AT THE SWAN ARCHIVES
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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
Listen to
Donaggio's full score
for Domino online
De Palma/Lehman
rapport at work
in Snakes
De Palma/Lehman
next novel is Terry
De Palma developing
Catch And Kill,
"a horror movie
based on real things
that have happened
in the news"
Supercut video
of De Palma's films
edited by Carl Rodrigue
Washington Post
review of Keesey book
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Exclusive Passion
Interviews:
Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario
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De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002
De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006
Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule
The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold
Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!
Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy
Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site
Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
To Peretz, nothing that happens in a De Palma film – no gesture, line of dialogue, bit of behaviour, camera angle or scene transition – is natural, obvious or common-sensical; on the contrary, all is ‘strange’, bizarre, in urgent need of interpretation. The word strange appears multiple times on many pages; indeed, this book could have been subtitled (with a nod to Raymond Durgnat) The strange case of Brian De Palma. Becoming Visionary launches itself from where the best De Palma criticism wisely begins: from the sense that everything in these films is grandly unreal, illogical, unbelievable, risible, grotesque, a live-action cartoon. So much for the stuffy old business of character psychologies (and believable performances), dramatic/comic themes and coherent, and fictive-world meanings! Peretz is more riveted by the falling softball that inaugurates the deepest action and logic of a story (in Carrie), or the sudden apparition of a big toe (Bataillian, bien sur – in The Fury) that is merely the first of a string of breaks or interruptions (on every level of the cinematic apparatus) which crack open the coherent shell of a diegesis and open up to something else: an Outside or Beyond that, however, is not metaphysical (that would be a kind of sin in Peretz’s argument) but somehow immanent – immanent to the filmic frame itself.
Martin states that he hesitates to call this a film book, and while he at first sounds skeptical about Peretz's "frequently stimulating, occasionally baffling" deep focus on certain moments in De Palma's films, he pleasantly admits to finding the book rather engaging. Martin explains:
It would be easy – it has already become a reflex in recent, disenchanted cinephile commentaries on the occasional writings on film by contemporary continental philosophers – to complain that Becoming Visionary has seemingly not much to do with the films it discusses, or (a worse charge) that it simply lines up some choice illustrative or allegorical moments from them in order to cue a heavy bout of philosophising. However – once I got past the defensive Cavellian moment on page 6, listing De Palma (after the great-philosopher roll call) as the ‘unlikely hero’ of this adventure – I found myself (almost despite myself) very engaged with this book; this successful diversion of a reader’s preconception is the mark of a good and interesting critical/theoretical work. (Why read something that merely confirms what I already think I know about De Palma, in the language that has already confirmed it?)
All in all, an interesting take on an interesting take.
Space Ace sent in this poster image for The Lodger a few weeks ago, noting the obvious similarities with the poster for The Black Dahlia. In the November 28 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Jesse North criticizes the "criminal" similarities on display in the Lodger poster:
2. A joker-esque trail of blood oozes from the corner of the woman's plump red mouth.
3. The titles are stylistically severed in two by an ominous red line.
4. The credits list a quartet of actors-- but Dahlia's cast is way, way sexier. (Sorry, Alfred Molina!)
MATT DAMON COMES ABOARD
This past September, it was reported that Matt Damon had come aboard to play Ness. Yesterday, it was reported in the Akron Beacon Journal that Fincher would begin scouting locations in Ohio "in the next few weeks" for his $100 million film about Ness and the torso murders. However, Entertainment Weekly's Christine Spines also reported yesterday that Hollywood is buzzing about why Paramount has yet to greenlight the Ness project, as the studio's rights to the project are due to expire on December 15th. Spines states that Casey Affleck has joined Damon in the cast, with Rachel McAdams also in negotiations. Paramount, the studio that would also distribute Brian De Palma's Untouchables prequel that has stalled over questions about who owns the rights, told Spines that Ehren Kruger's finalized screenplay had only just arrived, and that they were working on making a decision. This led Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells to check in with his own sources. Wells posted the following on his site yesterday:
A source close to team Fincher has told me that Fincher is ready to make the picture immediately but can't get an answer out of Paramount because -- ready?-- production execs prefer that Fincher make a Keanu Reeves chef comedy instead.
That "Keanu Reeves chef comedy" could very well be related to Fincher's long in development project previously klnown as Seared, which is a fictional take on CIA-trained Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. IGN's Stax reviewed the script for Fincher's film back in 2001, when Brad Pitt was set to play the lead. Late last month, Production Weekly reported that Reeves had indeed signed on to star in a film called Chef, to be directed by Fincher.
As far as thrillers go, AG is perhaps a little on the un-engaging side. While it does share many stylistic similarities to the work of Brian De Palma, Schrader proves to be less concerned with technique and aesthetics and much more fascinated by the underlying psychology of his characters. While De Palma's films tend to be over-the-top, AG is anything but the opposite; this may interest some, but it will surely bore others. One thing remains certain: few films established the 80's in the same way.