Pino Donaggio was honored with a Time Machine Award at the Sitges Film Festival earlier this month. The composer also introduced the festival screening of Brian De Palma's Passion, which marked that film's premiere in Spain. De Palma a la Mod reader Gonzalo López was there, and sent along the following notes from a Q&A Donaggio participated in the day before the Passion screening:

- De Palma considers him the ideal composer for horror / giallo - He said that De Palma's films are very mathematical and cold without his music and that's why he uses erotic and warm themes in the music. - Sometimes they use temp tracks but Donaggio is not a big fan of this technique, but sometimes it is the best way they have to comunicate since De Palma is not a musician and Donaggio doesn't speak very good English. - His favourite film composer is Bernard Herrmann. - The references in Passion's score to Dressed To Kill, Body Double and Raising Cain were intentional and agreed between Brian and him as part of the metalingüistical tone of the film. - He would have loved to score The Fury, he said that William's score is genious but it sounds too American while the film seems European. - He starts working once the movie is edited but he can work from the script. - He and De Palma were going to be reunited with Toyer but the project fell apart.

(Thanks to Gonzalo! Check out his terrific two-minute short, M is for Myth, which he has submitted to the contest to potentially be included in the ABCs of Death Part 2.)

DONAGGIO: "DE PALMA TOLD ME HIS NEXT FILM WILL ONLY USE TWO PIECES OF CLASSICAL MUSIC"El Periódico interviewed Donaggio at Sitges, where he talked a bit about almost working on De Palma's unrealized project, Toyer: "Before Passion, I had been called for another movie. Its title was Toyer and was a very good story. As [De Palma] wanted to shoot it in Venice, he thought I should do the music, but in the end the project was not made for economic reasons. Luckily, afterwards I was called on for Passion. I'm always called on when the film being prepared is one of his special blends of melancholy, suspense, and eroticism."

When it is mentioned that De Palma says Donaggio is perfect for such a combination, the composer replies, "Yeah, well , I too would have liked to compose for something like Carlito."

Regarding De Palma sharing temp tracks with him, Donaggio tells El Periódico, "He often uses music as a reference and sometimes I have to take ideas from the head. I say, 'Come on, Brian, this music is ugly.' And he says, 'Yes, you're right.'"

The interviewer suggests to Donaggio that the crisis music of Noomi Rapace's character in Passion sounds like the music at the beginning of Jean Luc Godard's Contempt, and he replies, "I do not remember, maybe. Since he is living in Paris, De Palma has become very French, and I think his style changed. Before he was looking at Hitchcock movies. Now he just looks at French cinema. The first part of Passion is a normal French film. Halfway through it becomes De Palma. He told me that the next one is political and will only use two pieces of classical music. I do not know." When the interviewer comments that that seems "strange," Donaggio continues, "Yes, quite. He always covers the film with music ... Well, we are expectant to change."

There is also a video interview with Donaggio from a few weeks ago posted on Vimeo by Twiworld Cinema. That interview, which is subtitled in English, is about a documentary that Donaggio recently scored called The Neorealism. We weren't just... Bicycle thieves.

MORE REVIEWS OF ARROW'S 'FURY' BLU-RAYCARLOTTA WILL RELEASE ITS OWN BLU-RAY NOV. 8 IN FRANCEArrow Video's Blu-Ray edition of Brian De Palma's The Fury is set for release this Monday. Meanwhile, France's Carlotta Films will release its own Blu-Ray edition on November 8th, with the same disc features as the Arrow release, and an added introduction from Samuel Blumenfeld. The covers of the Carlotta releases have been excellent, and their cover for The Fury, shown here, is no exception.

Reviews are popping up all over for the Arrow release, and the general consensus is that this is a phenomenal release, and that the image transfer is a marked improvement over Twilight's release from earlier this year. Here are some of the reviews:

Mike Sutton, The Digital Fix"De Palma dazzles us from the opening machine gun attack on Sanza and his son right through to the extraordinary ending (borrowed from Antonioni's Zabriskie Point but with a typical blackly comic twist). Shot after shot is inventive and witty so that you're entertained even when the plot is falling apart in front of you. From the whirling dervish camerawork - particularly good in the early test of Gillian's powers at school when a flash-forward is intercut to shocking effect - to the showy tracking shots and the daring process work, this is the work of an artist who has begun to trademark his own cinematic vision - De Palma is one of a handful of modern American directors whose films are immediately recognisable from a couple of shots. At his best, he is one of the greats. Take as an example the scene where Gillian and Hester (Snodgrass), Sanza's girlfriend, attempt an escape from the Institute. De Palma doesn't simply use slow motion to heighten the suspense, he uses slightly different speeds so each character seems to be existing in their own time-frame. We have the two women running, both with their own agendas, the hit men waiting, Peter Sanza wanting to capture Gillian, the government agents waiting in the car... This means that when the disaster comes it's both shocking and darkly ironic; note how Hester looks at her most joyously happy just as she is catapulted over the bonnet of a car. So much is packed into this scene and the key is that most of the impact is emotional rather than visceral, all the more so for it being largely backed by the score alone rather than sound effects."

About the Disc:"The transfer of the film is, quite simply, a triumph. It’s a full restoration from the original camera negative supervised by James White, while the Blu-Ray is authored by David Mackenzie – technical wizards both, with a passion for cinema and a reliable gut feeling for how a film should look. The result is quite beautiful and an improvement in all areas on the previous Blu-Ray release. Colours are rich and full, especially the all-important blood reds, and the detail is breathtaking. If you simply look at the opening scene then you can see the water droplets on the Sanzas’ skin, the texture of the fabric of the blue tablecloth and even, god help us, the fine hairs on Kirk Douglas’ legs. Things that I never really registered before suddenly leap out – the awful wallpaper in Amy Irving’s bedroom for example. There’s still a lot of grain in places but that’s characteristic of every version of the film that I’ve ever seen and the occasional darkness of the image is, again, integral to the original photography. Indeed, the car-chase in the dark is a revelation here, although the high level of detail does tend to make the process work stand out. Fans of the film will be pleased to know that those great set-pieces look even better in this transfer, particularly the splendidly baroque climax where the constituent parts of the exploding body are much more clearly defined than before."

On the Extras:"There are plenty of extras on the disc, most of them provided by Robert Fischer’s Fiction Factory. The most substantial is The Fury: A Location Journal, a fifty minute piece with Sam Irvin who worked as an intern on the film and wrote an account of the making for Cinefantastique magazine. He admits to having only recently seen the film again and is remarkably pleased with how well it holds up. His memory of the shooting is excellent and he has a lot of interesting anecdotes about meeting with De Palma and John Cassavetes – noting that the latter may have disliked making the film but that he gave his all to it once he signed the contract and made some significant contributions to the development of the character. I also liked his description of how Kirk Douglas would be in his trailer between scenes, doing push-ups. He also discusses the changes from the script to the finished film.

