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.

The double-role has been a favorite for movie audiences for a long time. Actors as different as Lon Chaney and Ronald Colman have indulged in the two-actors-for-the-price-of-one roles. In The Dark Knight, Aaron Eckhart will get to do a two-fer, playing a character who didn't get nearly enough to do in that Joel Schumacher fiasco. (Though I did very much enjoy the bifurcated Tommy Lee Jones' use of the pluralis majestatis, the royal "we.") Few double-roles, however, are as roundly a good time as Brian De Palma's Raising Cain, a reviled but rich melodrama derived in equal parts from Psycho and the equally scandalous Peeping Tom. Preposterous, invigoratingly silly, and done to a technical turn by Hitchcock's most devoted fan, this forgotten thriller gives John Lithgow -- kindly actor and easy-going TV star of Third Rock from the Sun --a chance to show his hulking, evil side.

I

"This fall, film director Martin Scorsese embarked on a secret experiment in filmmaking. A project which could have bold repercussions on future film preservation. Or maybe not." So begins a fascinating and unusual mocumentary/short film hybrid that is also part Freixenet wine commercial. Confused? Alright, well in the mockumentary portion -- which initially fooled several media outlets (and me) into thinking it was the real deal -- Scorsese has discovered 3 1/2 undated pages from an unmade Alfred Hitchcock project called The Key to Reserva. Scorsese has the nifty idea to make those pages into a Hitchcock-by-way-of-Scorsese short film, done in the style of Hitch. "It's one thing to preserve a film that has been made," says Scorsese. "It's another to preserve a film that has not been made."

This portion of the short is highly entertaining, with Scorsese glowing like a pregnant woman over the prospect of tackling one of his idols. He is such a high-strung dude, and the funniest moment is when the interviewer attempts to put his grubby hands on the script pages and Scorsese flips out. As for The Key to Reserva, boy did Scorsese nail the Hitchcock style. It's the ultimate homage. Scorsese cast classically handsome Simon Baker in the lead, and he uses the North by Northwest score and some super sweet old school effects (dig that balcony fall!) to complete the illusion you're watching an old Hitch classic. It's a bummer we'll never see a feature-length version of The Key to Reserva, but it's cool to have this little taste of Scorcock. (Hitchsese?) If you've got nine minutes, be sure to head here to check out the short (or watch it above). And if you could pick any modern-day filmmaker to do a film in another director's style, whom would you choose? Michael Bay doing Ingmar Bergman?

Starting tonight and running through December 17th, Edgar Wright is taking control of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is programming a festival of his favorite movies, and it's a wonderful and eclectic bunch. He's calling the fest "The Wright Stuff," (also the name of a universally beloved screenwriting column on this very site), and he will be on hand to introduce several screenings with special guests. As always at the New Beverly, one of Los Angeles' absolute treasures, every screening is a double feature.

I'll just tell you about the screenings with special guests, all of which start at 7:30. But don't forget to check the website for all show dates and times. Tonight, Edgar and songwriter Paul Williams will kick off the event with two musicals -- Bugsy Malone and Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise. December 5th, the first feature is Flash Gordon, with special guest (and ex-Bond) Timothy Dalton. The second feature is Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik, introduced by Edgar and the great Joe Dante. On December 7th, Edgar will introduce The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with one of the finest action screenplay writers of our time -- Shane Black. December 10 is John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Tremors (which I spouted my love for here). Landis will help Wright introduce his film. December 12th is Top Secret! (almost as funny as Airplane and The Naked Gun, in my opinion) and Woody Allen's Bananas, with David Zucker on hand. December 14th is the Roger Ebert - penned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and Head, hosted by Wright and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. And on December 16th, Wright will introduce Evil Dead 2 and an all time favorite of mine -- the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona.

Here is a press release from Edgar with his thoughts on the included films. If you live in the Los Angeles area, there's really no excuse to miss this. See you there!

