Last night, I did nothing. Nada. Which makes for some tough blogging.

I have, though, been thinking about making a CD of 80’s pop songs entirely from movie soundtracks. So far, I have:

01.  Back In Time – Huey Lewis and The News (Back To The Future)

02.  The Touch - Stan Bush (Transformers: The Movie) – this was an animated movie in 1986, and was comically covered by a greatly drugged up Mark Whalberg and John C. Reilly in ‘Boogie Nights’.

03.  You’re The Best – Joe Esposito (Karate Kid)

And I’m thinking of doing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ from ‘Rocky’ as well – though I’m fairly certain that was from the late 70’s. If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

My brother turns 18 today. That’s not as scary as some make out, but still rather strange. In the eyes of the world, certainly in the UK, he is a man – he can basically do anything legal. What can also happen is he can be tried as an adult.

Of course, I would never suggest that my brother is a criminal-in-waiting, but I do worry about some of the things he does seem to do, for which he is now fully accountable. I’m probably being overprotective. But still, it’s a worry.

In other news, and I would suggest this is probably only of interest to the people reading this who know what the Hoffman Process is, and what it entails, I am finally making public that I am attending ‘Closure’ as a returning graduate at Florence House on September 18^th.

I have been keeping this secret for a reason, and it is thus: to be honest, I felt bad.

You see, on the whole, I feel bloody fantastic. My life is incomparable to what it once was, as is my mood, my outlook and my general demeanour. In addition, in my opinion, I am doing great post-process work; really keeping in touch with the practices and tools we were armed with, and going to ‘Closure’ was just another step in that direction to keep things ‘topped up’.

I felt bad because, as is apparent from emails, etc, and tied into my desire to keep a bit of a healthy distance, (see yesterday’s entry) I didn’t want to be seen to be rubbing it people’s face – saying ‘I’m doing fucking great, and look how much I am keeping in touch with the things and you losers aren't!’ That’s in no way how I feel at all, but I can understand in the monotone and expressionless world of emails, it could easily be interpreted that way.

So, if you are reading this, and you feel in any way ‘put upon’ or similar, my apologies to you. My favourite saying post-process is ‘it’s not about me’ – this one is.

Until tomorrow, when I will have plenty to write about for sure.

Love and light to you all

Closed Box

Sick trip, sick weather, sick surf, sick dudes, sick time, sick eta, sick cheap alc ....

awesome lameness back home.

Magnolia is incredibly dense, incredibly deep and on an incredibly wide scale.  Clocking in at just over 3 hours long, this movie screams epic.  It interweaves nine separate storylines, all taking place in the San Fernando Valley.  PTA said he wanted to make "the epic, the all-time great San Fernando Valley movie", and I can't help but think that he succeeded.  In fact, there's so much to this movie that I'm going to have to resort to bullet points, and I don't know how far that will take us:

• I just read the Wikipedia article for this, and it really gives you a sense of the depth of this movie, what with all the storylines and the thematic elements and such.
• John C. Reilly is a chameleon.  He can be as silly or as serious as he wants, he can be in fucking Step Brothers or he can be in an incredible string of Oscar bait movies like Boogie Nights (also PTA), Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, and The Aviator.  I just want him to come back to serious roles again, so he can be remembered for not just being Will Ferrell's sidekick.  Then again, an Oscar nominee who makes viral comedy videos is amazing.  Oh, well.  By the way, he's incredible here as police officer Jim Kurring.  That was my original point.  He seems to be one of three purely good souls that are main characters here.  The other two are about to follow, but I just want to say that if you want to remake any movie that had Karl Malden in it, please please please cast John C. Reilly.  They seem like they'd be perfect for each other's roles.
• The second good guy is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Phil Parma, and word has finally gotten out that this could be the best actor in Hollywood.  He hadn't yet come into his own here, and I personally liked his work from Boogie Nights better, but he does the "I know how serious this moment is" cry very well, and a lot.
• The final good guy is child actor Jeremy Blackman as quizboy Stanley Spector.  He's solidly in Haley Joel Osment territory here, with big eyes that are very serious and a way of carrying himself that gives away how intelligent he is, or his character at least.  His character is possibly the most interesting.
• I really wish Tom Cruise wasn't a fucking douchebag Scientologist.  The douchebag part is more important, because everyone still loved Isaac Hayes, even after he quit South Park over his beliefs.  RIP Chef.  I wish Tom Cruise wasn't a douchebag because he's a great actor, really really creepy and awesome here as Frank T.J. Mackey, a guy who teaches other guys how to, you guessed it (actually, I really hope you didn't guess it), turn women into their sexual playthings.  He gets a great reveal.
• I get to talk about Jason Robards again! He's so amazing here as "Big" Earl Partridge, probably my second favorite performance, and he gives vitality to a character on his deathbed throughout the whole movie, while adding the authenticity to that very deathbed.  He's one of those actors that's always himself as the role, like George Clooney or Cary Grant, but he makes it work better than anyone I've seen.
• My favorite performance goes to William H. Macy as former quizboy Donnie Smith, a man who was warped by the childhood that Stanley Spector is on his way to having - his dad took all his prize money, and as he says, "I really do have love to give! I just don't know where to put it."  He's so great and twitchy, I just love his character even though he has such little inherent pathos.
• 728 words and only talking about the actors so far.  Jeez.  Okay, so the writing is so good it's beyond comprehension.  The way that unrelated stories come together without you even realizing it - I mean, it's not your classic come-together story in that all the stories converge on one point, it's that every story influences another story in the movie, whether at the beginning, middle or end, and these connections are what the preamble of the movie talk about, how interlocking circumstance is really what makes the world go round, and if enough circumstances come together, real shit goes down.  And it goes down.  In addition, the dialogue has that great combination of being real and being cinematic and dramatic that now seems to be PTA's trademark.
• Let me backtrack for a second.  Paul Thomas Anderson is an incredible young filmmaker.  His three biggies have been, in succession, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood.  All of them are long, deeply interesting, engaging films that make you think, and hard.  He is on my shortlist of filmmakers to watch as I grow older.
• He was the writer-director on all three of those films, and his directing here is also incredible, if a little Kubrickian in its mercilessness.  Its long closeups on the pained expressions of Cruise, Robards, Philip Baker Hall as game show host Jimmy Gator (also great here), and others are probably the trademark of this film.
• Thematically, apart from the chance encounters thing that I talked about earlier, a lot of this is how familial relationships shape our interactions with the rest of the world, with Robards influencing Cruise, Stanley's dad fucking him up, and others.  It's a really tough theme, but PTA handles it well.
• PTA's director of photography for all of his movies, Robert Elswit, was great if not "oh my god look at that camerawork" great here.  Elswit did win the Oscar for TWBB, though I thought that Roger Deakins deserved it for the second best movie of last year, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  Still, Elswit rules - he also did work for Michael Clayton, and surprisingly, Good Night and Good Luck, and anyone who's seen that movie can tell you how much he did for that movie.

SPOILERS

• If this film is remembered for one thing, it will be the frogs.  Oh my god, the frogs.  Why they fell from the sky, no one tells you when you're watching the movie, except for Stanley when he says, "This happens" at his moment of childhood serenity that happens for most kids at the end of movies of depth (see the two good M. Night movies, Star Wars Ep. I, literally any teen movie that has a protagonist).  See the wikipedia article for its significance, I'm still not entirely sure about it, but what I do know is that it's done so artfully and epically that I don't need to know what it means.  It seems like it fit at the time when a beloved TV icon was about to kill himself after revealing that he may have molested his daughter, when the greatest misogynist the world has ever known cries at his father's deathbed for abandoning his mother, and when a quizboy-turned-thief has a change of heart for the wrong reasons.
• I didn't know that kids say remarkably profound monologues when they pee their pants.  I want to see if that happens a lot.
• The whole issue with Donnie Smith and the braces made me want to cry in the best way, because it's such pure heartache and unadulterated, adolescent love in the craziest way that I have no idea how else to react.

Okay, nearly 1400 words is enough.  Hope you got through it all and don't hate me for it.  I know you won't, Kriti, I'm talking to everyone else.

