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

[MacGuffin]

AP Review: `Blood' Is Anderson's Epic

**SPOILERS**

Someday, we're probably going to look back at "There Will Be Blood," Paul Thomas Anderson's epic about greed, lies, manipulation and insanity, and call it his masterpiece.

Which is incredible because, except for the inescapable intensity, it's nothing like his previous films; if Anderson's name weren't on it, you'd never know it was his. It's thrilling to see him reinvent himself this way, applying his formidable directing talents in a totally different fashion.

Gone are the film-school tricks he made his name with in "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" (and this critic loved those movies). Anderson has moved out of contemporary L.A. and away from the histrionics of the carefully orchestrated ensembles he set there. He now seems more interested in storytelling and character development.

What a character he's created in Daniel Plainview and what a performance he's gotten out of Daniel Day-Lewis.

As a turn-of-the-century oil man, Day-Lewis gives one of the more terrifying turns of his long and eclectic career. He just completely dominates. He can be charming and cruel in the same breath, and with an accent reminiscent of John Huston, he says and does whatever he must to get his way.

That includes taking over a chunk of the central California coast and building a town there so that he can drill. (Anderson based his script very loosely on Upton Sinclair's 1920s muckraking novel "Oil!") A one-time silver miner, Plainview accidentally finds gold one day and sets his sights higher; this all takes place at the film's start, which stunningly lasts 15 wordless minutes.

"I hate most people," Plainview eventually confesses in a rare moment of introspection. The only one he connects with is his young son, H.W. (confident newcomer Dillon Freasier), who travels with him from town to town and tries to soften up the locals to get them to sell their land.

One person in Plainview's latest target of Little Boston who sees right through his tactics is the fresh-faced, seemingly innocent preacher, Eli Sunday, played with unexpected volatility by Paul Dano ("Little Miss Sunshine"). Eli comes off as soft-voiced, pious and ingratiating. He offers to give a blessing when Plainview opens his first derrick, for example, and won't take no for an answer. ("It's a simple blessing, Daniel, but an important one," he insists.)

But once Eli is on a roll, preaching in the town's crowded, makeshift church, he turns into a wildly charismatic evangelist and right then and there, Plainview knows he's met his match. They hate each other instantly; both recognize they're two sides of the same coin. And the ensuing, humiliating game of one-upmanship in which they engage is raw and riveting.

Just as Plainview enjoys his greatest success, though, he also suffers his greatest heartbreak. He gets his gusher but the spectacular derrick explosion leaves H.W. without hearing. This also marks the beginning of the end of Plainview's sanity, which at best was tenuous. The more money he makes, the more his mind and morals deteriorate.

Could this be Anderson's cautionary tale about the evils of greed and wealth? Hardly. He's never judged his characters before (porn stars, junkies) and he's not about to start now. It's more like a character study of a fascinating and deeply flawed man during a time of great change in our country. Reading much more into his intentions would be foolish.

One quibble: "There Will Be Blood" feels a bit too long, though it is shorter than Anderson's magnum opus "Magnolia," which ran just over three hours. Nevertheless, at the end and the climax is a jaw-dropper, one that hopefully hasn't already been ruined for you through news reports you may have a hard time getting out of your seat. It'll knock you out.

But please do take the time to see it on the big screen, for Robert Elswit's sprawling, dreamlike cinematography; for Jack Fisk's elaborate production design; and for the modern, dissonant score from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood that will grab you and set you on edge from the first frames.

It's worth the emotional investment. "There Will Be Blood," which is both a threat and a promise, is one of those movies that will stick with you and change your mood for days.

"There Will Be Blood," a Paramount Vantage release, is rated R for some violence. Running time: 158 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

[noyes]

Charlie Rose interview with PTA & DDL airs Friday December 21

interview is now up
really glad it's a full 50 min show/

is it just me, or is that brown long-sleeve/blue t-shirt the only shirts that Paul owns?
he's been wearing them for two months now..