"There are two other new interviews on the disc. The first is with Fiona Lewis, entitled Spinning Tales. During this 14 minute chat she discusses her work on the film and her feelings about working with de Palma and some of her other directors including Roman Polanski. The second, Blood on the Lens, is a piece featuring DP Richard H. Kline whose work also includes Body Heat, The Boston Strangler and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He has a lot to say about the way the film was shot and discusses the scenes which combine location and stage shooting. He considers the film to be his best work and I think he’s probably right. Although pretty old now – his career goes back to Columbia B-movies in the early 1940s – he is very eloquent and has a good memory. It’s a delight to listen to his instructive and entertaining reminiscences.

"Particularly interesting is the inclusion of Sam Irvin’s short film Double Negative which he made with some actors familiar from De Palma’s work including the great William Finley and co-operation from the great man himself. It was shown in the USA alongside After Hours and gained considerable critical plaudits. It’s intended as, in Irvin’s words, a 'valentine to Brian De Palma who gave me my start in the business' and is very entertaining with many nods to De Palma’s work and some clever bits of technique."

Ken Kastenhuber, McBastard's Mausoleum"As with all of the recent Brian De Palma Blu-rays from Arrow we have a nice selection of Fiction Factory produced extras beginning with Blood on the Lens (27:00) an interview with Cinematographer Richard H. [Kline. He] speaks fondly of his only film with De Palma, remembering his experience on the set, setting-up shots, De Palma meticulous nature and commenting on the gorgeous cast, John Williams score and going into details about the specific scenes like the carnival sequence and the levitation scene.

"Up next is Spinning Tale (13:38) with star Fiona Lewis who remembers the film as being ahead of it's time and bearing the distinct De Palma stamp. She speaks briefly about her time on Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers and A Day at the Beach with Peter Sellers and not wanting to do the film after reading the script until she met with De Palma, who impressed her. She offers some great recollections of working with John Cassevetes who was cold and dry witted, working with Andrew Stevens and being battered over the course of 24 takes of being thrown to the ground repeatedly.

"The most in-depth and rounded of the features would be The Fury - A Location Journal: An interview with Sam Irvin (49:49), who at the time of the film was intern and correspondent for Cinefantastique magazine. His recounting of his De Palma fandom and time on set working with the director and interviewing the cast is fantastic and offered a lot of behind-the-scenes info ranging from stealing the estate location from the Omen II production,the make-up effects, cut scenes, and differences between the book and film. Irvin is an unabashed De Palma groupie and was totally in love with Fiona Lewis, he would go onto direct and produce quite a few films of his own including Elvira's Haunted Hills and Gods and Monsters, the entire feature is quite a love-letter to De Palma and his film.

"Also included is Sam Irvin's Brian De Palma-esque short film Double Negative (17:58) a noir crime thriller about the film industry, fun stuff."

Dr. Svet Atanasov, Blu-Ray.com•The Fury: A Location Journal - a very long and very informative interview with Sam Irvin, intern on The Fury, author of the film's shooting diary and correspondent for Cinefantastique magazine. Mr. Irwin recalls his first encounter with Brian De Palma, his trip to Chicago and interactions with the cast (and specifically his conversations with John Cassavetes), how and where key scenes from the film were shot, and the first negative reviews of The Fury. Mr. Irwin also discusses John Williams' score. The interview was directed, produced, and edited by Robert Fischer for Fiction Factory. In English, not subtitled. (50 min).

•Spinning Tales - in this video interview, actress Fiona Lewis (Dr. Susan Charles) discusses her contribution to The Fury and Brian De Palma's directing methods. Mrs. Lewis also comments on a scene she had with Kirk Douglas which was cut from the final version of The Fury. The interview was directed, produced, and edited by Robert Fischer for Fiction Factory. In English, not subtitled. (14 min).

•Blood on the Lens - in this video interview, cinematographer Richard H. Kline (King Kong, The Boston Strangler) recalls his one and only collaboration with Brian De Palma on The Fury. The interview was directed, produced, and edited by Robert Fischer for Fiction Factory. In English, not subtitled. (27 min).

•Double Negative - a short film tribute to Brian De Palma directed by Sam Irwin in 1985, starring Bill Randolph, Dori Legg, and Justin Henry. In English, not subtitled. (18 min).

The following text provided by Sam Irwin precedes the film:

"Double Negative is a valentine to Brian De Palma who gave me my start in the business. I interned for Brian on The Fury, associate produced his next film Home Movies, and assisted him on Dressed to Kill. Utilizing actors and crew I had met during my De Palma years, I wrote, produced, and directed my debut film Double Negative. Graciously, Brian let me use his editing facilities for free. The film was an official selection of the 1985 Sundance Film Fesitval and played theatrically in New York and Los Angeles. New York Times film critic Janet Maslin wrote that the film was 'an exceptionally promising film effort'".

Mondo Digital"Considering the importance of its visuals, home video has had a very uneven track record with The Fury over the years. Like Carrie, the film was composed for 1.85:1 projection but shot open matte, and the initial VHS and laserdisc editions were released unmasked at 1.33:1. That framing destroyed the focus of several significant shots, especially the spinning death of one character near the end, and the initial transfers suffered from oversaturated, orange skin tones and a generally murky, ugly look. Originally released in mono, The Fury was given something of an audio revamp for its DVD bow from Fox in 2001 for a 4.0 surround track. That largely means the sound effects and score get shoved over to the front speakers, though some ambient sound carries to the rear as well. The mix often sounds strained and artificial, but if you want the audio to fill more of speakers, it's a passable effort. That disc also includes a bombastic three minute theatrical trailer and a small gallery of photos, including a funny, oft-printed outtake shot of the final scene. Those extras were carried over the limited (3,000 unit) Blu-ray from Twilight Time in mid-2013, which includes an improved (though still imperfect) HD transfer that looks similar to a good 35mm print (but more on that in a moment). The lossless audio for both the 4.0 and mono options sounds very rich, and Williams' score is also included as an isolated track for good measure.

"That brings us to the second Blu-ray release, a UK special edition from Arrow Video that marks their fourth De Palma release after Obsession, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out. Interest was piqued immediately when the label announced their transfer was not the same one used for the Twilight Time release; instead they were commissioning a new one from the original camera negative, the first time ever for this title. Thankfully their efforts have more than paid off with a powerhouse video presentation that easily blows its predecessors to pieces, removing the veneer of grime, noise, and grit that was once thought to be a part of its basic aesthetic. The grungy skin tones of the most problematic scenes (Irving's intro scene and the fingernail scratching cross cutting in particular) look far more natural now, and the film as a whole is much easier to enjoy. Interestingly, the framing is also very different and better judged, dropping some extraneous headroom to expose more at the bottom (while adding a great deal to left and losing a marginal amount on the right), creating a slightly more centered composition for the film as a whole. Black levels are also much deeper and richer, which creates a far greater sense of depth and atmosphere...

