BEFORE Very excited for There Will be Blood (35mm) and The Odyssey (70mm). Christopher Nolan is much better than Paul Thomas Anderson — excluding TWBB and The Master — even with cheesy dialogue and music. PTA’s two epics are better, but he’s very inconsistent. I will be curious to see if I prefer 35mm or 70mm. The cinematography in TWBB and TM are spectacular. Blessed with unlimited money, both directors too often and robustly cast ensembles Nolan likes making movies about white men going home to restore the nuclear family. PTA not so much. Different childhoods? Nolan is maybe more of a rule-follower. But then I think about his early movies. He’s both more creative and rule-following than PTA perhaps. PTA goes off the rails. Magnolia was cool. Right now, I can’t wait for the Hollywood screening of The Odyssey, based on my love of Inception minus Joseph Gordon Levitt. Odysseus speaks English, right? AFTER Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson, PART II They were born one month apart. Like the empty protagonist, Christopher Nolan has lost his way. Can’t even make Imax to 70mm look phenomenal. It’s an AI film, like one battle after another, even if they didn’t use AI, but did they? If one hasn’t seen the odyssey, one probably shouldn’t waste more money. They already wasted $400 million, though, economically, of course, it’s not waste One would be better served to read the original (in English, not a super recent version) and watch Lord of the Rings or Elysium. Telemachus will be king, civilization will heal, and dawn will break. The law of Zeus 🫡 Must be careful with adaptations and sever one’s love of the source material. PTA did this with There Will Be Blood, but not with the Pynchon movies. Glad I went and it didn’t drag at all in three hours, which is cool, and there were a few cool visuals that didn’t last so long, though I did leave for 15 minutes. Reminded me of the third Batman. If someone gave me $25(0) million, I would make a good movie. But I’m over white dudes with too much money. Terrible performances, casting, script top to bottom. Grossed $700 million and counting. Reminds me of One Battle After Another, a phrase that well summarizes Nolan’s flick
The Odyssey
Nolan likes making movies about white men going home to restore the nuclear family.
Which movies of his are you referring to here ? Actually, still haven't seen Magnolia. On my list. I liked One Battle After Another. Above all, was impressed with DiCaprio's performance as the dad. My reaction to the choice of Tom Petty's “American Girl" playing at the end was a bit of eye-rolling. I have a soft spot for Tom Petty's music, but I found its use at the end almost too triumphantly hopeful. His young adult daughter, she seems to be moving into a new political generation, but every generation believes it's escaping the previous cycle, only for its rebellion to eventually be absorbed. Just the same machinery of commodification, institutionalization and co-option, and then born anew to a new one. I'm not convinced if PTA's song choice was consciously chosen to operate at that level, was it as ironic as the use of the Mickey Mouse March at the end of Full Metal Jacket: "M-I-C"-KEY (see the acronym ?). Idk, but I have to say I did enjoy the film more than There Will Be Blood actually.
I missed all that in one battle. Just saw twbb on 35mm the other day. Was slightly underwhelmed but was probably just me. I was referring to interstellar, inception, the odyssey. TWBB should have ended earlier and left out the last part. The cinematography is amazing and the beginning is one of the best sequences
I think these are two filmmakers who one way or another (was it Tarantino who once called PTA an "ass kisser" ? ) were able to become the de facto hollywood auteurs of what i call the post Kubrick epoch (with the latter passing away in '99 just before release of Eyes Wide Shut). Although Kubrick IMO was only ever truly 'Hollywood' with Spartacus. I still regard The Batman with Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker as one of the most consequential of the early 2010s. But I get your point. I've always been slightly distrustful of the two, their output. I detested Inherent Vice, but then again I saw it a while ago. Maybe I'd have different opinion now. Speaking of their output where i find PTA sometimes as if too much of a weed smoker, I find Nolan too sterile or stiff. But then again he made Memento and got a performance like he did from Heath Ledger. It's just an impression I have. Reading more from Marcel Duchamp I think he was onto something when he became less interested in retinal art and more and more into the 'grey matter' as he calls it. Anyone with a 5D can make beautiful looking images just as Nolan with an obscene budget can make eye candy with AI. Neither matters if the ideas behind them are absolute shit. Still want to see The Odyssey though.