Friday, September 14, 2007

BRIAN DE PALMA'S REDACTED

This sounds like a very hard-hitting film from filmmaker Brian De Palma. Having just won best director at the Venice film festival for his new Iraq war drama, REDACTED is getting a lot of press, both intensely positive and intensely negative. Based on the true story of a group of American soldiers who raped a 15 year old Iraqi girl and then murdered her family, it appears as if De Palma has made a companion piece to his 1989 masterwork CASUALTIES OF WAR. I haven't seen REDACTED yet but am very curious. I have been a big De Palma fan for years. Even when his movies don't work 100% (think MISSION TO MARS, SNAKE EYES, THE BLACK DAHLIA, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES) there's always something interesting going on. And when he succeeds, he really turns out a great piece of filmmaking (FEMME FATALE, CARLITO'S WAY, THE UNTOUCHABLES, BODY DOUBLE, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, SCARFACE, BLOWOUT). Always a phenomenal technician (the bravura opening stedicam shot in SNAKE EYES is still one of the best of its kind), it sounds as if De Palma is up to something new with REDACTED. The film uses a variety of footage styles to tell its story and was made on a small budget of around $5 million. Produced by Mark Cuban, the HD television advocate and owner of HD Net, the film will hit theaters in November, as well as running on HD Network around the same time.

Here's a very interesting article about some of the legal problems that De Palma faced while trying to finish his film.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070913.DEPALMA13/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Movies/

2 comments:

Biff said...

I am very much looking forward to this film. Brian D is one of the best filmmakers around and, although Dahlia was dissapointing, the buzz around Redacted sounds very intriguing. It's too bad that a lot of the media-types (e.g. Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck, Neil Cavuto, etc.) have already formed negative opinions of the film and De Palma. See the movie first before giving your opinion, morons.

Actionman said...

I agree. The bull-shit right wing political commentators in today's media age are emabarrassing and disrespectful.