"The English audio is presented as usual in the same 4.0 and 2.0 mono DTS-HD mixes, with the isolated track included along with optional English subtitles. The trailer pops up again, of course, but the Arrow release really excels with the rest of the extras including some invaluable video featurettes that should make De Palma fans giddy. First up, ace cinematographer Richard H. Kline takes center stage for the 27-minute 'Blood on the Lens,' talking in detail about working with De Palma and advancing the split diopter photography he first introduced in The Andromeda Strain. He also talks about jumping onto this film while he was still in production on Karel Reisz's Who'll Stop the Rain, but the main focus here is on his sole collaboration with De Palma, which ranks among the best work either of them ever achieved.

"Equally good is 'Spinning Tales' (13 mins.), a chat with Fiona Lewis (a blonde!) about her overall career including a few highlights like The Fearless Vampire Killers, A Day at the Beach, Lisztomania, and Drum. (Dr. Phibes Rises Again fans will get gypped though.) It's fascinating to hear about her career, which really should have been bigger in the '80s, and her stories about making The Fury are fascinating (especially her initial reluctance to accept the role) and, in one instance, horrifying (as she describes a deleted attempted rape scene, during which she banged her head for real over and over again). Then brace yourself for the 49-minute "The Fury: A Location Journal," with De Palma acolyte Sam Irvin (now a director in his own right starting with Guilty as Charged) walking through his experience on the set for eight days, which he recounted for Cinefantastique magazine. Among the highlights are his memories of getting Irving to publicly admit her relationship with Steven Spielberg for the first time, the special effects work of Rick Baker and William Tuttle (with a little involvement from Dick Smith), the original casting choices for the old couple eventually dropped from the script, and the filming of an additional, nasty grace note for one character's death, which was cut from the film but would have actually been more satisfying (as well as closer to the source novel). You'll also find out about a quick cameo from producer Frank Yablans and a very funny technical gaffe in the cafeteria scene, specifically behind a young Daryl Hannah. He then recounts sitting in on the film's postproduction process and getting a gig on De Palma's next film, the hilarious film school experiment Home Movies. (And for the love of God, could someone please, please release a decent home video version of that one already?) Irvin's first short film, Double Negative, is also included from what appears to be an older tape source; it's a fun little 17-minute De Palma homage (with William Finely again!) about a film student with a bit of a personality disorder."

RARE SCREENING OF 'REDACTED' IN ITALYTONIGHT AT PALAZZO STROZZIBrian De Palma's Redacted had its world premiere at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, yet never opened there theatrically. It gets a rare public screening tonight at the Palazzo Strozzi's Strozzina in Florence, where it will play for free, in its original version with Italian subtitles. The Strozzina website describes Redacted as "an ingenious, uncomfortable and difficult work, in which the director takes up the American war in Iraq not from the objective perspective of the camera, but by making the 'images' speak directly."

A COUPLE OF PODCASTS ABOUT 'CARRIE'WITH 'SISTERS' THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASUREOn the latest Sordid Cinema Podcast (#68), the podcast panel discuss Brian De Palma's Carrie and Sisters. Interestingly, during the discussion of Carrie, one panel member tells how he had always watched Carrie with friends, or a group of people, but it wasn't until he recently watched it by himself that he realized just how great the film is.

Meanwhile, the latest Cinefantastique Spotlight podcast focuses on Kimberly Peirce's new Carrie remake, comparing it to De Palma's 1976 version ("There's nothing wrong with this new version of Carrie," states the host. "save for the fact that De Palma did it better").

ARMOND WHITE ON PEIRCE'S 'CARRIE'"DE PALMA'S CINEMATIC SOPHISTICATION REPLACED BY FLAT, ORDINARY TECHNIQUE"Armond White posted his review of Kimberly Peirce's Carrie yesterday, with the subheadline, "DePalma’s classic trashed in latest remake." White starts by stating that two cultural events made it "impossible" for Peirce to direct a remake that could live up to Brian De Palma's Carrie: political correctness and TV style.

"Peirce directs this remake with a depressing, plot-oriented single-mindedness," White writes. "That’s what political correctness and TV style have led to: a version of Carrie that is reduced to a few faint lesbian teases and feminist alarum (Carrie’s fanatical, repressed mother is a cutter who injures herself) and an anti-bullying message (at an inquest following the prom massacre). This desperately commercial, simplistic interpretation of Stephen King’s story offers none of the sensuality or boldness of Pierce’s debut film, Boys Don’t Cry. Peirce’s Carrie truly is a horror story, just an occasion for snarky meanness, grisliness and mayhem–as in the revenge Carrie takes on the couple that plotted against her: the entire automobile demolition is shown methodically, no longer an impulsive act with a edge of vengeance but calculated brutality like today’s sadistic horror films.

"DePalma’s horny-visionary humor is what made Carrie so American American–a horror satire but with deep feeling and real ambivalence. The mother’s warning 'They’re all gonna laugh at you!' did double-duty. It’s a hallmark of the 70s era that a film as funny as Carrie could also be so heartbreaking. DePalma’s Carrie transcended its Grand Guignol genre, but no one’s gonna laugh or cry at this literal-minded remake. The pig-slaughter scene ('Choose one that looks like Carrie') becomes a moment of mean-girl internalized self-hatred and the bucket-of-bloodbath is repeated three we-got-the-point times. TV-obviousness striking again and again and again.

"Stefan Sharff, the great film theoretician, devoted an entire class of his 'Analysis of Film Language Course' at Columbia University to DePalma’s Carrie (at my suggestion, and my everlasting gratitude). Sad that Columbia Film School graduate Peirce remakes Carrie using such meager film language.

"It was DePalma’s satirical sensibility that gave unexpected complexity to Stephen King’s potboiler, plus DePalma’s visual wit added layers of meaning through art and pop cultural references. The Pre-Raphaelite close-ups (of Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, William Katt, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen) allowed DePalma to raise the mystical elements of the story to an esthetic richness that resolved the theme of repressed sexuality. (The mother’s lush hair suggested her innate sensuality but is made stringy and witchy here.) Depicting Carrie’s forced closet penitence, DePalma’s great cinephilia reached back to evoke Lillian Gish’s anguish in D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms and for the mother’s orgasmic death he reached forward, outdoing Luis Bunuel’s wildest iconography.

"All this is why DePalma’s Carrie ranks as one of the great American movies and its characters are cultural archetypes–despite a previous remake, a Broadway musical and sequel, DePalma’s film has had huge influence stretching from P.J. Harvey to the excellent recent Disney film Prom. DePalma’s Carrie is one of those films where everything went right but except for Chloe Grace Moretz’s sweetly vulnerable expressions, everything in Pierce’s remake goes flat."

