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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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« August 2013 »
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De Palma interviewed
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De Palma discusses
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The Virtuoso
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No Harm In Charm

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Alfred Hitchcock Films

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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
Fan Page

The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

Astigmia Cinema

LOLA

Cultural Weekly

A Lonely Place

The Film Doctor

italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

Medfly Quarantine

Not Just Movies

Hope Lies at
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Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
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So Why This Movie?

Obsessive Movie Nerd

Nothing Is Written

Ferdy on Films

Cashiers De Cinema

This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

Every '70s Movie

Dangerous Minds

EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
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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.
All topics  «
Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
BAMcinématek
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Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
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Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
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Blue Afternoon
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Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
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Bruce Springsteen
Cannes
Capone Rising
Carlito's Way
Carrie
Casualties Of War
Catch And Kill
Cinema Studies
Clarksville 1861
Columbia University
Columbo - Shooting Script
Congo
Conversation, The
Cop-Out
Cruising
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De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
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Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
Edward R. Pressman
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Fatal Attraction
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Film Series
Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
George Litto
Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
Havana Film Fest
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Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
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Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Mod
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Murder a la Mod
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Passion
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Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
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Redacted
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Sisters
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Thursday, August 1, 2013
'PASSION' E-VIL E-MAILS TUMBLR


Read some e-vil e-mails and send in one of your own at the official eOne Passion Tumblr. Indiewire has the official explanation from eOne:

"In Passion, Christine (Rachel McAdams) is a powerful executive while Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) is her hard-working prodigy. In a dog eat dog world, competition is going to get fierce and coworkers are bound to get their toes stepped on if they aren't on top of their game. Things can get nasty real fast if something goes awry. E-vil Emails is the worst of the worst in the workplace: tales of lost tempers, backstabbing, humiliation, and more. While this kind of behavior is surely something to experience On Demand and in theatres, we've created a place where these stories can come to life. We're inviting you to submit your nastiest, most embarrassing, incriminating, and horrible work emails you've ever received or sent. Surely you have some drafts in your inbox consisting of things you wish you could really say to your boss. There must be a time where a coworker threw you under the bus and you just wish you could anonymously vent about it! Don't hesitate, send your e-vil emails our way to evilemails@passionthemovie.com."

(Thanks to Lindsey!)


Posted by Geoff at 5:32 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, August 1, 2013 5:33 PM CDT
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'PASSION' ON iTUNES & VOD STARTING TODAY
FILM COMMENT: "PRECISE IN ITS AESTHETICS, AN EXCELLENT LATE-PERIOD WORK"


Brian De Palma's Passion is available starting today on iTunes and VOD. It will hit theaters on August 30th. Film Comment's Violet Lucca writes of the film, "Precise in its aesthetics, it's an excellent late-period work that shows, without being over-bearing, how the ascent of the corporate ladder can sometimes be a descent into a deeper circle of hell." In the opening paragraph of her review, Lucca states, "I’ve never been convinced that Brian De Palma’s baroque displays of violence against women are a useful way of commenting upon misogyny—but all the same there’s something perceptive and accurate about the female vivisections in Passion. Embedded in a characteristically convoluted narrative replete with absurd twists that toy with audience expectations, said acts are no less gruesome than usual for a De Palma film, but they’re carried out by icy, corporate schemers who repurpose and manipulate feminist ideals for personal gain without batting their eyelashes."

Meanwhile, in a brief review, Noel Murray at the Los Angeles Times states, "Costars Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace start out a little stiff in Passion, and the film as a whole is so flat in its first third that it almost seems as if De Palma is baiting the audience. But then the man who made Dressed to Kill and Body Double shows up, throwing in split screens, over-the-top music cues and an ending that's hysterically nonsensical. All in all, this is De Palma's most playful, enjoyable movie since Femme Fatale."