[cine]

Charlie Rose interview with PTA & DDL airs Friday December 21

interview is now up
really glad it's a full 50 min show/

i think it goes without saying that you shouldn't listen to this if you haven't seen it. the touch on the ending and such.

that said though, its such an entertaining interview. one of favs.

[Pubrick]

BLOOD will be coming early to select cities on MIDNIGHT December 29th. I'll see all of my Dallas Xixaxers there.

posted two days ago..

This was just uploaded on youtube.

but i guess this is what happens when ppl post links without explaining wtf they are.

[MacGuffin]

'Blood's' new blood
Discouraged by what the usual casting sources had turned up, an executive with the film strikes gold after searching the plains of Texas for a young costar for Daniel Day-Lewis.
By Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times

**SOME SPOILERS**

NEW YORK -- THE history of Hollywood is replete with remarkable tales, and sometimes fables, of how performers got their first big breaks -- think Lana Turner in Schwab's Drug Store. Now add to that the kid who wound up on screen thanks to a middle-school principal and a speeding casting agent.

He's Dillon Freasier of Fort Davis, Texas, who was 10 when he landed the role as Daniel Day-Lewis' purported son -- you have to see the film to understand the "purported" part -- in "There Will Be Blood."
 
Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson recalled recently that the movie-making team initially looked at established child actors in L.A. and New York while searching for the right one to portray "H.W.," the stoic youngster who accompanies oil man Daniel Plainview, played by Day-Lewis, as he sweet-talks groups of ranchers into giving him rights to get rich off their land. But the candidates they found in those acting hotbeds, "young men with head shots and that sort of thing, and résumés," left them cold, Anderson said. "We thought they should be sent to their rooms. . . . We thought we needed a boy from Texas who knew how to shoot shotguns and live in that world."

Casting director Cassandra Kulukundis thus targeted schools in a number of rural areas but especially near where the shoot would be based, in Marfa, Texas, asking educators if they knew of, in Kulukundis' words, "a child who didn't play with GameBoys but worked outside," or as Anderson put it, "a man in a young boy's body."

So it was that a principal in Fort Davis, at a school so small it had perhaps eight boys of the right age, mentioned one who'd won belt buckles in rodeos, and prizes for showing pigs, and had horses at home, and was preternaturally self-composed. That's how the 30-year-old Kulukundis, who regular does casting for Anderson's films, came to do improv with Dillon Freasier, "and he just stayed in my mind, so I called [his mother] at home and asked if it was all right if I could come over that night."

But you don't put all your eggs in one basket. So soon after, Kulukundis was racing to another school to see more boys, "very late and very lost," and didn't see the car with the radar gun lurking under a tree.

She did hear the siren, though, and dutifully, if unhappily, pulled her rental car to the side of the road, where she encountered a stern female state trooper, who approached and asked, "Ma'am, do you know what you were doing?" It seems she was going 75 in a 25 mph zone, and she might have quibbled about how the speed limit dropped so suddenly (Speed trap! Speed trap!) had not the "very scary" trooper lady examined her driver's license and announced, "I think you're coming to my home tonight."

So that's how she met Dillon's mom, Regina, and wound up with "just a warning," thank you, and with a child actor who she discovered could memorize two pages of dialogue with one reading and didn't fidget or blink or any of that normal kid's stuff. He'd stand straight up too, with fingers in his pocket like a grown cowpuncher, and say "Yes, ma'am."

That said, the whole casting dream nearly had a sour ending when trooper momma got curious about whom her son would be working with and drove 45 minutes to a video store where she asked if they had any films with this Daniel Day-Lewis.

Day-Lewis takes the story from there: "She thought she better check out this bunch of people taking care of her son. . . . So she got 'Gangs of New York,' " in which Day-Lewis played, of course, the aptly named Bill the Butcher. "Absolutely appalled! . . . She thought she was releasing her dear child to this monster. And so there was a flurry of phone calls and somebody sent a copy of 'The Age of Innocence.' "

Parental concerns allayed, they started shooting "There Will Be Blood" with the required teacher and social worker on hand and a timekeeper to make sure he was not exploited child labor, all while Dillon begged to be allowed to stay and do more scenes.

