THE MASTER (2012) P.T. Anderson's film on the origions of Scientology (sort of), Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Laura Dern

how magnanimous of you

that trailer is absolutely astonishing

i agree with clemenza: boogie nights is the best thing he's done so far. not really a PT anderson fan on the whole, but i'm always interested in seeing what he's up to.

punch drunk and magnolia are both amazing to me. the others are good with TWBB as least good.

i think it's thought to be kinda corny round these parts to love magnolia though.

BN def my favorite.

magnolia has lots of good-to-great parts, but i was disappointed by the whole. feel the same about punch-drunk love, tbh. loved the first half, when it was hard to tell what was happening or where it was all heading, but i lost interest when it settled out into an offbeat romcom (not that i really have anything against offbeat romcoms). need to see there will be blood again.

the score ruined TWBB for me.

i'm always interested in seeing what he's up to

Same here. Whatever my assessment of each film, I really admire the way Anderson is always trying out new things--he's got the same restlessness that Altman had, although he's somewhat more careful, and I doubt, the financing of films being what it is today, he'll ever really have the chance to misfire the way Altman sometimes did. If I compare his career to Tarantino's--they both got on the map imitating Scorsese--I think Anderson has managed himself much, much better.

There Will Be Blood is very, very good but, after the initial awestruck viewing, subsequent viewings have had slightly diminishing returns (but only to the extent that I'm not all 'maybe the best film of the 21st Century!' like I was when I first saw it). I thought Punch-Drunk Love was decent on a first viewing but I've had almost the opposite experience, wherein it's only gotten better the more I've watched it and I really like it a lot now. Hard Eight/Sydney is great for what it is, which is just a super low-key little movie with a '70s vibe. It's been...maybe a decade since I saw Magnolia. I liked it a lot back then, but people change, so...who knows?

And, well, Boogie Nights is one of my absolute favorite movies, one of the few that never gets old or diminishes at all in my esteem. Anderson is an incredibly talented filmmaker and he's probably got me on his hook for life like he's Altman Mk. 2.

Ha, didn't even see your Altman comparison, clemenza. Not too much of a stretch, though, I guess.

the score ruined TWBB for me.

― jed_, Monday, May 21, 2012 10:06 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

they make far fewer films now though. scorsese was making about 6 films a decade in the 70s and 80s. altman was averaging out at more that one per year at that time.

xposts

which is basically what you were saying, clemenza... sorry i misread your post.

Ha, didn't even see your Altman comparison, clemenza. Not too much of a stretch, though, I guess.

― Quiet Desperation, LLC (Deric W. Haircare), Monday, May 21, 2012 4:15 PM (2 minutes ago)

he was Altman's "backup" director on A Prarie Home Companion

twbb > bn >> pdl >>> h8 >>>>>> mag

imo

this is p obvious but there's a big beau travail vibe in that trailer

i'm generally not a PTA fan but the trailer and subject are intersting

I still like Hard Eight best although there's lots to like in every film except Magnolia and PDL.

(a few xposts) Yeah--there's so much money at stake now, and every film by every name director is such an event, that I can't imagine Anderson having the freedom or resources to fall on his face with an Images or Quintet. (Not a comment on the films themselves, neither of which I've seen--got about 20 minutes into Quintet, once.) My guess is that PDL is about the limit of how small and oddball he'll ever get. He does seem to take his time and be comfortable working on big canvasses.

For the sake of comparison, within the span of time P.T. Anderson will have made six movies (16 years), Robert Altman made everything from M*A*S*H through Fool For Love (20 theatrical films from '70-'85).

this is p obvious but there's a big beau travail vibe in that trailer

good catch! it may be obvious, but i didn't make the connection.

soderbergh seems to crank 'em out

xp well it is just dudes on a beach

he was Altman's "backup" director on A Prarie Home Companion

Yeah, I know! I always wonder if he contributed at all to the final product.

as long as we're keeping inventory: liked magnolia but think it's a little stupid, really liked boogie nights, hate PDL intensely, never seen hard eight, got about halfway through TWBB and turned it off (late), never went back to it.

I used to admire Soderbergh's ethos but I watched Haywire tonight and it was so perfunctory he should probably stick to one film a year at best.

I guess he splits the difference between the Altman/Allen and Kubrick/Malick ends of the productivity spectrum.

I read somewhere that they test-marketed Just Dudes on a Beach as the original title for The Master and it just didn't fly.

TWBB is one of the most recent MUST WATCH ON A BIG SCREEN movies I done did scope out

clemenza, Images is great. It's one of Altman's most underrated films (along with, like, The Company). Quintet is one of two Altman films I never got all the way through (the other being O.C. & Stiggs).

my model for prolific "global" filmmaker is Assayas.

i think PTA would be more prolific if his movies didnt take so long to finance.

not a 100 percent fan of anything he's done but im still glad hes out there doing his thing.

ya same

i watched that trailer 3 times today. now i will pour myself a torpedo juice.

this is p obvious but there's a big beau travail vibe in that trailer

i'm generally not a PTA fan but the trailer and subject are intersting

― goole, Monday, May 21, 2012 9:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

i actively dislike his films. i don't begrudge other people liking them, of course, and a lot of people i love and respect do. i just find them inflated and faux-visionary and irritating. sound and thunder signifying nothing, etc. to each his own, etc.

sound and fury

thunder and the sound of thunder signifying redundancy

soundbolts and thunder, very very redunder

!!

whoops for malapropism

you get the idea

challop swaggering aside i do more or less agree with am, i have always felt a vague void around this dude, he's like one of those bands that pulls the right retro moves and genre exercises at the right time to keep the brand seeming very sophisticated and unpredictable but damned if i know what ideas or even what personality is being put across

yeah i don't mean to be challopsy, like i said lots of folks whose taste i seriously respect think this dude is the bee's knees. it's ok if people have different tastes though!

i can kind of enjoy his movies at the level of individual directorial choices, sometimes. and i guess i admire his audacity even if i'm not too thrilled at what it's in service of.

all of his movies have major daddy issues (except I guess PDL which has sister issues)

my students really like TWWB. however they didn't really like FWWM. FWIW.

i mean TWBB

oops

I'll never get people haveing trouble w/ JG's TWBB score.

didn't care for greenwood's score as an element of the film. it's perhaps interesting as a thing in itself, but i found it distracting.

agree with some dude about the absence of ideas and personality.

Yeah, if anything, I overlooked the score the first time I saw it.

Boogie Nights is certainly his most virtuoso movie, but it's anchored too much in homage (to other filmmakers, to real life events) for me to think of it as his best. It's like a young ambitious filmmaker explosion of ideas (compiled masterfully). "There Will Be Blood," on the other hand, I feel says something amazing and unique about America in a way that's never really been done before, least of all by Anderson. It feels like a really good novel, whereas "Boogie Nights" feels like a really good Rolling Stone article.

I did watch "Magnolia" for the first time in ages, and perhaps because I am now firmly in the realm of adulthood found it remarkably moving.

"There Will Be Blood," on the other hand, I feel says something amazing and unique about America in a way that's never really been done before

Au contraire:
http://cache.heraldinteractive.com/blogs/entertainment/love_that_tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/lhagman_l.jpg

(Only about half joking there.)