Entries associated with the tag "Paul Thomas Anderson":

More or less. Bloodied but unbowed ... or at least bloodied.

Though perhaps the hardest thing about gimping around in a 24-hour truss is the restricted movie diet. No DVDs or superplasma TVs to ease you through the famine—or at least ease me, since we're nothing if not Luddites at our house—and the only alternative is schlepping out to one of the commercial sit-down theaters in town. Which proved to be almost impossible, since I really wasn't able to schlepp or sit.

Just a pair of new releases then—Iron Man and Redbelt—in the space of four convalescing weeks, along with despairing thoughts on the parlous state of our hypermuscular movie culture. Is this the best our commercial future has to offer, guys lurching around in metal containers or pummeling each other half to death? But at least Downey's Iron Man flies straight and true, with brute acceleration and inertia, like a Japanese bullet train or a packet of supercharged ions in a particle collider—which makes him/it inorganically intriguing, the lack of flexibility and flow, or of anything resembling ordinary human motor coordination. And if anyone still wants to argue that Academy Award cinematographer Robert Elswit was somehow responsible for all the mise-en-scene goodies in P.T. Anderson's echt Stroheimian There Will Be Blood (see comment log here), then take a look at his pedestrian work for Mamet in Redbelt, or the earlier, run-of-the-mill Heist (not to mention Savage Steve Holland's How I Got Into College—arguably the most excruciating filmgoing experience I've ever had, with or without a truss). Yet another indicator of who controls what at the level where—aesthetically, auteuristically—movies start coming together. Maybe convalescing's good for something after all ...

                    Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ  Φ

It'll still be a while before I'm up to full movie speed, but thanks to everyone for the kind words and encouragement. Also for the unkind words, expressed or unexpressed, since every last bit of attention helps. And now back to the cinematic trenches—let the arguments recommence!

Shot up in bed yesterday morning with a single anxious thought running through my head: "Is this Oscar-night Sunday or what?"

My one and only, who remembers these things better than I do ("O look, there's Penelope Cruz lifting her feet so Ellen DeGeneres can vac the front-row carpet," etc), assured me in her own estimable 5 AM way that yes, it was indeed that unavoidable day (or night) . . . which means that by then I'll need a couple new inches of snow, so I can haul out the shovel, clear the town-house walks, slip on the ice and tear a rotator cuff, call 911 and get airlifted to the nearest emergency-room facility, as more or less did happen (except for the 911 transport) a Sunday or two ago. Just another Oscar-avoidance evening in the making . . .

Not that I hate Oscar so much, because actually I don't—I simply don't pay that much attention. And it's not an attitudinal or put-on thing—at least not mainly—since not once in my life have I ever watched the whole damn telecast straight through. Besides which, we just gave away our minimally operable 30-year-old Motorola—sometimes the antenna worked, on some of the channels anyway—so it's not even the NCAA Final Four for me this year.

But already you've probably scanned our online selection of Reader Oscar picks, to which I've contributed my own harebrained assortment of shipwreck candidates. A society of choosers is what we are, with everyone obliged to make at least a dozen or so whether he/she's inclined to or not—Hillary or Barack? Jif or Skippy? Toyota or Suzuki? M&M's or Mary Janes?—as part of the whole freedom package, what our "Western values" are all about, the kinds of things Al Qaeda and the Taliban allegedly want to kill us for.

Except: I couldn't have told you what was on the awards list without an official trot sheet spelling it all out in big, bold categories, like judicial retention ballots in general election years. Best picture—well, there's Reygadas's Silent Light, my own enthusiastic nominee for '07, with everything else an afterthought . . . except it didn't make any of the eligibles, right? Or best director—always P.T. Anderson, whatever he's been up to . . . which is pretty much how I decide on judges too: another one who's Irish—automatically out! And who are these other guys anyway? Yeah, the Coens, especially if crosscutting close-ups are your thing: what contemporary prefab "best direction" apparently comes down to these days. And don't even get me started on the Butterfly guy . . .

Also the screenplays (original or adapted) . . . also the, ahem, "performances" . . . also the cinematography (which seems more about calendar art and House Beautiful spreads than anything cinematographic—another one saved in the editing room!)—stuff you can't, or wouldn't even want to, single out if the movie's coming together the way it should. And "costumes"—the most radical being the ones that didn't exist in Ten Canoes (another ineligible: wrong country, wrong year), no bonnets or frippery, just the literal, unadorned, down-to-earth truth! But the year's deal breaker has to be "best supporting actor"—button-down dullards all, dependably skilled at what they do, also dependably forgettable: another month and we'll wonder what all the teapot fussing was for. Which is why, in that one lonely category, I initially opted for Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson from Southland Tales, just to be mean and ornery, but also as a provocation: enough of these judicious, measuring-rod approaches, the inconsequence of incremental "perfection." Like grading term papers . . . except it's supposed to be about "aaarrrrttt."