"I remember having the first costume fitting," Anderson said. "And you would think that most 10-year-old boys would not look forward to wearing, what do they call them, those britches? But the second he saw them he said, 'I've always wanted to wear britches.' "

Ready to be mean

DAY-LEWIS wondered how Dillon would take it when, as the determined Plainview, he had to summon up his inner Bill the Butcher and get nasty, or worse, with those standing in his way . . . and eventually with his supposed son, as well.

"I started to worry a little bit because we were very close," Day-Lewis said, "and I thought, 'Man, how's he going to feel when I start treating him harshly?' So I kind of sat him down. I created this sort of atmosphere . . . portentous atmosphere. 'Dillon, you know how I feel about you and there are going to be moments . . . I'm not going to treat you nicely. I want you to understand that I love you.' . . . He looked at me like I was insane."

Kulukundis, who felt like family by then with her young discovery, also recalls the shaking head of disbelief from the kid who was raised amid unruly horses and pigs and tough wranglers. "Dillon would say to me, 'Daniel thinks I'm taking this seriously . . . I know what I signed up for.' "

Much has transpired for him, naturally, since the filming the summer before last. He got to walk his first red carpet recently here in New York, with his mom, who has been able to leave her dangerous job with the state police. Dillon himself, now 11, also has moved on to an endeavor far more important in Texas than acting: He's playing football, as a fullback.

The casting lady, meanwhile, is staying in contact, ready with advice on what he should and shouldn't do next (No silly soda commercials, for starters). Kulukundis also has kept that written speeding warning as a memento of her unlikely path to -- who knows? -- "a little Daniel Day-Lewis waiting to happen."

[JG]

the tv spots at the paramount vantage site are pretty great. does pta cut those too? 

[Astrostic]

the music in the trailers was in the film, but not on the soundtrack.  it's too bad, because it's one of my favorites pieces from the film.

[noyes]

the music in the trailers was in the film, but not on the soundtrack.  it's too bad, because it's one of my favorites pieces from the film.

yeah, i thought Convergence was going to be on the soundtrack as well. worked amazingly in the movie.
oh well.

[squints]

GOD DAMMIT! i'd just like to say that i'd KILL to see this movie. I say that a lot. but this time i'm serious. Who wants to die? I want to see this so bad i'm considering a pirated screener.


its not worth it is it?

[md]

resist the urge.  you deserve better than that. 

[MacGuffin]

'Into the Wild,' 'There Will Be Blood' explore Earth as paradise lost and found
By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times

**SPOILERS**

EDEN is burning. The third rock from the sun is heating up, and the garden of the American imagination is on fire with scorched-earth imagery, four-alarm prophesies of doom and the growing cult of "sustainable" consumerism.

Frito-Lay boasts about making "carbon-neutral" potato chips. Bookstore shelves sag with titles such as "The Virtuous Consumer" and -- groan -- "Sustainable Living for Dummies."

Think all this started with Al Gore and his inconvenient Nobel Peace Prize? Think again.

The planetary and human costs of overconsumption reemerged as a major cultural theme this year, but it's an idea with deep roots in the national psyche, as evidenced by two of the year's best films: Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood."

Neither of these thoughtful, passionately crafted movies imparts any sort of crude "eco-friendly" message. Yet both explore the notion of America (and, by extension, Earth) as a former paradise under siege.

That idea is as venerable and loamy as the banks of Walden Pond, and it raises the same question for us that it did for Henry David Thoreau when he took up roost in his handmade cabin in the Massachusetts woods in 1845.

Is it desirable, or possible, to turn our backs on modern life and retreat into blissful Transcendentalist solitude, communing with flora and fauna? Should our goal be to banish humanity and return "the planet as close as possible to the Garden of Eden," as the radical Voluntary Human Extinction Movement proposes? Or should we admit that the utopian garden is long gone, and that in order to reconnect with nature (let alone save it) we must confront the destructive forces within ourselves?

