poll thomas anderson

voting PDL which I just rewatched on my boring Satuday night

There Will Be Blood, but I am considering voting for Punch Drunk just because I think it's great and I'm sure there are loads of people who hate hate hate that film on ILX.

twbb, though I can't remember anything about hard eight except that there was gambling and a lot of actors he likes to use

all i really remember was his pocket catching on fire.

PDL, for so many reasons.

"Business is very food" indeed.

I always really wanted to see Magnolia

There Will Be Blood, but I am considering voting for Punch Drunk just because I think it's great and I'm sure there are loads of people who hate hate hate that film on ILX.

this is very true and I will show solidarity by voting with you

I don't hate PDL; there was quite a bit in there I thought was cool. But even with its likable qualities it still seemed to me irredeemably full of shit.

I liked There Will Be Blood a lot too, but Boogie Nights is easily the best movie up there (out of the ones I've seen)

Probably the only filmmaker with five or more films where I've seen them all. Boogie Nights is an easy #1 for me. Magnolia's a flawed and fascinating #2. Punch-Drunk Love a mild #3, interesting mostly for Sandler. I tried three times with There Will Be Blood--as ambitious as Magnolia, but it just didn't come together for me. Hard Eight I only saw once, soon after Boogie Nights came out, and at this point I remember very little. Whatever he puts out, I'll go see. I still count him as someone who could make a great film at any time, even though Boogie Nights is the only one I count as unequivocally great.

I realize I'm very close to having seen every Kubrick film--all of them except the very, very first one.

love a lot of things about Magnolia, but it and his previous two don't hold a candle to the PDL or TWBB

I think how anyone feels about There Will Be Blood is going to be largely determined by how you feel about Daniel Day-Lewis. It's a memorable performance, but for me it overwhelms the rest of the film in ways that are often off-putting.

I can see that, but aside from him I think it's PTA's best work as a director and a writer. Of course, I think Daniel Day-Lewis fits the material perfectly.

There is lots to love about TWBB but PDA's giddy thrill at combining Scorsese, Altman, and 70s porn is absolutely palpable. It's one of the signature U.S. Films of the 90s imo.

Boogie Nights followed by TWBB, trash the rest

i'm pretty sure PDL was well received on here

it's pretty divided and polarized - people slam it for the same reasons they slam amelie, for being twee indie loser wish fulfillment bullshit

I know this because I looked up all the threads cause I'm a stan of both, I used to question my feelings towards but then I realized it's okay to be in touch with your sentimental side fuck the haters

PDL is my favourite, it's pretty unique. I love Magnolia too.

should really watch PDL again, loved it when i saw it like 7 years ago. voted TWBB though.

Voted BN with TWBB a close second.

i wanna see pdl for the jeremy blake stuff

Hard Eight still his best.

Hard Eight "

There Will Be Blood

boogie nights
magnolia
twbb
hard 8
pdl

My issue with PDL is not the sadsack twee stuff; my issue is with the careening automobiles and rando pipe organs or w/e the fuck that thing is

voted for Magnolia to be kinda semi-contrarian, because i realize how ridiculous and stupid it is but the first time i saw it was probably the most i've enjoyed any of his movies. Hard Eight was pretty good, would like to see it again, PDL was aight, probably have never give Boogie Nights the attention it deserves but something about it is just off-putting to me. and totally hated There Will Be Blood.

There Will Be Blood by a nose over Hard Eight (his only films that mostly work, in TWBB's case in spite of a shitty last 20 minutes).

xxp harmonium!

yea my main issue is the end w/ phil hoffman. i dont think its a terrible movie and theres some scenes i really like...one i remember is sandler spontaneously balling to the dentist...but i rate it markedly lower than the other 4

was that supposed to be "bawling" or was there a scene in this movie that i totally do not remember?

This is semantics, I know, but saying that Boogie Nights doesn't work seems way off to me; it's a complete and wholly realized film. You may not like it, or may think it's a mountain of style on top of a molehill of an idea, but it all comes together.

Xxp Yeah "harmonium" came to me just now...

