For those who can’t get enough, and knowing that the DVD won’t be out for a few months, here’s a longer trailer with some additional scenes (including Daniel’s “Oh” that I mentioned above). 2:34 long
Here’s another trailer with different scenes and more of the voiceover of his confessions to Henry.
Here’s something I hadn’t seen before. It’s a sort of a trailer for the sneak preview (the one we missed) with scenes not in the movie!
I know Paul’s brother and they are all just incredibly happy and proud of how well he did. I haven’t seen the movie yet but hope to this week. Sounds like it’s going to be really amazing.
Hmm I may wait and see if we get it on the 18th, as that’s my husband’s birthday. That would round out an evening’s festivities nicely. Thanks, Equipoise.
It wasn’t really my cup of tea (as in, I don’t think I want to see it again), but I still think it was a brilliant movie. Daniel Day-Lewis is fucking insane. It is kind of long though. I wasn’t precisely bored at any point, but I did shift in my seat a bit at some point and think, “Good Lord, this movie is long.”
I thought the ending was quite appropriate. The audience did laugh, but I think it was more a laugh of satisfaction than anything else. The whole milkshake dialogue was HILARIOUS.
Well, in all fairness, Kubrick may have used it for his films, but they weren’t written expressly for them. Other scores reminiscent of it (percussive, dischordant, atonal at times)–like Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes or Corigliano’s Altered States (both nominated for Oscars)–were strictly genre pieces (also true for the Kubricks). I’d say merging a more contemporary musical sensibility to an epic-scale period picture in a way that feels forward-looking and not anachronistic (paging Ladyhawke or parts of Chariots of Fire), especially when it’s acting as counterpoint to the action on the screen and reinforcing characterization and theme over story, is very unusual and rather gutsy coming from a Hollywood production.
It’s rare that a trailer will use its own score (often for practical reasons), but in doing so, the advert was being completely forthright in what to expect. And I’ve been listening to the soundtrack in my car, and while it’s not something I can play around the house (that kind of music drives my wife a little crazy), the result is still exhilarating in its own right.
Thanks! PTA was rather sparse with extras on his Magnolia DVD, but I hope the same doesn’t hold true when TWBB is out for home consumption.
With the DGA list out, things are looking worse and worse for Atonement (thankfully; I think the movie is cheap and lazy) and better and better for TWBB, though I think you’re right–DDL will be the only one taking home gold that night (especially since PTA’s up against the Coens in the writing category also). Still, a ton of nods will be to the Academy’s credit, and I can think of a lot worse films it could lose to than NC4OM.
I saw the movie again last night and it not only held up, it was even better, which, considering how blown away I was the first time, is amazing. I want to see it again too. Maybe tomorrow night.
That’s awesome! Have you met Paul? Did the family get a special screening? They definitely should be proud. He held his own against Daniel freaking Day-Lewis! Wow.
I paid special attention to the music last night and was awe-struck. I now think I could listen to the soundtrack on its own.
Oh yeah. Anything it gets I’ll be happy with, just because it’s the Coen Brothers TWBB is up against. I never would have dreamed that movies by the Coen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson would be the top two Awards films of the year. It’s surreal. I’d bet that the Coens and Anderson have a mutual appreciation of each other’s films.
I also saw Atonement last night for the 2nd time. I thought it was great the first time, and would recommend it to anyone, but it didn’t hold up the 2nd time simply because of the structure…everything leads up to the ending. Once you know the ending, things are, well, different. I won’t say anymore because I don’t want to use spoiler boxes. I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, wheras I could watch There Will Be Blood over and over. I’ve seen No Country For Old Men twice too. I could see it again, though it’s not as re-watchable as the Coen comedies, and it’s not as much “fun” as TWBB. People who’ve seen it will understand that use of the word “fun” but those who haven’t might misunderstand. It’s a heavy drama to be sure, but there are a lot of subtle (at times not quite so subtle) very dark humorous bits that I would classify as fun, at least for anyone who has a warped sense of humor.
Like HazelNutCoffee (I agree)
Well, come to think of it, there certainly are dark humor “fun” bits in No Country For Old Men, it is the Coen Brothers, after all, but it’s just different somehow.
