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

Rah! Just watched it twice through. I'm stoked.

the only way i could be more psyched for this is if there are aleister crowley & jack parsons analogues in the movie because their association w/ the hubb

that is pretty much exactly what a trailer should be. hope the movie is that good!

xpost -- got that goddamn right

the only way i could be more psyched for this is if there are aleister crowley & jack parsons analogues in the movie because their association w/ the hubb

omg what if

is he making a boob out of sand?

how would you rate your overall health?

strrrong

Actually you know, what if the whole supposition has been a bit of a blind and it IS all about Hubbard/Parsons/Crowley rather than just Hubbard straight up? The time period is right given the look of the trailer, and it suits the title.

will lose my shit if there's a Parsons (or Crowley) analogue in this

amy adams as marjorie cameron???

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/cameron.jpg

probably not tho!

radiohead's jonny greenwood is doing the score for this, for those who care about such things. i thought he did a fantastic job with both There Will Be Blood and Norwegian Wood.

was there ever a movie made about parsons? that entire story with the three of them is so bonkers

I thought the music in that trailer sounded very similar to Greenwood's TWBB score.

tbh i would watch this for the wrestling seamen alone #pvmic

i almost auditioned to be an extra in that scene!!!

gr8080, mind if I change the year in the thread title now that it has a 2012 release date?

by all means, and change this to 2013 while you're at it:

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MICHAEL BAY REBOOT (2014)

thanks!

sorry if that's an annoying habit, i just really hate the "anticipate" meme in movie thread titles

i almost auditioned to be an extra in that scene!!!

Jeez, man, you could have snuck in a 77 tattoo or something into the film and blown minds.

i saw a girl with a 77 tattoo on saturday!!

i came very close to asking if i could take a photo

Phoenix looks like he's aged 40 years and had a stroke in that. Someone in the comments says he should get an Oscar for the trailer alone.

why is this not at cannes? is it not finished? awesome trailer.

Via Deadline.com, speaking of Cannes:

The three films highlighted tonight will be released in succession this fall with The Master (starring Joaquin Phoenix in a return to films , Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams) involving a complex plot dealing with a scientology-related religion (and obviously destined for controversy) opening in October . Tonight’s presentation was more detailed but Deadline unveiled the first teaser earlier today....About four minutes were shown...None of these films were obviously easy to excerpt, and all look like works in progress although Weinstein told me The Master is nearly finished.

it is almost certainly not finished

xp

PTA cut the trailer together himself I think; we mention that yet?

it definitely has his touch.

Did anyone else read this thread title as "the MASTER P film on the origins of scientology..."

SP: Da Last Don

damn that looks good

wow, that's a great trailer

The trailer's intriguing, as is the Wes Anderson, and scientology's a great subject. I'll approach both films hoping for the best, but aware that, for me, they've never equaled Boogie Nights or Rushmore.

stoked

man I think There Will Be Blood is superior to Boogie Nights in every way

^^should go without saying but doesnt for some reason

yeah cracking trailer, very much like the very early There Will Be Blood one which was pretty much just the "Do you get envious.." spiel iirc.

Punch Drunk Love is still his out and out best IMO but i know it's uh.. divisive.

Many do. To me it's almost like the difference between Mean Streets and The Gangs of New York (roughly speaking--I'd much rather watch There Will Be Blood than The Gangs of New York).

I watched this like 5 times today. So excited. Pheonix is just pretty much amazing. In general.

BN is his best but its not an unassailable masterpiece, he'll make something better than it someday, i just keep waiting for his taste to catch up with his talent

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.

just bros being bros

Last posted on this in 2016, when I saw it for a third time (or second; I posted about drifting for 30 minutes the first time). So this was my fourth time. Or third.

"still not sure what it's trying to say"--me, 2016.

Still not sure--me, 2025. I actually thought of Mad Men tonight, which I hadn't seen when The Master came out (but had finished by 2016). Two stories about how men of roughly the same age dealt with the war when they got home. Anyway, after feeling more positive about the film after that third viewing, this time I reversed course again. Hoffman's very good, and Anderson has that John Ford/George Stevens feel for wide open spaces. But it all felt very muddled. Amy Adams has kind of a nothing role. And Phoenix's performance again struck me as very affectatious. Impressive, in a way, but I think he's been better in other films since. It was interesting to me to see Jesse Plemons and Rami Malek in prominent roles; would have had no idea who they were in 2012.

I like it better than Phantom Thread for sure, but not as much as There Will Be Blood.

What makes it slightly better than Phantom Thread?

Philip Seymour Hoffman beats DDL any day

His second-least-successful after Dogs, for me, but still wholly conceived and apprehensible. The minor weaknesses are a failure to commit to an alternate character / timeline for the elements that aren’t Hubbard, and Phoenix’ performance coming unmoored as it proceeds, whether from the former (PSH’s substitute by design doesn’t give the audience enough to believe that a cult of personality could compel the virile, directed Phoenix*), or Phoenix himself not finding his own character reprehensible enough to commit to portraying (probably the latter, given his turns in Vice and Eddington).

Phantom Thread is so distinct a portrait of a time, a personality, and two-to-several relationships, that it stands head, shoulders and sandy nipples above The Master for me - but I saw each on 70mm ad haven’t rescreened either, thinking streaming unfair by comparison.

*JP has made a career of this since — the leaning in makes one wonder how much was mere technique and whether his characters performance here is top-level silly fun.

Have you watched Phoenix in You Were Never Really Here? No commitment problems.

I'll take Lewis' performance in Phantom Thread any day over PSH's hamming in The Master. Lewis is helped by a better script, but he does a much better job of performing three-dimensional human with layers and interiority. Hoffman and Phoenix just both feel like they're having an acting contest in The Master, to me. It reminds me of Husbands more than anything else - they’re sure acting A Lot, but a lot of it ends up feeling like hot air and wheel-spinning.

an acting contest? idk. i think they're just in love

L. Ron Hubbard was a ham, I mean c’mon

uh i love Husbands and I love the Master. Probably prefer There Will Be Blood but it's apples and oranges and yes they're in love

the job for PSH in the Master is to go full Ham

Yes ofc them being in love is not very easy to miss, I think you can pick that up from the theater next door, even.

Hoffman obviously has big hammy role that calls for big hammy acting moments and he delivers as-promised, but I just think PTA is a little too in awe of him & Phoenix and loses control of the movie to them (imho, anyway). I see it as a transitional film for PTA, exploring and figuring out his mature style, but I much prefer the films that came after it when he has a little more control over the material.

(yes, I thought about caveating the consistency of You Were Never Really Here. Could be his choice or Ramsay cutting out any performance that went OTT, ofc — and Aster & PTA obv genuinely enjoy his performance joyfully leaving rails in the distance. He stays fairly on-message throughout Napoleon, too, at least the theatrical cut.)

Performances aside, I think PTA really excels at building time & place in The Master... this post-war California with a wary sense of optimism, and the blossoming counterculture that would later develop into the freaks of the 'Sixties.' Casting was pretty spot-on as well

(Also I think that boat is moored in Oakland... It was owned by both FDR and briefly Elvis Presley)