Fantastic Fest Day Eight
We had an initial plan to catch the Justin Lin comedy Finishing the Game at the early screening on Thursday and then to hit the road back to Houston in lieu of watching anything else. I figured that our chances of making into the closing night film would be slim without a multi-hour wait in line and at this point, I was ready to say fuck it to waiting. Also, there had been some advance buzz that Emile Hirsch was going to be at the theater, leading people to believe that the closing night film was going to be Into the Wild. I'll admit that I bit on this enough to think that the closing night might not be worth staying, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the whole thing didn't add up. I'm sure Into the Wild is a good movie, but it's not Closing Night of Fantastic Fest good. After all, last year the closing night film was the US premiere of The Fountain!


So we got to the theater around noon and there was already a line forming for the closing night film (showtime: 6:30). This seemed crazy to me as the longest we had waited in line so far was about 3 and a half hours. After the Sunday night wait where we spent a good chunk of the evening sitting on pavement only to be told that we weren't getting in to the midnight movie, I wasn't sure that a 6 hour wait for a closing night film that I had no idea about was a hot idea.

Well, I did have SOME ideas. Going into the festival, the #1 thing I was hoping to see was the Final Cut of Blade Runner. I didn't figure this would be closing night material, but I was hoping that the new digitally remasterd and fixed up film would make an appearance. No luck. Amber was anxious to see The Golden Compas but I kinda figured that wouldn't be at this festival even though it clearly fits the theme. The rest of the buzz was around three titles: The Mist, which I would have been happy if somewhat underwhelmed to see, Sweeny Tood, which I have almost no interest in but would have probably been fun, and Beowulf, which I am anxious to see in 3D but which I think probably requires a special projector which I'm not sure the Alamo has? They probably do--they have everything! So going into Thursday, those were the best guesses about what would make the 6 hour line worth the wait. Then there was an outside wildcard that made the idea of sitting on line for half th day seem sorta worthwhile. So after a 6 hour wait I give you...

There Will Be Blood
If you had told me going into this festival that I would have gotten to see the world premiere of the new PT Anderson movie, I would have gotten into one of those "NO WAY"/"WAY!" type Wayne's World arguments with you. This was one of my most anticipated films for the rest of the year simply because I love PT Anderson and the idea of him doing a period piece about an independent oil prospector in Texas seemed fascinating. And it was.

The film is a slow burn meditation on greed. It followed Daniel Plainview's oil man (played by Daniel Day Lewis in a role that's sure to be an early Oscar favorite) as he got into the oil business, built himself up, and eventually got rich off of the development of a particularly lucrative site in Little Boston, Texas.

I've tried to think of ways to talk about this film without getting into spoliers and I came up with the conclusion that I don't think that the story itself is really all that important to appreciating the movie. The plot details are actually pretty scant. The movie pits the oil man against a showy small town preacher and it works them both until they've utterly succumb to their own quest for wealth. It's a pretty fascinating and gripping piece of filmmaking, but it's not going to be for everyone.

The film is deadly slow at times--something I like as long as it's building and this one is certainly always building. There are a couple of rich relationships in Plainviews' life and they all get some screen time. He seems wholly devoted to his son and protective of him to the point of violence. He gains a half-brother about halfway through the film and he clings to the extension of family as something precious that he's been missing. He's also got a number of scenes going toe to toe with the young preacher and you can tell that all of these relationships are going somewhere bad by Johnny Greenwood's tense and omnipresent score.

True to the pace of the movie, when things do unravel, they do so not with a bombastic, frenetic climax, but with a slow stream of inevitable horror. I think that people are giong to have a hard time with this one but it's absolutely a movie that serious film people should see. It subverts a lot of what we might expect from a tense, dark and psychological contemporary drama but it ultimately works because the performances are so strong, the music is so unsettling, the cinematography is great, and because the whole thing feels not only entirely plausible but unforunately real.

We watched on as PT Anderson answered a few questions nervously and then we stayed for the awards ceremony in which much beer was chugged. There was an after party that promised even more beer, but we had already diverted from our origial plan to be back in Houston by nightfall, so it was time for us to hit the road. I knew after about 3 days of this festival that I wanted to come back next year and once the VIP badges went on sale, they started flying. I managed to snag one on the day they sold out by connecting to the Alamo's WiFi signal with my PSP and using their order form! So I'll be back next year--in the short lines where I don't have to skip movies to catch movies--and for anyone who's read these last eight posts has thought "man this sounds like it's up my alle," I'd recommend that you come and join me next September!</li-cut>