According to The Hollywood Reporter, Brian De Palma is headed into murderous territory. He has signed on to direct The Boston Stranglers for Valhalla Motion Pictures, a movie all about the notorious 60's killing spree.

The movie will be based on Susan Kelly's nonfiction book, The Boston Stranglers: The Public Conviction of Albert DeSalvo and the True Story of Eleven Shocking Murders. The movie will detail the famous murders, as well as their controversial resolution. Debate still centers on the guilt of Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to the murders, but never fit the profile. He was later murdered in prison.

Kelly's book is one of several to suggest there was more than one killer. Looking through Wikipedia, it seems there's a whole Jack the Ripper cult beginning to emerge around the murder cases. Everyone loves trying to piece together a gruesome tale, I suppose. Will they be inventing a fictional detective to center it on? It doesn't seem like there were any Abberlines or Paul Averys trying to untangle this spree, but I'm no expert.

This one is likely to be less controversial than Brett Ratner's forthcoming take on The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it may still offend some Brian De Palma die-hards. Fox has commissioned a remake of The Fury, which was De Palma's follow-up to Carrie back in 1978. Based on a book by John Farris, the movie dealt with a telepathic teenager and nefarious government agents' attempts to use him for weapons experiments. Looking back, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's Firestarter novel (if not the Drew Barrymore film), though that was published after The Fury was released.

Speaking as a De Palma fan, I'm not terribly offended by the prospect of a remake -- I think that The Fury is one of the man's less memorable films. (Case in point: I saw it less than two years ago, and I barely remember it.) The new movie will be written by newcomers Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, who got the job on the strength of an unproduced spec script. Let's hope this doesn't wind up being in the vein of the cheap-and-quick PG-13 horror we've been seeing a lot of lately.

As for De Palma, he's still licking his wounds after the beating that Redacted took, and reportedly mulling an Untouchables sequel.

This weekend sees the release of Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, about a soldier who returns from a grueling tour of duty in Iraq only to learn that he's being sent back for another one. The movie's not bad: very passionate, very angry, a bit didactic, and liberal to the core. (See our own Eric D. Snider's SXSW review here.) The "liberal" part is no surprise, at least not if you've been listening to the conservative pundits who have torn into Hollywood for what they see as anti-war propaganda masquerading as entertainment. Those same pundits like to gloat about Iraq War movies' perceived financial failure, holding up their box-office receipts as proof that the American people either aren't interested or aren't on the same page.

But have the Iraq War movies we've seen in the past couple of years actually performed all that poorly? And even if they have, does that have anything to do with public distaste for liberal Hollywood or its "propaganda"? Take a look at some numbers and share your thoughts after the jump.

Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding did smashing business at two theaters in Manhattan, earning a per-screen average of $39,800, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Was it the sparkling dialog, the witty performances, the star wattage of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black? The critics were mixed: our own Ryan Stewart opined that the film was "torpedoed by its own self-indulgence." A. O. Scott of the New York Times was kinder ("frequently brilliant, finally baffling") and Lou Lumenick of the New York Post was not ("I've had root canals that were more enjoyable"). Check Metacritic for more critical coverage.

Opening in a single Manhattan theater, What Would Jesus Buy? performed quite nicely according to Box Office Mojo, making $11,600. Personally, I thought Rob VanAlkemade's documentary was timely and entertaining, although quite scatter-shot in its approach.

Opening in a single Los Angeles theater, Smiley Face earned an estimated $5,700 over the weekend, according to Mr. Klady. Distributor First Look has been criticized for changing their plans from a wider release last April; filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake comments: "It is sad to see a film that screened at 4 incredibly well known festivals [Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Toronto] being released in only 1 theater." Amen! Both Jette Kernion and Monika Bartyzel reacted positively to Gregg Araki's stoner comedy starring Anna Faris; the movie hits DVD in January.

Redacted ($1,760 per screen; 13 theaters) and Southland Tales ($1,780 per screen; 63 theaters) appeared to fall victim to bad buzz. Everyone kept saying that no one would want to go see Brian DePalma's Iraq War project and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Critical response was lukewarm overall, though a number championed it, according to Rotten Tomatoes. (Ryan Stewart felt it "doesn't ever truly gel.") The same site estimated that only 34% of the Southland Tales reviews were positive; its champions are fewer but no less appreciative -- but not Nick Schager, who called it "monumentally vapid."

The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men expanded into 148 theaters and soared into the overall Top 10, scoring a scorching per-theater average of $20,540.