MC FROST-I CAN'T STAND YOU'RE WAYS             PRECIOUS MEMORIES- RESPECTISM

ZETA- PEN VS. SWORD                                         SKYHOOKS- HORROR MOVIE

ZETA- RUNAWAY                                                  LES YUEX NOIRS-CIOARA

THE BLACK SORROWS-COME ON COME ON          MC FROST- CONFRONT THE FACT

PRECIOUS MEMORIES- NETHERBY IN SPRINGFIELD

Show 21- Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Film News:Merc. Cinema. Don't forget to book for the new Gus Van Sant film "Paranoid Park" that screens August the 4th. The cost is only $11/$9 for a student.

Seniors on screen starts August 1st. So get anyone over 50 down to 13 Morphett street to see a great selection of films and participate in workshops Tickets only $4. Details for both can be found @ www.mercurycinema.org.au

New Releases include The Savages (NEW PSH film), How About You?, The X Files: I Want To Believe (*Possibly the Razzie of the year) and The Forbidden Kingdom

The Melbourne International Film Festival started last Thursday. It's on till the 10th of August. http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/2008/2008_festival The Brisbane Film Festival too will get underway on the 31st of July till the 10th of August. The impressive line-up will include In Bruges starring Colin Farell and Ralph Fiennes, Wong Kar-Wai's latest movie Ashes of Time: Redux, the B&W animation Persepolis and David Mamet's new Martial Arts film Redbelt. http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au/

Phillip Seymour Hoffman

In honor of his new film The Savages we wanted to explore the acting man-bear that is the other Hoff man

Hoffman is quite the versatile beast. He is well known for his range of characters. He can go from gay pornstar boom operators, timid joe schmos to aggressive mattress vendors like that.  Alas i do no justice to  him check out his impressive  CV @http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000450/

A few of our mutual favourites to check out include:

Boogie Nights (1997) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson       The Big Lebowski (1998 ) dir.The Cohens

Happiness (1998 ) dir. Todd Solondz               Punch-Drunk Love (2002) dir. PTA

Playlist: SNIFFIN THE TEARS-DRIVER'S SEAT//REM-HAPPINESS//ELO-LIVIN' THING//AIR SUPPLY-ALL OUT OF LOVE

Catch- TOM ;)

As a music enthusiast, I feel the same way about musicians. Since, I hold a particular affinity for those of the rock variety, I’ve seen the film Almost Famous so many times that I now ration its viewings. Naturally, I really wanted ... no yearned for Rock Star (2001) to be good. Maybe my expectations were set too high, because I found Rock Star to be mediocre to boring.

But why? The plot concept is great and the actors are perfectly cast. So what went wrong? The answer lies in the DVD extras, where one of its creators say that the movie is supposed to be a parody of 80s arena rock. Spinal Tap is a parody of arena rock. Rock Star is an earnest drama about the path to self-hood that tries to be a parody when it’s not too busy soul-searching. This mix doesn’t work. And the flick misses the mark on both parody and drama. (It doesn’t quite fail, it just hits the widest ring on the target.) Furthermore, the Steel Dragons are not a real band and nobody is interested in watching extended scenes of their performance. During one such sequence I minimized the screen and checked my e-mail without missing a beat (get it? A beat!).

But every thorn has its rose, and this movie has a few pretty buds. The plot revolves around the rise and fall of loser wannabe rockstar and his girlfriend. As I mentioned earlier, the lead casting is perfect. Mark Wahlberg is the quintessential everyman. If somebody were to revive Death of a Salesman, Wahlberg should be cast as Willy Loman. He’s ambitious and attractive in a way more evocative of successful car mechanic than of a leading man. Wahlberg's qualities are so striking that three years previous another director spotted his dynamic and used it in a much better film, Boogie Nights. Similarly, Jenifer Aniston is the everywoman -- beautiful in a bland way. She was a believable waitress in Office Space, a believable sales clerk in The Good Wife, and a believable maid in Friends with Money for the same reason that Bradd Pitt dumped her for another woman. (Angelina Jolie is not a believable waitress; she is a believable assassin.) And similarly, those are all better films. Who can forget Anistan's argument about flair?

And everybody's a sucker for a "true story" or a least something with a little verisimilitude. Seems that this movie is inspired by Ripper Owen's rise from fan to member of the band Judas Priest. (Check out this 1997 NYTimes article for backstory.) Oh and what about the guy (John Corabi) who temporarily replaced Vince Neil? He must have had an experience similar to this one. (Except that Corabi got fired from Motley Crue.) I wonder what these guys have to say about the film. What do you think?

