The numbers are persuasive.

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The LA Weekly has a little interview with Paul Thomas Anderson as he ruminates on the Valley, baseball and There Will Be Blood, arguably his best film to date. The most important bit though, is the secret origin of Daniel Plainview’s “I Drink Your Milkshake” monologue:

“I must admit to you where that came from,” Anderson says giddily, noting that the eccentric metaphor comes straight from the congressional transcripts of the 1920s “Teapot Dome” scandal, in which New Mexico Republican Senator Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes for the oil-drilling rights to public lands in California and Wyoming from several oil-industry fat cats (including Edward Doheny).

“I think it was Albert Fall, who was asked to describe drainage before Congress,” Anderson continues. “And his way of describing it was, ‘If you have a milk shake and I have a milk shake, and my straw reaches across the room…’ I’m sure I embellished it and changed it around and made it more Plainview. But Fall used the word ‘milk shake,’ and I thought it was so great. It was mad to see that word among all this official testimony and terminology — a fucking milk shake. I get so happy every time I hear that word.”

If he gets happy at just a mention of the word, he should hear my impersonation of Daniel Plainview singing Kelis’s “Milkshake.”

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I was gonna write something, but instead I will post my late night IM conversation regarding HOT FUZZ. Spoilers included. Playing the role of my laugh track, Mr. Dan Evans.

Han: did you do anything or did you just drive and sleep
Dan: oh me and Corndog went to eat and saw Hot Fuzz
Han: i liked the fuzz, yo
Han: we also had the bombass Q+A to finish
Dan: oh cool
Han: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
Han: Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino did PA work and passed out BadBoys2 DVDs to anyone that asked a question
Han: but Quentin wouldn’t give his up unless it was a good question
Han: so we ended up sitting there forever
Han: so Nick Frost started screaming about how he needed to pee
Han: and Simon Pegg said “This is the nerdiest seige ever staged. It’ll be the only Q+A ever to end in a riot”
Han: they ran out of Bad Boys DVDs and passed out LEthal Weapon instead
Han: also, Jack Black was there but for no real reason, other than he was at the 5:00pm show and thought it was awesome
Han: so he stuck around
Dan: hahahahahah
Han: you like the movie?
Han: btw, they’re really good at running a Q+A. They just cut people off at the knees. “I’m an aspiring actor…” “Oh I’m sorry, I meant that guy next to you. I want his question instead”
Dan: yeah it was the visual equal of eating all the candy you got for halloween
Han: that’s a good description
Han: I started getting sick of candy by the time they ran the carts into the butchers
Han: but then when Tim Dalton got impaled I was like “man, snickers are good”
Han: FACTOID: when he got impaled, Tim Dalton said “wow, I’m *LITERALLY* chewing all the scenery”
Dan: hahahahah
Han: FACTOID: Santa Claus was played by Peter Jackson
Han: FACTOID: His girlfriend in the mask was Cate Blanchett
Dan: I knew that was Blanchett
Han: I was talking about the Peter Jackson thing in the hallway next to the bathroom
Han: and this usher was like “Wait, did you say Peter Jackson? Is he here?” “No he’s in Hot Fuzz” “LIKE SCREENING RIGHT NOW?!?!” “No, he’s in the movie, like a cameo.” “DAMNIIIIIIITTTT! I thought he was here”

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Jim Emerson’s 102 Movies You Have to Watch To Be Considered Movie-Literate

I put a star next to anything I’ve seen. I mean really watched too, not the kind of fake “Yeah I’ve seen that” and look at the wallpaper maneuver you give when some jackass asks “you’ve never seen ‘FILL IN THE BLANK?” like he was challenging you to a duel. I did OK, but clearly I have an aversion to the French. “It’s a Gift” by Norman Z. McLeod shocked me by being the one movie I haven’t even heard of. Oh hey, it’s a WC Fields movie. Ryan, almost certainly sitting underneath a framed poster of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” right now, must be laughing at this list, since he saw all of them before he learned to pee standing up.

* “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
* “The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
* “8 1/2″ (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
* “Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
* “All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
* “Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
* “Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
* “Bambi” (1942) Disney
* “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
* “The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
* “The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
* “The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
* “Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
* “Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
* “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
* “Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
* “Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
* “Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
* “Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
* “Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
* “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
* “The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
* “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
* “Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
* “Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
* “Do the Right Thing” (1989) Spike Lee
* “La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
* “Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
* “Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
* “Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
* “E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
* “Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
* “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
* “The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
* “Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
* “Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
* “Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
* “The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
* “The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
* “Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
* “GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
* “The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
* “Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
* “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
* “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
* “Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
* “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
* “M” (1931) Fritz Lang
* “Mad Max 2″ / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
* “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
* “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
* “Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
* “Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
* “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
* “Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
* “The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
* “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
* “North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
* “Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
* “On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
* “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
* “Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
* “Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
* “Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
* “Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
* “Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
* “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
* “Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
* “Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
* “Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
* “The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
* “The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
* “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
* “Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
* “A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
* “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
* “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
* “Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
* “The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
* “Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
* “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
* “Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
* “West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
* “The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
* “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

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Has anybody else watched their Criterion Mr. Arkadin DVD yet? I was told that the titular character, played by Orson Welles, is basically Harry Lime by another name. And yet, the moment he comes on screen, all I can think is how much I want a croissanwich.