But now it's Paul Dano as my new, inspired supporting-actor "choice" (see comments thread here): better a raw, hysterically confused, freaked-out amateur than all that anally retentive baggage, somebody you can feel the conflicting energies coursing through (because they actually are!), remember indelibly for years—positively, negatively, whatever the alternative is fine.

So: Academy Awards with passion—who'd even dream of such a thing?

Hey, glad you could make it! Let me take your coat. What are you drinking? Guinness? Well, how about Old Style? This is a free paper, you know.

Yeah, we realize the Oscars are hopelessly corrupt, but we needed an excuse for a party. We've all filled out ballots, and here's what we'd like to see win:

PAT GRAHAM  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages ("choice with a figurative gun to my head, though Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding's more to my liking"). Best Actor: Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises. Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There ("easiest of all the procrustean decisions here, with fewest reservations—though oddly enough I did have a couple on first viewing"). Best Animated Feature: Persepolis ("unfortunately"). Best Cinemathography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood ("though how much actually has to do with Elswit, since most of the important logistical choices—re where to position the camera and how scenes ought to reveal themselves through evolutionary long takes rather than editing-room montage—belong to the director rather than the cinematographer [or at least ought to], and seem open to debate"). Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum (really brilliant, in a frenetic, hyperactive way that, unfortunately, makes for a movie badly in need of an anchor"). Best Costume Design: Albert Wolsky, Across the Universe ("just to get the movie in there somewhere...what do I know about costumes?").

ANDREA GRONVALL  Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. Best Director: Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Best Foreign Language Film: Beaufort. Best Documentary Feature: Sicko. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum. Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti/Francesco Lo Sciavo, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

J.R. JONES  Best Picture: Atonement. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Atonement. Best Actress: Julie Christie, Away From Her. Best Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton. Best Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Juliette Welfling, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood/Katie Spencer, Atonement. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

JOSHUA KATZMAN  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Brad Bird, Ratatouille. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Julie Christie: Away From Her. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Jay Cassidy, Into the Wild. Best Art Direction: Jack Fisk/Jim Erickson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Score: Marco Beltrami, 3:10 to Yuma.

REECE PENDLETON  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul "I Drink Your Milkshake" Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: "Sorry, but I just can't get past the fact that Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood wasn't eligible."

"One of the best years for all-round quality I can remember ... some extraordinary films," Sight & Sound editor Nick James waxed enthusiastically over the 2007 movie year (click on PDF link for full article download), though you'd never know it by me. But out here in the boondocks at civilization's edge, what passes through the cineplexes isn't necessarily what the arbiters of culture get most wound up about. Plus we're all arguably in remission—or at least I am—from Milla Jovovich's latest, which undoubtedly explains a lot.

Still, with 2007's example to spur him on, the A.V. Club's Noel Murray has decided it's once again time to reflect on what the greatest year in movie history might be. "To qualify as 'the best ever,'" he argues in what's mostly a semantic circle, "a movie year needs to be both bounteous and pivotal," which in his own considered view means 1974—the year of Godfather II and Chinatown and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (not to mention Celine and Julie Go Boating, which Murray confesses he hasn't seen yet). What mainly disturbs me about all this isn't so much the choice of year, on which I've little to add one way or the other, as the writer's nomination for the year's best film—actually two best, since it's a double-decker toss-up between Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us and California Split. "Minor miracles" is how Murray describes this critical perfecta, though I'm wondering if alleged "bests of the best," however miraculous, shouldn't be more than minor works. Because look at Steven Spielberg in 2002, who gave us both Minority Report and Catch Me if You Can. On a par with Altman's twins, I think, as well as among the director's most precision-crafted and/or thoughtful films, at least of recent vintage—also, not coincidentally, released during my own "favorite" year for movies, if not of all time then at least of the last 15. Arguably nothing groundbreaking about 2002, but there's a lot of rigorously calibrated niche work, like architects' surgical "interventions" in a building-wall facade, pushing the visual and thematic energies as far as they can go. Some career "bests" too from the filmmakers involved—Iosseliani, P.T. Anderson (in keen-edged pre-There Will Be Blood mode), Cuaron, Tian, maybe even Godard in an objet d'art sense—which is arguably a weasel's way of measuring, since even a relative "best" from, e.g., Spielberg might not be all that significant or enduring.

