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Paul Thomas Anderson's next thing.... looks like Joaquin could be looking at a career performance.

Synopsis via IMDB: A 1950s-set drama centered on the relationship between a charismatic intellectual known as "the Master" whose faith-based organization begins to catch on in America, and a young drifter who becomes his right-hand man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oZDKFoCqAw

Oh and Philip Seymour Hoffman not as L.Ron Hubbard.  

edit: Wow Phoenix in that one trailer.

Phoenix is one HELL of an actor. 

I agree.  He set the mood amazingly well in 90s. 

A new trailer thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGyj4pbfWfo

This just looks fucking fantastic.

Looks amazing.  I'll see it the day it releases.  Getting a Sean Penn vibe off of Phoenix's performance.

I am intrigued.

Oh yeah, that's the shit right there.   This is either a movie about L. Ron Hubbard or an update of "Manos: Hands of Fate".

That soundtrack deserves an award.

Anderson got Jonny Greenwood to do the score, and he's phenomenal.  His work on There Will Be Blood was unbelievably good and really set the tone for that film.

Am I the only one who thinks Anderson is an overrated hack?

Nope.

I've still enjoyed his films, though.

Definitely not, but that's not something really shocking. There are plenty of people that don't like Kubrick for example. I happen to like Anderson quite a lot.

First trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgV16H8zl_A

Fucking hell, just give me this so I can put it in my eyeballs already.

Finally, release date news. Opens limited September 14 and then wider in the weeks after.

http://www.slashfilm.com/the-master-opens-limited-sept-16-expands-week/

This only seems to be playing at the film festival here in Toronto and I'm not a God damn hippie so when is the general release?

Can I go on record and say I'm not really sure why people are expecting this to be so good?

No, sorry, you can't.

In all seriousness.. the acting looks truly astronishing, plus PTA is a fantastic director who seems to be really hitting his stride. He also seems to be the closest we have to someone like Hitchcock or Kubrick in terms of examining psyche in film. The movie looks gorgeously shot and incredibly acted and... terribly dark. Which for me, is perfect.

I'm disagreeing with what you said as hard as I possibly can.  :oh_i_see:

In what sense? I'm all for that discussion!

No, I'm right there with you.  Not sure why I'm supposed to be so excited about this one.

Anderson is an overrated hack. He takes the tone poem soundtrack schtick from David Lynch, then hammers it into your skull for two and a half hours. There Will Be Blood was a droning, meandering, waste of fucking time that never went anywhere, and was so devoid of emotion that even its violent climax elicited no emotion from me other than "That's it? After two hours, that's it?" The climax was filmed in such a sterile, distant manner that the whole scene had not one ounce of the catharsis it should have.

His movies tend to be pretentious circle jerks that take too long to say too little about too much.

They insist upon themselves.

So that's a no on this then?  :grin:

Actually, I AM interested in it, but only because of the actors and the story. I have no doubts that I will probably hate it despite all that.

 :awesome_for_real:

Given what I was comparing it against, are your sentiments about Kubrick the same?

Because honestly, we have similar issues with TWBB. It has things to fucking love, as in shot composition and acting, but does in fact have issues with pacing and does in fact lack a certain... thing? to make it stick. I think it was Ebert who compared it against Citizen Kane and mentioned that Plainview lacked his "Rosebud".

But the positives of the score (which we differ on, obviously), shot composition and acting far outweigh the other things. TWBB is not a modern masterpiece, and I don't mean to pose PTA as the best working director (because, frankly he's not), and I mean it when I say that he's hitting his stride, not that he has it.

Looking back at the chronology of his films exposes an artist who has all the right pieces waiting for an opus. From what I've seen from the trailers, and heard from early screenings, The Master sounds like it could be quite great.

However, it could also fall into the same problems that his past films have had.... that he's... not quit there. But I still enjoy his films far greater than most films produced. But, I do think he's probably the closest we do have to someone like Kubrick. That doesn't mean he IS Kubrick... he's far from it.

I don't understand what the issue is, you roll the dice with any movie.  That it could be slow artsy Academy bait?

Wow, going to have to disagree heavily with you on this.  I only watched TWBB last year, but was really amazed by it.  I thought the entire movie was super intense and just oozed raw emotion.  The acting was amazing, and the story was vastly different from what I thought it would be (in a good way).  It instantly became one of my favorite movies ever.

Got back from it, enjoyed it immensely. Hoffman and Phoenix are mesmerizing on-screen, but Amy Adams also lurks in the background to add to the piece. Maybe not perfect, but pretty damn good. For me there were some personal takeaways.

To me the acting quality looks on par with... cherry picked moments from... Walk The Line.