Well he might not have his Capone yet, but Brian DePalma is still determined to bring his Untouchables prequel to the big screen. MTV Movies Blog reports that DePalma will likely make The Untouchables: Capone Rising his next film. DePalma tells MTV that they still have not cast their Capone (played by Robert De Niro in the original film), but that he was looking for an actor with "...that street animal sexuality" -- and this just might be me, but Nicolas Cage is not the first person to come to mind with that particular description (although, I guess it doesn't matter now). Gerard Butler (300) is attached to play Jimmy Malone -- a role made famous by Sean Connery (I can still picture the overacting 20 years later... "You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way"). But, it did get the man his only Oscar, so you can never tell.

DePalma told MTV that the story will focus on "[Jimmy Malone]'s relationship with Capone during Capone's rise". News of a prequel first emerged around this time last year; so here we are a year later, and not all that much has been accomplished. DePalma did make assurances that the film would be keeping as much of the original feel of the 1987 flick as possible, saying, "I would like to use a lot of the original music from 'The Untouchables,' (which means the amazing score from Ennio Morricone will return) and the original locations in Chicago." I wonder if that will include giving the cast some snazzy costumes from Armani again. Until DePalma finds his Capone, though, he probably won't be 'rising' anytime soon.

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.

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.

I miss many things about living in New York -- the people, the restaurants and bars, Central Park, the smell of baked ass that overtakes the city this time of year (OK, not that last one). But what I miss the most has got to be the film "scene." Getting a coffee and taking the subway to a movie on a Sunday morning always filled me with happiness. NYC also puts on one of the best film festivals in the country -- the cleverly named New York Film Festival. Showcasing 28 films, the fest will be held this year at Frederick P. Rose Hall in the Time Warner Center. Screenings are set for September 28 through October 14th, and this year's lineup is a real doozy. It includes new films from Sidney Lumet (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, with Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman), Catherine Breillat (The Last Mistress, just grabbed by IFC), Todd Haynes (I'm Not There, his Bob Dylan movie), Abel Ferrara (the promisingly titled Go-Go Tales, starring Willem Dafoe), Noah Baumbach (following up the excellent Squid and the Whale with Margot at the Wedding), the ascotted Peter Bogdanovich (profiling one of my favorite bands with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream), and Brian DePalma (an Iraq war drama called Redacted).

Wes Anderson's new film (can't wait!) The Darjeeling Limited will open the NYFF. The Coen Brothers' new one No Country for Old Men (really really can't wait!) will be the "centerpiece" of the festival. And Cannes '07 jury prize-winner Persepolis, an "animated coming-of-age" story directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, will close the fest. Also showcased will be Cannes favorites like Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, Julian Schnabel's French-language The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. In addition, there will be five classic films screened, including John Ford's first major film -- The Iron Horse. Probably the most anticipated of that bunch is Ridley Scott's "definitive cut" of Blade Runner, in honor of that film's 25th anniversary. An evening called "The Technicolor Show" should be a major attraction, as it's introduced by Martin Scorsese. Head over to Yahoo Movies for the full roster.

I guess if you wait long enough, eventually every movie is going to get remade. Variety reports that MGM has partnered with Hyde Park Entertainment for a direct-to-DVD remake of Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill. So far, there has been no mention of a director or cast, but MGM has hired Rick Alexander to write the script. Alexander is also producing the Conan The Barbarian remake with Warner Bros. This is just one of the many projects that MGM has planned for the DVD market; the deal with Hyde Park calls for at least 12 remakes of popular TV and film titles.

Like most De Palma films, Dressed to Kill was an ode to Alfred Hitchcock, and Psycho in particular. Right down to an extended shower scene and the somewhat comical transvestism. The film starred Angie Dickinson, Michael Caine, and Nancy Allen with a story that centered on a prostitute (Allen) who is an eye-witness and a prime suspect for the murder of a bored housewife (Dickinson). Throw in Caine as a campy psychiatrist and you have the makings of another over-the-top De Palma classic. Both Caine and De Palma even managed to earn Golden Raspberry nominations, and believe me, there was some pretty tough competition that year. De Palma is reportedly still in talks to direct the prequel to his film The Untouchables; maybe if he's feeling nostalgic enough he could help out on Dressed while he's at it.

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.)

