The bloody beginings of the oil industry…
June 27th, 2007 by FrankThanks to someone called Graham Linehan, whose name sounds somewhat familiar but I don’t know why, for bringing this to my attention: PT Anderson’s new film ‘There Will Be Blood‘ about the early days of Oil prospecting. A story about ‘family, greed, religion, and oil’, it seems.
Paul Thomas Anderson is also responsible for Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, as well as a few others I never heard of before.
Moriarty on Aint It Cool News says it’s one of the best scripts he’s read recently, and the teaser trailer above certainly peaks my interest as it looks like a real old style western. And hey, who doesn’t like watching Daniel Day Lewis acting? Looks like he’s doing his De Niro impression too, which he perfected in Gangs of new York:
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June 27th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Graham wrote Father Ted, and writes The IT Crowd.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Ah! Yes, I knew his name was familiar! Nice one!
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 am
what nonsense. Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t need to imitate anyone. He’s a long admirer of DeNiro, but his style is very much his own.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Sorry Kathy but Gangs of New York was VERY much Day-Lewis doing an impression of De Niro playing that part. We’ll see about There Will Be Blood.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Sorry Eoin, but I still disagree. Yes, I’m a DDL fan, but also an admirer of DeNiro as well. These actors are very different from each other, although they are both well respected by their peers. To me, DeNiro is pretty much DeNiro in most movies he has ever made, and that is not neccessarily a complaint. He’s not the chameleon that Day-Lewis is, but he plays “New York types” very well. I just can’t imagine DeNiro doing the job that Day-Lewis did in “My Left Foot”. Heck, I thought his performance was severely flawed, just trying to play a stroke victim in his rather bad film “Flawless.” True, Day-Lewis made a few stinkers early in his career, but he doesn’ work often, and isn’t a major star like DeNiro, nor does he strive to be one.
Also, the majority of critics still believe to this day that Day-Lewis was robbed of an Oscar for his portrayal of Bill The Butcher, and have never likened his performance as a DeNiro imitation. So, guess I’ll go with the majority. His performance as Daniel Plainview is already being lauded by the majority of critics, and yes, I’ve heard about the supposed resemblence to John Huston, and I can see where that comes from of what I’ve seen from the trailers. But so what………if it’s a great performance, it still belongs to him.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hey Kathy, my original post was somewhat tongue in cheek – obviously, I don’t know if Daniel Day Lewis chose to imitate DeNiro or not, however the character that emerged, whether consciously or not, was incredibly like a, somewhat caricatured, DeNiro performance.
Not surprisingly necessarily – it is widely documented that DeNiro is a hero of Day-Lewis’s, so when he was called upon to play a character like this, it’s understandable that he would draw from his hero who is a perfect reference as you say yourself he does the New York type very well.
If you Google around you will find there are lots of references from people to the Bill The Butcher performance being a pastiche of DeNiro and Pacino.
This doesn’t change the fact that I think Day Lewis is one of the finest actors around, and even if he had chosen to simply imitate DeNiro for the film would that in itself take from the integrity of the performance? Not at all, Johnny Depp’s performance in Pirates of the Caribbean was widely hailed as brilliant despite being thought of as imitations of various celebrities.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I understand what you are saying about Dan’s admiration of DeNiro. I probably understand more than anyone here, as I have for the first time left the url to my website. I’ve been following Day-Lewis’ career for a long, long time. Having the site to keep up, I saw most of the reviews of Dan’s performance in GONY, and can’t remember ever seeing a comparison to DeNiro, until I saw it here. Not that doing a DeNiro imitation with such success would have been a terrible thing, I simply don’t believe it exists. I do, however, see Huston similarities in this upcoming movie that I have yet had the pleasure to see.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Daniel Day Lewis is a transformational actor that can get within the skin of the character. Robert De Niro is the greatest scam perpetrated on the film going public. He has limited talent but has made his reputation off of the idiots that are obsessed with his ‘dark’ characters. Never in quadrillion years, could De Niro pull off exceptional performances playing the roles of Christy Brown, Hawkeye, and Bill the Butcher. It takes a very special actor to do that and De Niro is certainly not that.
Robert De Niro has perfected playing himself and he has become a caricature of himself as a result of this. Each time out he brings the same smile, the same angry wrinkles, the same gazing eyes, the same everything. He does not even have a shred of versatility. I’m sure if I gave the same performance over and over again for each role over four or five decades, I too would have that performance down pat. And yes, I do realise that he is a murmur actor but a ‘rubber face’ he does not have. It is the same guy doing the same performance over and over. I’ve seen them all – from ‘Raging Bull’ to ‘New York, New York’ – in the hope that I can convince myself that this man is indeed an acting guru, but it never comes. I know I am watching De Niro in the act and not the character. Daniel Day Lewis has but one notable flaw, and that is his admiration for ‘movie star’ hacks like Robert De Niro who don’t even have one tenth of his talent.
May 26th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
You know Robert De Niro is Pronounced the best Actor in the world in history of cinema.I don’t tell this only…Roger Ebert,Amazon website even Day-Lewis tell this all over.