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

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

talkin final confrontation in office not sandface sex time

lol you dont know what an ending is

the climactic scene in the room was great much tension, a sense of shared history, the ruins of a love affair, iirc need to rescreen only saw it once but i liked it a lot, i liked how hoffman and Phoenix just wanted to party and go on adventures and lose themselves and no one else understood them cause they thought they were doing a srs religion

gr8080 otm

re: you're all nute and re: awesome as a whole

http://graphics.fansonly.com/schools/nd/images/pictures/rockne.jpg
^ all of you rn

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsH/7829.gif

Went back for a third look. Like There Will Be Blood, it gets better every time. Still not there yet, and still not sure what it's trying to say (not a bad thing, obviously). I have three or four half-theories. Impressive, elusive, frustrating.

That sounds a little too schematic--a great film doesn't have to try to say anything. But I think this one does, and I'm coming up short trying to figure out what that is.

YouTube video essay/cult crit guy takes a look at the "auditing" scene and how it compares to actual Scientology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keYYiuOJdrE

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

― Forks I'd Clove to Fu (silby), Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:04 AM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Phoenix's twisted grimace, hunched posture, antisocial behavior, and chemical-booze-poison intake were oddly, painfully satisfying for me. Like pushing your tongue against a loose tooth as a kid. My favorite PTA movie, I think.

Watched it tonight. The word salad coming from Hoffman's flushed, fleshy face has some fresh resonances.

this movie is fuckin awesome. not my favorite pta film but that shot where phoenix runs from the alley into that the wide shot of the field is my favorite thing pta's ever done

and that opening shot of the cruiser's wake, my heart swells in my chest when I see it

hi brad

Someone can make a case for its predecessor as the transition but the Bergman-esque chamber drama qualities of this film augured a new phase even if you count the yuks in IV (a chamber drama with yuks).

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.

― i want to say one word to you, just one word:buzzfeed (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, February 4, 2014 12:59 AM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

a wonderful post

love the department store scene

I saw this in the theater with my mom and she was hoping for more weird cult-y CoS type stuff. “I didn’t know it was just gong to be about... these two guys” <3

twbb introduced elision and ellipses into pta's scripts (though, idk, you could argue this started with punch-drunk love), but the master is tonally... quieter? more intimate? it's so sunk into its world that almost everything is understood via facial expression. this carries through into the next two films

Someone can make a case for its predecessor as the transition but the Bergman-esque chamber drama qualities of this film augured a new phase even if you count the yuks in IV (a chamber drama with yuks).

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 31, 2020 6:16 PM (eleven minutes ago)

I think the focused exploration of doubled characters does start in There Will Be Blood but there Daniel Plainview's doubles just orbit around him . Here's where the identification-with-the-other across impossible barriers seems to become of central interest.