I haven't seen it, actually. I'll check it out!

I too wondered how they came up with that notion.

Great movie! Another reason why Aldrich also deserves mention when discussing The AV Club's list of greatest American filmmakers.

I will never forget how in his review of Annaud's film THE LOVER, Serge Daney referred to Annaud as "the first non-cinephile robot in the history of cinema," and to his style as "a series of orphan images." I remember being quite taken by QUEST FOR FIRE and THE BEAR as a kid, but have never revisited them and do not…

I would personally rank DRESSED TO KILL below BLOW-OUT, CARRIE, BODY DOUBLE, SISTERS, SCARFACE and OBSESSION, and above THE FURY and THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. Mind you, I like them all a hell of a lot. I'm certainly a De Palma fan.

He certainly spends more time being openly and visibly vile in MONA LISA. His appearances in DRESSED TO KILL go for bloody shock, but he conceals his identity, so it is difficult to tell whether you are watching "Michael Caine" slashing his victims. It's an interesting question. Films with that kind of twist can be…

Director Babenco tackled homelessness before in the brutal PIXOTE. It's not easy to watch, and it is even more heartbreaking if you also watch the documentary WHO KILLED PIXOTE? The latter is about the tragic fate of PIXOTE's lead actor, who was in fact a street kid when he was cast.

While he still made some fantastic films after RED DESERT, I keep thinking that no other Antonioni color film looks quite it. I actually watched his films largely in chronological order of their release dates, so it just might have been the impact of seeing his unique rhythms imbued with actual colors, but nothing…

Sure! You can check out the U. of Copenhagen site that describes the project:

[SPOILER] Right, she was actually alive and well! The media got her mixed up with Janet Leigh's stand-in. It's an interesting case.

A few scholars from the University of Copenhagen have a project where they investigate what they call "the precarious aesthetic," a term for the strategies that render our relationship to screen images precarious "by means of shaky cameras, out-of-focus imagery and visual noise." Something motivating that research is…

This reminds me a bit of the story of Marli Renfro, who was Janet Leigh's body double in the PSYCHO shower scene and whose own murder was a decades-long mystery. Robert Graysmith wrote a book about that one:

Jamiroquai's video for "Virtual Insanity," directed by Jonathan Glazer, is a composited single shot, but even then it was really complicated to make. And he did another single-shot video for Radiohead's "Karma Police." If Gondry is the king of the single-take video, Glazer might be the prince.

I too had to stop and marvel at how spot-on that descrption was. I once read someone else write that Nolte's voice sounded like he was gargling with nails.

Just anecdotally, judging from the publications I read and talking to critics and film historians that I know, De Palma is having a bit of a moment. Interest in his earlier films (I think on almost everything up to and including BLOW-OUT) and the esteem in which they are held seems to have grown considerably in the…

Would that movie have worked if it had found, within Asimov's framework, a well-thought-out, persuasive and effectively dramatized argument against technology? I don't think that is such a bad idea in principle - staging a kind of cinematic response to Asimov that takes its ideas seriously, but then develops a…

Oh yeah, I think THE SECRET OF NIMH is great! I just thought it was interesting that so far, filmmakers have felt quite comfortable changing O'Brien's works in important ways (Philip K. Dick seems to be another writer whose work is adapted rather freely, with filmmakers loving some of his ideas and building different…

I didn't realize that the novel Z FOR ZACHARIAH was written by the author of MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH. His novels seem to inspire filmmakers to make very significant alterations, since THE SECRET OF NIMH is quite different from its source.

A suggestion for this week's WATCH THIS: CRÍA CUERVOS… (1976), Carlos Saura's drama about a girl, the daughter of a Spanish Fascist officer, dealing with grief during her summer vacation. Criterion released it on DVD but not on Blu-Ray yet. Great, strong stuff and perhaps one of the most downbeat tales set during the…

I thought she was fantastic in the amazing TOP OF THE LAKE, which should be up there in discussions about the best work made for TV. I found it much more powerful than even TRUE DETECTIVE S1 at its best.