Barnum & Barnum
There Will Be Blood (2007)
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Studio on the Square
There Will Be Blood is a funny, funny movie. In fact, there aren't enough diamonds in the bank of Monte Carlo to ransom a circus as fantastic as Left Foot Dan's. Don't tell me Anderson solicited that wounded bear bark when Plainview drags his broken foot from his first oil well, or those three long fingers like some half-drunk high-schooler shouting out for the riches of west-coast oil.
It's hard to imagine how many Alan Aldas and Nelson Rockefellers someone like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg would try to cram onto the platform at the Little Boston depot, as if drama was a derivative of look-who's-here cameos. Even Anderson can't cast Day-Lewis without someone to act as the wall - like Hawkeye would assault the gaffer if there wasn't a pasty Leonardo lead to abuse - but oh well. This movie makes a great case for never wanting to describe a great movie as "thoughtful" ever again. Give me the rampaging, drooling slob any day.
I kept thinking of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, as I guess I do when I watch directors who like to foot their ideas of themselves through the low hills and high hills of empty, half-stitched geographies. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is as close to a fairy tale as the western ever got - magic is John McCabe beneath a million creaking pines - and the conventional dissolution of Daniel Plainview pales beside Miller's aching opiate mysteries. But I will say this for There Will Be Blood: I got every thin penny's worth of my admission. The movie makes the price of a ticket look cheap.
I wonder if Daniel Day-Lewis ever goes through Arther Miller's old love letters from Marilyn Monroe and thinks about being the big actor of his generation. Marilyn never dated actors the way she dated theater idols or ball-players (she was such a patriot, even as the butt of the Kennedys' bad jokes - a Clarissa Saunders to the nation). Plainview is a wink from the camera at that one person in the audience the actor knows is going to the movie just to see her Daniel. Which, for all the awards season bluster, still must be the reason some actors try for the team. She might just as well be Marilyn as Rebecca Miller, in the dark opposite the snarling sneer from the crest of a great green wave, breaking into a big-as-the-Pacific smile.
If you squint this looks just like the movie still I couldn't find!
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Studio on the Square
There Will Be Blood is a funny, funny movie. In fact, there aren't enough diamonds in the bank of Monte Carlo to ransom a circus as fantastic as Left Foot Dan's. Don't tell me Anderson solicited that wounded bear bark when Plainview drags his broken foot from his first oil well, or those three long fingers like some half-drunk high-schooler shouting out for the riches of west-coast oil.
It's hard to imagine how many Alan Aldas and Nelson Rockefellers someone like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg would try to cram onto the platform at the Little Boston depot, as if drama was a derivative of look-who's-here cameos. Even Anderson can't cast Day-Lewis without someone to act as the wall - like Hawkeye would assault the gaffer if there wasn't a pasty Leonardo lead to abuse - but oh well. This movie makes a great case for never wanting to describe a great movie as "thoughtful" ever again. Give me the rampaging, drooling slob any day.
I kept thinking of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, as I guess I do when I watch directors who like to foot their ideas of themselves through the low hills and high hills of empty, half-stitched geographies. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is as close to a fairy tale as the western ever got - magic is John McCabe beneath a million creaking pines - and the conventional dissolution of Daniel Plainview pales beside Miller's aching opiate mysteries. But I will say this for There Will Be Blood: I got every thin penny's worth of my admission. The movie makes the price of a ticket look cheap.
I wonder if Daniel Day-Lewis ever goes through Arther Miller's old love letters from Marilyn Monroe and thinks about being the big actor of his generation. Marilyn never dated actors the way she dated theater idols or ball-players (she was such a patriot, even as the butt of the Kennedys' bad jokes - a Clarissa Saunders to the nation). Plainview is a wink from the camera at that one person in the audience the actor knows is going to the movie just to see her Daniel. Which, for all the awards season bluster, still must be the reason some actors try for the team. She might just as well be Marilyn as Rebecca Miller, in the dark opposite the snarling sneer from the crest of a great green wave, breaking into a big-as-the-Pacific smile.
If you squint this looks just like the movie still I couldn't find!
posted by NPK at 4:20 AM
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