"Into the Wild" and "There Will Be Blood" probe deeply into these themes and are serendipitous companion pieces. "Into the Wild" is a lyrical psychological portrait of an idealistic young man, Christopher Johnson McCandless, who tried to turn himself into a modern-day American Adam by dropping off the consumer-conformist treadmill but paid a fatal price for underestimating Mother Nature's mean streak.

"There Will Be Blood" presents a bleaker, more disturbing profile of the fictional Daniel Plainview, an oil driller ferociously played by Daniel Day-Lewis, a classic American, rugged individualist whose fanatical pursuit of wealth and power leaves a black stain on everything he touches. Although "Into the Wild" reflects our preferred national self-image as earnest, well-meaning Thoreau-ians, American economic history is also personified by the single-minded Plainview.

Spiritual journey

ADAPTED by Penn and Jon Krakauer from Krakauer's 1996 bestseller, "Into the Wild" recounts the true story of McCandless, a.k.a. Alexander Supertramp, a quixotic college grad from a well-off family who in the early 1990s disappeared into the Alaskan outback.

The movie celebrates the uncompromising integrity and Emersonian self-reliance of its hero, compellingly portrayed by actor Emile Hirsch. But it also questions whether McCandless' tragic end -- dying of starvation, alone and hallucinating -- is necessarily the best way to serve mankind or attain harmony with Mother Earth.

Though raised in affluent D.C. suburbia, McCandless could have stepped out of a 19th century German bildungsroman, a high-minded wanderer in the wilderness of his own tortured conscience. Disillusioned with what he saw as a soul-dead, consumerist society, McCandless turned to nature in search of spiritual transcendence.

This idea of retreating to wide open spaces in order to purge yourself of civilization and its discontented (and in McCandless' case, to escape your bickering parents as well) echoes through American culture (Walt Whitman, Huck Finn, Jack London, "On the Road") and reflects a very American belief that virtuous living is akin to self-realization. As the wife says to her husband in a recent New Yorker cartoon, "Yoga made you cranky, meditation made you anxious, but driving the hybrid you have found yourself, Walter."

But "Into the Wild" also serves as a cautionary tale about the folly of saving your soul by turning your back on mankind (and common sense). McCandless' tendency to treat life as if it were an extreme sport is contrasted with the lives of other characters in the film who seem to have found more temperate, manageable approaches to surviving off the grid.

Thoreau was one of McCandless' idols, but as Rebecca Solnit points out in her just-published essay collection, "Storming the Gates of Paradise -- Landscapes for Politics," Thoreau wasn't urging his fellow Americans simply to drop out of the human race and go pick berries. The author of "Walden" was also the author of "Civil Disobedience," a supporter of abolitionism who went to jail rather than pay taxes to support what he believed was an immoral war with Mexico.

Unlike McCandless, Thoreau was no babe in the forest. "To be in the woods," Solnit writes of Thoreau's philosophy, "was not to be out of society or politics."

Capitalist quandary

"INTO the Wild" belongs to a cinematic genre of Eco-Conscious Social Misfit movies that includes "Never Cry Wolf," "Dances With Wolves" and "Cast Away." "There Will Be Blood" fits in a separate but parallel line of literary and cinematic narratives ("Moby Dick," "Citizen Kane," "Chinatown") about the rapacity of capitalism run amok and ruthless, brilliant men (Capt. Ahab, Charles Foster Kane, Noah Cross) hell-bent on remaking the world in their own image, whatever the cost in natural resources or lives.

Just as the landscapes of "Into the Wild" mirror McCandless' mental states -- rapturous and Elysian, though filled with hazard -- the cheerless, unforgiving Western landscapes of "Blood" reflect the harsh, utilitarian personality of the aptly named Plainview.

