Anticipating Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza

His more explicit comedies, like Punch Drunk and Inherent Vice, are the ones I least want to see again. But all of his movies are funny, to an extent. Comedies of the human condition.

I was frustrated that they only hinted at some of the more interesting things going on around them

this is otm for me. i wish i saw what other people see in his last 3 but i just cant get there. they each feel like he's settled into this mode of where theres all these great actors filmed beautifully, arrayed into really interesting characters and relationships located in a really fascinating specific historical milieu, and as they orbit each other a movie always seems to be juuuust on the verge of breaking out but never quite does. eventually it feels like its all just about teeing up shots for Our Finest Actors to get to do Big Important Acting Moments, and i check out.

I can watch Phantom Thread any time.

The last half is a dare triumphantly realized, and as much as the film works as a depiction of masculine ego it's also damn funny, because, after all, we need good tea and sausage for breakfast and a martini with a twist after a hard day.

In other words: no consensus!

I still haven't seen Phantom Thread!

xpost That's just it, the fact that he's made so many movies yet there is no consensus which ones are the good/great ones really sets him apart for me. They're (mostly) all pretty interesting/novel.

What gets me is how often he fumbles in the last half-hour, to the point where I'm saying, "That's what he thinks this film is all about?!?" The Master is the only one with a great denouement, but they almost all have great scenes and performances (Inherent Vice lost me completely).

i got a bit lost during inherent vice, but i get a bit lost during all pynchon stories so it seemed normal

lol, yes, that felt very faithful to the source material

"That's what he thinks this film is all about?!?" The Master is the only one with a great denouement,

Ha The Master is the ne plus ultra film for me having this reaction

i remember watching the end of phantom thread and getting really excited at the last scene, thinking "ah what a great development! its going to be really interesting watching PTA and these actors explore this in the second half of the movie!" but then the credits rolled :/

Haha same

But why continue? It would rehash what we just watched in the last 50 minutes.

Anyone who hates on Boogie Nights is a fucking demon afaic, that movie is hysterically funny and bleak and pitch-perfect for what it is. Even the outtakes are great.

i feel like there's no strain in the master at all, and in fact that's what distinguishes it from his previous films. things are allowed to be

it is also amazing to me that people don't get inherent vice which is a lovely film on the surface and beneath that surface a seismograph of the slow death of american culture set right in the waning of the hippie era and the dawning of the yuppie era to the point where you can feel everyone in the film's possibilities and fundamental dignity being restrained/undermined by the untrammeled flow of capital and corruption but i guess we aren't stoned all the time

and like ..... any good noir(?), following the mystery isn't the point

xp to Alfred idk, im speculating about a movie that doesnt exist, but its not hard to imagine there would be some interesting things to explore w/two characters in that setting who have come to that realization about themselves & each other. for a filmmaking style that is so much about patiently observing unusual humans as they move through very specific worlds, i definitely didnt see that scene and think "ah, now i know everything i need to know about these two characters, nothing further needed!"

but also, like Halfway There, i also assumed the movie was going somewhere different. it seemed kind of obvious, more of the "yes, finally" feeling of a plot finally turning than a satisfying ending for me. i felt similar w/the master - after 87 consecutive scenes of them acting out an unrequited love, the final scene just left me thinking "thats it? thats all we're going to do with this?"

tbf phantom thread is one i havent revisted, i wonder if i'd get more out of it now that i understand the shape of it.

I just enjoyed Inherent Vice a lot better as a novel.

(I haven’t watched this trailer yet and have never been a PTA stan but maybe it’d be fun to be part of the party this cycle.)

i feel like there's no strain in the master at all, and in fact that's what distinguishes it from his previous films. things are allowed to be

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson

otm -- he became a better writer and a better director of his scripts

a seismograph of the slow death of american culture set right in the waning of the hippie era

It's obvious that this is what he wanted to do with Inherent Vice, I just thought it was a pale shadow of the films that did this at the time, like Night Moves, 92 in the Shade, The Last Movie, etc.

The Big Lebowski.

the long goodbye even

inherent vice is my comfort movie. must have watched it 10 times now

it's the fucking best

worst PTA films are magnolia and hard 8 imo.

moto panekeku!

