Of course it'll be another 3-4 months before I'm able to see it, but I've been hearing a lot of 'best of the year' talk going around the internets. Looks pretty incredible and PT Anderson is top5 for me so needless to say I'm pretty amped for this.

trailer

Not much of a movie but Daniel Day Lewis gives a performance of a lifetime...or for DDL the usual. He was magnificent, but the movie has no real plot. It's boring, with no plot, and super long. Just sort of floated along until it ended. He has Best Actor locked up harder than Hoffman did for Capote. Doesn't look like TWBB will get the best picture, No Country or Atonement from the looks of things and hype.

And I don't think either of those are deserving either. Two more long boring movies where not much at all happens. No Country's acting and some of the writing is better than Atonement, but Atonement was one of the most beautifully shot movies of the year. There were a few movies this year that combined brilliant filmmaking, and good acting without forgetting the entertainment part but they aren't getting the hype.

Academy Awards (other than a few notable exceptions) seems to prefer long, bloated, boring-ass movies. Pretentious a bonus, but not necessary. Some of the more...over the top reviews for There Will Be Blood, convince me that I have utterly no desire whatsoever to see it. And those were the "Zomg, this is lik teh greatest moviez evar!!" reviews.

Daniel Day Lewis is the man.

PT Anderson is a douche.

I'm done here.

Sums it up about right.

I am convinced that Daniel Day Lewis should play a bad guy with facial hair for the rest of his career.

I appreciate the fact that he isn't in every damn movie out. Oversaturation can kill a career faster than being sucky.

I am worried that this will happen to Christian Bale.

If he's smart, he'll slow the roll of his agent, and be highly selective. Most don't though. They get a taste of that money and fame, and are all "AAAAA!!! Accept everything!!!" It's happening to Steve Carell right now. People are becoming sick of seeing him in every crappy comedy since The 40 Year Old Virgin. I place the lion's share of the blame on personal managers and agents. All most care about is getting their cut, so they throw absolute garbage on their client's plates, and tell them that they HAVE to accept whatever comes down the pipe or be forgotten about. There is a happy medium.

I think the problem with Steve is that he plays the same, EXACT role every time out and that's pretty much all he can do. Same shit is going to happen with Owen Wilson when he comes back from suicide watch.

Anderson is brilliant, Lewis is brilliant, trailer was great, I'm looking forward to this one.

Bill the butcher was probably the best character of all time. I love that movie "Gangs of New York."

Did you like Magnolia?

Boogie Nights is the Qu'ran as far as his films go, but I like everyone of his movies so far, even Punch drunk love which most people hate. One thing's for sure his sets and styling are impeccable.

Yep!

It's in the same category as Foxy Brown, a nearly great movie with a bunch of fantastic performances hamstrung by overly indulgent editing.

But I don't mind when talented filmmakers get carried away and overreach. Better that than another predictable generic POS drunk on Syd Field's jizz.

And Punch Drunk Love was brilliant, the only thing I've ever been able to stand Sandler in.

I thought Punch Drunk Love was great too, but I hate Magnolia. Hate, hate, hate. Boogie Nights is as solid as it gets. Hard Eight is as underrated as it gets.

Hard Eight is fucking awesome.



philip baker hall is epic in it.

That scene where J.C. Reilly is threatening to beat up Phillip Baker Hall had me in stitches.

"A, I know karate, and 2......."

I will fuck you up if you fuck with me, ok? I know three kinds of Karate: Jujitsu, Aikido, and regular Karate.

Yep. That's the line. I forgot how it went.

There Will Be Blood is a complete, utter masterpiece.

Daniel Day-Lewis puts forth one of the top 5 greatest performances of all-time. Easy.

probably the movie I most want to see right now

I loved the movie because DDL was teh shit. The truth is the movie has no story line at all and the ending doesnt make sense but DDL can be in any movie and work that shit. If he were on Snakes on a Plain it would have won an Oscar.

It is intended to be rather bizarre and existential, according to what I've read on it. I have to say, every time I hear the radio spots every morning on the way to work, I crack up at DDL's line " I...drink...your...milkshake! I drink it UP!

Milkshake Scene

Dano's performance is going forgotten. He hsould have gotten a Supporting Actor nod.

"I AM THE THIRD REVELATION! I told you I would eat you!"

There Will be Blood is a very good movie. It does plod along at times and can be somewhat boring, but it's worth it.

There are some absolutely phenomenal shots in the movie. Specifically, I am thinking of the scene where there's an oil fire, and Daniel Day-Lewis, et. al. are standing in front of it. Really good stuff.

