daniel day-lewis
09/10/2007
"There Will Be Blood" Trailer #2
In June, we posted the intriguing first "trailer" for P.T. Anderson's upcoming There Will Be Blood. I use the quotation marks because that clip was more of a beguiling short tone poem than a typical teaser. Nonetheless, it got us excited.
The new clip, which began making the rounds on the Net last week, is substantially more informative. It's also amazing. There's blood, there's oil, and there's Daniel Day-Lewis, who eats up every frame of screen time as a greedy prospector in early 20th Century California. There's also Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano as a fanatical preacher who locks horns with DD-L.
The clip may only be two and a half minutes long, but this has multiple Oscar nods written all over it. Paramount Vantage releases the film Dec. 26.
06/25/2007
There Will Be Blood
I wasn't completely sold on Paul Thomas Anderson until I saw Punch-Drunk Love at the New York Film Festival in 2001. (The screening was interrupted when a woman in the audience had a seizure, which may or not have been caused by Anderson's experimental editing and jarring sound design.) But that masterful art-film take on the romantic comedy got me seriously hooked -- not just on the young director's talent (which even the most diehard PTA hater must admit he's got in spades), but on his genuine desire to challenge himself and his audience with difficult material (and not just beautifully-executed pop).
Six years later, Anderson's legion of diehard fans will finally get another fix with the release of There Will Be Blood. Adapted from a novel by Upton Sinclair and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, the film tells the story of battling oil prospectors in 1920s California. While the film won't hit screens until August, a tantalizing trailer hit the Net last week. This clip is about as oblique as it gets for a major-studio offering, but it certainly makes me want to see more. Check it out.
