Dude, his father who he loved and who he followed around like a puppy all day and all night abandoned him on a train without even saying goodbye, and he came back to see that his dad had found another partner in crime.
He was pissed.
Meh. TWBB is all aesthetic, no story. It's ok to have a movie that's character driven, but then you'd better give us some insight into how/why the character (ie. Daniel) gets this way...
McKingford gets it exactly right.
Speaking of the kid, the thing that really bugged me about that subplot was that after the accident he stopped speaking. He knew how to talk before he lost his hearing; there was no reason for him to all of a sudden become a mute. What, he couldn't learn to read lips?
Thank you Josh. As it may be the only time in my life I read those words, I will treasure them...
But I should add to my post that aesthetic *is* important in a movie, and TWBB does a great job of capturing it - so that I certainly understand why so many people loved the movie. I just think that in this case, it was the only selling point, and perhaps overwhelms - to the point of distraction - the problems with the storytelling.
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Making art comprehensible to geeks (link from Eszter via Froomkin).
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1, he abandoned him on a train after he set the cabin on fire.
It's unclear if the son, by reading the diary, figured out that the brother was not who he claimed to be or if he just saw that the brother might replace him and was enraged by it.
I assumed it was that he had read the diary and figured out the truth. Being raised by an insanely violent SOB, killing the impostor was not an especially out of hand response.
I disagree about the brother subplot. The blood of the title has threefold significance to me: blood as family, as salvation, and as violence; the false brother echoes the adopted son as a simulation of blood-family that could have but doesn't work, due to Daniel's megalomania. Maybe that story could have been told with the son alone, but Anderson has a history (a good one, I think) of using doubles in his movies -- Magnolia uses it to great effect, but it does tell the entire movie twice by doing so.
For fucks sake, Becks, you finally push the horrible McMegan thread down only to post a thread about a movie I haven't yet seen and don't want to see any spoilers on. So I can neither read nor comment. WORST UNFOGGED WEEKEND EVER.
Could the kid read and write? I thought at some point he was holding the diary upside down, and we never see him communicating using notes or a slate.
I tend to agree with the latter theory in 6.
WORST UNFOGGED WEEKEND EVER.
Noob.
Link in 5 is fantastic. My personal favorite: #34.
Because I have a 9-year-old's sense of humor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClCmO42_tQ0
The link in 5 is dorky, in a bad way. Get your lame, labored programmer jokes out of my immortal classics of the visual arts, please.
I mostly agree with 14, but the "art for geeks" thing has a couple of good moments, like the "office assistant" gag or the Mortal Kombat reference for David and Goliath.
I gotta say, I didn't love this movie. Even the soundtrack, which has been lauded so much (mostly, I think, because of its coolness factor - hey, it's the guy from Radiohead!), was incredibly distracting. Not to say the music isn't great - if you listen to the soundtrack alone, it's beautifully haunting at times but during several scenes in the movie I wondered if there wasn't an option to turn the soundtrack off because it was destroying my ability to focus on the film.
(There were a few scenes where I thought that the music was trying to force movement and action into a moment where there wasn't much - and where it would have been more effective had the music emphasized such stillness. Instead, I get Philip Glass on steroids.)
I love that PT Anderson was trying something ambitious here but I think he failed outright - and that he shouldn't be rewarded for this failure. The movie just wasn't that good, in my opinion. Great opening sequence - the first 20 minutes or so are gorgeous - but at the end of it, even with that great milkshake speech, I wondered, why the hell did I just spend 2 1/2 hrs with this squinty asshole in Texas-as-California?
8 is exactly right. Also notice that Daniel kills two brothers, both the False Brother from Fond du Lac and Eli at the end ("Paul, Paul was the chosen one"), who dies while insisting "I'm your brother." Awesome.
Other things that were hottt in that movie:
- Ciaran Hinds
- the silent opening 20 minutes
- that shot of the oil lake that reflected the sky
- hammering the spike into the table to seal the deal with Union Pacific, which finishes the whole surveying sequence.
In fact, any movie that sounds like it was set to a previously-undiscovered Radiohead album and at the same time also has a "surveying sequence" is pretty fucking great. Case closed.
a previously-undiscovered Radiohead album
There's a pretty good reason for this, after all.
Oh, and 14 is right. Take that, New Decency!
That link in 13 is great.
I like 9 year old mcmc.
And no, not in a pervy way, sicko.
this squinty asshole
Not seen the movie but Day-Lewis does seem to be doing a lot of squint-acting at the moment.
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20: I am actually in broad agreement with SCMT in this comment.
The brother thing was crucial: it's the one moment where the character is going to say anything about himself, because for the first time he's met someone who might not be in the competitor/not-competitor binary, someone he might trust.
19: But just because something is scored by a guy from Radiohead doesn't mean it will necessarily sound Radioheady. And yet, it does, in a novel way.
At the very end, when Daniel is walking through his house past the pile of shot-up furniture, and the dog is sleeping in the middle of the foyer floor ... I confess I thought, "Oh my God, he shot the dog too."
I just had to spend a far too large amount of money to see The Golden Compass which was completely shit. The kids thought it was bad too, apart from the 5 year old, who said, hurt, that she'd liked it, only to be told by the 11 yo that she has no taste. So I'm glad to hear that someone saw a film they liked. Although it sounds a bit earnest for me.