Posted by Geoff at 12:48 AM CDT
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Tuesday, July 30, 2013
DE PALMA OPEN TO RESTORING 'SNAKE EYES' CUT
"THE WHOLE IDEA AT THE END WAS DEUS EX MACHINA"
Drew Taylor's interview with Brian De Palma was posted today at The Playlist, and Taylor took the opportunity to ask De Palma about the lost ending of Snake Eyes. "The whole idea at the end of Snake Eyes was deus ex machina," De Palma told Taylor. "We were dealing with such a corrupt world that the only way to solve the problem is to have a hurricane come through and wipe it all away. That was my initial idea. And the problem is that people don't believe in that [laughing]. They don't believe in God looking down from above and saying, 'The only way to deal with this is a flood. There's so much corruption here, let's wipe it all away and get an ark out and start from scratch.' But it didn't work in the previews so we did this other ending which I don't think is as effective. We did shoot this big wave that swept through the casino but we ultimately cut it out."

Taylor then asked De Palma if he has ever thought about restoring the original ending either back into the movie, or perhaps as a special feature. "Well it was like when they made the special version of Casualties of War, I put in two scenes that were cut out from the initial release and I was very happy to put them back in. If they came to me and said, 'We're thinking about doing a new version,' I'd be happy to do it."

For more about the original ending for Snake Eyes, see this De Palma a la Mod post from 2011.

'STAR WARS', 'HAPPY VALLEY', & AN UNTITLED PROJECT TO BE SET IN FRANCE
Taylor also asked about De Palma's role in the opening crawl for Star Wars. "Well, you know, I find about these things that even my memory is beginning to dim a little bit. What I do remember is there was a crawl and Jay Cocks and I looked at it and said to George, 'I think we can make this better, because there's so many complex things going on here. Why don't you give us a shot at re-writing this?' And we did."

Earlier in the interview, Taylor said to De Palma, "Passion is a remake of a fairly recent French movie. You've been linked to another Untouchables and a Paranormal Activity sequel in the past. How do you feel about sequels and remakes, both in terms of your own work and what you choose to do? And how close did Paranormal Activity and Untouchables get?"

De Palma replied: "Well that's like ancient history, those two projects. The Untouchables prequel has all sorts of economic and legal problems wrapped up with Paramount. And the Paranormal situation was that they reached out to me and we had some discussions about it but that was many, many years ago. Right now I'm working on the Joe Paterno/Sandusky situation [Happy Valley, which De Palma also told Taylor is "a very serious movie about the whole Paterno/Sandusky situation"] and something that's set in France. So that's what's going on now."

SHOCKYA INTV - DE PALMA ON JEROME ROBBINS BALLET, DONAGGIO, & VOD RELEASE
Shockya's Karen Benardello posted a separate interview with De Palma yesterday. Here is an excerpt featuring the last three questions:

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SY: One of the film’s most ambitious sequences is when a murder is carried out while dancers perform Jerome Robbins’ modern staging of the classic Nijinsky-Debussy ballet ‘Afternoon of a Faun,’ which is based on the Mallarmé poem about dreams and desire. What was the inspiration in showing the murder and the ballet at the same time on a split screen?

BDP: Well, that’s a ballet I particularly like. I saw the Jerome Robbins choreography on the Internet, and it’s a black and white video that had to be taken in the ’50s. I thought it was a fantastic reimaging of this particular Debussy piece, ‘Afternoon of a Faun,’ and I’ve always wanted to put it in a movie. This gave me a perfect place to do it.

In the original film, she goes to the movies and slips out. **SPOILER ALERT** In this case, I wanted to put her in a ballet, so I could place the ballet against the murder at Christine’s house. By using that big close-up, you always think that Isabelle is at the ballet, and she couldn’t possibly be at the house. **END SPOILER ALERT**

SY: ‘Passion’ marks the seventh that you’ve worked on with music composer Pino Donaggio. Since the film is a crime mystery drama, what was the process of working with Pino to create the perfect score for the film, and capture the rivalry between Christine and Isabelle?

BDP: Well, I’ve worked with Pino on seven films together. He knows how to do these long violent sequences that I create. The last cue at the end of the film, when the last nightmare takes place, no one writes music like that but him. It’s exciting and suspenseful and scary and dramatic, and it’s completely unique to his talent.

SY: ‘Passion’ is set to be released on Thursday on VOD, with a theatrical rollout set to follow on August 30. What are your thoughts on VOD-do you think it’s the new release precedent for smaller, independent films?

BDP: Well, I’ve never done it this way before, and I’m interested to see how it plays. It was the choice of the distributor, and I’ve never had a movie released first On Demand, and then theatrically in a theater. But we’re looking at films all the time on smaller screens, so that’s the way it seems to be going.