In any case, here's what we got in 2002 Chicago, from my own list of favorites for that year. (Not everything listed is '02 kosher—see dates in parens—but that's when these movies first came to town and I'm not inclined to quibble.) "Bounteous" without being pivotal, I guess you could say—albeit we can only speculate, like blind historians groping in the dark.

   1. PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, Paul Thomas Anderson
   2. IN PRAISE OF LOVE, Jean-Luc Godard (2001)
   3. MONDAY MORNING, Otar Iosseliani
   4. SPIRITED AWAY, Hayao Miyazaki (2001)
   5. THE LADY AND THE DUKE, Eric Rohmer (2001)
   6. THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, Manoel de Oliveira
   7. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, Alfonso Cuaron (2001)
   8. SEX AND LUCIA, Julio Medem (2001)
   9. RUSSIAN ARK, Alexander Sokurov
 10. SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN, Tian Zhuangzhuang
       SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR, Roy Andersson (2000)

Not to neglect other '02 faves, like Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katakuris, Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (arguably best in the cycle), Jia Zhang-ke's Unknown Pleasures, Im Kwon-taek's Chihwaseon, or James Benning's completed "California Trilogy." Or '02 releases that didn't show up for another year or so: the Dardenne brothers' The Son, Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant, Olivier Assayas's Demonlover, Bill Morrison's Decasia, Claire Denis' Friday Night ... Or Catherine Breillat's contentious, ineffable Sex Is Comedy, about which I've already blabbered on more than enough.

So: any more "favorite" years out there? Or are we all gonna get stuck on 1939?

The idea of explaining artists' works in terms of problems and solutions is ... not so common in film studies. It can be fruitful to consider that sometimes filmmakers face common problems and that they compete to solve them, or to find different problems they can solve. —David Bordwell, from Web site commentary on Ratatouille 

One of the reasons I'm so stuck on Theo Angelopoulos's The Travelling Players (1975)—number one on my all-time best list, if you must know—involves this very notion of problem-solving. Because, at least in my opinion, based on the film's internal clues, Angelopoulos was facing a big one here—something that even halfway through the filming he hadn't come to grips with, perhaps because he wasn't quite sure what it was. But what seems certain is this: that more than his usual perfectionist striving was needed to bring this meticulously crafted epic to life. 

Which in the film's second half he serendipitously discovers—of course serendipitously, since that's what's been missing all along. Chance, randomness, indeterminacy--like punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory, where a sudden break in "natural" continuity ushers in waves of new life forms. No more the "absolute" master, like an obsessed totalitarian deity—it's almost as if he's decided to throw the film away. So the tablecloth comes off, at the wedding banquet on the beach, and suddenly we're in medias res, in a new, unpredictable space. "Let's try it and see what happens"—a discovery infinitely repeatable, if only in strategically measured bursts. As Angelopoulos has been systematically "rediscovering" ever since, about three or four times per film ...

So too P.T. Anderson in his semisurreal Adam Sandler vehicle Punch-Drunk Love (2002), which actually serves up a double dose of random—first the anomalous bouncing pianola, then the car crash with no other purpose than to turn the film inside-out: wherever we were before this happened, we're definitely not there now. But of course there's more, and Anderson keeps upping the ante. Like the scene of Sandler talking on the phone, back to the camera so we have an optimal view of his neck, in a room so devoid of sensory stimulation he might as well be peddling widgets at Guantanamo. It's minimalism upon minimalism, and the implied bet here is that Anderson can keep us interested—or maybe even fascinated, in a perverse, movie-movie kind of way. (It's a bet he almost loses, by the way, though against these odds "almost" seems equivalent to winning the lottery.) Or another logistic gambit: the "relationship"—such as it is—between Sandler's incredible shrinking schmo and poor Emily Watson, who's obviously befuddled by it all. A lot of critics frowned on this amorous coupling--as in "Why would an intelligent woman like that ever ...?" etc—but here's what I think went down: "OK Adam, your job is to be as unavailable as possible ... and yours, dear Emily, is to 'love' this inaccessible dolt in spite of everything he does." Which of course is a recipe for failure, and what's a capable actress to do? So when Watson ultimately falls back on, well ... mothering the damn infant, it's like throwing in the towel—yo, Billy Madison wins again! Though if ever she'd actually cracked the mysteries of Sandler, all we'd have to show for it is another conventional romance. Instead of the indeterminate, risk-taking masterpiece we ultimately do get. Winning for losing's the name of this gambler's game. Not what you'd expect from Hollywood ...