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It was Sakamoto's Femme Fatale that had a very Bolero cue/theme. Passion, alas, featured a Donaggio cue that was a temp-track-y rip off of his own Dressed to Kill finale. I presume that if the closest the film get to an LA run is two matinees a day in Torrance, it probably won't get to Seattle, unless there's an adventurous art house programmer up there. (I'd think some LA theater like Los Feliz 3, Downtown Independent or Arena CineLounge would snatch it up, but it kinda seems like the distributor actively doesn't want anyone to see it). Worse than Passion? That's a pretty low bar to limbo under. Ah well.
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It was Sakamoto's Femme Fatale that had a very Bolero cue/theme. Passion, alas, featured a Donaggio cue that was a temp-track-y rip off of his own Dressed to Kill finale. The entire Passion score is nothing but Donaggio riffing on his earlier, better De Palma scores...kind of like the movie itself. That's probably true, but the Dressed to Kill finale rip struck me as especially conspicuous and egregious. But it's cool that they're still working together 43 years after Carrie. That's only a couple years less than Spielberg-Williams, and even Hitchcock-Herrmann lasted only 11 years (if you count Torn Curtain).
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I have survived the round trip to Torrance (I nearly didn't get back, but only because I didn't realize the Harbor Freeway bus, unlike everything else in the local Metro system, is $2.50 instead of $1.75, so I almost didn't have enough cash on me for the return trip). My first moviegoing experience at Torrance's AMC Rolling Hills 20 was A-OK. Projection was top-notch (no underpowered bulbs, a too common occurrence at contemporary digital cinemas), and the only distraction came from the man who wandered in mid-way, talked to himself occasionally, and left before the end. I suspect he may have been mentally challenged, so it would be churlish to hold his lack of theater etiquette against him. As to the movie -- given my low expectations, it was surprisingly enjoyable. Definitely in the lowest tier of De Palma movies, but unlike the flatly directed Passion, it felt like De Palma was stylistically engaged with the material, if not emotionally engaged. It was great to see De Palma use his traditional tricks -- slow motion, split-diopters, multiple-screen images (as with Mission: Impossible, motivated by surveillance cameras rather than using old-style split-screen). The storyline even had some intriguing complexity though it ultimately felt undernourished -- a pivotal character, the most compelling figure in the story, spends the Big Finale sitting in an empty cafe with another major character while the real drama goes on, a dramatically frustrating choice. Hardly a classic Donaggio score, but for sentimental reasons I'm thrilled the partnership has lasted this long, and the Bolero-esque cue for the Big Finale seemed more like an homage than an actual ripoff (unlike in Sakamoto's Femme Fatale). The film overall lacked the stylistic extravagance of Femme Fatale but was at the very least far less nonsensical. One minor but surprising choice I really liked was that all the scenes with the terrorists (in French and other non-English languages) were not subtitled, giving an interesting feeling of authenticity to an otherwise hardly documentary-like film. Overall, if you love De Palma and don't expect it to actually be good, it's definitely worth a watch. (The latecomer was not the only one to leave before the end of the film, so mine is clearly a minority opinion). One other point -- it was surprising and refreshing to see a movie with male and female leads who never show any romantic or sexual interest in each other. And given the "emotional" subplot (which I won't go into), that doesn't seem like something that would have been in a longer Director's Cut, either. Is Varese still partnered with Cutting Edge? I saw a couple mentions of Cutting Edge in the end credits, so it would be nice if someone released this on CD, if only for completeness' sake.
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Glad you made the trip to keep the streak alive!
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Glad you made the trip to keep the streak alive! Considering how little I travel (I don't think I've even been out of California since 2015), a public transit ride from Hollywood to Torrance counts as an adventure, and there's no living director whose career I've been following longer than De Palma (that syntax sounds awkward, but I'm too lazy to fix it), so it was worth the trek.
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Glad you made the trip to keep the streak alive! Considering how little I travel (I don't think I've even been out of California since 2015), a public transit ride from Hollywood to Torrance counts as an adventure, and there's no living director whose career I've been following longer than De Palma (that syntax sounds awkward, but I'm too lazy to fix it), so it was worth the trek. Thanks for the honest review....and for being a fellow lifelong DePalmite....who also found PASSION a crashing embarrassment.