All in all, Rock Star is a good flick to catch on a rainy Sunday afternoon if it happens to air on VH1's Movies That Rock ... or, if you're like me, desperate for a rock 'n' roll film fix.

But don't take my word for it; check out these cool reviews:

Steve Rhodes on CelebrityWonder.com disagrees with me and thinks casting ruined the movie.

MoviesForGuys.com calls it a "formula movie that works."

A.O. Scott of the NY Times calls Almost Famous "more complex and better written."

TheCelebrityCafe.com says "If you've ever dreamed of being a Rock Star, then don't miss this!"

*Quote to the best of my memory

When I set out to watch a movie I don't look for something to entertain me. I look for something that will make me feel like the 2-hours spent in front of a screen have improved me as a person ... or at least increased my pop culture knowledge in some vital way. I'd like to imagine that this desire is due to my superior quality as a journalist, but I really think it's a psychosis dating back to junior high when everybody else was allowed to watch Rated R movies except me.

In an effort to make up for years of lost time, I go to the movie store in search of the great, formerly forbidden pop culture classic known as Requiem for a Dream. (Disclaimer: This search may have as much to do with my junior high-era crush on Jordan Catalano of My So-Called Life as a need for good cinema.)

So I find my way to the "R" shelf of the drama section and I'm all excited cause I've waited years for this very moment and then ... the movie isn't there. I just stand there and stare at the shelf utterly disappointed until a movie clerk comes up to me. He says, "Can I help you find a movie?"

"No, the movie I'm looking for isn't there."

"Well, I can help you find it."

"No, you can't."

"Yes, I can."

"OK, fine," I give up. The path of least resistance.

Except that now I am stranded in the "R" shelf of the drama section of the movie store waiting for this dude to come back. I really want to see if they have the new season of Entourage, but if I go to the "television" section the dude--who promised to be gone only a second--won't be able to find me. And while I am waiting several strings of seconds I pick up the movie Rockstar with Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston. Now if you know me at all, you are probably aware that I have a certain penchant for musicians of the rock variety. This affinity carries over to cinema (Almost Famous is my fave movie of all time). However, my intuition warns me that this movie must be awful. There is no way that an obscure-yet-not-arthouse movie with two big stars in leading roles can be good. It defies the laws of economics. I put the movie down.

The movie dude returns and says, "You were looking in the right place, Requiem for a Dream just isn't there."

"Uhh, thanks?" What was I supposed to say: thank you very much for making me wait for a movie i knew wasn't there? I should've asked for a discount. Instead, I picked up the movie Rock Star and shuffled to the check out.

So what happened? Was the movie as bad as I expected? Was Mark Wahlberg hotter in Boogie Nights? You'll just have to wait and see.

Check out the next exciting installment for: the actual movie review!

Download Trailer

Hoje é aniversário de Paul Thomas Anderson, mas o presente quem ganha, somos nós brasileiros: 11 anos depois de sua estréia, Boogie Nights finalmente será lançado em DVD no Brasil. A data prevista é dia 16 de julho. Antes do parabéns, clique no banner do filme...

E agora, depois de comer os doces e salgados da festa, aprecie sem moderação(e sem legenda), uma das melhores cenas do filme(e da história do cinema):

Burt Reynolds' star was shining very bright in 1973. He was nominated for Academy Award for his performance in the disturbing Deliverance, and he had a couple of more movies in the can (pun intended). Like most superstars with huge egos, Reynolds probably thought he could do anything. So why not make a record? The result is the painful Ask Me What I am.

My brother actually bought this collection at a used record shop as a joke, and we spent quite a bit of time listening to the tune "There's A Slight Misunderstanding Between God and Man" and laughing our asses off. However, I don't think Reynolds intended it to be a joke.

I think he fancies himself as a storyteller. "Childhood 1949" opens the record with a tale of the good old days gone sung by a man who sounds like he's about to hang himself. Next is "Slow John Fairburn" where he tells us in a laughable Texas twang about some old douchebag in his tiny hometown. It just gets worse with "I Didn't Shake the World Today," and the Donny & Marie-infested "You Can't Always Sing A Happy Song." As Frank Barone would say "Holy Crap."

