poll thomas anderson 2

i could really go either way myself

Sorry, I meant the one about Phantom Thread vs. The Master and DDL vs. PSH was the one I couldn't disagree with more.

There Will Be Blood and The Master both suffer for striving to be the Great American Novel of modern movies.

The best thing about DDL in phantom thread is how funny he is. I had no idea! And in hindsight it’s what makes TWBB enjoyable.

Will admit that my favorite scene in TWBB is the close up of him getting slapped around by Paul Dano.

the blub blub blub sound he makes when he gets baptized is A+

IV > 8 > Phantom > The Master of Teras Kasi

I can't stand Joaquin Phoenix, which makes viewing Inherent Vice and The Master impossible, but even the movies around them misfire for me: I find both of them bludgeoningly antic and boring. Loved Phantom Thread.

I violently disagree with many of them, but man there are some insightful and penetrating takes in this thread. Maybe the best thing about PTA is that he is worth discussing at that level.

Christ what a gauche comment, I’ll get me coat

he should stop playing people with intellectual disabilities. he's bad at it.

i think he's goddamn amazing in the master

A pity he won the Oscar for Joker; he's one of the three or best working mainstream American actors.

Hoffman singing “Slow Boat to China” to Phoenix is one of my favorite film scenes ever.

watching those two performances bounce off of and complement each other is the best romantic comedy of the last decade

Someone explain Phoenix’s appeal

You just stare at his face

It’s a nice thing to take a picture of

Dont rly understand the question

Hes really great in some of his roles, im unconvinced of the framing that says "you must be fans of the individual so"

i would say he embodies freddie quell so completely that it makes me believe i've met the character irl

Joaquin's best performance = a porn-addicted teen in Parenthood

PTA really did a fantastic job of establishing the characters of Plainview and Quell in their respective opening scenes with little to no dialogue. Love the scenes of Quell fucking up over and over again at the start of the film.

https://data.whicdn.com/images/50529197/original.jpg

btw, anderson was apparently able to finish filming the next one, so it might be viewable in a theater someday.

I've never done much of a deep dive into Anderson the person or filmmaker, but I just learned today that he used the same DP for his first five movies, plus Vice, before they apparently stopped getting along. And I guess the relationship between PTA and the DP on "The Master" was pretty fraught, too, which may be why he shot Phantom Thread himself. Who shot the upcoming one, was it another PTA DIY special?

iirc this was discussed on the phantom thread uh thread

One of the more intriguing aspects of Phantom Thread was the revelation that Anderson wasn’t working with his longtime cinematographers. In fact, no cinematographer was ever announced, so everyone assumed Anderson was working as his own director of photography. But the filmmaker tells EW that’s not the case—the film has no single director of photography:

“I should really clarify that. That would be disingenuous and just plain wrong to say that I was the director of photography on the film. The situation was that I work with a group of guys on the last few films and smaller side projects. Basically, in England, we were able to sort of work without an official director of photography. The people I would normally work with were unavailable, and it just became a situation where we collaborated — really in the best sense of the word — as a team. I know how to point the camera in a good direction, and I know a few things. But I’m not a director of photography.”

Robert Elswit, who shot most of Anderson’s films including There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice, was busy shooting Roman J. Israel Esq. at the time, and Mihai Malaimare Jr., who shot The Master, appears to have been otherwise engaged as well. Indeed, Anderson says there’s no director of photography credit at all, but he does single out a few members on the crew who helped handle those duties in a collaborative fashion:

“If you can give credit, Michael Bauman is the gaffer that I’ve worked with for many, many years on a lot of projects. I could veto Mike, I guess, but he held a lot of the keys. There was a camera operator, Colin Anderson, I’ve worked with, and Erik Brown, who was the first assistant cameraman and Jeff Kunkel, who was a grip. It was a real package like that. It was a really easy way of working. You have to be very, very careful because there are way too many good cinematographers that I would not put myself in that class for a second.”

https://collider.com/phantom-thread-cinematographer-paul-thomas-anderson/

Huh. Well, as I understand it those other DPs were not simply unavailable, they had a real falling out, especially Elswit. Unclear why, other than they just stopped getting along.

where'd you hear that?

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/02/robert-elswit-paul-thomas-anderson-cinematographer-1202044674/

Robert Elswit has shot six films for Paul Thomas Anderson and won an Academy Award for his work on “There Will Be Blood,” but the cinematographer doesn’t expect to work with Anderson again. During an appearance on the Light the Fuse podcast, Elswit didn’t have great things to say about their working relationship: “God, I don’t know what it is anymore,” he said. “It’s like a bad married couple. Unpleasant.”

Asked whether he could see them collaborating again, Elswit didn’t sound optimistic. “I don’t know. Probably not. You know, it depends on how he feels. I would do it again…I didn’t enjoy myself on ‘Inherent Vice’…It was a combination of me and Paul just not getting along, and I can be as immature as him.”

Part 1: https://soundcloud.com/user-552949050/ep-34-robert-elswit-interview
Part 2 (this is where he talks about PTA): https://soundcloud.com/user-552949050/ep-35-robert-elswit-interview