Of all the movie brats who would go on to have long and fruitful careers from the 1970s onward, Brian De Palma remains one of the more controversial. He’s helmed some indisputable classics, including “Carrie,” “Blow Out” and “Carlito’s Way,” along with many other early thrillers, often heavily indebted to his idol Alfred Hitchcock. De Palma’s detractors, however, often claim he is little more than a talented technician: a sleazebag artiste who disguises rank misogyny and a cruelly cynical view of the world behind the visual fireworks that are part and parcel with his approach.
Whatever side of the fence you fall on, it’s hard to dispute that De Palma is a gifted and hard-working storyteller: he’s been in the game for almost half a century now, even if some of his later films have failed to live up to the promise of his reputation. And now, just a couple days after the director’s seventy-fifth birthday, a new video tribute from Hello Wizard has arrived online that examines De...