Methinks this thread is full of covert Sandler fans...No matter; TWBB will walk this,a nd it should; it's a v good film.

clemenza, I don't like BN = it doesn't work. Its borrowings from Altman and Raging Bull to much lesser effect are actively annoying.

The Sandler movie is hideous.

You may not like it, or may think it's a mountain of style on top of a molehill of an idea, but it all comes together.

Well, I don't doubt that, for example, TWBB turned out exactly how PTA wanted, but it's a crabbed, stilted conception.

hard eight - seen twice, barely remember
boogie nights - great fun fuiud
magnolia - don't hate it, never loved it
punch drunk love - probably overrate it, but it pisses all over
twbb - not good and certainly not very much fun

I think nothing underscores PTA's genius better than recognizing "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" as ambitious transitional works, which clearly they were.

There are times I think "There Will Be Blood" is the greatest American film since the '70s, vying with "The Thin Red Line." I can't think of any movie that does a better job capturing just what went wrong with the American experiment. Those "shitty" final minutes are vital metaphor for the pathological farce that we've become.

The last fifteen minutes ARE a pathological farce.

All the Altman and Scorsese flourishes in Boogie Nights don't bother me at all; people borrow from people all the time. (They don't bother me anymore than stuff in Taxi Driver that's lifted from Godard and Bresson.) The thing that always carries me away--and this is where I find it different than all of PTA's other work--is how joyous a film it is. There's a sequence right at the end that I always mention...when Reynolds walks through his house, going from room to room, looking in on all the main characters (even Little Bill, whose portrait is on the wall); he's talking to himself as he does so, sort of a mock exasperation at things like Buck's baby being in the pool, and it's clear that he loves all these people so much. I've seen Boogie Nights at least 10 or 12 times, and it always strikes me as an improbably graceful and generous film in view of its subject matter.

otm

the pathological farce that we've become.

sounds a bit overheated for a country built on genocide and slavery but w/e

josh in chicago otm

x-post

sounds a bit overheated for a country built on genocide and slavery but w/e

Hardly unique to America, dude. But modern cutthroat capitalism is our baby.

Re: the end of "Boogie Nights," tbh honest the movie's alternative family theme, with Burt as paterfamilias, was already pretty prominent/obvious. That affection is there from the beginning.

Speaking of paterfamilias, my first reaction upon seeing "Magnolia" all those years ago was that it could have been titled "I Hate You, Dad." PTA working through some personal shit with that one.

Really, people don't like Magnolia? For me it's clearly better -- mostly because BIGGER - than Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. Didn't seem ridiculous to me at the time, and it seems even less ridiculous to me in retrospect -- we live in more Fortean times. But I didn't vote because I haven't seen There Will Be Blood or Hard Eight.

this guy is the worst, sorry.

Punch-Drunk Love but man toughest poll ever. I think this guy is an actual genius you know.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eg04Zz3CERw/S2yD5DVGnpI/AAAAAAAADwM/W-CEDBxGBT4/s400/vlcsnap-2010-02-05-12h38m35s191.png

That affection is there from the beginning.

Absolutely. I just single out the scene at the end as a summation of that theme. This affection is also what can be very off-putting about Boogie Nights. If you think about films set wholly or partly in the world of pornography, they tend to be along the lines of Hardcore, Auto-Focus, Videodrome, Star 80, Wonderland, etc; it's a grubby, hateful world. So Boogie Nights could well be a work of irresponsibly romantic naivete--having never, um, worked in the industry, I don't know. I can only judge it as a film unto itself, though, and I love the world it creates.

While I love "Boogie Nights" - as far as pure entertainment goes, it's a near-perfect confection - I do have some issues with it, namely that not only are many of the shots/scenes explicitly referencing other films (which is cool), a lot of the story is too drawn-from-life biopic for me. There's just way too much of the real John Holmes story in there for me to fully embrace it as much more than an ambitious stylistic exercise, even if as an exercise it really is flawless. The acting is top notch, the filmmaking top notch, the writing top notch, but I guess wish it were more original than audacious. That's a pretty minor criticism, to be fair, but it contributes to its talented young filmmaker getting his ya-yas out vibe. Which, again, is why I consider it and "Magnolia" transitional. It's not a coincidence that PTA made a concerted effort to change directions and tone things down with "Punch Drunk Love." That one's like a palette cleanser.

ilx loves the hyped pretentious American guys

There Will Be Blood is one of my favorite movies ever. An epic masterpiece. So I voted for that.