No, I haven’t met Paul - I don’t know him at all; just his brother. It is pretty amazing that he was not overpowered by Daniel Day-Lewis at all. I read in The New Yorker that Paul actually wasn’t even the first actor cast for Eli: someone else had already been filming for some time and it wasn’t working out so they brought Paul in after weeks had gone by. And he just dropped himself totally into the role.
I saw it last night and think everyone should fork out the dough to see it in the theater. I’m surprised Paul didn’t get a Golden Globes nomination for Best Supporting but these things are not always decided on merit. He was really amazing, as was DD-L. As you (I think) said, what he can do with just his face!
Question about Daniel and Henry:
I forget; what was it that Henry said that made Daniel know he wasn’t his brother? It was something after talking about that house in Wisconsin, right? Or was that it? I thought Henry said something later on but now I can’t remember. Does anyone recall?
And another spoiler; just some remarks about the movie:
I wasn’t clear on what Daniel was doing at the beginning of the movie: he’s chopping some rock or whatever, then dynamites it, then is happy that he “found” it or something. Are those some kind of mineral deposits indicating oil? Or was that supposed to be silver? (Based on the entries in the mining office.) And was that the same mine or hole in the ground or whatever it was that they ended up finding the oil in, when they dropped the drill bit and it started bubbling up? It seemed to look different to me so I wasn’t sure.
I thought it was gold. The way I took it was he first found enough gold to pay for some oil drilling a little while later (was it a few years?) somewhere else which is where the real money started coming from.
Ah, that makes sense. I think there were a few years’ time between the two events.
More questions re Eli’s father and Eli:
So Daniel must have paid Eli’s father, or not? He didn’t pay the $5,000 donation to the church, but did he pay the cost of the ranch? Or was that not addressed later on?
When Daniel mentions the Peachtree dance while they’re lying on the beach together–obviously a reference to an event back home–it doesn’t register with Henry. So Daniel repeats himself, and still nothing. Right afterwards, he goes into the ocean and you can tell his suspicions are on high alert.
I finally saw this tonight. I was primed to blown away and I was. I think this is a sneaky black comedy more than just a melodrama or a tragedy. DDL was phenomenal. A lot of reviews say that he slowly goes mad, but I don’t think that’s correct. He is slowly revealed to be mad. The madness is there from day one. It just takes an enormous force of will for him to keep it in check. It comes out once or twice, though, just in facial expressions when no one is watching – smiling at someone he wants to cut the heart out of, literally maniacal glee when his well first erupts – stuff like that.
I was also surprised at how wll Paul Dano performed. All I’d seen him in was Little Miss Sunshine where he was fine but didn’t have to do anything too challenging. He did remarkably well in scenes where he had to hold up as a nemesis to DDL without getting blown off the screen (something I think even Leonardo DiCaprio was not entirely successful at in Gangs of New York) and he did a good job showing the snake oil beneath his pious facade.
The score was quite inventive, not conventionally “musical” but evocative of suppressed rage and insanity nonetheless.
I’mm still trying to decide what I think PTA was saying with his two main characters. It’s easy to see them as American archetypes (Capitalism vs. Religion), but I think that’s a little too simple. The religious character doesn’t really care about religion and the capitalist doesn’t really care about capitalism. They are both using those things as means to selfish ends.
One thing I did find kind of significant in their relationships was the way that each character – at different times in the movie – forces the other to confess the truth about himself, and to know it’s the truth when they say it.
There was even a hint of sweetness in the movie in the relationship between HW and Eli’s sister which was nice.
That kid who played HW was pretty damn good too, by the way. There’s a little scene early in the film which really impressed me. It’s so subtle that I wonder how many people really notice it. It’s when the little girl, Mary, is asking the little boy, HW how much money his father is going to be able to bring in from drilling on their land and HW goes into a pitch perfect imitation of all Daniel’s mannerisms and speech patterns, wary, calculating, studiedly polite and evasive. It’s not just what he says but how he stands, how he tilts his head. It’s amazing.
I don’t know what to box. I think this far down in the thread, I won’t. Just so people know though, SPOILERS ARE BELOW.
I’m glad you liked it! Thank you for posting. You made several interesting observations.
