jürgen fauth’s muckworld

The promising first half of George Stevens’ Texan epic sets up a tiresome three-and-a-half-hour descent into mediocrity. Displaced northern bride Liz Taylor slowly fades from the center of the story, nouveau riche James Dean is woefully misused, children come and go, and Rock Hudson’s stubborn cattle rancher is granted an improbable redemption. Giant keeps pulling its punches, and in the end, it’s home sweet home and upstart Jett Rink lies under a table where he belongs. After 201 minutes, we have arrived in the cornball fifties, cheated out of any kind of pay-off, and that’s the real tragedy.

No doubt There Will Be Blood owes more to Giant than just the Marfa location; in fact, Anderson’s film feels like Giant’s evil twin, made up of all the scenes the other movie suppressed: the real drama, the truth of the matter. You know, the good scenes. After the jump, screenshots from both movies that seem to talk to one another, in the spirit of Kevin Lee’s influence spotting. Don’t click if you haven’t seen the movie yet: There Will Be Spoilers. For more Blood talk, I Drink Your Milkshake.com is the place.

Giant. George Stevens, 1958. ***

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Between the noontime press conference at the Waldorf and the Ziegfeld premiere, Monday completely belonged to There Will Be Blood. If celebrity sightings are your thing, I’ve got a few stories for you — but I’d hate to namedrop Maggie Gyllenhaal, Liam Neeson, John Leguziamo, and the kid who played H.W. just for the sake of baldfaced bragging. Still, Marcy successfully handed copies of Twins to Peter Saarsgard (who high-fived her) and Amy Poehler (who stole her seat) — no doubt, both have already fallen madly in love with the book and are setting the machinery of Hollywood in gear to make us rich and famous, too.

Oh, and the movie? Minute for minute, There Will Be Blood still thrills more than anything else I’ve seen this year, and that’s even more true for the second viewing. I won’t apologize for taking a few more days to fine-tune my review — but I am glad we had already handed the film a slew of awards before Paramount fed us steak and martinis. Previously.

There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****

There will be puns, there will be awards, there will be awesome. Based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, Paul Thomas Anderson (whose movies I often failed to appreciate in the past) has made a magnificent epic about the price of the precious resources, liquid and otherwise, that we extract from the ground — and from other people. Daniel Day-Lewis is reliably fantastic as Daniel Plainview, a prospector turned wealthy oilman and all-around American monster, but the real stunner here is Paul Dano as his nemesis, the pimply-faced fire-and-brimstone preacher Eli Sunday.

This one’s got “movie of the year” written all over it, and I’m already itching to see it again as soon as possible. We’ll have much more on this before the December 26 release. I drink YOUR milkshake!

UPDATED: My gushing review is now up at About Worldfilm.

There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****

• Karina Longworth found two tacks from the terrific score, and here’s the latest trailer:

Come and see the latest industrial-strength Sundance hit, now with 40% more quirk! Our new & improved independent™ formula leaves no storyline unsolved, no character trait unexplored, no minor role cast with an unrecognizable face, and no dry eye in the house with focus-group approved climactic superfreak dancing! But all the random quirkiness can’t make this thing any less predictable. It’s cute though; they got that much worked out. Marcy’s review is much too kind; I suppose it’s easier to be won over by all the charm-to-spare if you’re in a crowded theater. I took another half star off for the libellous portrayal of quality German engineering.

Little Miss Sunshine. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006. **

[tags]film, 2 stars, cute, independent, comedy, toni collette, abigail breslin, greg kinnear, paul dano, alan arkin, steve carell, quirky[/tags]

A timely reminder why I don’t particularly enjoy press junkets. I was at the Regency on Park Ave yesterday morning for a marathon roundtable session for Fast Food Nation: Eric Schlosser, Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano, and Richard Linklater. Don’t get me wrong, all of these people proved friendly, talented, and smart, and I’d love to hang out with every single one of them–especially Schlosser and Linklater.

But sharing them with a table full of wide-eyed interns, self-promoting film critics, and aggressive vegan activists for twenty-minute stints in crowded hotel rooms to repeat what they already said for the press kit while their publicists are hovering over them with an eye on the clock is more than a little bit frustrating. I got in one non-starter question with Linklater and otherwise resigned myself to trying to absorb some of his dedication and energy. Now I have a couple of hours worth of audio to transcribe for a proper About.com write-up….

[tags]film, press, film critics, interviews, richard linklater, eric schlosser[/tags]