The most radical aspect of "There Will Be Blood" is the way it depicts the twin U.S. belief systems of material progress and spiritual salvation as smoke screens for hucksterism and exploitation. The two slippery, intertwined personalities at the film's center -- the brutal oilman and his rival, grasping, egotistical minister Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) -- are presented as dark, dueling alter egos.

Outwardly charming and smooth-talking, Plainview (who was modeled after L.A. oil tycoon Edward Doheny) purports to offer financial deliverance to the dirt-farming rubes whose scrubland he cons them into selling at rock-bottom prices. Sunday claims the power to save souls by driving out the devil from his gullible parishioners. Yet he makes his own deal with the devil by cooperating with Plainview in hopes that the oilman will use some of his ill-gotten gains to build a new church.

Neither nature nor human nature, as Plainview and the preacher regard them, are at all idyllic. Rather, both men see these twin "natures" as out-of-control, ungodly. Only through sweat, sacrifice and ingenuity, the men preach in their different ways, can these primitive forces be tamed. But in the end both men, and by analogy America, are corrupted by the drive for profit, delivering destruction instead of redemption.

"There Will Be Blood" was loosely inspired by the 1927 novel "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author, Socialist and failed candidate for California governor in 1934, and bears traces of his worldview. Given current events in Iraq, Venezuela and elsewhere, the movie's skepticism toward petrol-based populism certainly doesn't have to strain for relevance.

But you have to dig below Anderson's mesmerizing visuals -- a towering oil well gushing like some great, evil god; blood pooling in a bowling alley -- to grasp the thematic audacity of "Blood."

When the Puritans landed in the New World, their Calvinist souls recoiled from the vast wilderness surrounding them, which they equated with the devil and the heathen Indian "savages." (See Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown" for details.) So they set out to subdue and, if necessary, destroy nature in the name of building civilization.

Those tendencies have provoked a cultural reaction encompassing everything from the 19th century Hudson River School of painting and the Earth Art movement of the 1970s to "Silent Spring" and Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax" to the hippie-orgiastic-communitarian "happening" of Woodstock. There always has been a spiritual, even religious dimension to America's green movement, fused with images of a lost Eden. As Joni Mitchell wrote in her musical homage to that rock 'n' roll hoedown on Max Yasgur's farm, "we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

But this idealized picture of a bucolic past may prevent us from dealing with the complex present reality of acid rain, drowning polar bears, Chinese coal-burning plants and record droughts in Arizona and the Amazon. In the 19th century, artists such as Frederick Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt painted romanticized American landscapes aglow with divine light, airbrushing out the railroads and deforestation that already were ransacking the country.

As the contemporary landscapes of photographer Richard Misrach show us, even a tainted nature, strewn with smokestacks and test-bombing ranges, can be majestic, mysterious, fertile with meaning.

Journalist Alan Weisman captures this bittersweet paradox near the end of his book "The World Without Us," which imagines how long it would take for the Earth to heal itself if human beings suddenly disappeared. Though cleverly disguised as a sci-fi/disaster scenario, the book is really a passionate moral cry not to give into the false comfort of imagining that we can recover an ecological Age of Innocence.

"The vision of a world relieved of our burden, with its flora and fauna blossoming wildly and wonderfully in every direction, is initially seductive," Weisman writes. "Yet it's quickly followed by a stab of bereavement over the loss of all the wonder that humans have wrought amid our harm and excess."

"There Will Be Blood" powerfully instructs us about how the American Eden got sub-parceled and sold off in the first place. "Into the Wild" poignantly asks if it's possible to get off the grid and live on the edge, without falling into the abyss. In the decades ahead, as another bard of the deep American interior, Robert Frost, once observed, the road we choose to take will make all the difference.

