There Will Be Blood: The Poll

There Will Be Blood: The Poll

****
20
47%
*** 1/2
12
28%
***
5
12%
** 1/2
2
5%
**
2
5%
* 1/2
0
No votes
*
2
5%
1/2 *
0
No votes
0
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 43

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rolotomasi99
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Post by rolotomasi99 »

an interesting take on the p.t. anderson and stanley kubrick comparisons film critics were making.

http://dailyfilmdose.blogspot.com/2008/04/there-will-be-blood.html
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Post by Sabin »

****. Can't help it. Knocked me on my ass.
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Post by Zahveed »

There have been a lot of comparisons between DDL's roles in There Will Be Blood and Gangs of New York. Personally, I find The Butcher to be a much more likeable and respectable character despite Plainview having more moments of genuine vulnerability.
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Post by Hustler »

I gave this film ***1/2 stars. I enjoyed so much the way it is filmed, the score is brilliant. As for the acting, I found Day Lewis´s performance very similar to his work in Gangs of New York. Rest of the cast is accurate.
In general terms the movie style reminded me a Lars Von Trier film.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I'm sure the confusion was intentional. What was the purpose of the three poured drinks in the final scene? This whole avenue was handled very coyly.



Edited By Sonic Youth on 1202792346
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Post by dws1982 »

Anderson had cast another actor as Eli and cast Paul Dano only as Paul, but the actor cast as Eli dropped out--a few sources say he was fired--just before the scenes with Eli were to be filmed. So Anderson got Dano to play both roles, always intending for them to be two seperate people. With two actors, it would've been understood that they were brothers. But with one actor playing both, Anderson had to know that there was a possibility--especially the way the story is structured--that viewers might think they were the same person unless he included something to make clear that they weren't the same person. He didn't, and I spent most of the movie thinking they were one and the same, and reading that Anderson intended them to be two different people didn't really make me feel like I had been wrong. I think it's a valid interpretation.



Edited By dws1982 on 1202791923
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Post by kaytodd »

SPOILERS


Maybe I missed something but I was not confused by the use of the twins in TWBB. It seems consistent with the rest of the film that Paul was handsomely paid for enabling Plainfield to cheat the Sunday family out of their fortune. And Eli seemed genuinely distraught during the scene in the bowling alley when he finds out what Paul and Plainfield did. I was never under the impression Paul and Eli were the same person. But I agree it was an odd decision (by Sinclair or PTA? I never read the book) to make them twins and it has probably caused needless confusion among filmgoers. Even if they were twins in the book, PTA could have decided to use two different actors. I don't think legions of fans of the book would have been outraged.

I think this would be a deserving Best Picture choice but, like many people, I admired it much more than enjoyed. I was a big fan of DDL's performance in GONY (a very close second to Cage that year, IMO) but I liked this one a lot better. This performance, for lack of a better word, had a lot more "layers" to me. Plainfield was obviously a much more complex character who was much more the focus of his film than Bill the Butcher was. Plainfield was also capable of genuine tenderness that I don't think Bill the Butcher could ever feel or express. And DDL shows all of Plainfield's colors. I'll bet the Plainfield DDL and PTA created is a far more compelling and interesting character than Sinclair's.

As for Before Sunset, I was also a big fan of its ending. That ending was so perfect because you could decide on your own what happens after the screen went black without feeling cheated. Many people think Jesse decided to stay with Celine, to not make the same mistake twice. I thought Jesse was laughing at himself as much as Celine while he was sitting on the couch watching her dance. He experienced great disappointment at the aborted reunion six months after the end of Before Sunrise. He then spent the last several years in an unhappy marriage devoid of romance or passion. I am sure people in unhappy marriages idealize old flames and spend a lot of time thinking "What if..."

But I would think Jesse would look at Celine very differently after discovering the truth about her and her grandmother. But those who think they were the great love of each other's lives and he stayed in Paris may be right as well. It is a nice romantic thought. Good work by Linklater, Hawke and Delpy.




Edited By kaytodd on 1202786857
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Post by Sabin »

I'll concede that Before Sunset bows out on an unexpected note, but I still don't know why you think the ending of Sideways is anything but telegraphed out. Because we don't see him go inside? Not an important debate by any means, I just don't understand how the ending of Sideways is abrupt by any definition.
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Post by Akash »

flipp525 wrote:Your misreading of my original post also seemed to provide you with a launching pad to continue the "what is and what isn't art" discussion from another thread.