GLEIBERMAN: 'CARRIE' MADE ME WANT TO BE A CRITIC1976 VERSION IS "ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT MOVIES OF MY LIFE"Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman posted an essay on his blog Friday with the headline, "The original Carrie is the movie that made me want to be a critic." Here is an excerpt:

"The release of Kimberly Peirce’s faithful, solid, efficient, and therefore essentially pointless remake of Carrie gives me the opportunity to look back at the 1976 original, which is still one of my favorite films — and, in fact, one of the most important movies of my life. It’s one of the two films, the other being Robert Altman’s Nashville, that made me want to be a critic. And that’s because Carrie did more than thrill, frighten, and captivate me; it sent a volt charge through my system that rewired my imagination, showing me everything that movies could be. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Carrie, at my local mall the day after Thanksgiving. I was a teenage geek who was fast on his way to becoming a movie freak (in this culture, we all need a role, and that would be mine). But I was still finding my way in cinema world, so even though the film had been out for close to a month, I knew nothing about it. I hadn’t read any reviews; I had never heard of the director, Brian De Palma, or Stephen King, whose 1974 novel the movie was based on, or any of the actors.

"The opening moments were like a hallucination — all those teenage girls horsing around in slow motion in a high school locker room, and then pale, freckled Carrie (Sissy Spacek), lost in a private reverie in the shower, caressing her skin and dropping the soap and getting her period for the first time, which makes her think that she’s dying. It’s a completely shocking, horrific sequence, yet it was set up with lushly tender and swelling orchestral music (by Pino Donaggio) that sounded like it came out of the most sentimental Hollywood love story ever made. It was as if Carrie was trying to freak you out and, at the same time, make you swoon over how freaked out you were getting. The whole movie was like that. It was the strangest, most exhilarating thing: a googly-eyed romantic teen-dream-turned-nightmare. Watching Carrie, I felt like I was being lured right into the action on screen, and that feeling never let go. As memorable as the whole experience was, though, if I want to be totally true to that first viewing, I can hardly overstate the importance of the film’s great shocker of a trick ending. I didn’t just jump, I stood up in my seat with terror and felt a tremor go through my soul.

"Emerging from the theater, I knew how powerfully Carrie had affected me, but I had no real idea why. Even the ending carried a tingle of mystery: I’d been scared by other big shock moments in horror films — why did the fear factor of this one cut so deeply? From that first viewing, the movie possessed me, and somehow, I had to understand what it was about Carrie that had gotten into my system. And so I thought about the movie. All the time. And went back to see it. Again and again. And even tried to write about it (badly). I was trying to figure out why the movie possessed me, and in doing so, without knowing it, I was becoming a critic.

"Today, something that strikes me about Carrie is that the movie has carved out a place in film history without ever really getting full credit for being the pop masterpiece it is. For many people, it’s a beloved film, yet when you read about it, Carrie gets described with words like 'cult classic' or 'creepy horror movie' that somehow reduce it. And I don’t think I’m just speaking out of my own personal nostalgia for what a seismic movie it was for me. The singularity of Carrie, and the reason that film history has never completely known how to classify or to judge it, is that the film is so many different things at once."

Go to Entertainment Weekly to read the rest of Gleiberman's magnificent post, including the part where he states, "To me, movies like Blow Out, Dressed to Kill, and Casualties of War are gliding-camera pastiches, yet none of the director’s fabled serpentine tracking shots ever matched the giddy power of the simple slow zoom he uses in the establishing shot at the prom in Carrie. Effortlessly, he fuses the film’s tones — high school cheese, YA empathy, pop-gothic Tennessee Williams, the zap! of telekinesis — and the deliriously extended slow-motion set piece of Carrie walking on stage to be crowned prom queen, that bucket of pig’s blood poised above her, may be the single greatest suspense sequence of the post-studio system era. In Carrie, it’s because De Palma used his fantastic technique, in every shot, to serve the movie’s emotional core that his virtuosity, for once, instead of being all about itself, really did attain a level comparable to that of Alfred Hitchcock."

Capone's review at Ain't It Cool News"This time around, director Kimberly Peirce (BOYS DON'T CRY, STOP LOSS) is at the helm of what turns out to be a shockingly and decidedly run-of-the-mill, paint-by-number remake with very little updating and even less insight in this story that seems ripe for a fresh look."

MORE 'CARRIE' REMAKE REVIEWSMATT ZOLLER SEITZ, WALTER CHAW POSITIVE ON NEW FILMWalter Chaw, Film Freak Central"If you were to boil down Brian De Palma's work, at least his earlier work, into a few ideas, you'd land on the way he took Hitchcock's subterranean perversions and made them perversion perversions, transforming pieces and suggestions into themes and declarations. Looking at De Palma's Carrie today, what's there is a clear attempt--often successful--to elevate B-movie tropes to the status high art, or high pulp: What Godard did to gangster films, De Palma did to Hitchcock, turning the already formal into formalism. When De Palma was at his best, his movies evoked in daylight what Hitchcock inspired in shadow. Of its many technical innovations, his Carrie, an adaptation of Stephen King's not-very-good but vibe-y debut novel, was aided immeasurably by pitch-perfect casting: Sissy Spacek, P.J. Soles, John Travolta, Amy Irving, and Nancy Allen. Hip then, it's hip still--and sexy as hell, as befitting a story that's ultimately about a girl's sexual awakening and, let's face it, really bangin' first orgasm. On prom night, no less. What could be more American?

"Kimberly Peirce's Carrie isn't sexually perverse like De Palma's. Its sexiness is entirely the dewy kind--the difference between porn and couple's porn, if you will. Both will get you off, but there's less guilt attached to the latter. I hated the idea of Peirce for this remake--I thought Boys Don't Cry was didactic and kitschy, on the nose if not nearly as on the nose as getting her to do another abused-teenager movie. Except that Peirce's Carrie does something De Palma's doesn't do nearly so well: it describes Carrie's headspace, so that her telekinesis becomes expressionistic. Her power is an extension of her as she explores it late at night, alone in her bedroom--a way that she becomes, as she calls it, 'a whole person,' at last. Peirce even manages to understand Carrie's chief tormentor Kris (Portia Doubleday), demonstrating a high level of empathy that allows this new adaptation to be something more than a man's version of a girl's revenge movie. Take how the two pictures open: De Palma's with a volleyball game transitioning into a soft-porn push-in to a girl's locker room (he'd do this same Psycho thing, with more fetish if you can imagine (and you don't have to), in Dressed to Kill). It's naughty, let's face it. Peirce's volleyball game is played in a pool, and the subsequent locker-room explosion allows a wider tableau for the girls' cruel reaction to Carrie's first period and, with it, the possibility for balance--and for multiple identifications, including feminine body horror...