In January, we brought you word of Brian De Palma's newest film, the Iraq war drama called Redacted. Coming from the term used to describe text that has been edited with black bars, the drama details the Al-Mahmudiyah Incident -- where soldiers murdered a young Iraqi girl's parents and younger sister before gang-raping and murdering her as well. The film is currently surfing the film fest circuit, and our Ryan Stewart reviewed it at TIFF. Now the film is being redacted itself.

At the end of his film, the director included disturbing images that were never published by the press, which he had found online. Mark Cuban and Magnolia want them removed. During a recent press conference at the New York Film Festival, IFC captured an argument between De Palma and Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles over the dispute. When De Palma starts to discuss the removal of the images, and his fight to keep them, Bowles jumped in from the back row to argue with him over them, before the film's producer, Jason Kliot, also came on stage to give his two cents. De Palma, meanwhile looks like he can't wait to get out of there and explode.

Ex-Cinematical head and current Spout blogger Karina Longworth contacted Mark Cuban about the argument, and he says: "The film is going to be 'redacted' before we release it. He is using images that have not been cleared... he can absorb 100 percent of the risk and release the film as he sees fit. If he chooses not to, then we will release the movie without the images." But it's not only business, Cuban also swears he won't include them so that family members could accidentally stumble upon the disturbing pictures and see a murdered loved one. I see where he's coming from, but in that case, why would you give De Palma the money to do whatever he wants? It's not like the guy is all about cinnamon hearts and puppies -- this is just like Casualties of War.

In the spring of 1999, I had a unique experience. The Roxie Cinema (in San Francisco) was opening a brand-new print of Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), which I suspect had been struck as a sort of apology for the now-forgotten The Rage: Carrie 2, released just a week before. I attended their press screening -- the very first unfurling of the new print -- but oddly enough, I was the only one to show up. Had the other critics already seen it? Or was there something else? The Roxie guys shrugged, asked if I'd like to go ahead, and I said yes. I sat in the middle, all by myself.

I've seen it again since then, and have become doubly convinced of its excellence. Along with The Untouchables (1987) and Mission: Impossible (1996) it was De Palma's biggest success and yet it's usually left out of diatribes calling De Palma a ripoff artist and a misogynist. Based on the first novel by Stephen King, Carrie uses virtually no Hitchcockian elements, and, actually, only about a half a dozen of De Palma's 28 feature films to date, do. Likewise, it's a fairly perceptive view, not of female sexuality in itself, but of the male fear of it. (And, more importantly, an awareness of this fear.) Moreover, both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie received Oscar nominations for their performances, a justification for two strong female roles.

Reason number #307 why I sometimes wish I still lived in New York City, in spite of the ridiculous cost of living there: There is so much cool film stuff going on there on any given night of the week. Case in point: our friends over at indieWIRE continue their series of monthly presentations with Apple Store - SOHO Wednesday night from 7:30-8:30PM with NYC-based film producers Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente.

Kliot and Viencte are the producing team behind some awesome indie fare, including films by Brian De Palma, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley and more. The pair will discuss their producing partnership at the event -- they're responsible for films like Coffee and Cigarettes and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (they've produced over 30 films, so no doubt they have way more to talk about than will fit into a one-hour program). But wait, that's not all!

They'll also be showing scenes from De Palma's Redacted, which just played at Toronto and is showing at the New York Film Festival on October 10 and 11. Wednesday's even will be hosted by indieWIRE Editor-in-Chief Eugene Hernandez, and best of all, it's FREE, so you can even afford to go get a nice coffee with all your film geek friends after and talk about it. Seating is first come, first served, no RSVP required.

It was at last year's TIFF that Brian De Palma was approached by the guys from HDNet, who made him their 'five million' offer -- we'll give you five million dollars to make any film you want. The film he decided to make was, surprisingly, one he's already made -- 1989's Casualties of War. Redacted tells the same story, of a company of Army grunts who take part -- some willingly, some reluctantly -- in the rape and murder of a young girl. The key difference is that De Palma adopts what I can only describe as a 'bloggy' style to film his movie, instead of using traditional dramatic techniques. We frequently get plot points delivered to us via suspiciously Youtube-like video screens, we watch video letters from the troops to their loved ones back home and vice versa, and most importantly, we see through a home video camera being used by one of the main characters, Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz.) Salazar is a grunt who plans to attach his documentary war footage to his application for film school after he returns home.

