview, Hertz delves more into questions centered around Weinstein:
You say that Weinstein changed the game for festivals. When the allegations came out against him last year, did it cause you to re-examine TIFF’s dealings with Weinstein? How close were you with him and his company?

We were negotiating with him every year, as we did with every other single North American distributor and studio. We obviously in no way condone any of what happened, and we were the first festival to come out in support of the women who came forward. You have no sense of what’s going on in your festival behind closed doors and in hotel rooms. But we’ve tightened up and we’ve always had a sexual harassment policy in place, which we’re going to make more public. There will be a hotline to call, signage, a code of conduct. We take it very seriously.

Did the allegations shock you? There was always talk about him being a bully, certainly ...

That’s a tough question to ask because is there any behaviour that surprises me at the end of the day? You’re in the movie business. Go back to the old Hollywood studio bosses – read Marilyn Monroe’s memoirs for Christ’s sake. The casting couch syndrome goes back to theatre. Does it come as a surprise that there are people still continuing that bad behaviour? No. Does it come as a surprise that that’s the person? Yes. It’s something you wish would go away, and I have no idea if at the end of the day it will. I know the #MeToo movement is going to make great inroads, and all of us are clamping down. But it’s going to take more than one year, two years, to change the industry.

What do you think of Brian De Palma’s plans to make a Weinstein-inspired horror movie set during TIFF?

[Laughs] Well, Brian’s made a movie set in Cannes, and Harvey was here all the time … I’m not going to have to deal with the issue in my position as CEO, someone else will. Whether the film gets made or not, who knows? I was amused by it. I read that and thought, “That’s Brian being outrageous.”

Were you ever tempted to go elsewhere?

I was approached, but you’re running the most important, biggest festival in the world. Some approaches were to run institutions where I’d be an administrator, and I didn’t want to be an administrator raising money. I wanted to be the film guy who had the luxury and opportunity to run an institution with people around me who could do most of that work, exceptional fundraisers who know their business. This is one of the best film jobs in the world, and it’s allowed me to dream my own dreams.


It was announced this week that Joana Vicente will be the new executive director and co-head of TIFF, joining the previously announced co-head and artistic director Cameron Bailey. Vincente is married to Jason Kliot. As co-presidents of HDNet Films, Vincente and Kliot co-produced De Palma's Redacted in 2007. At the New York Film Festival that year, Kliot jumped on stage during an after-screening Q&A (moderated by J. Hoberman) to try to explain the legal issues involved that led to the real-life photos from Iraq in Redacted's final sequence being themselves redacted, against De Palma's wishes:
Hi, I'm one of the producers on the film, and I've been dealing with the legal issues with Brian for a very long time. I think... what has to be understood here, is that, first of all, Brian absolutely tried to indemnify Magnolia, and Mark [Cuban] and Todd [Wagner]. So did myself and the other producers of the film. We were willing to put ourselves on the line to actually get the unredacted pictures out there. But that is not legally acceptable. That doesn't mean that people can't go after Cuban and Wagner, and the people who financed the film. And ultimately, it's their decision whether or not they want to take that risk. What I think is really horrible here, and, you know, what is becoming in the press, a sort of "Cuban vs. De Palma" type of silly debate, is that, E&O insurance, since 9/11, errors and omissions insurance, has become incredibly difficult to get for American films. And the Fair Use laws in America are completely unfair. And they set it up so that we cannot use images of our own culture to tell the truth about our own culture. And that is a restriction that occurs to documentaries that are out there, as well as feature films, and this is a much larger issue.

Posted by Geoff at 11:46 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, August 30, 2018 11:55 PM CDT
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Tuesday, August 28, 2018
'AD NAUSEUM' AUTHOR TO PRESENT 'DTK' OCT 9 IN NY
MICHAEL GINGOLD BOOK LAUNCH AT ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE (YONKERS)
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/adnauseumdtk.jpg

Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers, New York will screen Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill at 7:30pm on Tuesday, October 9th. Hosting the screening will be Michael Gingold, who will also be launching his new book, Ad Nauseum, that day. The image above comes from the book (courtesy the 1984prods Instagram page), which collects over 450 newsprint ads of fright films from the 1980s, "annotated and accompanied by vintage reviews," according to the Alamo description. Gingold will present Dressed To Kill, and also sign copies of Ad Nauseum.

Posted by Geoff at 11:32 PM CDT
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Sunday, August 26, 2018
SPANISH ACTOR CRISTIAN GAMERO TALKS 'DOMINO'
COMPLICATED ACTION SCENE, SUCCESSFUL NIGHT SHOOT WITH A LOT OF EXTRAS & VERY FEW TAKES
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/cristiangamero.jpgMari Paz Díaz at Huelva Buenas Noticias posted an interview today with Madrid-based actor Cristian Gamero, who worked for a few days last year filming Brian De Palma's Domino. Since then, Gamero has been working on a Netflix/Telemundo series in Mexico (Luis Miguel: la serie), where he has been gaining some recognition. He talks a bit about Domino in the early part of today's interview:
-Cristian, why did you choose acting?
-When I was a kid, I always locked myself in the room and, for hours, imitated the actors in the movies. I didn't know why, but I enjoyed it very much. Then, when I took my first acting class, I felt it was what I wanted to dedicate my whole life to.

-What have been your first jobs as an actor?
-The first job opportunity was in the series 'The Ministry of Time'. Then I shot two films, 'Domino', the latest film by Brian De Palma, and 'Sin ti', by the Alenda brothers, with Javier Rey and María León. And, last year, I started working in Mexico on the 'Luis Miguel' series of Netflix. And very happy.

- How did it feel working with Brian De Palma?
-It was the best experience of my life. I came across a casting that I did not expect at all. It was an incredible shoot and very special days for me. The action scene I had to do was complicated. We needed a specialist. When we finished, Brian De Palma told us that he was very happy with how the scene turned out, given that he was very worried about the little time he had. It was night and there were a lot of extras, not to mention the difficulty involved. So we had to solve it with few takes. And we got it. Therefore, the director congratulated us.


Posted by Geoff at 10:29 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, August 26, 2018 10:42 AM CDT
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