Besides Reynolds inability to sing, the 11 songs were produced by Bobby Goldsboro, who had a big hit with the God-awful "Honey." This combination is deadly and hilarious all at the same time. I have no idea how many people bought this piece of crap, but those who did also got a full length picture of Burt on the inside jacket in tight baby blue pants........fabulous.

MP3: "There's a Slight Misunderstanding Between God and Man"

MP3: "Childhood 1949"

MP3: "Slow John Fairburn"

MP3: "You Can't Always Sing a Happy Song"

Before you made Hard Eight I presume that this wasn’t the first script you wrote. How come you chose it to be your first one?

Yes I had only written maybe one or two other scripts that I didn’t really like that much and I liked this one and it seemed that I could do it. It seemed that I could make a movie which was small with only four characters in Reno, Nevada and that I could raise money for it. It was really all I had.

You had no choice!

Yeah but I really didn’t need any other choice. It was that movie that I wanted to make. I got very lucky on that movie just to start making it but I got in a lot of trouble when I made the movie. There were some producers that fired me actually after I… It was my movie. I mean I wrote it and directed it and then I found these guys to finance it and they were real criminals.

(Laughing)

I put the movie together. And they had all these ideas for cuts that I wouldn’t make. Some of them were actually good ideas but I was too arrogant to like see that they were good ideas and they were kind of dicks too. But they ended up taking the movie away from me. It was like this amazing lesson very early on where I was hit fucking repeatedly over and over again and I fought and I desperately tried to get the movie back and it was just a long, long battle. And eventually I got the movie back but there was a period where I did get beat up enough and where I was swimming in the darkest depression and I thought my career is over and I will never get another chance. But I pulled my self out of it somehow and the only way that I could get things going again is if I go to work again. So I went and got Boogie Nights made and the amazing thing in doing that was I went to get Boogie Nights made and that became kind of easy, getting money for it and at the same time I reinvestigated the fight to get my first movie back. And I got that movie back so I was in pre-production on Boogie Night while I was re-cutting and finishing off my first movie. And it was kind of a this great lesson that I learned just having gone in this really deep and dark depression where I couldn’t get out of my fucking bed and the only thing that I could do is just get up and attack, attack and attack. And I am happy that that happened. So it was kind of a great first lesson on my first movie. And I was able to learn right then and there all kinds of mistakes that I have made. All that arrogance where I wasn’t seeing anything and where they were right and I was just too blind to notice it. But I also learned that I was right on a lot of stuff and I should have fought for what I believed. So it’s just kind of a great lesson on my first movie.

This is a second great tip of the season. Beat depression by breaking it!

Yeah! Absolutely!

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch - Good Vibrations

Det här är en kille som nog är mer känd för sina filmer än sin musik. Han hade nämligen en kortare musikkarriär i början på 90-talet. Annars var det hans äldre bror Donnie Wahlberg som fick flickornas hjärtan att klappa när han var medlem i New Kids On The Block. Faktum är att Mark Wahlberg vid tretton års ålder var en av de urpsrungliga medlemmarna i NKOTB men av någon anledning hoppade han av och så bidde det en solokarriär för honom och så småningom en filmkarriär.

Jag fick upp ögonen för honom i filmen Boogie Nights, en film som jag än idag tycker är en höjdare för den har en så skön retrokänsla. Har nog aldrig varit direkt besviken när jag sett honom på filmduken vad jag kan minnas.

Fast det som fick mig att rikta strålkastarna mot Mark Wahlberg nu var en liten notis i Aftonbladet Klick som jag läste idag. Nu har han nämligen åkt på stryk av sin 4-åriga dotter. Tyckte att det var en så tramsigt underbar nyhet att jag inte kan släppa det. Såna grejer får nämligen min hjärna att snurra några extra varv. Vem har orkat lägga ner så mycket energi på att förmedla den nyheten så att den hamnar i världspressen? Jag önskar att jag kunde vara en fluga på väggen och följa hela händelsekedjan från att nån upptäcker det som hänt och fram till att jag sitter här i lilla Eksjö och slöläser Aftonbladet på nätet.