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Posted by Geoff at 7:13 PM CDT
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Posted by Geoff at 6:02 PM CDT
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Monday, July 29, 2013








Posted by Geoff at 7:35 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, July 29, 2013 9:33 PM CDT
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Sunday, July 28, 2013
TWO DIFFERENT LISTS OF DE PALMA'S BEST
ONE GOES MOSTLY PERSONAL, THE OTHER MOSTLY ADAPTATIONS
Earlier this month, Hey U Guys' Dave Roper posted his six favorite Brian De Palma films, and they were very interesting, idiosyncratic picks, as only one of them was a film that was both written and directed by De Palma, and even that pick was unusual (Raising Cain). Here are Roper's rankings:

1. Carrie
2. Mission: Impossible
3. The Untouchables
4. Casualties Of War
5. Carlito's Way
6. Raising Cain

Meanwhile, today The Chicago Reader's Drew Hunt posted his top five picks for best De Palma films (part of his "Weekly Top Five" series), and there are at least a couple that you might not expect. Here they are:

1. Blow Out
2. Sisters
3. Femme Fatale
4. Greetings
5. Snake Eyes

Both articles include great explanations of the critics' choices, so be sure to check those out, too. I have my own top five De Palma films:

1. Blow Out
2. Carrie
3. Phantom Of The Paradise
4. Femme Fatale
5. Dressed To Kill

Tell us your top five in the comments below.


Posted by Geoff at 11:23 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, July 29, 2013 5:50 PM CDT
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Friday, July 26, 2013
ARROW'S UPCOMING BLU-RAY OF 'THE FURY'
SHORT FILM TRIBUTE TO DE PALMA, STARRING WILLIAM FINLEY;
INTVS WITH RICHARD H. KLINE, FIONA LEWIS, 1978 PROMO TOUR, DUMAS LINER NOTES, MORE

As Arrow Video gets set to release its Blu-Ray of Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill on Monday (check out reviews of that release from Chris O'Neill at Zombie Hamster and Mike Sutton at The Digital Fix), we have below an early peek at the specs for Arrow's upcoming Blu-Ray of De Palma's The Fury-- and they look fairly incredible thus far (they say there are more announcements to come). The Blu-Ray will be released on October 21st, and is available for pre-order. CriterionCast has Jay Shaw's cover art, and here are the specs:

THE FURY

Special Features:

- Brand new digital transfer of the film from the original camera negative

- Original uncompressed mono 2.0 PCM audio

- Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

- Blood on the Lens: An interview with Cinematographer Richard H. Kline

- Spinning Tales: Fiona Lewis on starring in The Fury

- The Fury Revisited – An interview with Sam Irvin, intern on The Fury, author of the film’s shooting diary and then correspondent for Cinefantastique magazine

- Original archive interviews from the 1978 promotional tour, featuring Brian De Palma, producer Frank Yablans and stars Carrie Snodgress and Amy Irving

- “Double Negative” [20 mins] – A short film tribute to De Palma by Sam Irvin, starring William Finley

- Gallery of behind-the-scenes production images

- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw

- Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Chris Dumas, author of Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible, as well as a re-print of a contemporary interview with De Palma, illustrated with original stills and posters, and more to be announced!


Posted by Geoff at 8:52 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, July 27, 2013 12:06 PM CDT
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'PASSION' IN AUSTRALIA & IRELAND THIS WEEKEND
U.K. DVD COMES OUT AUGUST 12


As you can see above, tomorrow night marks the Irish premiere of Brian De Palma's Passion at Triskel Christchurch. As it stands right now, this will be the only theatrical screening of Passion in either Ireland or the U.K. prior to its release on DVD in those territories August 12. Metrodome is not releasing a Blu-Ray of Passion, but just a bare-bones DVD, which Mike Sutton from The Digital Fix tells us has a "fairly good picture quality." The Movie Waffler, in association with Metrodome Distribution, are giving away three copies of the DVD.

Meanwhile, Passion has its Australian premiere today at the Melbourne International Film Festival, where it will also screen July 29 and August 8. (It will be available on Quickflix beginning August 28.)


