If you haven't seen There Will Be Blood, then you may want to avoid watching the YouTube video that comes at the end of this post. I don't think there's anything too-too spoilery, but it does feature what could be the best line of the movie.
I feel like TWBB was made specifically for me. Other people (like Mattical) might also enjoy it, but I don't think anyone can really appreciate it the way I can and do. Why? Because my two favorite movies of all time are Silence of the Lambs, the Academy Award-winning Best Film about chillingly genius psychopathic murderers and the people who chase them, and Gettysburg, the 4 1/2-hour long Civil War epic featuring more fake beards than an unauthorized Tom Cruise biography. TWBB combines these two films into a sort of "If They Mated" masterpiece of murderous, overly-long, period-piece, sociopathic, mustachioed, high-falutin' speechifying, landscape-y delight.
The only way this movie could have been better is if it was about Hannibal Lecter (played by Daniel Day Lewis) fighting on horseback across Antietam battlefield, cannons firing everywhere, beating up priests with bowling pins, then skinning off their faces to use as a disguise to sneak into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where he falls in love with Angelica Houston from The Royal Tenenbaums and they move to a brownstone full of eccentric characters in present-day Manhattan and then becomes besties with Bill Murray and Aunt Jackie from Roseanne.
Maybe once we've all seen the movie, we can totally dedicate this blog to worshipping TWBB and analyzing every scene and performance and coming up with theories (Identical twins?). Until then, please enjoy this video tribute to the MOVIE OF THE YEAR.
6 comments:
I killed the blog. :(
I enjoyed the movie. Tough as nails to enjoy, but I dig the creepy-ness. The soundtrack was badass. I read the book before hand though, so I was a little scarred. I do find it interesting that my three favorite movies as of late, No Country, I'm Not There, and There Will Be Blood, have all been disturbing. It's tough to walk away with the conventional 'pleasure,' but each has satisfied my thirst wholly.
Oh, and about the twin thing...I'd be anxious to find out what kind of scenes fell off the chopping block, kind of like The Departed??? You know, it was awesome and it flowed really well, but I felt like there were more scenes there that weren't necessary (and got cut) but could have been fun to watch.
More on this later...when everyone's scene it
Love the milkshake video! Jay, I couldn't agree with you more about your three favorite movies as of late... In the coming months my DVD collection will grow, those three are must owns!
tripled. all three films sorta defined the current state of the suggestive "thinking block." not to shabby of an end-of-the-year movie run. didn't leave much for early '08. i agree, the pre-final-cut of TWBB was probably much longer, more tributaries in plot, which may have been detrimental, given the more singular characterization the film ultimately spoke for.
i didn't see the paul/eli dual persona as actual in-the-flesh identicals, more of an emotionally-led strategy. whether deliberately conscious or not, it also helped define how plainview "filed" the people he knew. by assuring eli's falsehood, he no longer had to acknowledge any respectable quality in him. in turn, he directs all worthy competition towards the irrelevant, unreal "paul," thus removing all potential guilt from his now relieved pursuit of progress/greed. this relationship was very reminiscent of the butcher in GangsofNYC with leo's dad, an affirmation of past which governs any and all emotional decisiveness from that point on; a personal vindication.
DDL killed it, man. he also pretends to chew sunflower seeds while illustrating his character, as in gangs. i might detect an unhealthy comparison bewtween the two characters, given the familiar performance.
did anyone respond similarly? opposingly?
on the soundtrack: perfect. in the truly classic sense, an actual "soundtrack," meant to "track" the movement of film with "sound." as opposed to the director's personal favorites or 5 yet-to-be-lubed kinks cuts, the music actually spoke for what wasn't said or saw. in other words, a "soundtrack."
that was probably a bit bitter, but come on. i congratulate pt, and the coens for making serious movies in the royal sense. the sense that thoroughly joys my seat in the audience.
Post a Comment