After his screen debut, a horror-thriller “The Tag-Along”, the Taiwanese director Cheng Wei-hao is back with the elaborate mystery crime-thriller “Who Killed Cock Robin?” Though the international world-wide title given after an old English nursery rhyme feels inspired, the original Mandarin title “Mu ji zhe” directly translated as “The Eyewitness” would give a better clue to the viewers what the film is actually about – an accident from the past surfaced by its reportedly only witness who has to solve the puzzle from other unreliable testimonies.
Who Killed Cock Robin is screening at Asian Pop-Up Cinema: Taiwan Cinema Online
The protagonist Wang, played by sleazy-charming Kaiser Chuang, is a journalist not too dissimilar from Lou Bloom, the protagonist of Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler”, using a police radio scanner to get to the scenes of crimes and accidents. After he finds a senator and a celebrity model involved in a car crash,...
Who Killed Cock Robin is screening at Asian Pop-Up Cinema: Taiwan Cinema Online
The protagonist Wang, played by sleazy-charming Kaiser Chuang, is a journalist not too dissimilar from Lou Bloom, the protagonist of Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler”, using a police radio scanner to get to the scenes of crimes and accidents. After he finds a senator and a celebrity model involved in a car crash,...
- 6/8/2020
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
by Jason Adams
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of director Brian De Palma making feature-length films -- I've never seen 1968's Murder à la Mod, which was thought lost until it popped up as an extra on Criterion's Blow Out disc in 2011, but I think it's safe to guess that there's something worth seeing in it because even at his worse (and he's had plenty of those moments) Brian De Palma always gives us something to stare at... ...
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of director Brian De Palma making feature-length films -- I've never seen 1968's Murder à la Mod, which was thought lost until it popped up as an extra on Criterion's Blow Out disc in 2011, but I think it's safe to guess that there's something worth seeing in it because even at his worse (and he's had plenty of those moments) Brian De Palma always gives us something to stare at... ...
- 4/4/2019
- by JA
- FilmExperience
No 1960s film student had more on the ball than Brian De Palma, who enlisted a smart group of collaborators to pull together his voyeuristic student-filmmaking, Alfred Hitchcock-worshiping early experimental pictures. In these three early features we can feel the director being influenced in multiple directions — do ensemble comedy and Godard-esque minimalism have a future?
De Niro & De Palma The Early Films
The Wedding Party, Greetings and
Hi, Mom!
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1966-1970 / B&W & Color / 1:37 & 1:85 widescreen / 92, 88, 87 min. / Street Date December 11, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video
Directed by Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma fans tend to love his later overdone exercises in Hitchcockian excess and voyeurism, whereas I tend to enjoy his creative student work, his hit & run, improvise-and-hope enterprises. The man certainly had the drive. By 1964 he was co-directing a film on Long Island with the money of a rich student friend. De Palma’s lopsided...
De Niro & De Palma The Early Films
The Wedding Party, Greetings and
Hi, Mom!
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1966-1970 / B&W & Color / 1:37 & 1:85 widescreen / 92, 88, 87 min. / Street Date December 11, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video
Directed by Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma fans tend to love his later overdone exercises in Hitchcockian excess and voyeurism, whereas I tend to enjoy his creative student work, his hit & run, improvise-and-hope enterprises. The man certainly had the drive. By 1964 he was co-directing a film on Long Island with the money of a rich student friend. De Palma’s lopsided...
- 12/11/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Brian De Palma unleashes 101 ferocious Hitchcock references for this great horror opus, all bolstered by Bernard Herrmann’s nerve-jangling music score. Plus a very young Margot Kidder and the impressive Jennifer Salt. It’s a fine revisit of an early Criterion disc, with some highly amusing extras — such as a surprising 1970 talk-show excerpt with Margo Kidder, Janis Joplin and Gloria Swanson.
Sisters
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 89
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date , 2018 / 39.95
Starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, William Finley, Dolph Sweet
Cinematography Gregory Sandor
Production Designer Gary Weist
Film Editor Paul Hirsch
Original Music Bernard Herrmann
Writing credits Brian De Palma and Louisa Rose
Produced by Edward R. Pressman
Directed by Brian DePalma
In 1971, New York Filmmaker Brian De Palma was just beginning to become well-known among the hipper cinema literati … like Martin Scorsese and Paul Bartel, he was already a legend in...
Sisters
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 89
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date , 2018 / 39.95
Starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, William Finley, Dolph Sweet
Cinematography Gregory Sandor
Production Designer Gary Weist
Film Editor Paul Hirsch
Original Music Bernard Herrmann
Writing credits Brian De Palma and Louisa Rose
Produced by Edward R. Pressman
Directed by Brian DePalma
In 1971, New York Filmmaker Brian De Palma was just beginning to become well-known among the hipper cinema literati … like Martin Scorsese and Paul Bartel, he was already a legend in...