Posted by Geoff at 7:18 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, July 27, 2013 10:10 AM CDT
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Posted by Geoff at 12:43 AM CDT
Updated: Friday, July 26, 2013 6:53 PM CDT
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Thursday, July 25, 2013
DE PALMA ON GOING 'OVER THE TOP', ETC.
SAYS "THE FAMOUS DE PALMA CACKLE" IS USUALLY PRESENT IN HIS FILMS


Brian De Palma has been doing a ton of interviews the past few weeks as Passion gets ready for its official U.S. release next month. The first of these to surface was posted today at Gawker. "I could hardly believe how easy director Brian De Palma was to talk to when I spoke to him in advance of the release of his 29th feature film, Passion," writes Rich Juzwiak. "He was generous with his time and refeshing with his candor. He was relaxed, open to critique, and surprisingly humble for someone who's directed bonafide classics (Carrie, The Untouchables and Scarface) and cult favorites (Body Double, Dressed To Kill, Femme Fatale), alike. He was willing to discuss subjects that might make other directors bristle—the possibility of unintentional comedy in his work, or the idea that his films are 'camp.' He even came close to admitting that at 72, he's most likely peaked as a director."

One of the most interesting parts of the interview comes when Juzwiak delves into the use of the word "camp," which is sometimes used to describe the tone of a De Palma picture:

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EXCERPT FROM GAWKER INTERVIEW

In some reviews, the word “camp” has been used to describe Passion. I read a really old interview with you, in which Variety's review of Carrie was brought up and that word was also used and you kind of bristled at it. Have your thoughts on this word changed?

I've been through this for so many years, it's hard for me to really pay much attention to it. I have my followers and then I have my detractors. You know, because I have a kind of very distinctive style and a very, cinematic way of approaching things, some people like it and some people don't. And there is not much to convince one side to come over to the other. Sometimes I find that perceptions… we've heard them all before. It sounds like they’re quoting some boiler-plate Brian De Palma, just put you to sleep.

The antagonistic dynamic between women in Passion is something you've long explored on screen. It's interesting that this movie comes at a time when that dynamic is so prevalent on television, specifically on reality TV. What’s the difference between your interest in the topic and what we see on trashy TV?

Women trashing each other reality TV is not something I'm too familiar with, but maybe [Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace] are because they really worked it.

They certainly did. There’s a distinct an element of fun in this movie.

Oh yeah! Absolutely. Demonic fun.

No matter how gruesome or serious your movies are, there is usually that element. That’s intentional, right?

It's the famous De Palma cackle I've been reading about for decades.

What do you think about people laughing at unintentionally funny elements of your work? Is that insulting to you as a director?

Well, you can go over the top. You can push something too far. I do very stylized stuff and sometimes it goes too far. In Body Double when, he's embracing her and I'm doing this delirious 360 degree tracking shot around her as they're kissing, the audience started to laugh. It was just too much. I was pushing it too hard.

Do you regret doing that?

You know, Body Double is the kind of movie that people always talked to me about. It got massacred by the critics when it came out, but I can't tell you how many people come up to me to this day and talk to me about Body Double. So who knows… times change.

I think part of appreciating De Palma is appreciating your willingness to go over the top, or to push it almost to the edge where it might over the top.

You're usually criticized against the fashion of the day. But the fashion of the day changes. And works that live on somehow transcend the fashion of the day. A movie that was so attacked, I don't know why everybody remembers it so well.

END OF EXCERPT

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In the interview, De Palma says that he likes Passion a lot. He says they have a "very good script" for Happy Valley, "And now we're in the process of budgeting." When asked by Juzwiak what it is like to reunite with Al Pacino, De Palma replies, "Two old warriors going up the mountain one more time."

De Palma also discusses how he felt when watching Scarface in a theater a few years ago: "It's interesting, I was listening to an interview with Oliver Stone recently at Karlovy Vary, a festival somewhere in the Czech Republic. They showed Scarface and he was reflecting on not seeing it for many years and he had the same reflection that I did: He was amazed by the performances in Scarface. When they showed it at the 30th anniversary—who remembers, whatever anniversary it was—I hadn't looked at it in a movie theater in a long time, I thought, 'These actors are just unbelievable.' And as you've seen [your movies] through your life you have different feelings about them."

Check out the rest of this terrific interview at Gawker.


Posted by Geoff at 5:42 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, July 25, 2013 7:52 PM CDT
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