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

check the dude with the pipe doing a funky little strut near the end after the incredible "everybody!"

btw i really felt seymour-hoffman had a ron burgundy thing going on in this, not even saying that as a criticism, he just had this pompous straight man thing. also dr evil.

definitely a lot of nods to super mario in this... the plumbing-like environment of the torpedo hold, the way joaquin seemed to "grow" in stature after eating the "mushroom" of PSH's knowledge

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Monday, October 1, 2012 1:28 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― i too went to college (silby), Monday, September 9, 2013 2:27 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark

lmao

i liked this movie but i still kind of feel like PTA's movies are these big arty empty gestures

I'm okay with those. Small empty arty gestures, nah.

name some big arty full gestures of the 21st century

Yeezus

nah amateurist is right: this is the only big non-empty gesture he's made

the one way i guess they are not empty gestures, at least the last 2 films, is in their deliberate lack of commercial potential, despite costing a bunch. and i guess that's to be welcomed, just to keep the american art cinema alive. and b/c of all that it's hard to really resent PTA. but yeah i think he's both talented and really full of hot air.

i guess i've tried to make my case esp. on the TWBB thread...

name some big arty full gestures of the 21st century

― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Sunday, September 15, 2013 9:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't know about arty but i was pretty impressed with the thoughtfulness of rise of the planet of the apes, actually. despite its flaws, which i would scarcely deny, there was meat on its bones.

in terms of artier stuff, i don't know, i didn't think take shelter was blowing smoke.

if you go beyond US there's plenty of stuff...

i enjoyed the master so much more than twbb. again because i found it funny - it was prob kind to lrh, i reckon he's far crazier than lancaster todd having read barefaced messiah, but there still was definitely some of the same comic madness to him that comes across in that book. and the sense of this general madness in the organisation.

but honestly morbz i don't really know how to answer your question b/c i don't really ask my films to be thematically ambitious w/ grand gestures and stuff. but PTA's stuff is inarguably grand in scale, not a little pretentious, and bombastic. so i was really just saying that the films feel a bit hollow for all that, even the newer one which as noted I liked a lot better than TWBB.

i've noted before that PTA's films (at least since the adam sandler one) get a lot of their charge from a kind of rhetoric of refusal... a refusal of the familiar sorts of narrative arcs, characterization, etc. that most filmgoers expect. they seem to be built almost as a series of perverse gestures in reaction to what might be expected of them. at least to a point. and there are worse ways to make films. but there are better ways, too, i suspect.

watched this for the first time since the theatre, cuz psh. he reminded me of welles a lil here. first half, maybe a little more, is riveting, and i love the jarring elisions: the cut from phoenix hopping onto the yacht to him asleep in the bunk, and then hoffman filling him in with "you became aggressive because you drank too much alcohol" -- huge laugh for me this time. excellent use of pop songs, including the paired set of "don't sit under the apple tree" (longing to be home) and "slow boat to china" (longing to be away) but also that great gratuitous circuit the coat girl does of the dept store to ella singing "get thee behind me satan". finally, i loved hoffman striking goldwater poses in the arizona desert. nevertheless i spent most of the second half trying to remember the exact wording of this hilarious post:

This guy thinks HE'S the Master...but his wife just ordered him around while yankin his crank, so who's REALLY the Master, bam.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, March 17, 2013 7:03 PM (5 months ago)

bam.

"trillions?" "WITH A T."

even tho this is partly a movie abt alcoholism it's also such a testament to the fun of getting wasted w a bro; these scenes are really vivid and sensual. phoenix's stagger, hoffman's happy ego. you can smell their breath.

the paired set of "don't sit under the apple tree" (longing to be home) and "slow boat to china" (longing to be away)

woah good ear

I liked their relationship, just two guys who want to have adventures surrounded by a band of joyless pedants

― lag∞n, Monday, October 1, 2012 9:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Finally watched this, looked terrific on Blu-Ray, major LOLZ when looking at the beginning of this thread and everyone thinking this movie was gonna have Alesteir Crowley/Jack Parsons/blowing the lid off OT VII shit in it. What was in there was very very close to the actual shit that happens in Scientology but was completely irrelevant to the movie anyway.

Dunno why his book was buried in the ground.

Because the mind-blowing revelations that he has spent the last year or so "discovering" before publishing have really been locked in a box in the desert for who knows how long.

dow totally OTM above about Phoenix and David M. in "Going Clear" - the sudden outbursts of violence whenever anyone threatens the movement. That was literally the first thing I thought of. Plus the history of Scientology going to great lengths to silence its critics.

I liked their relationship, just two guys who want to have adventures surrounded by a band of joyless pedants
― lag∞n, Monday, October 1, 2012 9:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Still think abt this often

Anyone know how to score NYFF tix for Inherent Vice?

this is now on Netflix watch instantly

The Master, not Inherent Vice

seeing in 70mm tomorrow!

The Master, or Inherent Vice

The Master of Inherent Vice

Great start, but could have done without the 2nd half.

still watchable, even more so on repeated viewings. great palate cleanse for Hemlock Grove's over-stylized, hyper color-saturated, heavy-handed score, overwrought EVERYTHING. thanks for the heads-up 'on netflix'

musical score for this is appropriately subtle/pleasant.. TWBB seemed way too overkill

--the sudden outbursts of violence whenever anyone threatens the movement

Reminds me of a year or two ago when I was walking past the Scient010gy HQ on 46th Street in Manhattan and there was an anti-Scient010gy protest happening on the sidewalk outside it.
I thought to myself something like (given what I had recently read about how the Scient010gists treat their members) "a protest is the least those fuckers deserve--they're getting off easy." Just then a car sped around the corner onto 46th St and sped right by me, through a huge puddle, splashing me with water up to the waist.
Since then I've made sure I only think good thoughts about Scient010gy when within a 1 block radius of its HQ building.

ha, they just closed up shop in my hometown. it was a really good location, too.

life update: struggling to get through this, have actually come to forgive myself for pausing every five minutes to check up on everything else in the world, consider eating something, etc

it wouldn't stop popping up on netflix's most popular movies lineup tho, idk why

like that entire thing is always full of tv shows why is this one the one everyone can't stop watching

PSH I guess

i'm not a huge PTA fan except for loving magnolia and boogie nights in my teens, but incidentally his whole aesthetic -- the colors,
depth, the movement, shot length, camera... stability, more colors -- is the closest thing my eyeballs have to a genuine primal visual pleasure center. i love taking in the screen. i would really love to just be able to accept that and treat his movies as simple impulse storytelling without anything to pick through but even that's getting harder and harder with him. cruddy storytelling.

there's also always been a part of my brain that connects PTA to worst filmmaker alive christopher nolan. something about them makes them seem like long-lost brothers (part of it is simply the aesthetic palette, def) and with each of PTA's movies the distance between them gets a little bit shorter.

xp oh shit right

the other movie there is the birdcage

if the story here were replaced with that episode of boy meets world where shawn joins a cult it'd be perfect

love how pta gives "brutal unwriterly simpleton with latent sadness and depth" the old college try and still manages to turn him into a nothing shitcharacter that was born yesterday

might hate pta now

i preferred the first half of this film a lot more than the second half.

I thought it was pretty great. Refreshing too.

the second half did have me longing for the first half

you're all nute, this movie is one incredible whole

nuts*

gr otm ur all nute

the ending blows

the rest is good tho

wow "nute" is a weird GiS

the ending is incred

you just hate it because he falls in love with a sandface

i hate it bcuz the song is dumb