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Passion is the one I may never get over. De Palma remaking a well-regarded erotic thriller and casting Rachel McAdams -- who is talented, charismatic and an absolute knock-out -- and delivering a film so flat and uninspired made me really wonder if retirement was overdue. (I felt that way about Carpenter after films like Vampires and Ghosts of Mars, but The Ward was a well-crafted film so clearly he hadn't truly lost it, just misplaced it). Seeing Carice Van Houten (star of Verhoeven's terrific Blackbook) in Domino made me think of how Blackbook and Elle have shown Verhoeven still at the top of his form. (It helps when he works with writers better than Joe Estzterhas, which is most writers).
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Posted: |
Jun 3, 2019 - 4:00 PM
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By: |
rcashill
(Member)
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I have survived the round trip to Torrance (I nearly didn't get back, but only because I didn't realize the Harbor Freeway bus, unlike everything else in the local Metro system, is $2.50 instead of $1.75, so I almost didn't have enough cash on me for the return trip). My first moviegoing experience at Torrance's AMC Rolling Hills 20 was A-OK. Projection was top-notch (no underpowered bulbs, a too common occurrence at contemporary digital cinemas), and the only distraction came from the man who wandered in mid-way, talked to himself occasionally, and left before the end. I suspect he may have been mentally challenged, so it would be churlish to hold his lack of theater etiquette against him. As to the movie -- given my low expectations, it was surprisingly enjoyable. Definitely in the lowest tier of De Palma movies, but unlike the flatly directed Passion, it felt like De Palma was stylistically engaged with the material, if not emotionally engaged. It was great to see De Palma use his traditional tricks -- slow motion, split-diopters, multiple-screen images (as with Mission: Impossible, motivated by surveillance cameras rather than using old-style split-screen). The storyline even had some intriguing complexity though it ultimately felt undernourished -- a pivotal character, the most compelling figure in the story, spends the Big Finale sitting in an empty cafe with another major character while the real drama goes on, a dramatically frustrating choice. Hardly a classic Donaggio score, but for sentimental reasons I'm thrilled the partnership has lasted this long, and the Bolero-esque cue for the Big Finale seemed more like an homage than an actual ripoff (unlike in Sakamoto's Femme Fatale). The film overall lacked the stylistic extravagance of Femme Fatale but was at the very least far less nonsensical. One minor but surprising choice I really liked was that all the scenes with the terrorists (in French and other non-English languages) were not subtitled, giving an interesting feeling of authenticity to an otherwise hardly documentary-like film. Overall, if you love De Palma and don't expect it to actually be good, it's definitely worth a watch. (The latecomer was not the only one to leave before the end of the film, so mine is clearly a minority opinion). One other point -- it was surprising and refreshing to see a movie with male and female leads who never show any romantic or sexual interest in each other. And given the "emotional" subplot (which I won't go into), that doesn't seem like something that would have been in a longer Director's Cut, either. Is Varese still partnered with Cutting Edge? I saw a couple mentions of Cutting Edge in the end credits, so it would be nice if someone released this on CD, if only for completeness' sake. The terrorist scenes are all subtitled on VOD. The film would make that much less sense without them. (It makes no sense that the female lead is "otherwise engaged" to someone she pairs rather poorly with from the little we see, but perhaps that was all junked amidst the production confusion.)
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A review I saw today mentioned how interesting one of the terrorist conversations was, which led me to guess that some versions are subtitled. But as I said, the lack of titling in the DCP I saw gave a fleeting feeling of reality to an otherwise far from realistic-feeling film. I especially liked they way they tracked down the ISIS supervillain by seeing him drive by on a Spanish highway. Great detective work! (True, they were cleverly following a tomato truck...)
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Follow the tomato If William Goldman had thought to put that line in All the President's Men, people would still be quoting it.
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I don't think it was the framing. DCPs often have multiple settings regarding things like subtitles, and with such a low-priority release as this (seriously -- two matinees a day in Torrance is about as minimal release a film can receive and still be considered "opening in LA," though since it's not a full day of screenings I'm not even sure if that counts as an "Oscar qualifying run") it wouldn't be surprising if either the distributor or the theater was sloppy about which subtitle setting was used. It was an accidental improvement but an improvement nonetheless. The cinematographer, Jose Luis Alcaine, shoots a lot of Almodovar films, and after the film it occurred to me that Almodovar-Alcaine's The Skin I Live In is a better De Palma film than any actual De Palma film of the last twenty-plus years. Worth seeing if you haven't already. (And Alberto Iglesias would have made a terrific composer for De Palma).
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Well, that’s weird. If he wasn’t involved with the recording sessions, why did they stick with Donaggio and why did Donaggio use Bolero like that??
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