Comments for The De Palma Touch

Comment on Give us a hand by Julian Boyance

Julian Boyance — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 19:24:30 +0000

New clip I just put together. https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurosawa3/videos

Comment on Bleeding Hands and Naked Souls by Jerry

Jerry — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:59:43 +0000

This one sounds like a really thriller…

Comment on Contact by Gustavo

Gustavo — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:45:21 +0000

Hello! Please post more stuff in your site!

Comment on Turning the Valves of Society by Harry Georgatos

Harry Georgatos — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:21:47 +0000

This film may have a technical facination in the way it’s put together but if one is honest they have to admit it’s a failed film. This isn’t the movie De Palma wanted to make out of the book. De Palma was forced by the toxic egos at Warner Brothers to rip out 40 to 50 pages from the script 2 days before principal photography, therefore changing the tone of the film all-together. De Palma wanted to make a 3 hour film that would have done justice to the book. The film and characters come off as cartoon characters of Wall Street and don’t seem real in the slightest. Warner Brothers forced De Palma to cast a ridiculous Bruce Willis when De Palma wanted Michael Caine. If De Palma didn’t make the changes that Warner Brothers wanted he would have been removed from the film. The book was inflammotry and controversial where the film is a sanitized bland telling of the book with so many memorable chapters from the book removed. The film bombed because of the studio. The fans of the book knew what they wanted from the popular book and the studio did not let De Palma make the film the way he wanted that would have pleased the fans of the book. Warner Brothers forced De Palma to make an unforgivable ruined film that had no chance of succeeding.

Comment on Give us a hand by Joshua Sussman

Joshua Sussman — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:26:02 +0000

I was at the premiere of “From Paris With Love” and I went up to John Travolta and told him I loved him in “Blow Out”. I then told him he must work with De Palma again. He just kept telling me thanks. Thats the coolest De Palma story I have.

Comment on Manipulating Fate by Harry Georgatos

Harry Georgatos — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:16:17 +0000

Don’t get me wrong MISSION TO MARS is put together with sophisticated skill and craftsmanship. It’s an amazing looking film through it’s use of CGI and visual effects. It has complex space travel set-pieces that have a hypnotic precision. MISSION TO MARS is an ode to 1950’s optimisim but I just didn’t care for the story that much. It’s a rescue mission and in the last 15 minutes we get this embarrassingly simplistic answer in how life originated from Mars to Earth. That’s it! End of story! I’ve always thought De Palma’s style is suited to sci-fi. I’ve been waiting for De Palma to be given the chance to make THE DEMOLISHED MAN into a film since he made THE FURY. That project has been languishing in development hell for 30 years! CARLITO’S WAY and THE BLACK DAHLIA are great distintictive De Palma films. SNAKE EYES has an opening hypnotic 50 minutes of sophisticated filmmaking from three different points-of-view. De Palma is obviously influenced by Kurasawa’s RASHAMON. It is RASHAMON meets Hitchcock. The last 30 minutes the film is a major rip-off. The ending is extremely anti-climatic! Cage at the end refers to how he got out of that tunnel filled with water. There was no such ending. There was a huge CGI set-piece to finish the film. The studio removed that huge action set-piece and De Palma replaced it with that unfortunate ending. The original cut had a higher sex and violence quotient where the studio forced De Palma to delete a lot of scenes. REDACTED is powerful but no match to CASUALTIES OF WAR. It is a film more for film-festivals. With a limited budget it is very rough around the edges in the second half. I wanted REDACTED to have been as well crafted as THE HURT LOCKER to make it accessible to a wider audience. It’s a pastische of different forms and styles that doesn’t translate to a mainstream audience.

Comment on Manipulating Fate by Mickey

Mickey — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:12:08 +0000

Femme Fatale wasnt a return to form. De Palma’s form never left. Mission To Mars is a great film once you get its ode to 1950’s space optimism. Carlito’s Way is amazing, most serious De Palma writers think Black Dahlia is his best film, Redacted was powerful and Snake Eyes was an excellent thriller. I do agree that Femme Fatale pales, however, in comparison to Mulholland Drive.

Comment on Superhuman Holding on by school grants

school grants — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:25:10 +0000

Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!