"Where Margaret was essentially an evil, evangelical witch in De Palma's film, she's a more dangerous sort of nut in Peirce's: a fundamentalist so askew that she gives birth alone while praying for death. Carrie 2013 resists the instinct to vilify, to reach for loud, screeching hysteria as a feminine-madness catch-all. Consider the same moment in both films where Margaret declares to a polite neighbour that 'we live in godless times,' how in the De Palma it's as Margaret is proselytizing and asking for a donation, while in this one she's humiliated, surreptitiously cutting herself. If it's still hysteria, it's of the more introverted, self-directed kind--the maelstrom is inside this Margaret, and she's put it into Carrie. Margaret is no longer interloper but shut-in, a quieter infection. Or how about the poetry-class sequence that inverts the writer of the verse, making Tommy the critic, the white knight of a slightly different sort who recognizes that the teacher, more than a harmless blowhard, is a frustrated old man teaching a classroom full of nubile girls, right on the verge. At the centre, though, is Moretz, who, along with Elle Fanning and Saoirse Ronan, offers a bright, shining hope for the future--and the present, as it happens. She's heartbreaking in this role. Her fear, her nervousness, her embarrassment, and that moment where Tommy asks her to the prom (the second time) and all the world...floats in happy sympathy. There's more purpose in this Carrie; like the best of King's writing, as it happens, it's not obvious that the whole thing isn't a metaphor for trauma. It's not a B-movie at all--not prurient, it's deadly serious, and when Carrie erupts, as Carrie must, it's archetype, not circus. The irony of it is that De Palma's film shares the view of Carrie as a freak; Peirce's sees her as a little girl lost, eaten alive by the burden of fanaticism, class, beauty, biology. The De Palma is about Sue and Kris, the Peirce is about Carrie herself--and therein lies all the difference."

Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com"Where Brian De Palma's 1976 version of Stephen King's novel was a teenage girl's nightmare as seen through the eyes of a straight male voyeur, this one looks through a wider lens, and strikes more universal notes of sympathy. (Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers ahead.)...

"For all the psychological realism of Carrie and Margaret's relationship, however, this remake has a comic book feeling. Peirce has turned Carrie into dark, sick take on a superhero origin story, complete with wide-angle lenses and God's-eye-view shots and poetic sound effects (when Margaret is near, Carrie 'hears' her before she sees her, thanks to a high-pitched whine that's like a dog whistle). Whole sequences have a Clark-Kent-in-Smallville feeling. What would have become of Superman had he been a girl raised by an insane single parent? He'd might have endured being called a freak for years until he finally snapped and roasted the football team...

"Perhaps because this Carrie is helmed by one of the only prominent female directors in Hollywood, Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), it appreciates Carrie and her mother and the heroine's various female adversaries as women, and portrays their brand of cruelty as specifically female. For example, where the girls in the 1976 Carrie tormented the menstruating heroine in the shower in a wolf-pack manner, as teenaged boys might attack another teenage boy, the shower attack in this film is a joke that originates in embarrassment and nausea, then snowballs. (Peirce doesn't show nudity; this time it's all about the girls' emotions.)

"Peirce and screenwriters Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa give the whole film this kind of heartfelt, inside-out re-imagining. Class differences play a part in Carrie's mistreatment; a few early shots establish that Carrie and Margaret live far from the obviously privileged high school, in a modest neighborhood. And as the tale nears its inevitable climax, the tone becomes more despairing. Nothing can stop what's coming.

"It's on this last point, though, that Carrie falters most conspicuously—and ironically, its failure is a product of its decision to depart from the novel and the first film, but without going far enough. Peirce's version sometimes makes Chris seem a bit of a victim, too, by implying that she was spoiled rotten by her yuppie dad—played by a perfectly cast Hart Bochner, a.k.a. Ellis from Die Hard. This is a good impulse, but the movie doesn't properly follow through on it. The script has Chris be exaggeratedly 'evil' when it serves the plot, but life-sized elsewhere. This version strands the supporting characters between realism and archetype, an awkward spot.

"Still, there's a lot to like in this remake. It's sincerely interested in exploring the pain that its characters suffer and inflict. And when Carrie unleashes the full brunt of her powers, it's a magnificent and appalling spectacle—the teenage sci-fi rampage that the 'X-Men' films never dared show us.

"Not for nothing does Carrie check out library books on magic as well as paranormal power: when she becomes a gore-drenched avenging angel, her gestures become more ritualized, almost dancer-like—as if she's not just committing gruesome murders, but in some sense 'presenting' them, as a performer might. The movie links Carrie's burgeoning power to creativity, watching her develop her gifts until, at the end, she is assured enough to preside over a combination Grand Guignol play and art exhibit. The prom is a masterpiece of mixed-media slaughter, Hellraiser by way of Columbine. Each killing is a discrete work employing different media and techniques: death by psychic assault, by trampling, by electrocution, by fire, by face-through-glass. As Walter Chaw writes, 'Peirce's Carrie does something De Palma's doesn't do nearly so well: it describes Carrie's headspace, so that her telekinesis becomes expressionistic.'

"Curiously, for such a secular movie, this Carrie lends Biblical significance to every blood drop spilled. Original sin is never far from its mind. Margaret's original sin was having sex with Carrie's father, an event she describes as a violation even though it was just a case of husband and wife doing what husbands and wives do. The community's original sin was attacking Carrie in the shower, humiliating her for manifesting signs of Eve's 'curse.' After that, they were thrown out of the garden of their innocence, or ignorance; each counterplot or attempt to make amends is a doomed attempt to return to the garden. Carrie's original sin was being born. She is born again at the prom, kills the woman who gave birth to her, and dies that very night.

"It’s possibly the most heartbreaking line in movie history, a wail of despair from a bullied, persecuted, utterly friendless soul who has just brought the walls of Jericho tumbling down. It’s the cry of Carrie White – and by extension every outcast who ever felt the sting of casual cruelty. In her, Stephen King created the ultimate victim, then handed her a hydrogen bomb and pointed it at the sneering cretins of the world. Carrie turned him into a household name, but it took Brian De Palma (with a lot of help from Sissy Spacek) to really, truly capture what it was all about. The constant terror. The powerless wards against blows that could fall at any time. The tearful hand held out for someone – anyone – to show a little kindness and the smoldering fury left behind when no one does.

"It was perfect, as perfect a horror film as you could find, which is part of why this new version fails almost as soon as it leaves the gate. It couldn’t possibly match its predecessor, or even come close. But with a little more insight, it might have at least found few new things to say about the story. You can see them hovering around the edges, with helicoptering parents and humiliations shared with the world on YouTube. But director Kimberly Peirce can’t find anywhere to go with her new concepts, and clings to the old ones too closely to break out of De Palma shadow. Too many scenes stick to close to his. Too many conversations are repeated too closely. And while Peirce clearly understands the material, she can’t find the painful sympathy necessary to convey its message.