Um, that so wasn't anywhere in the vicinity of my thought process. I was merely disagreeing with what I thought was a counter-opinion that Upton Sinclair's works were great fiction. And HELLO? I was barely in that soap jamboree thread! And especially not when the shit hit the fan. Leave me out of it! I wouldn't dream of arguing Nietzsche's art aesthetics as applied to....American soaps.

Point your canon elsewhere. Like at a dark haired muscle guy -- or whoever you're fucking in honor of whatever award show this week :;):




Edited By Akash on 1202765449
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Post by Akash »

I think it's "abrupt" in a conventional sense Sabin. Maybe "abrupt" isn't the right adjective, but I certainly didn't mean it in a negative way. I disliked Sideways but Before Sunset was one of the best films of 2004 and certainly it's ending is perfect. But there were people who saw it and reacted with surprise (at least in the New York theater I saw it in) and that's because it doesn't end the way we are conditioned to think a film like this would end.
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Post by flipp525 »

Akash wrote:Oh right, what was I thinking? I should have known by "great" you meant anything but.

Honestly, Akash, I don't know how anyone could've read "great" in that original sentence and thought that I meant "wonderful", "fantastic" or "fabulous". Within its context, it was quite obviously meant to convey a sense of importance. Your misreading of my original post also seemed to provide you with a launching pad to continue the "what is and what isn't art" discussion from another thread. Note again, that nowhere have I claimed that the fiction of Sinclair is some superlative artistic achievement rivaling that of Shakespeare. If we're to judge Sinclair's fiction purely on the propagandist scale you propose, rather than one of literary merit and/or artful composition, I'd say it's rather successful on that level, having mobilized a new generation to effect social change.




Edited By flipp525 on 1202764845
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Post by Sabin »

how is the ending of Sideways abrupt? as soon as the v.o. began, I knew how it would go. Before Sunset's ending isn't so much abrupt as FUCKING PERFECT!

(SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!)






You keep watching wondering when he's going to make his decision out loud, and then you realize (like any warm-blooded male in the presence of a socialist sex goddess) he already has. She suspects it too, teases him about missing his plane. 'Yes, I am.' And she dances on...

Not abrupt. Perfect. I would argue that an abrupt ending is essentially the cleaving of artifice, filmic punctuation. It's putting your balls on the table with a cut to black. 'I'm finished!' is pretty ballsy but ultimately shallow, like everything that Anderson is saying with There Will Be Blood. It's still great but I don't think anybody leaves thinking about the film's subtext. Just the conviction with which P.T.A. films.

An 'abrupt' ending like in 'Before Sunset' is all subtext and, like the whole film, is the satisfying curtain to the subtlest of dances, a film whose narrative derives entirely from little steps forward and back.
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Post by Akash »

Oh right, what was I thinking? I should have known by "great" you meant anything but.



Edited By Akash on 1202763528
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Post by flipp525 »

Akash wrote:And Flipp, I'd disagree that Sinclair was one of the great fiction writers -- naturalist or otherwise. He's a propagandist. And while I certainly agree with his Socialist beliefs, as good literature, as good fiction, his work doesn't hold up. I found The Jungle and Oil among the most labored and forced pieces of literature I've ever read. If Ayn Rand is a propagandist (and she is), then so is Sinclair and if I'm really honest, I'd have to begrudgingly admit that Rand's horrible political beliefs are more artfully woven into her writing.

I didn't say he was one of the "great fiction writers" of American Literature. He was one of the four prime American Naturalists of the late 19th/early 20th century. Whether or not you agree with that, is pretty much immaterial since it's a fact. I originally used "great" more definitively than qualitatively, as in the "great" bulwark-like giants, producing and promoting a new genre of literature. And, of course, you can graft your own modern sensibilities onto any piece of fiction over a hundred years old and come up with any number of reasons why it's not "great" or not "art" or shouldn't be canonized or is muckracking propaganda or yellow journalism (one can come up with various criticisms of Dreiser's style in Sister Carrie, for example), but at the time, these writers employed a style heretofore unknown to literate audiences. In that way, they were "great", pioneering types of literature later aped by lesser writers down the line.




Edited By flipp525 on 1202762364
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Post by OscarGuy »

Not having read the novel, I'm more apt to believe that they aren't twins, but separate personalities. If they were twins they wouldn't be so conveniently separate. We never see them together.
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