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De Palma a la Mod

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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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« July 2024 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


Enthusiasms...

De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
of the 7th Art

The De Palma Touch

The Swan Archives

Carrie...A Fan's Site

Phantompalooza

No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Snake Eyes
a la Mod

Mission To Mars
a la Mod

Sergio Leone
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
24 Frames Per Second

Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
Country Cinephile

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
Love, Dr. Jones!

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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De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion  «
Demolished Man
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Thursday, June 13, 2024
THE BLOG 'EVEN BETTER' TAKES DEEP DIVE, RANKS DE PALMA FILMS
DOMINO, PASSION, REDACTED ALL MAKE TOP 20, FEMME FATALE "ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE CENTURY"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/evenbettermontage0.jpg

"Last month was De PalMay," write Elliott Duea and Shawn Cook at the blog Even Better. "This month, we ranked his greatest movies." Their rankings of Brian De Palma's top 20 films feels fresh and fascinating, and the writing is insightful. Here's the intro:
Not going to say there’d be no Even Better without Brian De Palma, but he certainly helped get the ball rolling on this thing. Last spring, we embarked on our first joint project — watching as many De Palma pictures as we could in the month of May. And thus De PalMay was born. (Yeah, it doesn’t really rhyme or make any phonetic sense, but you’ll have to roll with it.) We watched a whole bunch of his movies last year, and dedicated the 2024 season of De PalMay to an even more robust slate of big blindspots and classic rewatches, in preparation for a combined ranking of his 20 best films, which you’ll find below.

More than most of his contemporaries, De Palma’s kind of a Rorschach test for moviegoers: to some, he’s the guy who directed Scarface and Mission: Impossible. Others, the voyeuristic pervert who mastered the erotic thriller. Or maybe, the (fossilized) assessment of a schlocky Hitchcock imitator. A deep dive into his work reveals all of these and more — a lot of Hitchcock, a little bit Godard, a bit more Brecht. But all told, he’s far greater than the sum of his influences, bending their approaches to become one of the greatest film stylists of all time and an expert practitioner, refracting the history of cinematic form into a language all his own. Few modern filmmakers have traversed the boundaries of the studio system and bristling outsider irreverence quite like De Palma, emerging with their techniques and identity so fully intact.


Posted by Geoff at 10:53 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, June 13, 2024 10:55 PM CDT
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Saturday, June 1, 2024
HOW TRAUMATIC MEMORIES SHAPE PEOPLE'S PRESENT BEHAVIOR
REVAN OLUKLU AT BAKLAVA BOLSHEVIK LOOKS AT BODY DOUBLE & BLOW OUT
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/bdbored45.jpg

In his monthly blog column "Reading, Watching, Listening" at Baklava Bolshevik, Revan Oluklu writes his thoughts after a recent Brian De Palma double feature:
Last night, I had the pleasure of experiencing a Brian De Palma double feature at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, showcasing Body Double and Blow Out. These films—brimming with De Palma’s signature style and thematic preoccupations—offer wildly entertaining exploration of prescient concerns that are strikingly relevant today. During the 80’s, De Palma was evidently fascinated with the elusiveness of truth, the perils of male impotence and sexual obsession, and the corruption and unresponsiveness of official institutions. From our historical vantage point, one can only conclude that the man was onto something.

Body Double screened first. As the reel started to spin, my friend and De Palma aficionado Hamish warned that I was in for something truly strange. The plot centres around Jake Scully (Craig Wasson), a struggling actor who becomes embroiled in a murder mystery after spying on his beautiful neighbour, Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton). In this way, Body Double is a vigorously campified update to Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Vertigo, bringing them into an age where cinematic voyeurism and fantasy have become so powerful as to supplant reality. De Palma’s exploration of male leering here is not mere plot device or pastiche. Instead, it forms a configuration of Hollywood filmmaking into the precise shape of the slobbery masculinity it so often serves.

I don’t believe I’ve seen a more pitiable protagonist than Jake Scully, painfully conjured by the boyish Wasson. The character’s apparent ‘soft’ masculinity, true to life, belies something significantly more perverse. Jake’s immotility, both physical and psychological, channels a pusillanimous current within male subjectivity that has increased in deviance since the film’s release. His sheer obsessive fetishism is the very source of his inability to act decisively upon the world, representing the collapse of the ‘performance’ of masculinity under the weight of its own plasticity. He likes to watch—so he may only watch.