"It really comes down to who the creators identify with. King himself always claimed he was Susan Snell (played here by Gabriella Wilde): the well-meaning bystander who regrets her part in Carrie’s pain and tries to make amends. Peirce gravitates towards Coach Desjardin (Judy Greer), another sympathetic figure who works to protect Carrie from her peers to no avail. They both see the story one step removed. Only De Palma latched on to Carrie herself, displaying her tearful existence for all of us to see and daring us to look aside...

"Peirce loses her nerve with distressing regularity, pulling her punches when she should be going for the throat. This is an R-rated film and yet it feels very PG-13; God forbid they do something daring at the cost of a few teenage dollars.

"Take, for example, Carrie’s chief tormentor Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday), she of the infamous bucket of pig’s blood. Here, she hesitates in her barbs from time to time, goaded by her boyfriend Billy (Alex Russell) rather than being the ultimate mean girl she’s really supposed to be. Peirce is going for well-roundedness, but it ends up letting Chris off the hook a little bit. Bullies never dwell on their bullying; they just cast their victims aside and move on to whatever pain their own life holds. Peirce misses that here, and it proves a fatal decision. Carrie suffers from a number of similar issues, from the pro forma recreation of De Palma’s iconic images to a climax that loses the apocalyptic tragedy it desperately needs."

David Edelstein, Vulture"Apart from an early scene with a cartoonish high school principal, Brian De Palma’s 1976 Carrie is well-nigh perfect — a lyric, Expressionistic horror classic with the greatest female performance (by Sissy Spacek) in genre history and a supporting turn (by Piper Laurie) that’s not too far behind it. (I could go on and on about Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, darling P.J. Soles, John Travolta, etc.) Above all, it’s a movie that takes no prisoners. The well-meaning die as gruesomely as the malevolent. The one character left alive is probably too damaged to recover. As much of a hot dog as De Palma is (few directors are as gleefully virtuosic), he rarely takes off into a solipsistic sphere: Every trick both delights him and heightens his characters’ emotions.

"I won’t pretend I wasn’t incensed when I heard about a Carrie remake in the works, but I went in with an open mind and heart. The director, Kimberly Peirce, could in theory provide the one thing De Palma couldn’t — a female gaze — and the ideas she explored in Boys Don’t Cry about gender and female self-image made it likely she’d at least bring something new to the party. Based on the finished movie, though, I’m wondering if she had any say in what finally hit the screen.

"The new Carrie isn’t atrocious — just flat and uninspired and compromised by the kind of mindless teen-movie 'humanism' that De Palma so punkishly spat on. (It’s atrocious by comparison.)"

EARLY REVIEWS OF 'CARRIE' REMAKEMOST SEEM TO AGREE THAT REMAKE IS OVERSHADOWED BY ORIGINALSome early reviews of Kimberly Peirce's new adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie agree that the new version cannot seem to get out from under the shadow of Brian De Palma's 1976 film (although one critic feels the new version is better than De Palma's). Here are the links and some quotes:

Rafer Guzman, Newsday"For the most part, the new movie merely imitates the old one, sometimes shot for shot and word for word. It makes superficial updates -- modern hair, modern clothes, a viral video of Carrie being humiliated in the gymnasium shower -- without adding any original spin or thematic embellishment. And aside from Judy Greer as Carrie's well-meaning gym teacher, the movie's supporting cast is unmemorable. Portia Doubleday and Alex Russell are no replacements for Nancy Allen and John Travolta as Carrie's main tormentors.

"With nothing new to offer, Carrie is reduced to attempting the impossible: repeating De Palma's long, tense buildup to Carrie's prom, one of the most stylishly executed horror-film sequences in history. Peirce doesn't dare rip off De Palma's famous split screen -- no director would -- so the disappointment is inevitable.

"Peirce has already made a better version of this story anyway, her phenomenal 1999 film Boys Don't Cry, about a small-town transgender girl who learns just how far a herd mentality can go. It's far more effective, and far more horrifying, than Carrie."

James Verniere, Boston Herald"As talented as they are, 16-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore do not look a bit alike and have their hands full trying to make us forget the original actors. Epic fail...

"This present-day adaptation, scripted by Glee scribe Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, starts out over-the-top and is hysterical in more ways than one.

"The book and original film’s 1970s setting, which as usual for King seemed more like the 1950s of his youth, lent itself better to some of the subject matter. It’s hard to believe that Carrie could be so naive in the age of the Internet, viral videos and Twitter. In fact, this Carrie Googles 'telekinesis,' and the video of her writhing on the shower floor as her classmates chant, 'Plug it up' is posted online.

"Peirce ups the ante on the carnage and rewinds the bucket scene so many times she induces howls of laughter instead of terror. Still, King’s keen sense for the horror lurking just beneath our cherished ceremonies peeks through in the prom scenes.

"In the role of the sympathetic gym teacher played by Betty Buckley in the original, Judy Greer tries. But not even she can help this poor movie."

Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury News"That the opening scene is by far the most chilling in the movie is both the strength of this remake and its key weakness. Peirce shines such a harsh spotlight on the twisted love between the religious zealot mother, Margaret White (played with heart-pounding menace by Julianne Moore), and her misfit daughter Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) that the rest of Carrie's connections to the world seem like an afterthought. Home is the real horror here. Moore's captivating performance steals some of the thunder because very little else in the picture can rival it.

"While Peirce pays homage to Brian De Palma's 1976 original by echoing many of the iconic film's seminal moments, she diminishes the bite of the bullying that Carrie endures from her peers. That's a pity because it robs this bloody revenge tragedy of its visceral impact...

"For all its cheesy '70s vibe, De Palma's movie far better captured the primal, almost Lord of the Flies nature of the high school experience, the sheer terror of being a social outcast. That's what really gave the Carrie myth such staying power in pop culture.

"It doesn't help matters that Moretz has an undeniable spunkiness, a quality showcased in Kick-Ass, so it's hard to shake the feeling that she could hold her own with or without telekinesis. For the record, Peirce also pumps up the blood-splattering pyrotechnics of Carrie's powers. Once she sheds her meek facade, this is a Carrie who can split the earth beneath her with a stomp of her foot. She always seems more in control of her sorcery and far more formidable than the fragile and delicate Sissy Spacek."

Matt Pais, RedEye Chicago"Not just the best horror in ages but a remarkably astute teen drama, Carrie will make those who have seen Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel see the story with entirely different eyes. That tone-deaf, unjustly beloved original film is weak sauce. The new, modernized interpretation is hot lava."

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter"While 1970s horror is a long way from 1950s romantic comedy, Sissy Spacek’s performance in Brian De Palma’s Carrie left no less indelible an imprint on the role than, say, Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina or Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday. And as the folks behind the lifeless '90s remakes of those films learned the hard way, messing with a classic -- particularly one with such an iconic lead -- is a losing proposition. So it’s surprising that Kimberly Peirce’s respectful Carrie overhaul is as entertaining as it is, even if the prom-night bloodbath never escapes the long shadow of its predecessor.

