There Will Be Blood - now with child/partner forum we call H.W.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I'll attempt brief a spoiler-free review. My very spoilerish thoughts are in HW.

This is a new PTA. I think everyone who's read about how he wanted to try a new way of filmmaking (which I just did now) knows this already. It's not stylized. It's trim and masterful, intense only where it needs to be, much like Barry Lyndon. And while that lack of flashiness is initially disappointing, it works. This one will endure.

[cinemanarchist]

The other major story of the weekend is the wildly successful expansion of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage). Adding 49 screens Friday, the searing period drama still impressed with a stunning $5,600+ PTA. With Daniel Day Lewis giving perhaps his best-ever performance, Blood is an arthouse blockbuster, and its headed for an estimated weekend of just over $1M and a 3-day PTA of $21,000 or so.

Source: www.slashfilm.com

[picolas]

get this
i googled '"there will be blood" advance screening vancouver'

first hit is a local tv station contest. i click. i get 'PAGE NOT FOUND'.

i figure the contest has either been cancelled or it's over. but i go back and click 'cached' anyway, and enter the contest through that.

on wednesday, a message is left on my phone telling me i won. i strongly believe this is because i was one of if not the only person to enter the contest because the contest is virtually unenterable and there is no advertising for it.

but somehow i never see or retrieve the message.

today, my finger accidentally slips on the review messages button whilst doing something else and i hear the glorious news. i'm seeing it monday.

[noyes]

i'm seeing it monday.

haha. that's awesome Picolas.
enjoy.

[MacGuffin]

SCENE STEALER: 'There Will Be Blood'
Source: Los Angeles Times



Building a believable oil rig that actually erupts before catching fire was only half the challenge faced by special effects supervisor Steve Cremin on Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood." The other 50% was making it environmentally safe. Cremin's previous gusher, for the 2005 Gulf War film "Jarhead," provided the template -- with one big difference. "This time, we had to have oil coming out that wasn't burning, which then ignited on-camera," he says.

The derrick was constructed in Marfa, Texas, close to where James Dean's "Giant" did its own drilling. Back then, it was common to shoot gasoline skyward then light it at the director's command. These days, what goes up better not come down. "The Texas Environmental Quality people tested the soil for a baseline before shooting; afterwards, they came back to verify that we had not added any gas to the soil. If the air and fuel mixture becomes too rich, unburned fuel will fall on the ground. Spilled gas requires a toxic cleanup. That's a no-no."

The trick is to achieve 100% burn -- easy with a 3-inch propane torch, not so easy if your fire must dwarf an 80-foot derrick. "Gallons of gas might not ignite. Everything that goes up the pipe has to burn or you get shut down," Cremin says. Here's how he created the scene without drawing environmental ire.



Cremin's problems began before construction coordinator Bill Holmquist's four-man crew even completed the wooden derrick. A local drilling company excavated a 25-foot-deep hole with a 12-inch diameter in the solid granite ground, which Cremin intended for a sealed line reservoir. "The nightmare began when we found the hole was drilled crooked," Cremin says. "We literally turned our 12-inch pipe into a drill bit, put it on a hoist, and hand-drove it into the ground. That three-day delay was pretty painful."



Cremin and production designer Jack Fisk searched local junkyards for genuine pump-jack parts. Cremin converted an old steam engine to run on compressed air so the pump was working while the oil was spurting. "When the drill hits a gas pocket, the bit shoots out, followed by water and oil. I don't know that anyone's ever seen that in a movie."

As for environmentally friendly oil? "We used a water-based food additive" -- methylcellulose, a thickener found in McDonald's shakes -- "and edible, food-grade dye that fades in sunlight."



Cremin's team rigged parallel lines to switch from water to fuel so the gusher could catch fire as cameras rolled. But the producers' decision to construct a real wood derrick meant Cremin got just one take. "We had four separate ignition systems in case one failed. The last ditch was a road flare at the very bottom, so if any gas touched the ground, it would ignite." The result? "We got 110 feet of flame and 200 feet of black smoke. It was pretty huge."

[jigzaw]

Gosh.  I'm a PTA fanatic in Miami (which is a huge city), and there's not a peep about "There Will Be Blood" ever opening here.  Am I shit out of luck till the DVD comes out???

[polkablues]

Gosh.  I'm a PTA fanatic in Miami (which is a huge city), and there's not a peep about "There Will Be Blood" ever opening here.  Am I shit out of luck till the DVD comes out???

Probably depends on how well it performs in the city's it's currently playing in.  So if the sold-out crowd I saw the movie with in Seattle last night is any indication, you might be in luck.  Keep those fingers crossed.

[hedwig]

Gosh.  I'm a PTA fanatic in Miami (which is a huge city), and there's not a peep about "There Will Be Blood" ever opening here.  Am I shit out of luck till the DVD comes out???

i'm betting it's gonna show here. were you at the regal south beach screening on dec 29? it was so packed they had to open up a second theatre.

i know it's opening at sunrise eleven cinema in davie on jan 11. that's not too far from miami.

[tpfkabi]

the numbers i saw at box office mojo look very positive.
surely it will expand beyond 51 (i think that was the number of theatres this weekend).

[cine]

the numbers i saw at box office mojo look very positive.
surely it will expand beyond 51 (i think that was the number of theatres this weekend).

yeah, he's been hitting his best numbers.. this is gonna be his best film box office-wise as well as with OSCAR.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I saw the movie at 1:15 on a Friday afternoon in a semi-large single-screen theater (this one), and it was comfortably half full (with about 1/3 of the total seats occupied). I thought 12:45 was early, but many of the good seats were taken when I got there. I wonder what the crowd was like that night.

[polkablues]

this is gonna be his best film box office-wise as well as with OSCAR.

It's the one thing he's not grouchy about.

[modage]

After opening with the highest per-theater averages of 2007, P.T. Anderson's fifth feature There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage) added 49 more theaters in select cities to bring in $1.3 million over the first weekend of 2008.

[Gamblour.]

This Friday, I Will See Blood.

[diggler]

damn it, how much longer am i gonna have to wait to see this thing?