- 10/30/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
What a great sales hook — a feature film with a Bernard Herrmann music score that we hadn’t heard of. And one of the writers was Martin Scorsese, before Boxcar Bertha and Mean Streets! But wait, it isn’t as simple as that. The new release is more than a little confusing. Its own ad copy first calls this Dutch production ‘obscure,’ and not four sentences later describes it as a ‘classic exploitation film.’
Obsessions
Blu-ray + DVD
Cult Epics
1969 / Color / 1:37 flat full frame (should be widescreen) / 91 min. / Bezeten – Het gat in de muur / Street Date May 9, 2017 / 34.95
Starring: Alexandra Stewart, Dieter Geissler, Tom van Beek, Donald Jones, Elisabeth Versluys, Marijke Boonstra, Vibeke, Michael Krebs, Hasmig Terveen, Fons Rademakers, Victoria Naelin, Adrian Brine, Sara Heyblom.
Cinematography: Frans Bromet, Hubertus Hagen
Film Editor: Henri Rust
Original Music: Bernard Herrmann
Written by Pim de la Parra, Wim Verstappen, Martin Scorsese
Produced by Pim de la Parra,...
Obsessions
Blu-ray + DVD
Cult Epics
1969 / Color / 1:37 flat full frame (should be widescreen) / 91 min. / Bezeten – Het gat in de muur / Street Date May 9, 2017 / 34.95
Starring: Alexandra Stewart, Dieter Geissler, Tom van Beek, Donald Jones, Elisabeth Versluys, Marijke Boonstra, Vibeke, Michael Krebs, Hasmig Terveen, Fons Rademakers, Victoria Naelin, Adrian Brine, Sara Heyblom.
Cinematography: Frans Bromet, Hubertus Hagen
Film Editor: Henri Rust
Original Music: Bernard Herrmann
Written by Pim de la Parra, Wim Verstappen, Martin Scorsese
Produced by Pim de la Parra,...
- 7/15/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Manic, messy, and experimental, The Wedding Party serves as a 90-minute preamble, both technically and thematically, to the next decade of Brian De Palma’s young career. Co-directed with two others (Wilford Leach and Cynthia Munroe), the film was shot in 1963, only to be released in 1969, after both De Palma and Robert De Niro’s stars were on the rise. Leach was a theater professor at Sarah Lawrence, De Palma and Munroe two of his students. Fellow student Jill Clayburgh stars as Josephine, the bride-to-be, while Charles Pfluger plays Charlie, the impending groom. Jennifer Salt — who would go on to star in Murder à la Mod, Hi, Mom! and Sisters — also appears as Phoebe, friend of the bride.
Not too long after Charlie docks on the upscale island where the wedding is to take place and meets Josephine’s whole, judgmental family, his two groomsmen, Cecil (De Niro) and Alistair (William Finley,...
Not too long after Charlie docks on the upscale island where the wedding is to take place and meets Josephine’s whole, judgmental family, his two groomsmen, Cecil (De Niro) and Alistair (William Finley,...
- 9/8/2016
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
“This is a pretty good land, a fact” was proclaimed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in a television broadcast addressing the Vietnam War — the leader of the free world backing up a “humble” if contentious wording of his nation’s state with an absolute, and thus already opening up the possibility of not just satire, but images as the ultimate medium for telling lies. Perhaps it was the ultimate “prologue” for a 28-year-old Brian De Palma.
With the mission statement of setting out to make something akin to Jean-Luc Godard’s ’60s work, De Palma’s third feature, Greetings, still feels surprisingly his own; his preoccupations already so dominant that it doesn’t come off as a banalization of Godard’s aesthetics and ideas the way so many other rip-offs did. Perhaps the difference is that it’s based in a very personal milieu, situated around three New York buddies...
With the mission statement of setting out to make something akin to Jean-Luc Godard’s ’60s work, De Palma’s third feature, Greetings, still feels surprisingly his own; his preoccupations already so dominant that it doesn’t come off as a banalization of Godard’s aesthetics and ideas the way so many other rip-offs did. Perhaps the difference is that it’s based in a very personal milieu, situated around three New York buddies...
- 6/29/2016
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
Debut features are often some of the most interesting cases one comes across when undertaking the deep-dive of an auteur’s filmography. Oftentimes, signature aesthetic tics are nascent, not developed, and these premiere outings are less than fully formed visions. However, there are plenty of impressive first films that present a filmmaker’s particular fixations as more or less formulated, a clear direction leading to the later canonical landmarks. Such is the case with Brian De Palma’s Murder à la Mod, which bares the thrillmeister’s genre proclivities in full view. Although Murder is technically the second film De Palma made, it was the first to get released, as 1963’s The Wedding Party wasn’t distributed until six years after its production. (It also stands as the man’s first solo feature effort.) Indeed, Murder à la Mod is less aligned with De Palma’s pre-Sisters satires than the...
- 6/20/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
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