"It's Not Not Vineland...": One Battle After Another (PTA, Pynchon, DiCaprio etc.)

Picking Up From: Paul Thomas Anderson: C or D?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feOQFKv2Lw4

I do love that they cast an actor with a perfectly Pynchonian real name for this, Chase Infiniti.

Her first role: name holding a lotta currency.

Adaption looking more "loose" than I want it to be. I want to see Zoyd's window jumping media spectacle under the bright lights of a hollywood budget! Trailers are self-serious by nature, hoping that's not representative of the end product.

I thought this was turning out to be not even loosely adapted, but who knows.

Most of the stuff in the trailer looks straight from the book plot-wise, also doesn’t seem that different in tone from IV?

In Vistavision, opening on IMAX screens:

No fear. #OneBattleAfterAnother only in theaters September 26. pic.twitter.com/YxBOcBID5h

— One Battle After Another (@onebattlemovie) June 30, 2025

:D

So, The Brutalist was the first film shot in Vistavision in 60+ years, and now there's another one?

Huh, interesting:

Over the next 12 months, five upcoming films are set to be shot in VistaVision. It's unclear if this signals a lasting revival or just a temporary trend, but for now, projects from Gerwig, Emerald Fennell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Yorgos Lanthimos are slated for release in 2025 and 2026—all using VistaVision.

i just looked at the wikipedia for films shot in VistaVision and wow at the drop off between 1961 until now. what was even more shocking was that tarantino hadn't directed something on VistaVision!

I imagine sic knows the full score, but IIRC right now VistaVision film stock is easily available and surprisingly affordable compared to other types of celluloid, so it's the best option going for filmmakers who want to shoot on film.

you know i love you but omg you guys go from like zero to rabbithole in like 60 seconds lol

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

could we get a Fortnite collab with the extended PTAEU and if so, is Fiona Apple part of the PTAEU so I could play Fiona Apple in Fortnite

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film ‘ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER’ is getting a Fortnite collab. pic.twitter.com/JYKjQaC8ID

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) July 24, 2025

Interesting how the new trailer isn't emphasizing auteur quirk but just putting it out as an action movie with some comedy on the side.

it looks kinda tedious tbh

The latest trailer was better, at least.

I have a feeling it'll be a better Southwest crime/quirk/semi-noir film than Eddington was. But not as promising as Honey Don't.

Forgot that this is coming out next month, not November!

New poster for Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER starring Leonardo DiCaprio

In theaters on September 26th pic.twitter.com/Mh3ATimx00

— Matt Neglia (@NextBestPicture) August 19, 2025

oh i didnt realize it was that soon either! YAY

A note from Paul Thomas Anderson on the film formats available to see #OneBattleAfterAnother.

First Showing tickets on sale today, 8am PT. All tickets available next week. pic.twitter.com/oXAl44XZCS

— One Battle After Another (@onebattlemovie) September 3, 2025

Steven Spielberg says Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio's "One Battle After Another" is "really incredible."

“What an insane movie, oh my God. There is more action in the first hour of this than every other [PTA movie] put together... I have not seen a movie that is so… pic.twitter.com/B3owb5ptVN

— Variety (@Variety) September 8, 2025

The trailer didn't do much for me, but some of these early reactions (just read Demi Adejuyigbe's rave on Letterboxd) are getting me hyped.

Got tickets for a slightly early screening in two weeks, so we'll see what we do.

You go to the screening?

https://xcancel.com/davidehrlich/status/1965392516443930798

well well

I'm not a contrarian but both this early praise and those comparison points are making me side-eye slightly.

Definitely hyped for this.

At the very least it got me to a reread of Vineland, which continues to open up more and more each time.

I read it in May and was to my surprise pretty underwhelmed.

Ehlrich I usually tend to agree with so if he is hyped...but I dunno, the most recent trailer I saw in the theater actually made me less interested then the early ones

I'm rereading it now, and at this point think it might be the worst Pynchon. But I can see it turn into a good film.

For sure. Judicious pruning.

See, after my first read I thought it was pretty weak and my second least favorite Pynchon, just ahead of Bleeding Edge. But, I dunno, something opened up for me on this reread. Not so much plot-wise, but sentence construction wise and some of the descriptions of the landscape. Not terribly surprised though, most Pynchon fans I know report it taking multiple reads to really grok some of them.

I would appreciate a second reading in a few years; in May it felt ponderous like Pynchon rarely does.