The movie's basically a character study. The plot serves the function of seeing how a man will react to his situation when his only goal is to prove that he can defeat whoever he feels is challenging him. As the plot escalates, so does Day-Lewis's character's intensity, eventually becoming all-consuming and pretty frightening.

I don't think there's any doubt that Daniel Day Lewis is one of (if not THE) best actor working today. There's been a few "Method" actors out there who were amazing in several performances, but then faded as they became more established and took safer roles, and ended up just playing cops or smart criminals in every movie. DDL just keeps rolling.

There were some mesmerizing scenes and fantastic visuals (as the above post mentioned) and Daniel Day Lewis was brilliant, but I thought that the movie as a whole didn't quite measure up to the sum of it's parts.

The second half of the film just didn't manage to keep the momentum that the first half had built up, and it started to drag. I think it could have been tightened up a bit. Still, a very good film, and worth seeing, but not as good as I had hoped.

For the record, I'm a PT Anderson fan. I loved Magnolia, Boogie Nights and Hard Eight. Not so big on Punch Drunk Love, but it was decent.

Finally saw this tonight; masterpiece for two hours...then it skips to 1927 and is utter shit. Andersen wrote the movie and I think he over indulged the source mind. He all but abandoned what Sinclair was getting at in Oil! for hours but then almost seemed compelled to make sure the ending went off on a Sinclair "capitalist bad" note. In the same vein, things end with the son completely off-tone from the rest of the movie.

For two hours though, it was the one of the greatest character studies I've ever seen. Lewis's character was oddly heroic even as he went killer. I recommend watching it and stopping when you see a wedding and sign language. Hell, ending with the girl chasing the deaf kid would have been brilliant on its own. For all the bitching I saw for the end of NCFOM, this was ten times less sensible.

the end was absolutely the logical outcome of the story, and a perfect capstone to the film.


i like PT and Danny Day for the same reasons- neither one of them is afraid to swing for the fences.

i liked the movie. Am I the only one who noticed similarities with 'the shining' in terms of the score?

fucking kubrick biter...



Boogie Nights, Hard Eight, Magnolia, There will be blood = decent resume.

Glock: Disagree; forces the audience to make assumptions that the early going does not build to at all. The stuff with the preacher wa ssolid and I couldn't help cheering for the bowling pin but the bit with the son had no dramatic foundation.

I was really in two minds about whether I liked the bowling pin scene at the end - for a moment it felt kinded contrived, a little overly climactic. Is that how the novel ends?? No biggie though. And DD Lewis's last words uttered were genius and the whole thing is worthy of all the kudos it got.

Making Boogie Nights at age 27 tells you Anderson's not your run-of-the-mill film maker and the fact that Robert Altman chose Anderson to be his stand by director (for insurance purposes as he was so old) on the set of his last film says it all imo.

?

the kid was as integrated into the story as any of the other subsidiary characters, and the culmination of his storyline was as logically preordained as anything in the movie.

I just saw it, and I loved every bit of this movie, I didn't think it was boring, my ear was fixed on every line Daniel Day Lewis recited. Daniel Plainview is easily one of my favorite movie characters in cinematic history, I enjoyed this movie more then No County For Old Men, and I love that movie.

Funny you say that, some of the score sounded like the monolith scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

saw it last night. the ending made the whole movie, I don't get ppl who didn't like it. one part I didn't get... I'm assuming the kid set fire to their place because he found out the other guy was an imposter, posing as daniel's brother, but why then didn't he just tell his dad? he could still talk even though he lost his hearing. why did he put his dad's life in danger?

cause his dad was a worthless piece of shit and he wanted them both dead?

that's the first thing that popped into my mind.

I disagree; Plainview is the model of the self made man. He's built as a tragic hero who then is corrupted but the movie skips too many narrative steps. We just don't see enough of the corrupting. I don't see how a guy who would drag himself on a broken leg to his own success, who can build a town and make its people all better off, even if his pursuit was singular, is bad so I never have a reason to dislike him. The murder scene is justifiable given the individual honor code we've seen up to then.

When he concedes at the end that he sent the 10K to the twin who he promised and not the 5K to the preacher (who he never promised anyways and who I feel is the true villain, the charlatan who provides false dividends while Plainview is putting food on the table), he retains his worth as a man of his word.

In fact, the whole movie, he is what he says he is. I just feel like the movie is telling me at the end that I was supposed to hate him all along because he was driven and successful but it doesn't make me do that in the way say Wall Street does with Michael Douglas's Gecko. There's not enough corrupt behavior to warrant the end he gets or the feeling that's supposed to be there.