Those who go to Redacted looking for the traditional quirks of De Palma will probably not be disappointed; in addition to the video screens that recall the director's obsession with split-screen, there are also several panoramic shots that echo earlier films like The Untouchables, with one in particular standing out. The camera is placed in the inside of an Iraqi car that is approaching a U.S. military checkpoint, more or less up against the windshield, and as it turns and swerves through the curves of the checkpoint, we see the increasingly agitated faces of the soldiers – agitated because this car is not stopping. All good stuff, but the film has other peculiarities that aren't so successful, such as a decision to add unnecessary subtitles to some sections, and to more or less dump the main narrative in the closing moments in favor of showing stills of dead Iraqis. Even though these stills are explicitly titled as being authentic, during a Q&A after a screening here at TIFF, one of the producers acknowledged that some of them were created by De Palma's team.

Frankly I don't even know if this is good news or bad news: Nicolas Cage has decided to bail on the Untouchables prequel that Paramount and producer Art Linson are planning to put together. The original plan was for Cage to play a "young" Al Capone, but Variety indicates that "scheduling issues" will now prevent that from happening. (The paper also says that Cage's next movie is unknown, so I guess we know what "scheduling issues" actually means.) One piece of good news is that Gerard Butler has been cast as the "young" Jimmy Malone -- the character played by Sean Connery in Brian De Palma's 1987 near-masterpiece.

Or perhaps it's just that Nicolas Cage feels like giving us a break from his face for a few months. Nothing against the Oscar-winning actor (indeed, I'm a big fan of the guy), but he's already got National Treasure 2 coming in December, and the last few years have been littered with titles like Next and Ghost Rider and The Wicker Man and World Trade Center and Lord of War and The Weather Man. Heck, half of 'em are damn good movies, but there is such a thing as massive over-exposure. Or hell, maybe Nick's just trying to be the next Michael Caine.

In related near-news, it looks like Brian De Palma is in talks to direct The Untouchables: Capone Rising, but I'm not sure if he's signed the deal just yet. It'd be pretty cool if he did. Here's hoping they can wring a fresh screenplay out of David Mamet. THEN I'd be really excited for this movie. Actually the screenplay seems to come from David Rabe and the team of Koppelman and Levien. Not bad, not bad. But the question of the day, of course, is this: Who would YOU cast as a prequel-style Al Capone? (My vote is for Timothy Olyphant.)

Wow, this is going to be hard for two reasons. On one hand I'll find it tough to rank my very favorite Stephen King movies because the ones I love ... I really love. On the other hand there's been a whole LOT of rotten King flicks churned out over the years -- and I actually like some of those, too! But as a lifelong King kook I think I'm able to separate the wheat from the chaff -- even if, yes it's true, I actually sort of enjoyed Tobe Hooper's The Mangler. (It's just so enjoyably stupid!) So with that I bring you my own personal picks for the best Stephen King adaptations yet (not counting TV shows, mini-series or short films).

Christine (1983) -- Yes, the book is better and sure, a few important things were monkeyed with on the way from page to screen, but there's so much I do like about John Carpenter's adaptation that it makes the speed bumps a lot easier to handle. From the filmmaker's creepy score to an excellent lead performance by Keith Gordon, the flick's just got an admirably bad-ass attitude. Stripped down to its essence, Christine is not much more than another "geek fights back" revenge-centric horror flick, but Carpenter makes the movie his own with a solid production design, a few excellent set pieces and a pace that moves at an appreciable clip. Plus that car is just so damn cool.

Pet Sematary (1989) -- Just about every hardcore horror geek I know holds Pet Sematary in pretty high regard, and just one visit with this bleak and unflinching piece of pulp horror will explain why. It's a remarkably grim and unapologetic tale of dead cats, cute kids and a patch of land that, well, it resurrects dead tissue is what it does. And if you've read even one "back from the dead" story, then you know they never end well. (Pet Sematary, both the book and the movie, packs one doozy of a dark denouement.) OK, so maybe Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby aren't exactly the rock-solid thespians you'd want for a screenplay this devilishly mean-spirited, but the pair do what they can, plus they've got good ol' Fred Gwynne supplying background color by the bucketful. (And don't forget about poor sickly Zelda! Yuck.)

Carrie (1976) -- The very first (and arguably one of the very best) of the Stephen King movies, Carrie hit the screens courtesy of a young Brian De Palma, and the director pulled out a big bag of Hitchcockian tricks to bring the story to the silver screen. It's about a socially bankrupt young girl who tries to cobble together a normal social life ... much to the chagrin of some snotty she-bullies and a resoundingly devout lunatic of a mother. Some might say the flick takes a long while to get where it's going, but between the prom night finale and the graveside stinger, Carrie more than delivers its share of grisly goods. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie make it watchable all by themselves, but De Palma is the real star here. (OK, De Palma and a young, evil John Travolta.)