Comment on Contact by Juanito Cinefilo

Juanito Cinefilo — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:56:04 +0000

Hi there, i love this site, there arent many De Palma related sites around and it’s a damn shame because Brian is one the finest american filmmakers of the last 2 decades.

one suggestion: Dont forget to write about the music in his films. I mean a great deal of amazing composers had worked with the man: Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, Pino Donaggio, Ryûichi Sakamoto, Dave Grusin, Patrick Doyle. “Musical De Palma” that should be a section of the site.

Comment on Contact by Michael

Michael — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:23:37 +0000

Great site. Best of luck.

Comment on Contact by Harry Georgatos

Harry Georgatos — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:54:25 +0000

I’ve been waiting since THE FURY for De Palma to direct THE DEMOLISHED MAN. Is that picture ever going to be made? Will De Palma ever be reconsidered for that movie? Also will there be a director’s cut of SNAKE EYES with that huge CGI set-piece the film was intended to finish when the studio deleted the scene and had De Palma shoot that lame and unfortunate ending. I read the original cut had a higher sex and violence quotient before the studio recut the film. Will the original cut of SNAKE EYES ever be released on DVD. The first 50 minutes were amazing with a horrible last 30 minutes!

Comment on Hand-made Proof on Spy TV by Harry Georgatos

Harry Georgatos — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:17:56 +0000

De Palma was given a travesty of screenwriting and made the film more interesting then it should have been. This wasn’t the story I was expecting. De Palma’s style of fillmaking would have always made a definitive IMF sting operation. The twists and turns in this movie any smart 15 year old kid would have worked them out. The premise to M1 doesn’t ring true! There is no way CIA would implicate ETHAN as the mole and assassin of his own IMF team without recovering all the dead body’s first! Unless CIA had JIM PHELPS and CLAIRE’S dead body’s on a morgue slab there is no way ETHAN would be implicated! This is the goddamn CIA not some underfunded police department. In the bonecrunching classic THE FUGITIVE when Dr RICHARD KIMBLE dived off the spillway into that torrential river US MARSHAL SAM GERARD wanted an all-out search of the river for KIMBLE’S body. When Phelps threw himself into the river the water was extremely calm and would have washed up somewhere down the river. That’s a huge question mark hanging over the credibility of the film. The set-pieces in M1 are put together with great skill by De Palma. The CIA computer heist sequence is still the most sophisticated set-piece in all three bland and boring mission films. MI is efficinetly edited, has a great soundtrack, amazing cinematography and production design but an appalling plot! I was hoping De Palma would have made a mission film that was a hybrid of films like BLOW OUT, THE FURY, SCARFACE and Oliver Stone’s paranioa of JFK, with a mindbending IMF sting operation. De Palma was a director for hire and was given a dreadful script by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner and made it more interesting then it should have been. These mission films are for an undemanding 15 year old mentality!

Comment on Manipulating Fate by Harry Georgatos

Harry Georgatos — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:00:18 +0000

FEMME FATALE is a great return to form for De Palma after the non-existant story to MISSION TO MARS with some of the most dumb dialogue one wishes to hear. FEMME FATALE starts with a delirously absurd heist sequence to orchestural music on the soundtrack. REBECCA betrays her two partners in crime and runs off with the stolen goods leaving her two partners to take the wrap. REBECCA assumes a new identity in an alternate reality. The use of the split-screen has never been used as well since De Palma’s SISTERS and BLOW OUT. The strategic use of the parisian church is a masterstroke and brilliantly photographed. Banderas photographic obsession in creating his masterpiece is the type of character obsession that can be seen in Travolta’s character in BLOW OUT. De Palma has all his visual stylistic tricks from the split-diopter to the long crane tracking tracking shots, to his use of silence and his sudden triple cuts. The devices De Palma uses to create an alternate reality a conventional from the clock always at 3.33, to the deja vu poster, to the overflowing water, to the same truck moving up and down parisian streets, to REBECCA falling from great heights and the chubby security guard from the Cannes film festival at the biker’s club. FEMME FATALE is not as complex as David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE or INLAND EMPIRE. Those Lynch films have come out of the directors dark surrealist subconscious. FEMME FATALE is still a rich film but can’t be compared to those three Lynch masterpieces! Once in the real world, outside the church everything is settled through divine intervention with the final shot of Bandera’s photographic master work completed. FEMME FATALE is more of a cult film for De Palma fans as opposed to the mainstream which probaly explains why it did not perform at the box office.