The second revelation was Eli was the false prophet.

What was the third? Was it that Daniel's life is now "finished?"

Hi all,

What a great multilayered flick, But does anyone know what style or type of hat Daniel Day-Lewis's character is wearing during the movie. I must have poured over about fifty online based hat shops and still can't find anything quite close. I recall Val Kilmer wore something similar in Tombstone and I looked after I had seen that movie for the first time with the same result.Thanks for any help you can  provide.

Everyone wants to focus on the final scene (which is flawed but in an exceptional way) and skip over these two gratingly awkward scenes that really add nothing to the movie. In fact they contain leaps of logic. One second in the film the son could care less that he's with his dad the next he's begging him to understand why he has to go off on his own and that he loves him. This was the scene that lost me. It felt more like the creator of the film forcing the characters to do what he wanted them to do rather than letting them become their wily selves in the end.

I'm putting up a whole brass blog right now."

Posted by:  Phillip Kelly|February 18, 2008 10:54 PM

Read Kelly's full criticism of the final scene between Plainview and adult H.W. (a "terrible cheat" as he calls it) at:

 http://philzine.wordpress.com/

Details:
http://transcendentfilms.com/therewillbemonopoly.jpg

Auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180231494616

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Every year, we seem to get at least one. "I see dead people." "I wish I knew how to quit you." Anything from Napoleon Dynamite.

This year's latest cinematic must-say comes from There Will Be Blood, the oil drama in which Daniel Day-Lewis delivers a crushing insult to a nemesis with the punch line "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"

Relatively few people have seen the movie — this past weekend, it expanded to about 1,500 theaters and its gross so far is $21.1 million — but the dialogue has taken off nonetheless.

A "There Will Be Milkshakes" video, with scenes from the film playing to Kelis' song Milkshake, has more than 60,000 views on YouTube. IDrinkYourMilkshake.com has become a popular forum to discuss the films of There Will Be Blood director P.T. Anderson.

New York magazine even offers a user's guide to the phrase. It suggests using it as sports metaphor ("The Celtics drank the Knicks' milkshake last night"), a sexual double entendre or a taunt, as in "You'd best back down before I drink your milkshake."

Anderson concedes that he's puzzled by the phenomenon — particularly because the lines came straight from a transcript he found of the 1924 congressional hearings over the Teapot Dome scandal, in which Sen. Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes for oil-drilling rights to public lands in Wyoming and California.

In explaining oil drainage, Fall's "way of describing it was to say 'Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I'll end up drinking your milkshake,' " Anderson says. "I just took this insane concept and used it."

So have the movie's fans.

Kevin Kunze, 18, a student at the University of San Francisco, says he created the YouTube video "just to get people to see the movie. I loved it. I had no idea it would take off like this."

Nor did Jurgen Fauth, the website creator.

He says he wanted simply to have an audio clip of the line, delivered in Day-Lewis' booming baritone.

"But (Anderson's) fans started using it to talk about his movies, so I made it a forum," he says. "Although I think some people turn up the volume and hit refresh to drive their co-workers crazy."

Not that Anderson minds — or worries that it will undermine the gravitas of the movie, which is up for eight Oscars, including best picture, director and actor.

"I love the YouTube video," he says. "It's completely insane and hilarious. It's crazy what people latch on to."

Fittingly, the mansion was built by Ned Doheny (the only son of Edward L. Doheny, early oil magnate born in Fond du Lac and inspiration for Upton Sinclair's Joe Ross, who then evolved into you-know-who). Ned Doheny was shot and killed in a reported murder-suicide involving a close associate. Some speculate it had something to do with Ned acting as his father's bagman to deliver a bribe to Senator Fall (of "I drink your milkshake" fame).

Alas, no photos here of the bowling alley. It was only recently restored by Jack Fisk and crew for TWBB.

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/2550

 It seems implausible that such a big thing would hardly be touched on, but I'm wondering if anyone else even considered that Eli could be the girl's father.

"Ladies and Gentlemen...."- perhaps not a conventional catchphrase, but it's the first phrase in the film and the one Daniel uses to start a lot of his speeches in the early going.

"I hate most people"- Daniel summing up his worldview.

