Brian De Palma, the De Pollma

(genuine interest not passive-aggressive zing attempt)

xp: The incredible ones ARE the terrible ones, or at least the ridiculous ones.

like wise guys and raising cain?

i agree that de palma is colder, perhaps less "interested in people" than hitchcock... or a lot of other director's. he's no renoir. but i don't really care. i like him for different reasons. not everyone has to be a great expansive humanist.

Haven't read Kael/Kaelites on BdP recently enough to know where JR's coming from...

I find the ridiculousness in The Fury to be about 40% entertaining and 60% annoyingly empty tech moves.

I think movies like Dressed to Kill are more "meta Hitchcock" rather than just "borrowing from Hitchcock".

I didn't like The Fury.

I think movies like Dressed to Kill are more "meta Hitchcock" rather than just "borrowing from Hitchcock".

-- latebloomer, Thursday, May 15, 2008 4:36 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ya, this. they go beyond homage or allusion into their own weird category.

Phantom of the Paradise by leaps and bounds.

Blow Out! One of my favorite films. Alfred's right about Craig Sheffer (feh) in Body Double. And The Black Dahlia is the worst, not just of DePalma, but of everything ever.

like wise guys and raising cain?

It would be really hard to choose between these two for a worst poll.

Craig Sheffer

Craig Wasson! Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors!

Redacted is pretty safely in the lead as De Palma's worst.

What's that thing Orson Welles said, something about how being a director is like a child having a huge Erector set at its disposal? More than any Hollywood film this decade, Femme Fatale comes closest to conveying the excitement in that statement. So that one.

What an odd but cool career this guy has had. I saw the Fury for the first time a few months ago, and it was pretty wacked-out.

I haven't seen Sisters since I was, like, 13 years old or something, but I remember it being super-creepy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Didn't expect a Hi Mom! vote.

haha, less voters = better results

Got my copy of the Criterion version of Blow Out yesterday: will watch again tonight. Beautiful packaging.

ha yeah i picked that up yesterday too, can't wait to watch it!

i bought a vhs of obsession at a book sale for $.50 today

Not a huge fan of it, myself.

I'm trying to come up with a parallel for calling Bri underrated. Derek Jeter, maybe.

got this on Blu-Ray and am very much looking forward to see how it looks. i did watch the Baumbach/De Palma interview and it had its moments. funny for revealing bits like "what was that movie we watched the other day? how they did that thing, TERRIBLE!". guess they're pals.

this has been pretty solidly my favorite De Palma film, but it's been a while. looking forward to a re-watch.

Really, this movie is political? Uh-uh.

btw, aside from Obsession on TV, probably the first film of his I saw, on initial release.

there's a Criterion of Blow Out?! man i've gotta get that. how is it?

i think Blow Out is one of the saddest fictional films ever made by anyone; so sad and so amazing.

It's political like JFK is political...

i.e. entertaining

and with no politics besides "They're out to get me."

no, c'mon, it's nowhere as dumbass as JFK.

The Untouchables: Capone Rising (2008) (in production)

um I'm guessing this didn't happen?

and with no politics besides "They're out to get me."

You really don't want to watch the Baumbach-De Palma interview, in which DP shows that he stopped paying attention to politics in Nov. 1963.

that's unsurprising, I'm sure Dario Argento has been neglecting Italian politics too.

After weeks of Shoah and Satantango and Week End and Sans Soleil, I just wanted to turn off my mind, relax, and float downstream the other night, so I finally took Femme Fatale off the shelf. Not that I don't think De Palma's made some very smart films: Carrie, Blow Out, and Casualties of War are three all-time favourites. Anyway, I thought he'd scraped bottom with Raising Cain--where at least Lithgow was comically bizarre--but Femme Fatale is much, much worse.

I remember liking it. It's way better than Black Dahlia certainly.

All I remember is the scene in which the subtitles get big, bigger, BIGGEST.

I bought that a while back too...Not singling you out or anything, Alex--it got two votes above, and does pretty well on the IMDB rating--but what did you like about it? I found it was one big overblown set-piece after another; De Palma has always had those, but in the three films I mentioned above, he was also careful to develop the story between those sequences. And the script...there was a certain epithet that kept getting hurled at Rebecca Romijn; it was like whenever he was stuck for the next line, he'd just pencil in the same two words.

it's been a long time since I saw Femme Fatale but I liked it, and definitely am skeptical at any kind of "worse than raising cain" reading. Not really worried about thin story between the set pieces.

wouldn't put it above his '70s & '80s classics though

in general i'm down with movies where de palma is having fun - if it wasn't for the horrible casting I probably would have liked Black Dahlia fine and still enjoy the set pieces. Raising Cain always struck me as kind of self-loathing.

I don't think he can write good dialogue anymore but that's probably related to the refinement of his visual skills.

but maybe I'm underrating his FF script; I haven't seen the thing since 2002.

and I'm one of Raising Cain's defenders! It's well cast and loony in the best sense, although the ending is meh.

I doubt that there's another director for me with a wider gap between the films I love and the ones I hate, with at least three at either end.

caught a bit of "Sisters" on TV awhile ago not knowing what it was and after about 10 minutes I was thinking "oh man this HAS to be DePalma" ... feel like I should get around to seeing the whole thing, seemed like one of his more entertaining early entries.

"but what did you like about it"

Seriously can't remember it much other than the fact that Rebecca Stamos was in it and there was some crazy twist right where it turns out part of the movie was a crazy dream... it's in the middle of the pack on my DePalma rating list from a couple of years back.

"I doubt that there's another director for me with a wider gap between the films I love and the ones I hate, with at least three at either end."

Ridley Scott.

it's been a long time since I saw Femme Fatale but I liked it, and definitely am skeptical at any kind of "worse than raising cain" reading. Not really worried about thin story between the set pieces.

― da croupier, Thursday, August 23, 2012 2:31 PM (55 minutes ago)

otm. femme fatale is one of my favorite de palma flicks, and tbh, one of my favorite movies period. the story doesn't much matter to me, and it's never anywhere near so near as kill-me-now stupid as the conclusion of snake eyes. love its full commitment to his trademark themes and movies, the act of watching and seeing, duplicity, perception vs reality, sleaze and suspense for their own sake. it's almost self-parody, but it's so full-on nonstop brilliant that i don't care. nearly every shot is astounding. gaze and camera, the observed and observer, reflection and transparency constantly collapsing into one another. i can think of few other films where the simple experience of watching images unfold on screen fills me with such pleasure. play time. i don't want to sleep alone. night of the hunter.

Wow...I want to see that movie!

Stamos is even more polymorphously perverse here than in X-Men.