The double feature closed with Blow Out, which follows Jack Terry (John Travolta), a movie sound tech who inadvertently records a car accident that turns out to be a political assassination of the likely incoming President. This film is more intensively concerned with the complexities of uncovering the truth, amidst a web of deception and conspiracy, something Body Double approaches rather cartoonishly. De Palma’s focus on the auditory elements—creepily crafted sounds and eerie silences—serves as metaphor for the struggle to make sense of contradictions within reality (something that is once again beginning to prominently concern filmmakers).

Jack is consumed by a need to piece together sounds and images, cross-referenced with his own memories, to reveal the truth. This quest runs up against both institutional indifference and concerted cover-ups. As liberal democracies continue pioneering authoritarian state censorship, too often claiming the freedom of the few driven by their conscience to become whistleblowers, Jack’s total inability to make objective reality count for something feels prophetic. The film’s genuinely bleak and meanspirited conclusion is among the more audacious narrative choices in a career littered with them.

Both Body Double and Blow Out feature ‘strangler’ killers, who target women with the pervasive violence that is often sensationalised—yet inadequately addressed—by the culture industry and society more broadly. The male protagonists, despite their best efforts, are pathetic failures, unable to save the victims or even themselves. In fact, their feebleness and monomania are necessary elements for De Palma’s female characters to become mortally endangered.

De Palma’s films are also deeply reflexive, providing unflinching critique of Hollywood and even independent cinema. Body Double’s Hollywood setting allows De Palma to satirise the industry’s exploitation of sex and violence, while Blow Out examines the manipulative power of film and media in shaping perceptions of reality. Both films underscore how traumatic memories shape people’s present behaviours—the sole reservoir of sympathy De Palma lends to his leading men. All of this amounts to enthralling, splenetic cinema allowing no respite from the litany of social ills which dominate us.

If you haven’t already, submit yourself to these stupefyingly stylish apogees of De Palma’s vision—a vision that has only grown in salience since the 1980s.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, June 2, 2024 12:01 AM CDT
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Friday, May 17, 2024
'IT'S ORGANIC' - CHRISTINE & KRISTINA
PASSION & HOME MOVIES
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/itsorganicpassion245.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 10:36 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, May 17, 2024 10:42 PM CDT
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Friday, March 15, 2024
ODD & AUDACIOUS
AT "WEALTH OF GEEKS", RICHARD CHACHOWSKI RANKS HIS TOP 15 BRIAN DE PALMA MOVIES
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/wealthgeekstop15.jpg

"Less well-known but still crucial among these names is the cult horror director Brian De Palma," states Richard Chachowski in his introduction to his Wealth of Geeks slideshow ranking his top 15 De Palma films. "One of the unsung heroes of ‘70s and ‘80s film, De Palma served as the closest thing New Hollywood had to Alfred Hitchcock’s successor. Through his odd and audacious movies, De Palma crafted a new kind of horror movie that merged psychological suspense with plot twists and more visceral imagery."

This is a slideshow worth viewing, as Chachowski's writing about the films throughout is much better than the average click-bait slideshow, and he does seem to be familiar with De Palma's work. Check it out.


Posted by Geoff at 7:18 PM CDT
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Friday, December 1, 2023
5-HOUR DISCUSSION OF DE PALMA'S FILMS, IN CHAPTERS
ON THE PODCAST UNDER THE STAIRS
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/puts.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
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Monday, November 13, 2023
'ALL MY BEST CLIENTS CAME FROM YOU'
"PETER, YOU'VE GOTTA GIVE ME THE TELEPHONE NUMBER OF THAT DAME FROM THE ANTIQUE SHOP"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carlitokleinfeld.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 12:19 AM CST
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Tuesday, November 7, 2023
'LIKE A JOHN FORD, JOHN HUSTON KIND OF VIBE'
FASHION HIGHLIGHTS OF FILM DIRECTORS IS THE FOCUS OF @directorfits
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/furysetbriancoffe.jpg

In the weekly Style Points column of Elle, Véronique Hyland talks to @directorfits:
“I’ve always looked to directors over actors for personal style,” says Hagop Kourounian, who operates the popular Instagram account @directorfits, on which he chronicles the fashion highlights of auteurs past and present. Some recent favorites of his include the look Justine Triet wore while accepting the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, “this bulky, double-breasted blazer, and hardly any makeup except for red lipstick. She just looked really elegant, I thought.” And at the Telluride Film Festival, “Wim Wenders had this insane goth ninja look, with this big black fedora on.” Wenders, Kourounian has found, often breaks out pieces like the Adidas Y-3 Qasa, “which is a shoe that was popular maybe eight or nine years ago. It’s kind of weird to see it back now. I’m sure he just pulled it out of a closet somewhere.”