Tjillevippen

notbugs

Ou primeiro de Abril mudou de lugar ou realmente a coisa vai ficar foda: Aki Saito estava numa entrevista pra divulgar Metal Gear Solid 4 e declarou que o mais que esperado filme pode ter como diretor Paul Thomas Anderson. Em parte dá pra entender que pode ter acontecido uma confusão, talvez ele tentou dizer só Paul Anderson, que já dirigiu Mortal Kombat, o primeiro Resident Evil e tá arrumando Castlevania, mas aparentemente ele realmente mencionou Paul Thomas Anderson, que já fez Magnólia, Boogie Bights e mais recentemente Sangue Negro, que rendeu um Oscar de melhor ator e quase levou melhor filme. Uma notícia boa demais pra ser verdade, vamos começar a torcida pra que seja real e a coisa siga nesse jeito. No caso de terem escolhido o Paul Anderson errado, infelizmente já sabemos o que esperar.

It doesn’t matter that the champagne costs £100 a bottle. It doesn’t matter that the staff treat you with a contempt normally reserved for incestuous Austrian paedophiles. It doesn’t even matter that you puke up an entire steak and kidney pie in their toilet.

No, none of these things matter because you are seriously fly and the chicks are digging it.

Digging it, that is, until you have the following conversation:

CHICK: Are you the guy from Peep Show?

YOU: Er, no.

CHICK: Oh.

(Chick shuffles away, with all her friends.)

In the spirit of Director week at SILASIDL, I decided to reverse my dour dismissals of the Scott brothers in favor of the love train. I love Paul Thomas Anderson. It's actually a love that's waned a tad over the years, but no figure helped define my "I'm really interesting and deep" adolescence better than this guy.

Scorecard: 2 Divergent Masterpieces, 1 Flawed Personal Epic, 1 Strange as hell Romantic Comedy, 1 starter film that was jacked by a studio.

Sydney/Hard Eight - There's some good stuff in here (especially Phillip Baker Hall and John C. Rielly showing what they can do under PTA's direction), but I never saw the original version so I have no idea how good it can be. The most long standing aspect of the film (besides the studio butchering it) seems to be internet nerds getting into passive-aggressive arguments over which title is more appropriate. The pretentious PTA love crew likes Sydney cause it's the title PAUL wanted. The snarky PTA love crew likes Hard Eight because they think the pretentious PTA love crew is being pretentious and they're just being contrarian. I chose Hard Eight cause normal people will understand which fucking movie you're talking about.
Punch-Drunk Love - A really likable film I appreciate for a bunch of reasons. One, it really echoes the kinds of dysfunctional relationships you see in John Cassavettes films (specifically Minnie and Muskovitz). Two, the films works tremendously well as an analysis of the popular "Adam Sandler character" and what an aggressive man-boy would be like in real life. Thus, it ends up being a neat little character piece. Three, there's some genuinely funny moments. Four, in terms of form it's pretty adventurous. Five, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Six, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's mattress man commercial on the DVD.

Magnolia - This is that flawed one I was talking about. It's long winded, audacious, occasionally didactic, and in 1999 it was my favorite movie ever. This is where the whole adolescent thing comes in. The themes and ideas seemed so revolutionary to me at the time. Part of that was my inexperience, part of that was PTA being ahead of the curve in terms of "we're all interconnected" stories. Which is a good thing because the twee-ness of that genre was nowhere to be found in this sobering film. In retrospect, it's almost refreshing to see the audaciousness on display. It's kind of a punk movie in it's own weird way: the rains of frogs and whatnot. Even the "interconnected-ness" is more of a "we're in this together, don't be such a dick" kind of way and I come to appreciate the frank beauty in that. Also, some people dismissed it as a Short Cuts rip-off and that's not exactly fair.

There Will Be Blood - Now a qualified masterpiece. Better than that it's a fascinating 3 hour character examination that manages to be completely riveting. Also, it's easily his most accomplished film in terms of a more "adult" direction. I could really write and entire paper on the film but I'll just adjust one thing I found fascinating in terms of the films construction. [Spoiler] The entire film is actually building up for the ending time jump. Some people just saw it as "the ending" but in retrospect the entirety of the film is the examination and evidence of how a driven (but secretly decent man) can end up becoming a monster. It's also comes at you like a batshit insane ending, filled with nervous laughter and action bursting off the screen. The more I've watched it, the more you see what's really there... and it's fantastic.

