There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray]

There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray]
by Paul Thomas Anderson

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DVD details

Actor: Ciar?n Hinds, Daniel Day-Lewis, Martin Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Paul Dano
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
Cinematographer: Robert Elswit
Editor: Dylan Tichenor
Producer: Scott Rudin
Producer: Eric Schlosser
Producer: David Williams
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 158 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount

DVD Reviews of There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray]

DVD Review: What a Waste...
Summary: 2 Stars

This is a sad, pointless movie. Perhaps well executed, but why anyone would go to the trouble of producing a story like this for the big screen is beyond me. I guess it's sort of a politically driven critique of business, religion and the darker elements of human nature but it really offers no profound insights into its subject matter.

Very nihilistic, so I guess if that's your bag you might "enjoy" it, just make sure you are lying on a bed of nails while watching to get the full effect.

Basically it's a Scrooge story with the Ebenezer characters (you get two for the price of one, the oilman and the preacher) portrayed in a much more exaggerated fashion and zero redemption. What a hoot. If one of the points of the story was supposed to be single-minded ambition can be costly, it fails to show any sort of counterpoint that can be achieved by striking a more reasonable balance in your life. There is no Fezziwig character in this gloomfest.

So overall the story is so outrageously negative I found it hard to believe. By so intensely focusing only on the darkest moments of the human experience the movie comes across as artificial and inconsequential. More balance between good and evil would have made for a much better and effective story.

I think in reality someone as unbalanced as the Plainview character would not have the opportunity to bludgeon his opponents to death the way the movie portrays. Even the most desperate acquaintances would stay well away... which is what I would advise you to do with this pathetic film!

The even sadder part is the attention to detail and expense that went into the sets, acting and portrayal of the early oil production process all go to waste. Come to think of it, the movie itself suffers from an even worse self-centered vanity than its main characters. The unrelenting, narrow focus and dumbfounding myopia of the story make Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday seem like sympathetic renaissance men by comparison.

DVD Review: Great performance by DDLewis but....
Summary: 3 Stars

Daniel Day Lewis is very impressive in this film...and, for the most part, very handsome...even with oil on his face. So, for my money, it's worth watching....once. The script is based on a story by Upton Sinclair which was relevant and important at the time Sinclair wrote it. Now...not so much. I think the film could have been better if the main character, Daniel Plainview, had been given more to do than cheat and rob people. True, the interaction with his son is interesting and that saves the film. Also, the little bit with the blond girl, Mary, was interesting and, at that point, he seemed to be a caring man who was protecting the girl from beatings by her father.

What I didn't understand from the film was how deeply he degenerated after he the son returned to him. It seemed that things were going well for him--he had the family that he had always longed for and certainly the material success. So why, in the last segment, in his huge mansion, was he so severely embittered? There was nothing to explain the schism between him and his son. The final scene bordered on the bizarre...did Sinclair write that?

While I'm complaining, I'll add that I've about had enough of the character of the charlatan minister. Perhaps they abounded at the time of Sinclair, but I think this stereotype has been exploited enough. I've met many wonderful men who were ministers, even of the holy roller type, and I personally find it offensive that they are so often portrayed in this way. This fellow, Eli, was alternately wimpy, cruel, craven and hysterical, not to mention that he was bad looking and had a terrible haircut. I never did understand what happened to Paul. (Only Robert DuVall, in The Apostle, showed the positive side of these men.)

Visually the film gives you plenty to look at. The oil well fire is spectacular. Even though it's long, it did hold my interest, mostly because of Lewis' performance. He is such a spectacular looking man and has such a great voice that he engages our sympathy way beyond what was realistic for such a character.

I was heartened to read so many negative reviews...am happy to see that not everyone is impressed by the hype this film got. I give it three stars for the overall spectacle and the Lewis' performance.

DVD Review: There Will Be Yawns
Summary: 2 Stars

Daniel Day-Lewis is his usual outstanding self and the movie is beautifully filmed.
But on the whole, the movie is way too long at over two and half hours and the plot drags, especially with the Paul Dano preacher character.
Directed by the overrated Paul Thomas Anderson (anyone remember Magnolia?).
Cinephiles can rejoice while the rest of us can wonder when something is going to happen.

