Re: [Marxism] Rave review in the New Yorker about "There Will be Blood"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ruthless Critic of All that Exists wrote:
> ""There Will Be Blood" is about the driving force of capitalism as it
> both creates and destroys the future, and the film's tone is at once
> elated and sickened."
> 
> "Bears comparison to the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford. "
> 
> Full: 
> <http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/12/17/071217crci_cinema_denby>

Just a reminder of what I had to say about this idiotic movie on my 
blog. And, yes, I did suffer through until the ending:

This is based on an Upton Sinclair novel about evil oilmen in California 
at the turn of the century. It opens in theaters during Christmas week. 
The director is a 37 year old named Paul Thomas Anderson whose best 
known credits are “Magnolia” and “Boogie Nights,” a movie based on a 
porn star. He seems totally uninterested in politics and based his 
screenplay on the first 150 pages of Sinclair’s novel. In the novel, the 
father is estranged from his son who has become a radical and sides with 
striking oilworkers. In the movie, the son hates his father because an 
accident at an oil rig has left him deaf. Well, that’s what we are led 
to believe in the absence of any other plot elements. The movie is 
mostly about the oilman Daniel Plainview, who is played by Daniel 
Day-Lewis. He has captured Anderson’s attention in the way that William 
Randolph Hearst captured Orson Welles’s attention in “Citizen Kane”. 
However, Anderson is no Welles, to put it mildly. Daniel Day-Lewis looks 
like and sounds like the evil water works magnate that John Huston 
played in “Chinatown”, another movie about rotten millionaires in 
California. If Anderson is no Orson Welles, neither is he a Roman 
Polanski. He should stick to subjects that he is more familiar with, 
like the comedy “Punch Drunk Love” that he did with Adam Sandler. 
Apparently, Anderson is a huge fan of Adam Sandler. Poor Upton Sinclair. 
He deserved better.

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