[MacGuffin]

iW PROFILE | "There Will Be Blood" Director Paul Thomas Anderson
by Eugene Hernandez (December 24, 2007)

Sitting down with indieWIRE earlier this month in New York City for a one-on-one conversation about "There Will Be Blood," the exceptional new film that dominated iW's 2007 film critics' poll, American auteur Paul Thomas Anderson caught a first glimpse of Upton Sinclair's re-issued 1920s novel, "Oil!" resting on a small table nearby. Examining the book's cover, he groused briefly about the need to place an image of Daniel Day-Lewis on the front of the book, explaining that he had intially hoped the promotional item could be re-released with that same simple cover that first caught his eye in a London bookstore years ago. Picking up the book back in Britain started him on the long journey to making his epic new film.

Sinclair's novel is at the core of "There Will Be Blood," its script loosely adapted by P.T. Anderson from essentially the book's first 150 pages or so. But, to flesh out his story about the emergence of a powerful California oil baron who f inds himself at odds with a skillful young preacher leading a growing congregation, Anderson spent years immersing himself in the history of oil in America, studying photographs and visiting numerous museums dedicated to the subject. He also relied on Margaret Leslie Davis' biography of infamous oil tycoon Edward Doheny, The Dark Side of Fortune. Anderson's rich story -- opening in limited release on Wednesday, Dec. 26th -- examines a dynamic intersection of oil and religion, family and greed, driven by capitalism and corruption. Connections to America one hundred years later are subtle but striking.

With dollar signs in his eyes, "There Will Be Blood"'s Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) travels with his young son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) to Central California in search of oil riches. In the modest, dusty town of Little Boston, they settle on the ranch of a local family living atop what may be an ocean of black gold. Equally ambitious and opportunistic is the family's eldest son, emerging Pentecostal evangelist Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who quickly finds himself competing with Plainview for the hearts and minds of the townspeople.

Asked about some of his cinematic influences, during a Q & A with noted critic Annette Insdorf along with Daniel Day-Lewis last week at New York City's 92 Street Y, Anderson cited both John Huston's 1948 film "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and George Stevens' 1956 film, "Giant." Huston's own voice may have inadvertently permeated the character created by Day-Lewis for the film. An even stronger link is the fact that Anderson filmed "Blood" in Marfa, TX where "Giant" was shot.

While struggling with the screenply for "There Will Be Blood," Anderson said that he came across "Sierra Madre," admiring the "economy" with which the story was told. Calling the film a "buoy in the night," he said, "I needed a foothold and when I came across it again, it was a lifesaver."

in conversations about his new film, Paul Thomas Anderson has emphasized the collaboration that drove the film. Settling comfortably into an old-fashioned armchair for the indieWIRE interview, he offered background on "Blood," discussing his work with some of the movie's key collaborators, including lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis, production designer Jack Fisk (a regular collaborator with Terrence Malick), frequent Robert Altman editor Dylan Tichenor, cinematographer Robert Elswit, who has worked with Anderson on all of his films, and first-time film composer Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead. The film was produced by Anderson's regular partners JoAnne Sellar and Daniel Lupi.

For his California story, P.T. Anderson wanted to shoot the film in his home state, but couldn't find the right undeveloped landscape. Looking for, "what Bakersfield would have looked like before the discovery of oil," he ended up in West Texas. Detailing the importance of the setting, Anderson recalled walking around the 50,000 acre Marfa ranch they found, literally planning where to build his town, surveying the land and nailing a stake with a red flag into the ground when he decided where to construct houses, a church and an oil derrick for the town of Little Boston. The ranch even had requisite train tracks. With the exception of the derrick, the structures -- erected over the course of three months -- still stand, and were constructed as four-sided, actual buildings, rather than movie set facades.

P.T. Anderson, who exudes confidence first and foremost as a writer, explained that he was still working on the unfinished screenplay for "There Will Be Blood" when Daniel Day-Lewis signed onto the project. In the two years before production actually commenced, the director recalled an initial resistance upon receiving a tape of Day Lewis performing his distinctive character. He eventually came around.