I'd say that the ten minute set piece episode between the "morning after/call before work" scene and the "sex worker telling him he's fucked" scene is probably the best thing Anderson has done so far.

PDL is typically idiotic Sandler with pretentiousness added

Morbz otm.

The Waterboy >>>> Punch Drunk Love

(crucial deciding factor = Fairuza Balk)

Does anyone else wonder whether Boogie Nights endorses Burt Reynolds' conviction that he's making "artistic" porn? That's one of my problems with the movie; it doesn't seem to know.

I'm pretty sure Reynolds' grand pronouncements about his films (mostly made during the one scene in the restaurant early in the film) are meant to be amusing. I think you're supposed to like his inflated sense of self, but not take him seriously.

we like the characters (to begin with anyway) but think them misguided (at best). does the film have to make a declarative statement? i don't think the films are meant to be taken as art, at all, but the first one we see them shoot with julianne moore and wahlberg is not meant to make us feel it's exploitative or whatever, as later ones do.

we're supposed to giggle at reynolds' ambitions but the movie likes him because he has ambitions and doesn't just want to beat girls up on shitty video for the money.

we should poll how many bad performances there are in Magnolia. Julianne Moore would top the list.

totally love julianne moore in this movie tho

you're dead to me

her crazed, manic melodramatics seem pitched just right for that material imo

p sure i have mentioned this before. the scene where she is picking up the prescription and the guy is all "p strong shit ur picking up there lady" is top drawer

the problem is the movie is pitched as a crazed, manic melodrama.

also there's a bit where frogs fall out of the sky

well that's not Moore's fault xpost

realize this sounds baity but the frogs are the only good part.

Moore's performance in Magnolia reminds me of Agnes Moorehead's meltdown scene in The Magnificent Ambersons--she's so far out there, you're going to think it's great acting or you're going to recoil. For me, the performance is too much. But I don't have any particular problems with anyone else in Magnolia, and think some of the performances (John C. Reilly, PSH, Henry Gibson) are excellent. (I like Cruise a lot too.)

never really understood the relevance of the prologue to 'magnolia'. confuses coincidence with... stuff happening.

the Moorehead analogy is good, but in a movie in which the other actors are quiet and solid Moorehead's hysteria is necessary -- and, like you said, she only melts down once.

What PTA does to Moore in Magnolia reminds me of what Woody did to Judy Davis in Celebrity: after directing her best performance in H&W he asks her to reprise her tricks, with the added bonus of simulating giving head to a banana. "Let's see how I deeply I can embarrass her and the audience."

The prologue does seem kind of tacked on, there to announce that you're about to see an important film. I like Ricky Jay's narration, though, and there's something of a tenuous connection.

I'm with you on Moore. I find her unwatchable in the pharmacy scene plax singled out.

I don't loathe Boogie Nights or Magnolia -- they both have some good stuff in there -- but I'm amazed that some ppl hate one and not the other, since they seem so damn similar.

well, for one, BN doesn't boast that skin-crawling score.

well one of them has a bunch of cool 70s songs while john c. reilly does some funny riffs about the gym and the other one has stringed instruments being poured into your ear literally nonstop while people weep.

and except for every scene William H. Macy's in (PTA's got a talent for misdirecting him), the perfs are all solid.

magnolia is like if the "1980s" section of boogie nights went on for three hours and was even worse.

Talking to difficult listening hour offboard, I remarked that maybe PTA's talents are best suited for television, where the medium would suppress his wilder flights of fancy. Hard Eight's in essence an excellent HBO-type film.