There Will Be Blood is not earnest.
Surely you'll forgive some good old-fashioned plain talk.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if I tell you I am a family man, you will agree.
28 - oh good - it was the deaf mute bit that must have made me think that.
Re 29 and 30 - oh dear, they're everywhere ...
I see the tasteless 5-year-old growing up to be a psycho-killer. You should watch her closely.
We're raising a fucking monster, John. On Friday she saw a bit of Neighbours (Aussie soap if you haven't had the pleasure) - "Oh, I love this! People get lost and hurt!"
Ah, you must spare no effort to bring her to the new English-language Funny Games.
A psycho-killer isn't nearly as bad as a psycho killer.
the new English-language Funny Games
Which is very well done! I was suspicious about Naomi Watts, but she is good. And the husband isn't as annoyingly passive as Uli Mühe was.
And Haneke is my new favorite public speaker, for mercilessly shooting down stupid questions in a Q&A.
You're at the festival, Blume?
I've seen several Q&A sessions with directors before and after their premieres at the Toronto festival. All are invariably disturbing in the complete predictability of every question.
Blume is at all the festivals. Blume is a festival! Let us all go to Blume and be festive!
TWBB is all aesthetic, no story.
This statement is ludicrous. The fuck?
I wish!
No, I saw it a month or so ago at a special showing at the film archive here in Cambridge. Cambridge = obnoxious audience questions. When someone tried to twist Funny Games to have been about gun control, though, Haneke broke in and said, "You'd have to be trying very hard to so willfully misinterpret my film."
It's been too long since I had a good Thurmansbang.
Every day of my life is a Blumenfest.
You're making it sound like I dance around with flowers in my hair, dude.
And why does the beer on that site keep going from empty to full, instead of the other way around?
There ain't nothing wrong with the way she moves.
Blume, are you saying that even you cannot comprehend the Blumenfest?
No, for I, too, want to know, Wo kann ich die Wolferstetter Biere
auch ausserhalb Niederbayerns kaufen?
('Cause I'm sure as hell not going to Niederbayern for any beer.)
42: In America we're more informal and call them Umabangs.
46: contracting universe where entropy decreases, and there's always more beer.
50.2: how do I get there?! (Assuming it's not in Niederbayern.)
You're making it sound like I dance around with flowers in my hair, dude.
Clearly you should be in San Francisco.
Habermas came to Stanford last quarter to deliver a lecture in memory of Richard Rorty, and he got a lot of questions about his own thoughts on this or that matter, all of which he quite admirably dismissed by observing that it wasn't the right occasion for such a discussion. Bully for him.
You just have to live your life backwards in every way.
The beer on that site is actually going from full to empty so fast it looks as if it's going from empty to full, just as sometimes it looks as if wheels on a car are spinning backwards. Optical illusions.
Clearly you should be in San Francisco.
MLA 2008, baby!
I presume that "Autoscooter u." is some sort of institute of higher education. See if you could take some part-time internet-based classes there.
The guy drinks faster than the barmaid pours.
Hmm. There's a Gottesdienst on Sunday that doesn't look entirely skippable, but hey, anschließend traditioneller Frühschoppen!!!
w-lfs-n might want to check out Innernzeller Spitzbuam" at the Blumenfest. And yeas, it's spelled "buam".
w-lfs-n might want to check out "Innernzeller Spitzbuam" at the Blumenfest. And yes, it's spelled "buam".
Ponyreiten u. Bonbonkanone!!!
Oh man, maybe I'll have to take back everything I said about Niederbayern!
That sounds like the name of a Stereo Total song.
Apparently "Spitzbuam" is a genre or style. There's even an American Spitzbuam band in St. Louis.
Literally the word means "rascals".
MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE MACK TRUCK
WOULD YOU LIKE SOME MAKING FUCK
BONBONKANONE
I thought it was just "LIKE A TRUCK".
MEET ME AT THE SCHOOLYARD I WILL BEAT YOU LIKE GORILLA
MY LOVE FOR YOU IS TICKING CLOCK
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUCK MY COCK
BEN WOLFSON
Movie question: How do you pronounce Persepolis? I can't figure the stress.
As to the movie, I liked it. I was interested all the way through. Interesting mix of techniques that kept to the style of the book. The soundtrack was quite effective. I went with someone who had a marginal interest in seeing the film and she came away impressed.
Oh, the scene Ogged didn't like was handled so Satrapi didn't come away looking good.
Saw the movie! I agree with T. Burke up in 25. The brother subplot is necessary for flushing out Lewis's character. He drugs his own "son" to talk to his new "brother", he opens up to him, and then he murders him. All three events are revealing, and without them I can't see how the ending would make sense.
As for why the kid set the fire - wasn't he drunk?
What I want to know, though, is what happened to Paul Sunday? Are we to trust Lewis's rant at the end? Did Paul just take the money and run? It would explain why he apparently never went home. Or did Daniel murder him? Has anyone read the book?
76: They're making a movie out of puhr-SEH-puh-lis? No way.
Made a movie, rather. Where the hell have I been.
Thanks DS.
Yep, bough tickets for purh-SEH-po-lis. Then I talked about how much I liked per-seh-POH-lis. Only two more syllables left.