"It was terrifying, even as much as I looked forward to working with Daniel and trust [him]...," Anderson recalled about bringing Day-Lewis into the process, Once the actors and others were on board, P.T.A. explained that he had to take off his writer's hat and focus only on orchestrating the execution of his script. The process begins and ends with the writing, Anderson noted in an interview with Charlie Rose last week, explaining that if the script is good, directing can be easy. But once he and his collaborators are on set, "The writer really gets left at the door," he added, because, "nine times out of ten, [any] problems are with the writing."

Reflecting on his recent work as the stand-in director for major filmic influence Robert Altman on the set of the maverick's final film, "A Prairie Home Companion," Anderson told indieWIRE that he learned to "hold onto stuff" and not always give his collaborators the immediate answers they desired. Sometimes not answering their questions resulted in the best results, he found. But, in the conversation with iW, and then again the next night during the lengthy Q & A alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, P.T. Anderson reflected on that "terrifying baton hand off" that took place when he began to bring people into the world he was imagining.

A good example of that came near the end of the process when Anderson developed the music for the movie. A key element that literally sets the tone for his film is Jonny Greenwood's evocative score that opens the movie with an extended high pitched blare, jolting the viewer from the get go. The music carries the viewer through an extended, otherwise silent sequence depicting Plainview's early efforts to find oil. A bit tentative initially, Greenwood went away to create music, ultimately delivering two hours of work for the picture.

Concluding the conversation with indieWIRE, Anderson marveled at the arc of of a project like "There Will Be Blood" that began with his solitary period as a writer, grew to include the many collaborators and then, once shooting was complete, left the film in the hands of just a few people. He said that structure reminds him of the shape of a Christmas tree.

"You know, when you're making a film you start with all these collaborators," Anderson said in notes on the film, "And in the end you come down to just three people - the director, the composer and the editor -- holding this work together."

[Stefen]

Is there a screener out?

[The Red Vine]

EDIT: HUGE SPOILERS!



I found a 1 star review from RT.


THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Paramount Vantage
R - some violence

Aiming to make a big impression with a powerful message about American greed and violence, director Paul Thomas Anderson has made a one-note movie that loses its energy early on and never recovers. The story is loosely based on a small segment of a 1927 novel by Upton Sinclair. No doubt Anderson was fascinated by the portrait of the twin engines of America as represented by two characters: a driven and selfish oil man who hates everybody and a young minister whose fundamentalist Christianity emphasizes the sins of humankind.

In a very slow start, we meet Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) in 1898 scrounging around in a cave looking for silver and gold. Years later, he has made a name for himself as a very successful oil man. We see him making a pitch to a crowd of landowners with his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier), the orphan of a worker killed in a mine accident. He uses the kid to prove that he is a family man. Plainview believes that greed is good (as if we've never heard that one before) and will do anything to achieve his goals. Thanks to a tip, he is able to purchase some valuable property that is awash with the black gold. He has no qualms about taking advantage of the owner of the land and not paying him a fair price.

It is in this community that H.W. loses his hearing and is banished by his father to a school far away. Plainview finds an adversary in Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a young Christian preacher who has an ego as big as his own and also wants to be center stage. Eli builds a large church in the wilderness and expects Plainview to contribute to his work.

Henry (Kevin J. O'Connor) arrives one day claiming to be Daniel's half-brother and replaces H.W. in meetings with new clients. Plainview confides in him saying "I hate most people. I want to earn enough money so I can get away from everyone." Meant to be the closest thing to a personal confession, it falls flat given all the evidence we've already seen to prove that Plainview is a mean, angry, and violent man who has no interest in anyone except himself.

Anderson wants us to recognize in the portraits of Plainview and Sunday a troubling image of what is wrong with America. But the director's message gets lost in the excruciatingly long and repetitious drama that leads to a sickening and senseless act of violence that reminds one of Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" (complete with a character's head being bashed in like a pumpkin). "There Will Be Blood" also features the worst score of the year by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. It is a constant irritant.

Reviewed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Rating: 1/5

edit: how the fuck could you post this without a spoiler warning??

[pete]

any critic too quick to point out whatever political allegory they see is suspect.