Boogie Nights - The original masterpiece. When I first saw this, I had no idea how good it was. I think this might be the most re-watchable movie I own, as I love it everytime. It's remarkably all-encompassing: It's deep and dark, yet light and airy. It's straightforward yet nuanced. It's audacious, yet grounded. It's as close as you can get to a perfect movie and has one of the best completely cast performance I can think of. Every single person who gets a moment makes it count. Plus it's another one of those batshit insane endings that totally work (skinny Alfred Molina!)... It's also a quote machine.

In retrospect, I should have gone in hedging my bets. I've never liked any of Paul Thomas Anderson's movies; I thought Punch-Drunk Love was meandering and tried too hard, while Magnolia was meandering and just a mess. I've never seen Boogie Nights. I also should have reconsidered Daniel Day-Lewis; I think I used to like him. I remember renting The Boxer back in the day solely because he was in it, and I know I've seen My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, but for the life of me, looking back, I don't think I actually really liked any of those movies. I'm sure he gave commanding performances, but I don't really recall any of them. Well. Except for My Left Foot; I remember that chalk board thingy.

So I started watching There Will Be Blood.

Barely two minutes in, I started my personal running commentary. I wanted to Mystery Science Theater it. And then I figured, "Why not?":

2:00-- Okay, so we've got Daniel Day-Lewis in a hole.

2:30-- with dynamite. Oh, dear. This can't be good.

--I'm totally surprised he just made it out of the hole in time.

--But oh noes, he no can pull up his bukkit!!11!!

--And down the hole he falls. I knew that was going to happen.

--So what's with these rocks he's spitting on? There's no real visual cue to tell us what's going on.

--But he's broken his leg? What is this, "My Right Foot (In the Desert)?"

--What's with the swelling violins on the mountains? It sounds like the THX logo.

--Okay, cup of rocks...

--Oh! It's silver and gold! He's Yukon Cornelius!

--But I thought this movie was about oil?

--1902. Four years past. Which means that the director just telegraphed that aboslutely nothing of import to the story happened in half a decade.

--And he's crankin'. And dude falls, which sends it down.

--Ten minutes in (10:12) and oil finally makes an appearance. I knew it was about oil!

--So easy way to cut this movie down from more than two hours is to lop off the first ten minutes. Start with the thingy falling. I think the point was that it was supposed to be a silver mine but ended up being an oil well, but in which case, it's still kind of vague. Easier just to have Day-Lewis say so, later. "Oil? Wasn't that supposed to be a silver mine?" "A-yuh. Lord works mysterious."

--By the way: is this a silent movie? No dialog ten minutes in? Seriously? It's not like the visuals are rich, or anything. So far it's a couple of shots of a mountain and a dusty mine shaft. Woopdedoo.

--Oh, no, wait. Dude's wearing a slicker, and Day-Lewis is too happy about the slick for it to have been a surprise. By the way: minute 11.

--Dude! Watch gettin' oil on the expensive, high-def video camera! Seriously.

--And buckets of oil into a makeshift wading pool in the dirt. Except: there are no girls in this to go wild, yet. But seriously, whose first thought is to transfer oil from one hole in the ground to another?

--Okay, besides Daniel Day-Lewis.

--(does he hyphenate that, by the way? I'd hate to be getting his name wrong. I'll check before I post this)

--Yeah, let's baptize the kid's forehead with oil. I'd like "Heavy-handed symbolic correlations between religion and capitalism for a thousand, Alex."

--Why are they moving the oil? Can't they just mine the fucking well? They're wearing more of the stuff than is coming out of the hole.

--You know how you know your movie sucks? When a giant beam of wood falls down the oil well, but the audience doesn't worry, because you haven't set up any of the characters, yet, and even if the audience did care about any of the characters, it can't worry because it has no idea who the damned beam just hit because of your stupid awkward camera work.

--And by 'audience,' I obviously mean: me.

--And then I think it's Day-Lewis, but the next shot is of the baby, so it's baby's father who just baptized the infant with oil, anyway? And I'm thinking, well, yeah, but he's a retarded father in the first place.

--And thirteen minutes in and the first word of dialog is "eeeeaaaeeaeaae." Because the baby is the first character to make a damned sound.

--Woo! Words! "Ladies and gentleman."