"I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD!!!"- I suppose this one has taken off since it's the scene I most often see in "Blood" commercials now, and it will probably be Daniel's Oscar clip. You can also subsititute it for "I'VE ABANDONED MY BOY!!!"

"Bastard from a basket!!"- Daniel's famous last words to H.W

"DRRAAIINNNGEE!!!"- If Daniel's way of delivering "Milkshake" is what makes that such a powerful catchphrase, it should be the same for this pre-milkshake line.

"IIIIII AM THE THIRD REVELATION!!!" Right between "Milkshake" and "I'm finished"

"I tolllldddd you I would eat you!!" You almost miss that one in between Daniel's other lines and Eli screaming for mercy to high heavens.

Come to think of it, counting the two famous lines, there are about six catchphrases in the last 15 minutes alone.

So, other than the two famous phrases, which other famous "Blood" line is best? Did I miss one?

Screencap:

Cute. I love seeing TWBB referenced in random places.

I was at the main UT library today and was thumbing through a Doheny biography, "Dark Side of Fortune," by Margaret Leslie Davis. Well, not only did ELD put a bowling alley in the mansion he built for his son, he had a bowling alley of his own, pictured in the book, in his own mansion. It was used as a legal planning room for his team of attorneys during the Teapot Dome scandal.

There was also a photo of a Doheny field in Mexico which looked just like one of the shots of the first derrick in Little Boston.

But what knocked me on my ass was a photo of the crew of men who brought in a particular well. It looked like it had been taken from the 1902 segment. The men were drenched in oil and all wearing slicker suits. In the middle was a man who looked like Ailman, with his slicker hat's brim down and his nose and mouth covered. Next to him was a guy dressed like DP was, with his slicker hat brim up, like a Maine fisherman. I cannot imagine that PTA didn't see this book before filming.

What's you take on HW?

I had only one thought when I saw the trailer for THERE WILL BE BLOOD several months ago:

"Sweet dancing lollipops, he's back."

Look. Daniel Day-Lewis is a brilliant actor. One of the greatest alive. He utterly transforms himself and disappears into whatever role he does. Much like Gary Oldman, (generally, there are exceptions, I'm sure) no single DDL performance is alike. And yet, when I watched that trailer, did anyone else see what I saw?

It's Bill. It's William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting.

No, seriously, think about it. Sure, he died in the draft riots of 1863, but he was so badass and malevolent that, when he died, he instantly was reincarnated in Wisconsin, and grew up to become an oil baron by the turn of the century. Bill died because he was out-of-touch with what his beloved country was becoming, so he just reinvented himself into a brand new dark vision of America.

That's what I was thinking at the time. Then I actually saw the movie, and yes, yes there were some differences. But on more than one occasion, particular at the end... there he was. Emaciated and aged from a lifetime of hatred and booze, but he was there. With his deep-seated desire for a family and a son stronger than ever.

I'm not the only one seeing Bill in Daniel, as many reviewers keep comparing GANGS OF NEW YORK to THERE WILL BE BLOOD in parts. One line of note, from Nathan Rabin of the A.V. Club:

"Larger than life" doesn't begin to do justice to Day Lewis' performance in THERE WILL BE BLOOD. As in GANGS OF NEW YORK, Lewis plays a man so forceful and towering that he could probably wrestle a full-grown grizzly bear onscreen and have audiences worried primarily about the bear's safety.

He can't be stopped. No matter what ultimately happened to Daniel Plainview, the terrifying man with the mighty 'stache will live on and on. He's just too hardcore to die.

1.Eli says "Gods voice came down into my belly and sloshed around..in a whisper..."

Daniel goes in to the belly of the earth and whispers, then sloshes around. It can be interpreted too as the muse inside of PT. 

2. Eli says "you will be cast up (Im getting teh chills-again) and thrashed back to perdition!"  Ultimately sucking the artridis from teh woman and smashing the ghost back to hell. 

Plainview sucks the oil from the ground, and thrashes Eli into the mud(Eli used mud in his sermon as well)

Daniel does to Eli in the final scene.  Extracting the ghost/falsehhod from Eli and ultimately smashing him back to perdition.

-At the end of ELis Sermon he says, (about the devil) "And then he left."