They have a lot in common, but there's a mood of oppressiveness in Magnolia that's mostly absent in Boogie Nights. (It's there sometimes, mostly in the second half, in scenes like Reynolds and Roller Girl making the man-on-the-street video). Boogie Nights has a lot of scenes that are light and joyous--there just aren't any in Magnolia. I love one, like the other, but the second feels more like work (and, to me, ultimately feels more like There Will Be Blood than Boogie Nights).

(It's there sometimes, mostly in the second half, in scenes like Reynolds and Roller Girl making the man-on-the-street video).

yeah, this scene--"artfully" intercut w/ wahlberg jacking off in a truck while loud ominous music plays--is the one i was thinking of. magnolia is a whole movie of that.

I rather like oppressiveness, I don't know if you've noticed

you should visit the US politics thread at least once then.

also i'd bet $5 that "GOTY" is stuck in tamtam's mind because of "game of the year"

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, March 12, 2011 10:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yyyyyyep

These are all pretty good movies, but there is way too much SHOUTING acting in them. Although Burt Reynolds is terrific in BN and doesn't shout at all.

best film maker of his generation though right?

tamtam & ENBB otm throughout

Me too.

lol

boogie nights and twbb are the top two for me, probably twbb just a shade over BN, probably solely because of DDL's performance (choice lines such as "One night I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm gonna cut your throat" and so on.)

there's some stuff in 'boogie nights' that doesn't quite work for me, like that weird scene with handjob dude (entire scene makes zero sense imo) and the donut shop scene that seems to come from a tarantino whereas everything else is scorsese. still entertaining as fuck. magnolia is trying to be great but it's really just all surface and the content seems a little empty despite desperately trying not to be. plus the frogs = the earthquake in short cuts.

this is actually a tough poll since i think all of these films have great points but there's something off about all of them too. i've always felt the middle part of Magnolia, the pacing and mounting tension of it (you just know some sort of cathartic release is coming), is sort of amazing. maybe his best stretch of filmmaking, and probably the kind of thing he'll always be best at.

TWBB has always been sort of a blank for me. need to see it again.

Boognie Nights is certainly most entertaining and even fun despite the fact that its condescension to its characters bothers me a little bit. I can't remember anything about PDL except for the Popeye song on the soundtrack.

I probably said as much upthread, but I don't think Boogie Nights condescends to its characters any more than Altman does in Nashville. I realize some would argue that both films do. I say neither--the directors like the characters too much to condescend.

well. it's a tricky line because i think the movie does both. i almost wonder if the idea was to be "lol 70s" and then Anderson realized he liked his characters and that's why the movie takes a poignant turn. i guess you could argue its either incoherent or that whole idea was to make that turn.

i rewatched boogie nights just a couple weeks ago, and it's still really funny and enjoyable, but i honestly had forgotten or maybe never realized how much it owed to goodfellas. i mean i always thought of it as being part of the goodfellas legacy, remembered the shots it had lifted, but really the entire movie literally couldnt exist in any recognizable form w/o gfellas. its almost like a reskin. so that kinda lessened it in my eyes, but i still think it's probably my fav pta. that was the first time i noticed PSH in something and im still really impressed by how specific and perfect that performance is, and also still cant believe the guy who played that asexual blob creature could be so convincing as a hardass baseball lifer like Art Howe

i havent seen twbb since it came out and ive been meaning to rewatch it because i was majorly confused by the late-film revelation that paul dano had an identical twin or something. i guess i wasnt paying enough attention, maybe it was there the whole time. really enjoy DDL in it

*homosexual blob creature

Dano's twin is in the first scene

yeah i figured it was something like that. during the final scene i was so distracted cuz i was just trying to puzzle out whether it was a revelation or if i was supposed to know it already

boogie nights is still his only good film

Video: Steadicam progress – the career of Paul Thomas Anderson in five shots

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/video-steadicam-progress-career-paul-thomas-anderson-five

spoke to the NYT about his upcoming adap of Pynchon's Inherent Vice:

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/paul_thomas_anderson_on_upcoming_pynchon_adaptation_screenplay_is_more_secretarial/

i like Siskel and Ebert's 'dscussion' here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_2dKTxpH7o