"Lord help the mister/
Who comes between me and my sister/
And Lord help the sister/
Who comes between me and my man."

-- Irving Berlin, "Sisters"

Debuting at the 2007 SXSW Film Festival, Douglas Buck's Sisters looks like yet-another remake -- this time, of Brian De Palma's 1973 thriller of the same name. Something about Sisters caught my eye in this iteration -- possibly the cast, including Chloe Sevigny and Dallas Roberts among others. The curious thing is that I've never seen De Palma's original -- I was going into Sisters blind, and curious if the film would work on its own without memories and recollections laid over it to fill in any blank spots or uneven patches.

And from the jump, Sisters doesn't quite feel like a remake -- to use a musical metaphor (which, for a film that debuting at SXSW, is certainly allowable), Buck's take on Sisters felt less like a cover version than a mash-up. Sisters has De Palma's original story and credits him, but a lot of the film's look, feel and sensibility are on loan from that other avatar of '70s horror, David Cronenberg. You have all of the classic De Palma touches in Sisters -- voyeurism, faux-Hitchcock, cheap and greasy surprises that satisfy -- but you also have many classic Cronenberg elements -- bizarre institutes of medicine, signifying and stomach-churning scars, winter-grey Canadian shades in the cinematography.

It's been many years since the cherubesque '80s Michael J. Fox co-starred with Sean Penn in Brian DePalma's Casualties of War. Dealing with the atrocious realities of the Vietnam War, the film detailed the true story of a girl taken from her village by American troops and kept as a sex slave until she's killed to cover the soldiers' tracks. In step with Fox's hero reputation, his character refuses to rape the girl, and later speaks out, determined to bring justice to the perpetrators of the terrible act. Working witha terribly similar recent real-life occurance where a young Iraqi girl was raped and murdered, DePalma has decided to re-visit the theme with his new film, Redacted.

The film gets its name from the term used to refer to edited text -- often documents edited to cover classified or sensitive information with those lovely, scribbled black bars. The particulars of the Al-Mahmudiyah Incident are as follows: Five US Soldiers have been accused of murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl's parents and 5-year-old sister before gang-raping and murdering the young girl as well. While one has been sentenced, the others are facing court martial and charges.

Unlike the fictional Casualties, Redacted will be heavily steeped in real information, using The Queen's approach to real-life narrative. According to Production Weekly, the movie will employ news broadcasts, trial coverage and also internet video from YouTube and, believe it or not, one of the solder's video blogs. The already-disturbing story will probably gain gut-punch intensity from the mixture of fictional narrative and real footage -- a strong reminder of the reality of the situation, and one that should keep it from being dismissed as 'mere' fiction.

Back when I was but a young and sponge-like movie nerdlet, I chanced upon Brian De Palma's Body Double on HBO one night. Aside from being dazzled by the movie's, ahem, erotic nature, I found myself absolutely fascinated by the non-sexy bits, too. After seeing it a second time, I was convinced (well, as convinced as a 15-year-old geek could be) that Body Double was easily as good as De Palma's Carrie, Dressed to Kill and/or Blow Out. (OK, maybe not Blow Out.) But "the critics" didn't seem to dig the flick, generally dismissing it as a thinly-veiled rip-off of Alfred Hitchock, particularly the master's Vertigo and Rear Window.

These criticisms inspired me to seek out those "old-fashioned black & white" movies, and (obviously) I became a huge Hitchcock fan overnight. So while some critics chose to see De Palma's affectionate homage as De Palma's shameless rip-off, I was just grateful that Body Double introduced me to the wonderful world of Hitchcock. And yeah, I still think Body Double is one of De Palma's best, and I've been following the guy's career since before I could drive.

So for the price of one aimless anecdote you now get the news: Sony Home Video will be releasing a Special Edition of Body Double on October 3rd. Extra goodies include four featurettes, some new cast & crew interviews and a sparkly new anamorphic transfer. No commentary, unfortunately, because guys like De Palma (and Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood) don't like doing audio commentaries.

For those with hazy memories, Body Double is the one with the porn stars, the massive power drill, and the Frankie Goes to Hollywood.