"Pauline Kael summed up the singular pleasures of the De Palma film, calling it 'a terrifyingly lyrical thriller.' She went on to describe its 'perverse mixture of comedy and horror and tension, like that of Hitchcock or Polanski, but with a lulling sensuousness.' The lyricism and playfulness are both in shorter supply here. But while the remake is at times too self-serious, it’s never boring or dumb, which is often the case with horror updates...

The pairing of a director new to the genre and the promise of a return to King’s source novel made it natural to expect a fresh stamp on the material. However, the remake is less faithful to the book than was the 2002 television version, with Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson. In fact it frequently seems like a slavish homage to De Palma’s film, recycling much of the same dialogue. Both adaptations share a screenwriter, Lawrence D. Cohen, working here with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa."

Screen Daily"Stepping into the blood-soaked prom dress made famous by Sissy Spacek in the 1976 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name, Chloë Grace Moretz toplines director Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie, about a shy outcast who ends up unleashing telekinetic terror on her classmates. Passable only as a piece of recast entertainment for those who’ve never heard of the original, much less seen it, Carrie doesn’t plumb the depths of adolescent isolation its premise obliges. There doesn’t seem to be a pronounced rationale, beyond commercial reward, for this relatively undistinguished remake...

"In a frustrating and somewhat confusing step backward, Peirce, in only her second feature since 1999’s striking Boys Don’t Cry, too often opts for conventional, traded close-ups, undercutting the potential tension of longer takes and wider compositions. She doesn’t seem particularly moved by or connected to the material, and while the editing isn’t what one would call flashy or over-caffeinated, it does frequently seem stilted.

"Given the verisimilitude a number of recent high school movies have achieved, Carrie feels overly posed, and artificial. Carrie’s life of privation provides some dramatic tension, but the original film was also a powerful metaphor for the searing pain of bullying and adolescent ostracisation on the whole. This adaptation doesn’t quite summon those feelings.

"At the core of Carrie’s emotional disconnection is Moretz’s performance. Spacek’s Oscar-nominated turn in the 1976 film casts a long enough shadow that any young actress would have some trouble escaping it. Spacek tapped into the title character’s pitiable qualities with such a consuming focus that it was at times painful to watch.

"Moretz, still just 16 years old (almost a decade younger than Spacek was at the time of filming), is a quite talented young actress, but lacks, at least here, the ability to convey an emotional hopelessness resulting from years of ground down self-esteem. Her Carrie is all over-articulated social shyness and body shame. The lack of any interior monologue results in a less honest blossoming of Carrie’s ever-fragile confidence and ergo a less cathartic finale — no matter the level of technical achievement brought to bear in Peirce’s bloody comeuppance for the bullies, which is the film’s indisputable high point."

Manohla Dargis, New York Times"As in the first film, blood runs through Carrie, first as a symbolically suggestive trickle — initially as an unholy brew of menstruation and the blood of Christ — and then in great, gushing waves as the body count mounts. Ms. Peirce plays up the story’s religious themes and Carrie’s burgeoning power as she discovers her telekinetic gifts, even as the dread of the female body that deepens Mr. De Palma’s version somehow goes missing. This Carrie has its share of terrors, certainly, partly because of the seeming timelessness of its deeper, more resonant themes. Although now, when Carrie — one of the more memorable screen victims of bullying — locks the doors of the school gym and does her bloody worst, it’s a good guess that it won’t be the movie that you will be thinking about, but recent headlines."

"And, of course, there's that tricky telekinesis business: As Carrie begins to find her true self, she realizes she has the power to move objects just by willing them - squinching up her eyes and waving her arms. At first, the cracked mirrors and exploding water coolers are a spontaneous manifestation of her rage, but with a little training and focus, and a reason to seek vengeance, well, let the cutlery and electrical cables, cars, and corpses fly!

"Note to Hollywood: Now, will somebody please let Peirce make the movies she really wants to make?"

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune"Those with little or no personal relationship to the 1976 Brian De Palma-directed Carrie will find themselves in a different situation than I am on this one. I admit it. If I didn't love Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie quite so madly in that movie — a film representing drive-in schlock elevated to Himalayan heights, with two of the great 1970s performances leading the way — I might've fallen further into the world of the remake. With all movies, really, we bring the baggage we bring.

"Some things are different, others are the same. Peirce delivers none of the voyeuristic nudity of the '76 edition. Even with the various killlings in the prom-night climax, when Carrie, slathered in pig's blood poured by her enemies, takes revenge, Peirce stages and shoots the action tastefully by R-rated horror standards. Even this remake's arresting prologue, depicting the bloody birth of Carrie into the conflicted, scissors-wielding hands of her unstable mother, has an air of restraint.

"The director, in other words, isn't an showboater or a sadist or a combination of the two, the way De Palma was behind the camera in the first Carrie movie, or the way Steven Spielberg tortured audiences with elan in that other '70s black-comic thriller classic, Jaws."

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly"Carrie, the rapturous and terrifying 1976 Brian De Palma thriller based on Stephen King's first novel, is a movie that has earned its place as a quirky horror milestone without, perhaps, ever having quite attained the status of a masterpiece. Yet I personally think it's a great film. There's nothing that compares to its glittery fusion of dreaminess and dread — of Cinderella-at-the-prom fantasy and blood-bucket horror, all mixed up with elements of ‘70s teensploitation comedy and primally entangled mother-daughter tragedy. And what acting! Sissy Spacek, as the squashed-nerd telekinetic high school wallflower Carrie, and Piper Laurie, as her ragingly repressed Evangelical mom, achieved a tremulous power together. And De Palma, a prankish virtuoso, perched the whole thing on the knife's edge between sincerity and satire. Carrie is a timeless movie because it's both one of the most passionate and most scandalously funny horror films ever made.

"So what does one do for a remake encore? Kimberly Peirce, the gifted director of the new Carrie, has gone down what seems, on the surface, to be a savvy road. She follows De Palma's version quite faithfully, evoking everything from his camera angles to his lighting to his flying-object F/X to his gleeful staging of mean-girl antics. At the same time, she offers just enough tweaks and updated details to present the material in a new way...

"Despite being 40 years old now, the Carrie story lives quite comfortably in the 21st century. Here's the problem, though. The original film had King's ingenious plot, with its fusion of innocence and cruelty and that subliminal wink of demonic takeover, but it also had De Palma's voluptuous operatic style, which gave the story the quality of a daydream-turned-nightmare. When you take away that style and serve up the plot fairly straight, as Peirce does here, we seem to be watching a Carrie that's been flattened, robbed of its over-the-top emotional extravagance.