Joaquin's shtick doesn't do much for me. Hoffman is much more interesting, but I'm not expecting PTA to do as much with him as he could - all his films are the same...

That depends on which Kubrick movie we are talking about. Eyes Wide Shut? Yep, had a lot of the same feel. That movie was a terrible, terrible movie, none of the actors evoked any emotion from me and you could feel the director's hand oppressing every ounce of energy on the screen. But something like A Clockwork Orange or 2001, or really any movie he did from Lolita to Full Metal Jacket? While you can feel the director intentionally muting a lot of the performances in those movies, he still manages to evoke emotion from the audience, whether it's the revulsion of the acts of ultraviolence in Orange or sympathy at the plight of the dying Vietnamese girl at the end of Jacket, fear at the two little girls in The Shining or wonderment at Bowman's entrance into the obelisk in 2001.

At least Boogie Nights made me feel something - granted that something was a greasy feeling of being unwashed at having seen that whole spectacle, but TWBB? Nada. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters, nor even a hint of understanding about why they acted as they did.

I really hope The Master is him finally putting the pieces together to make a great film, because I really dig the cast and the story.

You do have to read between the lines at some points in TWBB to find the reasons for characters' choices, except for the preacher, whose behavior is pretty well explained through his relationship with his family.  Especially in a scene where he attacks his father.

I got absolutely none of what you were saying about that character from watching it. There's a difference between subtle and inscrutable.

I have am in the "undecided" camp here. Don't really have any strong on feelings for Anderson (only seen Maginola, it was too long again to form an opinion).

The trailer didn't really give a good feel for what's coming imho; not sure what's supposed to be interesting about Joaquins character. Reason I will watch it nonetheless are my long standing crush on Philip Seymour Hoffman and that guru-charlatan characters like Hubbard are very intriguing.

You guys are nuts, TWBB was/is epic. And Daniel Day Lewis is a monster, no matter the movie. Almost the same for PSH…

I really liked "TWBB". Sociopathic capitalism trumping manipulative religion FTW!  :grin:

That tidbit makes the movie a lot more interesting and understandable for me, it's a shame that information was left out.

I'm just jumping in to say:
1. Daniel Day Lewis is an actual master. So stoked for Lincoln.
2. Philip Seymour Hoffman is more entertaining on screen his his shittiest roles than Joaquin will be any day of the week.
3. This still looks like its worth seeing. But only because pandering Oscar grabs generally are. Except Crash and Mystic River. Those can blow me.

Edit: Also, Haemish is objectively wrong about There Will be Blood. Even if I hadn't been entertained by There Will be Blood (which I was), just as a piece of cinema the thing is goddamn film perfection from beginning to end.

I... just didn't get it.

The performances are impressive, but the movie itself is extremely dull and just seems to be really in love with itself. This reeks of a 'best actor' delivery vehicle and not an actual movie.

A standard P.T. Anderson project, then. I'll wait until it's on the small screen.

Just saw this & I fully agree, the only reason I didn't switch it off was cause of the performances, some nice cinematography too. Came away thinking it was a pointless movie with a dull narrative, I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters.

So against my better judgement, I watched this movie.

Can someone please explain the fucking ending to me? I don't consider myself a stupid man, but goddamnit, what the fuck happened? I sort of nodded off when Joaquin rode the motorcycle off into the sunset but woke back up when he was walking up the steps to Doris's house. Did I actually miss anything that would explain why he and The Master would be sworn enemies if they met in the next life? Maybe it was that Joaquin's entire characterization seemed to be "talk like Mushmouth, act like retard" so I couldn't actually understand the words that were coming out of his mouth in that final scene. Other than the few times he was able to emote (because Anderson just fucking loves to have the camera focus on someone for minutes a time while they do fuckall and other people talk offscreen), he had a terrible performance. Hoffman was brilliant as usual, and I was actually interested in the middle bits with all the processing and applications and stuff. But then it just... ended. At least There Will be Blood had a resolution. This fucking thing... what happened?

I'm all for endings that leave you wondering, but the one in this film only left me wondering why I bothered to sit through it.

My feeling was that it was trying to outline the power struggle between two different breeds of human and who would turnout to be 'the master', similar to There Will Be Blood, 'the stoical religious devout' against the 'battle-hardened mogul'. I think it was a casting issue with Joaquin as the 'animalistic wanderer' pitted against a 'high brow cult leader'. Great actor but too effeminate to carry that persona off.

I'm not sure the problem was the actors so much as the message being an utter muddled mess - if that was indeed the message. The problem was that message did not come through at all. And even if that's what he was trying to say with the two factions represented by the actors, the ending didn't resolve any of that nor was it even clear what happened to the cult other than it went to England. Why? No idea.