Aww, I have a soft spot for Hard Eight but haven't seen it in many years

I actually feel bad calling it "worst" anything. it's good.

I enjoyed Inherent Vice a ton when I saw it in the theater, way more than my friends who I went with, haven't seen it since then. But it's such a literal interpretation of the book that I don't fully think of it as a PTA movie, a la 'No Country for Old Men' and the Coens.

i do not really agree but i have watched inherent vice a lot. there are things the film does that the book cannot do, cf. the superimposed image of shasta after doc starts smoking a joint, which, as probably several pta threads on ilx bear out by now, is literally my favorite scene in any movie

idk, the ending dialogue between shasta and doc in the car, with the light streaming over them, plus the aching tenderness the characters have for each other through the entire runtime... these are the movie's terrain

movie also snips one of doc's threads of inquiry, can't remember which, but it's for the better

That's true, and the book is longer and shaggier than the movie for sure

yeah i was shocked he was able to pull a coherent adaptation out of such a nutso book

movie also snips one of doc's threads of inquiry, can't remember which, but it's for the better

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, September 29, 2021 3:09 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

movie gets rid of the book's Vegas digression, which contains one of the best summations of Pynchon ever:

“Out there, all around them to the last fringes of occupancy, were Toobfreex at play in the video universe, the tropic isle, the Long Branch Saloon, the Starship Enterprise, Hawaiian crime fantasies, cute kids in make-believe living rooms with invisible audiences to laugh at everything they did, baseball highlights, Vietnam footage, helicopter gunships and firefights, and midnight jokes, and talking celebrities, and a slave girl in a bottle, and Arnold the pig, and here was Doc, on the natch, caught in a low-level bummer he couldn’t find a way out of, about how the Psychedelic Sixties, this little parenthesis of light, might close after all, and all be lost, taken back into darkness . . . how a certain hand might reach terribly out of darkness and reclaim the time, easy as taking a joint from a doper and stubbing it out for good.”

To some extent they morph this digression into Doc's encounter with Mickey in the asylum but I don't recall if it covers this passage.

I haven't read the book, but in the synopsis I did see (and that posted excerpt), it seems including that part would skirt extremely closely to bat Fear & Loathing country.

That sentence is a perfect example of why I've never been able to finish Gravity's Rainbow.

On a different note, this cleared up what I thought was just a psychedelic choice for naming a record store:

It’s from a self-deprecating joke by the comedy-folk duo Bud and Travis, who joke around the 9:30 mark of this video that one of their vinyl records is so unsuccessful that it’s being marketed as “licorice pizza” — since records are black and round.

Also initials L. P.

i like hard eight. it’s not his best, maybe even in his bottom 3. but it’s really good imho. i love philip baker hall

i get why a quirky LA neo-noir about people fucking up wasn’t the most original concept 3 years after pulp fiction. but it’s still a lot of fun

We have soundtrack: https://pitchfork.com/news/paul-thomas-anderson-licorice-pizza-soundtrack-announced/

Barabajagal, yessss

Well...He transformed some real junk in Boogie Nights, so anything's possible. (I can see him doing something memorable with "Diamond Girl.") Underwhelming, though. "My Ding-a-Ling" for Chuck Berry? That's insulting (and irredeemable, I'm guessing).

(I see it's a version from 1967 with the Steve Miller Band. So maybe it started out life sounding like Chuck Berry's supposed to sound.)

Kind of wishing there was more Have A Nice Day junk tbh, like I can totally see him doing something great with "How Do You Do?" or "Chick-A-Boom". Related: I really wish the trailer had been cut to Dwight Twilley's "I'm On Fire"...but then again I wish all trailers were cut to that.

Would look forward to either of those first two, basically the equivalent of what he did with "Sister Christian," "Driver's Seat," and Apollo 100's "Joy."

This looks like it’ll be fun.

Maybe he's paying tribute to the Canadian film Paperback Hero (1:15:45) with "If You Could Read My Mind," the one song on that list I unreservedly love (also used memorably in Mr. Robot).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ig2EL6WBEs