WAXIN' AND MILKIN'

skeetonmischa:

A few weeks back, it was announced that Paul Thomas Anderson was hard at work on his next project, The Master, a film about an intellectual (potentially Philip Seymour Hoffman) who creates his own faith based organization in the 1950s. Obviously, great news for us, those who love and appreciate great movies, but then I start to think about one specific aspect. I started to run Anderson’s filmography through my head and I started to notice some interesting things.

Nearly all of Anderson depicts Southern California during a specific decade/era. Go with me for a minute:

1997’s Boogie Nights showcases the Valley from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s.

1999’s Magnolia and 2002’s Punch Drunk Love is about present day/late 90s life in Southern California

2007’s There Will Be Blood broadly covers Southern California from 1902 to 1927

Let’s roughly estimate The Master will come out in late 2010 or winter 2011 and that will take place potentially in the 50s.

Which leaves out the 30s, 40s, 60s and well, anything beyond 2010. Now, the question I’m asking or at least wondering out loudly, will PT Anderson do a film set in Southern California covering every decade since the 1900s? I’m sure this issue has been wondered about before and most likely the subject of some graduate papers in film school (haha!) with much greater depth and insight (Comparing PT Anderson’s depiction of Long Beach V.S. William Friedkin’s in To Live And Die In L.A.). Yet it seems that Anderson hopefully is on his way to becoming the definitive Los Angeles filmmaker. A filmmaker that will make Thom Andersen proud with his devotion to one particular stretch of land.

I think P.T. Anderson has it in him to be the next Kubrick, or at least, the Kubrick of our generation. That said, I would love for him to tackle a sci-fi epic (post-apocalyptic Los Angeles in the year 3000 maybe? DROOL) or just a genre film (war, horror, black/white arthouse) and have it set in LA during any time period and it’ll probably be great.

I think another important question would be, who repped L.A. better, Altman’s Short Cuts or P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia?

Sidenote: I meant American directors. There are probably some other visionary foreign filmmakers who are up on Kubrick’s level at the moment.

skeetonmischa:

A few weeks back, it was announced that Paul Thomas Anderson was hard at work on his next project, The Master, a film about an intellectual (potentially Philip Seymour Hoffman) who creates his own faith based organization in the 1950s. Obviously, great news for us, those who love and appreciate great movies, but then I start to think about one specific aspect. I started to run Anderson’s filmography through my head and I started to notice some interesting things.
Nearly all of Anderson depicts Southern California during a specific decade/era. Go with me for a minute:

1997’s Boogie Nights showcases the Valley from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s.
1999’s Magnolia and 2002’s Punch Drunk Love is about present day/late 90s life in Southern California
2007’s There Will Be Blood broadly covers Southern California from 1902 to 1927
Let’s roughly estimate The Master will come out in late 2010 or winter 2011 and that will take place potentially in the 50s.

Which leaves out the 30s, 40s, 60s and well, anything beyond 2010. Now, the question I’m asking or at least wondering out loudly, will PT Anderson do a film set in Southern California covering every decade since the 1900s? I’m sure this issue has been wondered about before and most likely the subject of some graduate papers in film school (haha!) with much greater depth and insight (Comparing PT Anderson’s depiction of Long Beach V.S. William Friedkin’s in To Live And Die In L.A.). Yet it seems that Anderson hopefully is on his way to becoming the definitive Los Angeles filmmaker. A filmmaker that will make Thom Andersen proud with his devotion to one particular stretch of land.

I think P.T. Anderson has it in him to be the next Kubrick, or at least, the Kubrick of our generation. That said, I would love for him to tackle a sci-fi epic (post-apocalyptic Los Angeles in the year 3000 maybe? DROOL) or just a genre film (war, horror, black/white arthouse) and have it set in LA during any time period and it’ll probably be great.
I think another important question would be, who repped L.A. better, Altman’s Short Cuts or P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia?
Sidenote: I meant American directors. There are probably some other visionary foreign filmmakers who are up on Kubrick’s level at the moment.

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