DVD Review: Exceptional movie but packaging is a disaster
Summary: 3 Stars

As many other reviewers have already stated this is an exceptional movie with a great story line that holds your attention from start to finish. The acting is also superb, lead by Daniel Day-Lewis. Unfortunately the single disc DVD comes in a cheap cardboard trifold monstrosity. When placed on a shelf with other DVD's it is next to impossible to find. Are the plastic protective cases, with their fine art work, on their way to becoming extinct or is this an abberation. I fear the worst.

DVD Review: The Best Film I've Seen Thus Far This Year
Summary: 5 Stars

"There Will Be Blood" is one of the few films made in recent years that will be long remembered for something more than raking in bucks or featuring the latest flavor of the month topless. That is to say, it's an instant classic. Shot with a lyrical confidence that evokes both Bernardo Bertolucci's "1900" and Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," it nonetheless firmly establishes its own identity, and if "Boogie Nights" or "Punch-Drunk Love" alone haven't convinced people that Paul Thomas Anderson is the most interesting American director working today, this film certainly should. Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's "Oil" (but really having as much to do with "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," with a little "Chinatown" and "Citizen Kane" thrown in), the tragic drama stars Daniel Day-Lewis, perhaps the greatest British actor of his generation, as Daniel Plainview, an obsessive, sociopathic robber baron who in the first scene literally wills himself back to life and crawls across a desert not so much to safety, but to cash in his haul of silver. Those first five minutes tell us everything we need to know about this character, who will go from bad to worse to worse yet in a depiction of unbridled greed that is refreshing in its brutal honesty. In a country where greed is so often depicted in film as divinely ordained, Plainview will seem a theatrical canard to those who catch glimpses of themselves in him, or in his like-minded foil, the duplicitous Reverend Sunday (played with effete menace by Paul Dano). Though Day-Lewis' portrayal sometimes threatens caricature of actor/director John Huston (whose fine works include "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"), and there seems to be an act missing before the disturbing but inevitable climax of the film, it's tough to find any real flaws in the work, whose raw soundtrack by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood is often as relentless as Plainview himself. If I have one wish for Paul Thomas Anderson, it's that he resist Hollywood overtures to make the next tinny summer blockbuster or moronic Christmas comedy and instead keep plugging away -- he's on course to go down in history as one of America's truly great filmmakers.

Description of There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray]

Bluray Disc

Unmistakably a shot at greatness, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood succeeds in wild, explosive ways. The film digs into nothing less than the sources of peculiarly American kinds of ambition, corruption, and industry--and makes exhilarating cinema from it all. Although inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson has crafted his own take on the material, focusing on a black-eyed, self-made oilman named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), whose voracious appetite for oil turns him into a California tycoon in the early years of the 20th century. The early reels are a mesmerizing look at the getting of oil from the ground, an intensely physical process that later broadens into Plainview's equally indomitable urge to control land and power. Curious, diverting episodes accumulate during Plainview's rise: a mighty derrick fire (a bravura opportunity that Anderson, with the aid of cinematographer Robert Elswit, does not fail to meet), a visit from a long-lost brother (Kevin J. O'Connor), the ongoing involvement of Plainview's poker-faced adoptive son (Dillon Freasier). As the film progresses, it gravitates toward Plainview's rivalry with the local representative of God, a preacher named Eli Sunday (brimstone-spitting Paul Dano); religion and capitalism are thus presented not so much as opposing forces but as two sides of the same coin. And the worm in the apple here is less man's greed than his vanity. Anderson's offbeat take on all this--exemplified by the astonishing musical score by Jonny Greenwood--occasionally threatens to break the film apart, but even when it founders, it excites. As for Daniel Day-Lewis, his performance is Olivier-like in its grand scope and its attention to details of behavior; Plainview speaks in the rum-rich voice of John Huston, and squints with the wariness of Walter Huston. It's a fearsome performance, and the engine behind the film's relentless power. --Robert Horton

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