--Which we all know is throat-clearing. And it's almost fifteen minutes in. And it's voiceover.

--I say this with all sincerity: w. t. f. ?

--Fifteen-thirty-two. Danny boy is delivering some speech, sounds like to a prospective customer. Sounds like he's trying to sell it. Only: he's a sucky salesman, with no pitch whatsoever.

And given that sales and oil are correlated, verbally (pitch), and given that good salesmen are said to be 'slick,' this guy is full of major FAIL.

--Fifteen-40: "We're wasting time." Unnamed, unshown prospective customer says the first intelligent thing all movie. Provided, that ain't sayin' much, considering there've been about seventy words spoken so far.

--17:50. A lease? What are they talking about? What the hell's he trying to sell? What the fuck is this movie about? Who wants what, and what are they willing to do to get it?

If you can't answer those two questions, nearly twenty minutes in: major fail.

--18:02. "I'm not going to waste your time, and I'd certainly appreciate it if you wouldn't waste time."

You know what, DDL? So would I.

--If someone says "yes," when you call "Mr. Plainview," chances are they are, indeed, Mr. Plainview. Otherwise he'd probably say, "No, I'm Daniel Day-Lewis. I'm here to cobble some shoes."

--21:41. "I'd like it better if you didn't think I was stupid." You know what? So would I.

--And a minute-long shot of an old car driving near some tracks, a building, a farm, and then stopping on some dust. Somebody explain why we couldn't have skipped 59 of those seconds to get to the car stopping? Or even skipped the whole car all together? 25:56... this movie has four more minutes to convince me to watch more than half an hour.

--Oh, good, thirty seconds of dudes walking. I was worried it might speed up for a second there. Phew.

--Quail hunter my ass. Now he's a liar?

--If you find oil, how do you buy land from a family who thought you were quail hunters?

--"Do you see that?" Well, sir, I see that you're treating H.W. as audience by proxy. Which makes sense, but even still this fucking movie is incomprehensible.

--"I believe in plain speaking," which is why I completely lied to you about being a quail hunter.

I believe in plain speaking, too; I can't think of a single reason to continue watching this movie.

If anyone knows of one, leave a comment, and maybe you can convince to me watch the rest.

Having said that i don't have any decent software and I'm using Nero to do the editing and compiling which is okay for very basic activity but I really would love to learn how to use Ableton or something a bit more simple on a nice shining new box.

Anyway, I had to remove various dialogue clips that were only 4 or 6 seconds in length because they seemed to develop a stutter or repeat once burned but not during the process.

The clip that resulted in the mix title has actually been deleted due to burning issue but Simon Pegg still deserves to be here somewhere, er, so behold...

So the final disc runs thus;

Celebration Of The Lizard (intro) - The Doors

WFL (Vince Clarke 12") - Happy Mondays

Di Gue Ding Ding - Michael LeGrande

Every Breath You Take/Peter Gunn - Henry Mancini

Rebel Without A Cause/Ghostbusters Mash Up - Public Enemy

Disco Fudge - dialogue from Spaced

Smash It Up - Fuzz Townshend

Ezekiel - dialogue from Pulp Fiction

Go It Alone - Beck

The In Crowd - Ramsey Lewis Quartet

Juice You Up - dialogue from The Cable Guy

The Devil Went Down To Silverlake - MC Honkey (Eels)

Jesus I'll Never Forget - The Soul Stirrers

Zed's Dead - dialogue from Pulp Fiction

My Doorbell - The White Stripes

Good Evening America - dialogue from Apollo 13

Genius - Kings Of Leon

Let Freedom Ring - dialogue by Martin Luther King Jr.

Intervention - The Arcade Fire

Freedom Exists - Jim Morrison poem

Sister Christian - Night Ranger

Hold On - Magnet

Beaumont's Lament - diaologue from Jackie Brown

Tennesee Stud - Johnny Cash

Bring Out The Gimp - dialogue from Pulp Fiction

Can't Stay With You Baby - Jimi Tenor

Express Yourself - Niggaz With Attitude

Your Wicked Life - dialogue from Kill Bill Vol. 1

Music For A Found Harmonium (Dirt) - Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Life Moves Pretty Fast - dialogue from Ferris Beuller's Day Off