"Given the challenge of revamping Spacek's brilliant shivery-nerd-turned-avenger performance, Chloë Grace Moretz does a creditable job. In stiff hair and lumpish clothing, she's very much the geek outsider (though today there's a much greater context for geeks as heroines), and the emotions seem to bleed through her ghostly, lunar-pale skin. Yet the way Peirce has updated Carrie White, without making any overt changes to the character, is to portray her as a little less clueless, a little less pathetic, a little more defiant. She's now a cute, bright, painfully shy girl who sees herself (wrongly) as a loser. Before, she was a total walking blob of misery and dysfunction. That slight tonal shift robs the story of its masochistic edge.

"Of course, Carrie isn't merely a fable of adolescent agony. It's all about Carrie's revenge, once she's subjected to the most diabolical practical 'joke' in movie history. Carrie's telekinetic powers, driven by the rage she represses, allowed De Palma to orchestrate a senior-prom apocalypse that was pure filmmaking mastery. Peirce stages the prom as a prosaic rerun, without a lot of gaudy inspiration. And it's here that the real problem with redoing a classic reveals itself. Sure, a lot of famous movies are timeless, yet they're also rooted in their time. In the original Carrie, Spacek's character seemed to be channeling something creepy and larger-than-life — maybe it was even the underworld. But now we're a lot more accustomed to seeing movie characters mold their destiny through special effects, and since Peirce films the climax in a rather depersonalized, shoot-the-works way, Carrie comes close to seeming like an especially alienated member of the X-Men team. She blows stuff up real good, in a way that would make the devil — or Bruce Willis — proud."

SO MUCH 'CARRIE' & 'CARRIE' REMAKEREMAKE SCREENWRITER SAYS DE PALMA FAITHFUL TO NOVEL, PRODUCES HOMAGE ON 'GLEE'A lot of Carrie material everywhere (but no reviews yet of the new version)-- here are some links and quotes:

New York PostBetty Buckley on the locker scene in De Palma's film: "Everybody was trying to get their bodies in tiptop shape for that scene. Some people decided to go completely naked, some didn’t. It wasn’t meant to be exploitative — it’s a beautiful scene."

The Boston HeraldScreenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: "I always thought of Carrie as a perfect horror novel: It’s short and every scene matters. It’s like a Swiss clock: Once it starts, every piece chimes in with this terrifying inevitability that leads to prom night. The De Palma movie is quite faithful to the novel as well. It’s a great movie. The imagery is incredible and the story is universal. While there are big action scenes, it plays as a psychological drama."

Kimberly Peirce: "That movie is probably a classic because the underlying material is so essential. It’s a myth. Stephen King is a great writer who turned around the Cinderella tale, and on top of that, De Palma, one of our greatest directors, does what should be done."

New York Daily NewsJulianne Moore on seeing the De Palma film when she was a teenager: "I remember the theater was packed and we were waiting for the next show in a huge line of kids that curled around the block. And they wouldn’t let us into the theater until all the kids from the last show filed out. As we were walking in, we passed the kids walking out and they were ashen. They were absolutely terrified and we were scared, too, thinking, ‘What could this be?'" Moore adds, "Piper Laurie’s performance was iconic and untouchable."

Seattle Times (by Moira Macdonald)Long a friend of De Palma’s (“I think he’s a brilliant director”), Peirce called him to see what he thought of her taking on the project. “There’s enough material out there that I shouldn’t have to do anything that makes another director feel bad,” she said. “He was really supportive — he said, ‘You have to do it.’ ”

There are, of course, similarities between her approach and De Palma’s — “Two people who love this source material are going to come at it, in some ways, exactly the same” — but Peirce added her own stamp. The new Carrie features an opening scene depicting Carrie’s birth, adds more emphasis to Carrie’s exploration of her superpowers and her relationship with her mother, and subtly alters the focus of the revenge scene (it comes, says Peirce, from grief).

Mercury NewsKimberly Peirce: "It's a love story, that mother fiercely loves that daughter, but she's also terrified of her. For me, the movie is very much about that bond between the mother and the daughter, everything else comes out of that."

Huffington PostKimberly Peirce on balancing expectations of fans of the De Palma film while modernizing the story: "I faced it with humility. On some level, of course, I was scared I wouldn't live up to it, but then I just thought, 'I love Carrie. I'm going to ground this moment. I'm going to make this as specific and real as possible.' I do think I ended up making it different. It's the same reason why people are able to bring a new reality to Shakespeare and other works."

MoviefoneKimberly Peirce: "The other huge thing that was important to me, which you see in all my movies, is a sense of justice and, part and parcel with justice, is revenge. I think we love a justice story. So you had to love Carrie -- you had to be involved in her journey, you had to want her to get love and acceptance, you had to see the obstacles against her, you had to see her playing with the powers, you had see her get that invitation to prom and think, 'Sue should apologize and you shouldn't go to prom, because this is not going to work.' She goes anyway, and you still want to see her succeed. But you also secretly want to see it blow up. And when it does, it's important -- I changed it so that when Tommy goes down, Carrie is overwhelmed with grief. It's out of the grief that unconsciously the powers come out. And when they come out, that's when things happen. The damage is done."

IGNChucky creator Don Mancini is asked what is his favorite scary movie: "Probably Brian De Palma’s Carrie. I love Brian De Palma, I love the style of that film. I also love that story, and the novel by Stephen King. I just think it has incredible pathos and the character of Carrie White is such a fascinating one. I would probably say that. Recently, one of my favourite horror movies was Orphan. I thought that was really well done. Like a good Hitchcock movie – it was psychological – the game of wits between Vera Farmiga and the little girl who turns out to be something quite different. And I thought both actresses were amazing. I really loved that movie."

October 3 episode of GleeThanks to Maurizio for letting us know about this episode, which features Beatles songs and a lovingly faithful homage to the bucket/prom scene in De Palma's Carrie, complete with rope, dream-like music, slow-motion clapping, bucket-hitting-the-head of the prom king, and even lip-licking. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the screenwriter for the Carrie remake, is credited as the Supervising Producer of this episode. Of course, this show comes to us from the same team that brings us American Horror Story.

'Strange and Disturbing': A Movie Virgin Watches Carrie for the First Time"I don't think I've ever seen my sister go through as many emotions as she did during the 10-minute span of Carrie's opening scene. Director Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film, based on Stephen King's novel, clearly hasn't lost its touch -- the dreamlike, voyeuristic locker room scene shots had her face twisted in confusion, and Carrie White's introduction a la naked steamy soaping up in the shower prompted her to ask me if we had accidentally rented a porn version of the film. But once the camera panned to the infamous blood shot, she was horrified -- and, as Carrie's schoolmates chastised her and showered her with tampons and maxi pads, my sister was almost in tears. 'This is so sad!' she exclaimed. 'I don't want to watch this!' Luckily, she stuck with it."

Shock Till You DropVideo interviews with Peirce and cast. Peirce talks about calling De Palma, and him telling her to Skype him.