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Walk the Line

Biopics tend to be pretty hit or miss for me, because great lives tend to lack the strong narrative structure required to make a great film. Films that focus around historical events tend to be tighter, while bios tend to sprawl all over and bore me. James Mangold, harhar, walks that line with Walk the Line, pulling the big story of Johnny Cash and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in around the personal story of Johnny Cash and June Carter, a fabled love that could be denied… or so the story goes.

I haven’t liked Reese Witherspoon since Election, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really liked Joaquin Phoenix in anything, but they both do the heavy lifting here, including the singing(!). The performances, both acting and musical carry the film, as the actual story tends to get a little repetitive. The story of sex, drugs and rock’n'roll gets a chaste twist here, as Cash pursues Carter for FUCKING FOREVER. They never do quite explain why Carter likes Johnny Cash at all, as he’s a bit of a druggie stalker jackass most of the time.

I forgave most of this because of the musical storytelling, which works wonders. Pretty much every stage performance tells a specific story, most of the time better than the previous 10 minutes of exposition. When Carter and Cash perform Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” while Cash’s wife and children look on? Love, God and Murder, right there.

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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter 4)

OK, I haven’t read one single Harry Potter book. When I walk into a theater full of people with the colored scarves and the lightning bolts carved in their foreheads, I feel like I may be the only one. The general concensus for those crazy reader people is that this is a downgrade from Potter 3, but better than Potters 1+2. Since I haven’t read the source material, maybe I’m less sensitive to the changes, but Goblet of Fire worked a lot more than Azkaban.

There are clearly things getting dropped, the kids relationships being the most apparent, but for the most part it’s an intelligible straight-line plot that’s easy enough to follow. The cuts that feel the worst are the events that get built up and then get shuffled offscreen. I’m thinking mostly of the Quidditch World Cup and the first three champion’s dragon trials, which I doubt were even filmed due to cost and time issues. Still, the set pieces work, the cute character stuff is there and the adults are fine all around, from Brendan Gleeson and his wacky eye to Ralph Fiennes’ scene stealing reprise of Ultimate Evil. So hammy and awesome and he doesn’t even have a nose.

One thing that I am sort of tired of, which admittedly is the whole point of Harry Potter, are the moments where he stumbles across something, scoffs, and then shown that it is magic. "What’s with this boot?" "It’s a MAGIC BOOT." "This tent sucks." "It’s a MAGIC TENT." I don’t have a problem with people finding awe in magic, but mix up the beats a little bit.

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Look for my favorite movie of 2005 on the shelves of your local dvd retailer …

*actual cover may look slightly different.

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As explained in the trailer, History of Violence has Viggo Mortenson as Tom Stall, a small town diner owner who becomes a small town celebrity when he kills a pair of stickup artists when they attempt to rob his business. The publicity brings in east coast bad guys though, who swear that Tom Stall is not a normal guy, but a man with a shady, violent past.

I’m a little surprised by the raves that History of Violence is getting. It is certainly a good movie, well shot and well acted and so methodically paced that when it explodes in fits it has a genuinely visceral effect. After leaving the theater and letting it sit in my head a little bit, you sort of realize how thin it is, in terms of plot and character development. Once its concepts are laid out, it really is a matter of getting through the checkpoints. It is agonizingly slow at times, but this is mitigated by a 90 minute running time. It was better than Road to Perdition, at any rate. Warning: there is some unintentional comedy involved with the wide range of “Philadelphia” accents used in this movie. William Hurt, in particular, seems like he’s from a whole ‘nother planet.

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The long awaited (by nerds) big screen version of “Firefly” is pretty much that. They do make the western allegory a little less literal, but for the most part there isn’t much different from the show, and I don’t see it converting a lot of fans.

All that aside, it is witty and smart and touching and all the things that big screen versions of anything aren’t anymore. That was a poorly constructed sentence, but who cares. When the middle section sags there’s still lots of funny to go around, and the characters’ extreme likability is what really kept the series going as long as it did. For those completely unfamiliar, imagine Star Wars if it was about Han Solo’s smuggling days instead of boring-ass Luke Skywalker. Also imagine if it was well written. Hah, sorry. Poking at George Lucas never gets old, really.

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