tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post117359764538134487..comments2024-03-24T13:26:57.317-07:00Comments on Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: COPPOLA AND DE PALMA: BETWIXT PASSIONSDennis Cozzaliohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01954848938471883431noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-1101968736659562172013-09-21T23:41:10.084-07:002013-09-21T23:41:10.084-07:00Cool! I like "Love Crime" very much.
Den...Cool! I like "Love Crime" very much.<br />Dennis,thanks for your sharing!stonehttp://bestrecumbentexercisebikes.us/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-15911030221132580032013-09-12T23:19:07.924-07:002013-09-12T23:19:07.924-07:00Having seen both versions now, I must say that PAS...Having seen both versions now, I must say that PASSION is good, but not great. Corneau's version is properly serious, but DePalma's is as well, lacking that wicked sense of humor that's practically his trademark. And while I'm sure Rapace relished a chance to play the victim for a change--and gain some weight--the casting is a problem: McAdams looks younger than Rapace, whereas in the Corneau, there was a 19-year difference in their ages. Still, on balance, I enjoyed it, and the camerawork and score were as supple as always. I just wish it had been more FUN.mike schlesingernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-67871486407303784692013-09-11T15:30:40.944-07:002013-09-11T15:30:40.944-07:00From Twixt’s imbd ‘trivia’ page: “Director Francis...From Twixt’s imbd ‘trivia’ page: “Director Francis Ford Coppola had originally intended the film as a type of “live editing” experiment using groundbreaking digital editing technology. Coppola intended to act as a sort of conductor during every screening of the film, lengthening or shortening scenes and even changing plot elements depending on the audience response. This caused long delays in the film's release and ultimately proved impractical, forcing Coppola to do a locked edit of the film, integrating elements from all various permutations of the story.” (The imdb gives no source for this). So, we might imagine, the goofy Bruce Dern subplot might have resolved itself more goofily in one permutation, the self-referential shticks (Val Kilmer doing Brando as Kurtz, Kilmer’s ex-wife cast as his wife, even the oblique allusions to Coppola’s personal tragedy) might have come more to the forefront in another. As it is, the story makes very little narrative sense and Coppola’s heart really seems to be in the crepuscular dream sequences, and nowhere else. Really, would 60 minutes of Val Kilmer and Elle Fanning in a <i>Traumnovelle</i> constructed according to some sort of dream logic have been less commercial than this? I wish he’d gone for it.Jeff Geehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02556922556611887235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-39885424651362215102013-09-08T06:38:47.821-07:002013-09-08T06:38:47.821-07:00I caught up with both pictures this week, and find...I caught up with both pictures this week, and find each to be a bit of a wank, albeit on the fun side. I think that I prefer Passion, but that mostly comes down to my favoring the thriller genre over horror. Oddly this passage of your takedown of the De Palma: "The problem with Passion (one of the many) is that De Palma so completely gives the second half of the movie over to an incoherent, defiantly absurd dream logic which encourages the audience to process events, visual tricks and even line readings not as deliberately disorienting but instead as unintentional howlers, fundamental lapses of narrative faith the detrimental effect of which no amount of Thank God it was only a dream' backtracking can defuse." could easily be applied to the Coppola. Of the two, De Palma at least has a handle on the material.John K.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-52671507583140825142013-09-07T12:35:18.851-07:002013-09-07T12:35:18.851-07:00Ellroy's The Black Dahlia is NOT a true crime ...Ellroy's The Black Dahlia is NOT a true crime book; it's a novel.Tom Beshearnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-19650977703840686092013-09-05T08:35:13.350-07:002013-09-05T08:35:13.350-07:00TWIXT and PASSION are two of my favorite films to ...TWIXT and PASSION are two of my favorite films to be released this year, so I'm somewhat pleased to see a kinder stance taken in regards to TWIXT, and somewhat dismayed to encounter such a brutal takedown of PASSION.<br /><br />The argument here seems to be that PASSION is an indifferently created Greatest Hits package by De Palma himself (which is the same stance that usual De Palma apologist Armond White takes in his review). Despite the fact that the last ten or fifteen minutes of the film are absolutely a Greatest Hits riff (with nods toward DRESSED TO KILL and RAISING CAIN), I think this complaint ultimately misses the mark. PASSION may use some of the familiar De Palma machinery, but there's more than just rehashing here, and De Palma's look at our surveillance culture is handled with some real wit and insight.<br /><br />No moment in PASSION is more spectacular than the image on which the entire film pivots: Isabelle sobbing in a fake rain in a car park, all the while watched by a surveillance camera. De Palma's success in creating images such as these marks him as the only successful American follower of Godard.<br /> <br />This is not to say that I think PASSION is an unequivocal masterpiece. De Palma's strategy to divide the film into clearly defined stylistic halves is an approach that backfires; as a result, the film doesn't pick up until about forty minutes in, when De Palma gives himself the freedom to create real images. But even if it lags at the start, PASSION has moments that are as sharply conceived as anything in De Palma's canon.<br /><br />Regarding the point of the split screen sequence, De Palma has clarified his intentions in interviews. First, the ballet is present to underline the eroticism of Christine waiting for her lover. Second, it's yet another De Palmian statement about the cinematic image as a form of deceit and manipulation. De Palma revisits this sequence later in the film to show us that he has used split-screen to con us, that Isabelle was never really watching the ballet.Ryan H.http://seenthatmovietoo.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-56731777265046076522013-09-05T01:11:39.171-07:002013-09-05T01:11:39.171-07:00In that behind-the-scenes documentary for Twixt, y...In that behind-the-scenes documentary for <b>Twixt</b>, you mention, Coppola loosely describes his film to the young, willowy Elle Fanning as a "Halloween party", which I found rather interesting. What can I say...I enjoyed this film for being its own little <i>thing</i>, whatever that thing may be; quirky, eccentric, idiosyncratic and, best of all, quietly curious about dreams and the night, and with a touch of amusement (on Kilmer’s part). As for Coppola’s twilight career in general, <b>Youth Without Youth</b> ranks among my Top 5 from his entire filmography. <br /><br />And don’t count Lucas out just yet. For one, he’s no longer involved with Star Wars, so that’s done. He’s currently pushing to fund (entirely from his own pocket) a museum, to be located in San Francisco’s Presidio Park, dedicated to the history American popular arts that would include comics, illustrations, animation and film design; featuring both his own work along with a myriad of other works from artists such as Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell, to name a few. It may not be a new movie but it certainly strikes me as an inspired, passion project. After that, or during, who knows? He just might zero-in on making whatever tone poem feature film that catches his fancy. He certainly has the money for it.Cannonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12886860130286869992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8795280.post-65663954186958822312013-09-04T16:06:22.856-07:002013-09-04T16:06:22.856-07:00Dennis, Brian De Palma's great subject all alo...Dennis, Brian De Palma's great subject all along has been America, not sex or violence or the complicity of the viewer in each of the above. Remove him from the engine which drives him as an artist, and you are left with all the surface stuff. None of the heart. De Palma, Parisian expatriate, is heart broken. His real artistic forebears are Emily Dickinson (Carrie, in a previous life), Edgar Allen Poe (the obsession with the double) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (guilt, shame, sex as punishment). Of his generation I think only Altman matches him in this department, but De Palma's engagement with the idea, and the disillusion, of America is more emotional than Altman's. A great artist who has been reviled for addressing exactly what is broken/duplicitous in the American Dream. I think in Passion he is trying to enter/enact a role of global citizen, and it just leaves everything he values at the door, as you point out.Anne Richardsonnoreply@blogger.com