It's a fine film, with an unsatisfying end for me. Magnolia and Boogie were superior total works if lesser in their first 8/10ths. Still, I'd rather see almost great Anderson than most any other director right now.

well that wouldn't explain why the kid set the fire up to ignite beneath the imposter guy's bed. what did that guy do to warrant hw's wrath other than lie to his dad? if the kid's beef was with his dad, he shouldn't have cared about that guy. the fact he wanted that guy dead actually means that he honored his dad, that he didn't think daniel was a piece of shit. further, if the kid actually hated daniel, he never would have returned to him.

Why wouldn't he love his dad? Plainview was good to that boy from day one. Even when he sent him away, he did so for logical reasons (angry boy tries to light man on fire after losing hearing while living out in what amounts to industrial frontier = seeking specialized help). Daniel's walk away was cold, but he showed genuine concern for that boy to his close compatriots while HW was gone. That's where the book as source material was needed; the HW composite in Sinclair's work stands against his father for the workers, sparking ire. "You'll be my competitor" made little sense for a falling out, especially considering how much he seemed to respect Paul Sunday's use of the 10K.

That's what I thought at first, but without Paul's information, Plainview may have never reached the success he had, so he was okay with Paul having some success, and also, I think deep down he didn't want his son to leave him.

One thing, was he telling the truth about HW not really being his son, or was he just saying that because he was a bit bitter because his son was leaving him?

HW was not; he took the boy on when on his his early employees was killed in the mines.

You see HW's father get killed working the mine early on in the movie. Plainview sits with the baby afterwards and obviously decides to keep / raise it. But still - did he really love the kid, wasn't the kid kind of a useful prop for his business, giving him a clean family man image?

I never got the impression that h loved the kid - I thought HW set fire to his room because Plainview had only time for his work (memories a little hazy here). I thought Plainview sent him away not because he was doing what was best for the kid, but because the kid was now more of a burden than a pleasure or benefit.

That's what I took out of the film - the book may give a different impression.

Well, at least I don't need to actually see the movie now. The entire plot is laid out for me, lol!

Who's to say he was pleased with Paul's success. He was taunting his brother with that information, not sharing it casually. I can't imagine he was happy or proud but it was a nice insult to use against someone who was in need of money. "Hey dumb ass, your brother was always smarter than you, always..."

As for his falling out with his son, that's just his way. He wanted his boy with him and he knew he was losing his boy. Throughout the movie, Plainview uses the kid as his anchor to humanity. Without that anchor, he knew he'd devolve to a madman and the climax of the movie shows this. Remember the line "I'm not sure how long I can keep doing this...with these...people."

Also, remember how happy he was with the fake brother. He was clearly searching for someone to be a trust-worthy associate and a link from him to others and when dude was outed as a fake because he didn't remember the Peach Liquor Ball or whatever the fuck it was, Daniel killed him. Before then, he was practically in love with his brother, despite not knowing him. That foreshadowed what was going to happen with him and his son if his son left, in my opinion.

And to complete the theme, within moments of his son's emotional break-up with him, Daniel killed the 1st dumb ass to get in his way. I think the ending had more to do with showing Daniel's absolute need for a human anchor than it did any rivalry with the Preacher. The rivalry was already won just by the Preacher showing up hat in hand and it became a rout with 'DRAINAGE!'

I do think he had love for HW, but yeah, I also do think he used the boy to help him buy land.

Great movie, I think I'm going to watch it again, I already saw it twice.


Yeah, I love the look of disgust from Daniel when his fake brother was asking for money when he was at the whore house.

Pure Awesomeness. Purely American. Best Western since Once Upon a Time in the West. Better, really. The extensive oil/blood/sin/baptism metaphors notwithstanding. This is the emergence of the American aristocracy. One that got there with blood on their own hands. Men willing to drag themselves from the bottom of a mine shaft across lord knows what kind of terrain to get an assayance. Single minded pursuit of something. Relentless competitive. What would I do? Don't tell me what to do. Fuck you.

The final scenes were perfect. Taking the frivolities that come with unreasonable wealth and literally beating the false spirituality out of the country. Where do these men go when the frontier is literally at its end? How do individuals live as a collective society in face of the great miseries that are ahead? Not my problem.

Frederick Jackson Turner couldn't have summed it up any better.

Literally one of my favorite movies. When I first watched it I didn't know what it was about and all I knew was that it was up for Best Picture and was well received by the critics. I loved it. Didn't want it to end. Daniel Day Lewis was brilliant.

anyone who hasn't seen this should check it out.

Once upon a time in the West was unfegganbelievable. I keep telling people, no one listens. That should be mandatory viewing for anyone who likes films.

Of course, blood was special too. Look forward to seeing PT Anderson at work again, dude is a can't miss.