Wednesday 29 September 2010

A Belated Apology to the P.T. Anderson Blog-a-thon


If you aren't already following the terrific blog Moon In The Gutter (written by Jeremy Richey), well, I just don't know who you are anymore...He not only has great and insightful writing on the site, but a very keen eye for how the visual aspects of film contribute to the whole (e.g. framing, colour composition, etc.). Spend a minute there and you'll spend an hour - I have many times.

Anyway, Jeremy ran a blog-a-thon on one of my favourite directors - P.T. Anderson - a few weeks ago and invited me to contribute. I thought about numerous possibilities, was very keen to do it and was also completely wrapped up in the Toronto International Film Festival at the time. So, in short, I submitted nothing...Take a look at the above link, though, for some great writing on the films of Anderson - only 5 full length features under his belt, but widely considered one of the best American filmmakers around. Jeremy has news that his latest, entitled "The Master", is delayed in production due to funding. A damn shame.

So by way of contrition:


Opening of Magnolia



Even better than this incredible, Ricky Jay narrated opening is the following 4-5 minutes that introduce, in almost breathless fashion, the raft of characters. Backed by Aimee Mann's cover of "One", the sequence perfectly sets up the backgrounds, personalities and faults of each one of them. It's deliriously giddy filmmaking.


Deleted scene



My initial thought while watching this was, "Hey, he's a Rush fan! Excellent!". Then I paused and thought, "Wait, P.T. Anderson made Frank T.J. Mackey a Rush fan? That may not be a good sign..."

3 comments:

Nostalgia Kinky said...

Wow Bob,
Thanks so much for those very nice words. They really mean a lot.
No big deal on the PTA submission. I actually fell apart a bit myself at the end as I had some more posts I wanted to do, but the upcoming wedding has kind of shut me down creatively a bit.
Anyway, thanks again for the support, link and post!

Bob Turnbull said...

Wedding planning will certainly use up your free time...B-) Best of luck with that - I'm sure it'll be completely awesome even if little details don't completely fall into place.

I'm still reading through some of the posts you received for the blog-a-thon. Wow, talk about people bringing their A-game - there is some high quality writing in there.

Unknown said...

One of the more interesting and more memorable opening scene of any movie i've seen so far.
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