That’s one of the exciting things about following directors’ style: They don’t necessarily opt for the most on-trend, au courant piece. They’re shopping their closets, and their archives run deep. Directors are also dressing for a physical job, so they favor function: for every Sam Raimi in his impeccable suits, you’ll see a Brian De Palma in safari wear, or Tony Scott in a fishing vest crammed with filmmaking gear. (“That vest was originally designed for [storing] bait and tackle. Now, it’s being used in a totally different work setting, but it still is purposeful,” says Kourounian. “That’s a thing of beauty, in my opinion.”)

The account has also tracked the way some directors go method with their on-set fashion, like Stanley Kubrick wearing a Vietnam-era army jacket for Full Metal Jacket. Greta Gerwig favors boiler suits, directing Barbie in the garment, including a bubblegum-pink version from Pistola. For the prom scene in Lady Bird, she wore a prom dress, just like the cast members. “She said she was trying to do a little bit of cosplay to get her actors in the spirit,” Kourounian explains. “She was one of them in that moment.”

The inspiration goes both ways, with directors’ aesthetics spilling over into their characters’ wardrobes at times. Kourounian notes that Bill Murray’s character in The Royal Tenenbaums “is dressed identically to Wes Anderson in that era, down to the John Lennon-style circular glasses,” and that even the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox features a main character in one of Anderson’s signature suits. Sofia Coppola falls into this category, too: “There’s this amazing photo of her and Rashida Jones on the set of On the Rocks: both of them are wearing the same identical green work pants, and they’re hiked up in the same way.”

The visual precision directors bring to every part of their onscreen work is often reflected in their wardrobes as well. “Directors, especially auteurs, are such creative, world-building people who have all-encompassing visions. There’s no way what they’re wearing wasn’t premeditated and meticulously thought-out.” Paul Schrader is a frequently featured fit god on the account. “It’s not like he’s just wearing something just to wear it, or because it’s popular. It’s almost like a costume designer trying to build an outfit for a character. You can understand a lot about who he is through this very buttoned-up uniform he puts on.”

Asked about the directors he thinks are slept-on style-wise, Kourounian cites De Palma, whose aesthetic feels inspired by a previous generation of filmmakers, “like a John Ford, John Huston kind of vibe. I guess even your favorite director has a favorite director.” A more obscure style icon is sexploitation auteur Doris Wishman, who sports what he calls “these very chic, Old Hollywood-ish looks.”


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
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Friday, September 15, 2023
AMAZING SENSE OF HUMOR/IRONY
GALE ANNE HURD'S HAPPY-BIRTHDAY TWEET TO BRIAN DE PALMA
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tweetgalesept11th2023.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 11:33 PM CDT
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Wednesday, September 13, 2023
WINSLOW'S VOICE ECHOES IN 'PASSION'
REMOVED FROM THE PREMISES
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/winslowremoved155.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 11:55 PM CDT
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Friday, September 8, 2023
GOLD DERBY WRITERS RANK TOP 20 DE PALMA FILMS
"BLOW OUT IS A STERLING EXAMPLE OF WHAT DE PALMA DOES BEST"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/goldderby1.jpg

For the Academy Award-based blog Gold Derby, Zach Laws and Chris Beachum have posted, "Brian De Palma movies: 20 greatest films ranked worst to best. They start with The Black Dahlia at number 20, and then all the way up to Carrie at number 1. Here's part of the intro to the Article:
Although several of his films have either competed for or won Academy Awards (including “The Untouchables,” which brought Sean Connery a Best Supporting Actor trophy in 1987), De Palma has never personally been nominated for an Oscar. He has, however, competed at the Razzies a number of times, including for a few films (“Dressed to Kill,” “Scarface,” and “Body Double”) that have since been named as some of his best (the same, sadly, can’t be said for either “The Bonfire of the Vanities” or “Mission to Mars”).

De Palma’s reputation has grown among cineastes who appreciate his visual flair, his flashes of humor, and his fascination with gore. He was recently the subject of the career-spanning documentary “De Palma” (2016), directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow.

Tour our photo gallery of De Palma’s 20 greatest films, including a few gems for which he was undoubtedly snubbed at the Oscars.


 


Posted by Geoff at 10:46 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, September 8, 2023 10:55 PM CDT
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