On my first read - 10 years ago, 15?! - it became my favorite Pynchon book or at least in the running for that.

Earlier this year I started a re-read and … I couldn’t hang (maybe 25/30 percent through at the stopping point, i think the Vomitones are playing some huge party at a mansion), but recognized aspects of what I’d loved so much time the first time.

Maybe it felt that way because I’m revisiting in this year, of all years?!?

Will probably see the movie but am already preparing myself, mentally, for this to just be a totally separate thing from the book.

I mean, just two of the passages I noted this time:

"...plus flirters, deserters, wimps and pimps, speeding like bullets, grinning like chimps, above the heads of TV watchers, lovers under the overpasses, movies at malls letting out, bright gas-station oases in pure fluorescent spill, canopied beneath the palm trees, soon wrapped, down the corridors of the surface streets, in nocturnal smog, the adobe air, the smell of distant fireworks, the spilled, the broken world."

and

"and the crimes behind the world, the thousand bloody arroyos in the hinterlands of time that stretched somberly inland from the honky-tonk coast of now."

I reread it last fall, I think my fourth time through it in 30 yrs or so, and some of it doesn't work exactly but a lot of key aspects hit me harder now then ever because of *gestures toward everything*

I have greater hope for PTA doing this as more of an "inspired by" like he did with Sinclair's Oil! then doing a straight adaption like he did with Inherent Vice

xpost And to piggy-back on that, there are passages of the book that are as well-written and artful as anything he has ever written and spots that I had to read multiple times to just try and understand what was even going on.

It's jall the flashbacks... There's always flashbacks in a Pynchon-novel - Mason & Dixon is kinda one big flashback - but here they're piled on top of each other and at this point I'm struggling to get through it.

Yeah, the layered meta flashbacks do take some grokking ("oh wait, now this is from Takeshi's view not just DL talking about meeting him"), but that's part of the Pynchon trip so I try not to get hung up on it and ride it out. Usually dumps me back safely.

He, I do love the flashback that changes from DL to Takeshi without informing us that Takeshi has shown up to tell his part of the tale. It's more that the structure of the book is kinda simplistic compared to most of the others. A buildup to a point of no return, then flaschback flashback flashback flashback etc.

It's Pynchon's most succinct and clear statement of the never ending battle with reactionary forces that runs through all his books, especially the way they tempt and co-opt us all.

Oh, AFIpaws...They're getting a 70mm print. Not that a 70mm print lured me to Licorice Pizza, but decisions decisions.

Can't remember the last time I saw hype like this. (Other than Megalopolis obv.)

Actually maybe the last time was TWBB which I found disappointing.

when i saw the trailer in theaters a month or so ago i thought it was v funny & i for one am excited to see it

I want to like this so much, I would describe myself as terrified to see it.

xxp i just went back and rewatched the original TWBB trailer and that thing was absolute catnip for a college kid like me. new one has me wary but i'm genuinely tempted to try and catch a vistavision screening.

Just found out that this film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, and has a rumored budget of around 150 million dollars. This will either win every Oscar there is, or flop so hard.

Hey Lois, this is worse than the time I joined that semetic R&B band Jew Edition

lol

I think even the biggest Pynchon fan will agree that his jokes are sometimes painfully bad. There's a jingle for a gardener in Vineland that goes: 'A lawn savant who'll chop a treee-ah'.

i always felt there was a kind of intentionality to the groaners in pynchon. not sure id go so far as to say it's brechtian alienation effect, but when you're face-palming in response it's in that ballpark. like being trapped talking to a person who tells long winded stories with unnecessary elaboration is exactly the vibe he's going for?

(speaking of pynchon's almost rhythmic use of italics actually does make me smile/laugh quite a bit...)

I was gonna say that Jew edition joke isn’t far from something you’d encounter in a tp book

"not only do i insist on silliness it's occasionally be the kind of silliness that's not even redeemable but outright obnoxious..."

i read Ulysses earlier this year and the jokes are often very funny, but--arguably--always within the context of this radial modernist experimentation that is never quite as deflating as a 5 star pynchon groaner.

radical but why not radial too.

its out for home viewing now so everyone can check on the little details speculated about itt

what, the Epstein video

thats right

Showed my daughters (20 and 23) this evening, went down well, even better than I expected. Holds its charged power even at TV scale. Fun new detail noticed: the Christmas Adventurers’ secret knock is “Jingle Bells”.

lol ok thats v good!! i did not catch that before

the Christmas Adventurers’ secret knock is “Jingle Bells”.