BINGO! When I answered your earlier question about the end and people lauging, I didn’t know quite how to phrase my answer. I made it sound more serious than I thought it was…it is a serious scene, but with a streak of very dark humor, but people weren’t laughing AT it, they were laughing WITH it, and I didn’t know how to quite get that across. I’m glad you saw it for yourself and picked up on it. I’ve seen it 3 times now and the funny parts just keep getting funnier, but to someone who hasn’t seen it, the movie in no way could be called a comedy the way most people understand a comedy.
Yes! I’ve described him as a hard worker, single-minded, tough, and in other ways too, but you nailed it. “He is slowly revealed to be mad.” That is so frickin’ perfect I just might have to steal it (I won’t claim it as my own though). Those first scenes where he’s down in the mine by himself…first, you realize that he DUG THAT HOLE by himself, and then he’s getting out silver bit by bit, then when he breaks his leg, his first thought after the initial shock and pain is if he hit a vein, which he did. So he hauls himself back up, makes himself a splint (not shown) then gets himself into town. That’s more than being a hard-working, single-minded tough guy. That takes a streak of madness.
I’m glad you liked Paul Dano too. I’ve been hearing complaints about him elsewhere and I can’t figure out why. He was the perfect foil for Daniel Day-Lewis. Eli too had a streak of madness in him, shown especially when he blows up at his father. To go OVER the table instead of AROUND it? Yeah.
I still haven’t gotten the soundtrack yet, but I’ve been watching the trailers and listening to selections on the TWWB web site, and on Jonny Greenwood’s MySpace page (I even set one of the songs, “Proven Lands,” to play on my personal page).
That’s a great observation too. Plainview didn’t want to be an “oil baron” so much as he just wanted money so he’d never have to worry about money again. I’m not discounting his competitiveness, but yeah, he wasn’t what somone might think of as a classic capitalist.
And those two scenes are the most powerful in the movie. Btw, as far as I know, it hasn’t been revealed what “Plainview” said to “Eli” after the Baptism scene. You can see Plainview walking over to Eli and Eli steps back a bit with a wary look on his face, not sure if Plainview is going to slug him or what. Plainview speaks something we can’t hear, and Eli relaxes. I’d love to know what that bit of dialogue was.
Yes. Mary is in a few of my favorite scenes. First when Eli uses her to thumb his nose at Eli (“proud daughter of these hills”), then when Eli catches her when she’s running and asks her if her father still beats her and then says “No more hitting” and Mary’s father is sitting right there. Plainview didn’t have to tell him directly. He knew he overheard what was said to Mary. I also loved the scene of Mary learning sign language, then a grown-up Mary translating for HW at their wedding.
I did notice that. It was clear, just as in that campfire scene linked in my earlier post, that HW was learning well. He never went too far though. “I thank god I’m not like you”
That kid, Dillon Freasier, had never acted before, which amazed me. In the Newsweek Oscar Roundtable, DDL says this:
I hate to be a contrarian, but this is not an Oscar-worthy movie. Great cinematography, great costume and set work, and a great performance by Daniel Day Lewis, but everything else about the movie is mediocre at best. It’s billed as an epic, but it’s really more of an overblown character study. And the character at the center of it just isn’t very convincing. There’s no way to explain his bizarre behavior with any logical consistency.
The church scenes were surreal, and not in a good way. It was obvious that the writer/director has never set foot in a church, and has no real idea what goes on inside such a place.
I suspect this film may have been intended as some sort of allegorical tale about US pursuit of oil in the Middle East – but if that’s how it was intended, it fails miserably.
Maybe it’s not intended as an allegory, in which case the characters are just poorly-developed.
It’s a perfect example of the genre, but a different kind of example. I know that charges of “you don’t get it” will be met with snorts and eye-rolling, but you really don’t, and that’s ok. But all this critical acclaim it’s getting? It’s deserved, and it’s getting it because the people giving it the acclaim, get it. Your claims of it not being Oscar-worthy are obviously wrong, because it IS Oscar-worthy. 8 nominations say it’s Oscar-worthy.
Look, I’m sorry Into The Wild was practically shut out. I expected it to do much better too, but you’re taking it out on the wrong movie. Go bash Juno or Atonement.
You’ve never been in a Pentecostal church, have you?
That’s not how it’s intended. This movie is in no way intended as an allegory about the Middle East or any current events.
It’s an allegory alright, just not about anything current or political, and the characters are anything but poorly developed. I think you might just have to see it again.
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(I agree)