I missed this on my first watch, but remembered some laughter in my theater and was perplexed...second watch "oooooh"

god what a joy to watch a well executed, strongly played and brilliantly stylised action movie

now to read the thread

everyone feels the same way!

it is true that almost everyone agreed it was a rip rollicking good time

and without any great political metaphorical weight to burden it either

well

that part was also good

im seeing kubrick comparisons upthread and ive just ctrl f'd preacher and no results and idk gang

leo played his OUATIH role again to a large extent and to similar excellent effect imo

Went to see this a second time earlier this week, as it's showing on 70mm here a few times at the moment, and loved it just as much as the first time, to that point that I'm actually going again today. A bit excessive, perhaps, but it is just such a fun film to watch.

hell yeah

I’ll have to keep an eye out, I want to see it a second time and didn’t get a chance in the original run

Had great fun the third time round. It was still really busy too, which is nice to see.

i didnt feel it possible to catch half of what was going on as i watched

incredible pace

The pacing on it is great, yeah. It's a pretty long film, but it flows really well and is engaging the whole way through.

I kept calling it 'kinetic' when speaking to friends - I'm not sure where I picked that particular phrase up, but I guess I meant it to be a slightly fancy way of saying how action-packed and exciting and entertaining the film is.

I'm not sure where I picked that particular phrase up

it's in the movie! felt to me like PTA signaling his MO here as well.

Bah, that's embarrassing! When is that? I can't place it, thinking back.

it moved

it’s the pathetic macho code for the swat bros smashing the dojo door with a battering ram. “We’re gonna have to go kinetic on this.”

I was kinda taken with the expression and have started using it...sounds like something military guys probably do actually say.

It works splendidly for a gay hookup.

^^ PVMIC <3

Ah, yes, thank you sic.

Very nice Alfred LS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_cV9ciktoQ

the moment when lawrence subtly demolishes dicaprio around the 10 minute mark is a chef's kiss

Very nice thread on various aspects of the film, mainly its family abolionist politics

finally saw "One Battle After Another" and I have some thoughts so maybe I will do a rambling thread? I would say SPOILERS but it's been out for a long time so here are my late to the party thoughts about family, revolution, genre and gender

— DREW DANIEL (@DDDrewDaniel) December 27, 2025

c/p for the non-x users?

https://xcancel.com/DDDrewDaniel/status/2004957134140965300

thx sic. a+ thread

Maybe I shouldn’t have watched Sentimental Value after this bc it made it feel almost cartoonish in comparison. Enjoyed at the time though.

Nah, it's time people realize that Joachim Trier is overrated.

Sentimental Value = bourgie mush

Mush is tasty.

I watched House of Flying Daggers again a couple of days ago and it reminded me a little of this... You've got a violent revolutionary group entangled in a romantic affair with a representative of the state, but is the romance real? Is it just a ploy? Is love getting in the way?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq1QC81TqCA

i’ve made love with one eye on the door
i’ve left good rooms with nothing to say

i wanted to love them
but love got in the way
i wanted to love them
but love gets in the way

and so what if everything’s changed
and so what if i’ve held out for more
i'm all wild in places i wasn’t before
i'm wild in places where i wasn’t before

so come on and make a mess of me
i won’t walk away
i'm ready as i’ll ever be
i won’t walk away

i want to be fed by you
i want to be led by you
i thought i wanted freedom
but love got in the way
i went looking for freedom
but love got in the way

so come on and make a mess of me
i won’t walk away
i'm ready as i’ll ever be
i won’t walk away

Variety:

“One Battle After Another,” a subversive comedy about radical politics, was named best picture at the 31st annual Critics Choice Awards on Sunday. The film won two other top prizes; best director and best adapted screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson.

i guess i was craving an actual relationship dynamic between dicaprio and his daughter

so was she

re Critics Choice Award win: OBAA has also won the top prize of the New York and Los Angeles film critics' circles (not to mention critics' groups in various other cities), the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Gotham Awards.

in the past few decades, the only movies to win as many precursor awards and not win the Best Picture Oscar are L.A. Confidential (1997) and The Social Network (2010). in both cases, they were beaten by a populist favorite (Titanic and The King's Speech, respectively). so Sinners still has a chance, but i would bet on OBAA at this point.

https://web.archive.org/web/20251216222319/https://www.vulture.com/article/black-actresses-are-carrying-one-battle-after-another.html

liked this essay on the actresses’ roles and performances