When Daniel finishes Eli, needless to say, he says, "I'm finished."

It is my feeble belief, even if teh above is happenstance and conjecture that PT is extracting the falsity for us all and eliminating the ghost of god with the ghost of the devil.  I could be very wrong but I believe PT is agnostic if not indeed an atheist (does anyone know?) and Plainview, teh man, not the devil is killing god off.  Becuase if Plainview does indeed call out the ghost of God, then there is no such thing as the devil, being that God is wholly responsible for Satan himself.  No God=No Devil. 

These are not arguments, just ideas.

And yes, I cannot resist.......Im finished.

Daniel Plainview: "I drink your milkshake. I drink it up."

Kelis: "My milkshake bring all the boys to the yard."

The lyrics to Kelis' 2003 track 'Milkshake' seem to have an uncanny simpatico with Daniel Plainview.  It's as if Kelis was channeling the man in the song.  You can almost hear him singing it. Do you suppose Kelis has read Sinclair?  Was PTA grooving to the track while writing? Compare and contrast. Debate and discuss.

WHY DID PLAINVIEW KILL ELI ?

Just needed some more insights to the part which bothers me the most.

Sound like anything you've seen lately?:

"An ice-pack of a movie, a masterpiece in every insignificant detail ... [that] suppresses most of the active elements that make movies pleasurable. The film says that people are disgusting but things are lovely. ... It's a coffee-table movie ... like a three-hour slide show for art history majors."

A lot of the complaints about There Will Be Blood (and there've been more than a few) strike these kinds of disenchanted notes: "a thudding bore," "tempered and wrought, to the point of dullness ... its very scale almost obscures its blankness," or in general simply wondering "what's the point of it all?"—though in fact the passage I've quoted is from Pauline Kael's notorious pan of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, one of the "100 best films of all time" if you believe what the critics tell you. Is it too great a stretch to argue that what's problematic in both films comes to almost the same thing?

Read the entire post. Comments, anybody?

Please respond or hazard a guess.  I am attempting to insert the image in question below.  He looks like Vincent Price or the old Bob Dylan (sans hair).

It wouldn't have been a particularily noteworthy comment except it was wrong. Food and consumption is everywhere in TWBB, and I was wondering if anyone has thought about why it is that way.

For instance: "potatoes" and "goat's milk" are repeated throughout the movie. "Bread" is this amazing grain-- a "luxury"-- that Plainview can bring to the town of Little Boston. Plainview insists that HW gets a "strong" steak in him when he returns from his deaf school, and in the bowling alley scene Plainview is constantly gnawing on some old steak (or a small plank of wood, from the looks of it).

Most notably, Plainview is almost always-- I mean literally in practically every scene-- eating or drinking or smoking (in another word, consuming) something. When the DVD comes out I can better pay attention to how many times. But if you're going to see the movie again soon, you might want to note how Plainview is constantly either drinking alcohol, or tea (I noticed the frequent tea drinking because I found it absurd how a tough oilman with sooty hands was shown three or four times sipping from a dainty china cup) or chugging a cigarette. In very few scenes is he without something to drink or smoke or eat. Smoking and drinking and eating steaks sounds like an oil man type thing to do, except no other characters are shown having such a constant access or need for it.

It reminded me of his comment to Tilford when Tilford suggests he sell out his land so he can have time to take care of his son. Plainview asks something like, "What will I do with myself?" And that's Plainview-- he needs to always be doing something, always planning and thinking something, you look at him and you can see the gears constantly whirring in his head. And he manifests that physically-- he's always drinking something, eating something, smoking something. He needs something to do with his hands. After being woken by Bandy in the woods, he immediately reaches for his whiskey flask. The scene near the end in his cavernous office-- he drinks tea while he disowns HW, he simultaneously downs whiskey and smokes as HW walks out. In the bowling alley, he's drunk off his feet in the presence of his oldest enemy and he still drinks like a champ and chews through his little plank of wood. He's always consuming something. Count the teacups.

It might be reaching, but to me its a physical manifestation of his internal greed, the need to swallow up and ingest as soon as possible, as much as possible, whether its oil or bread or whatever. If he can get his hands on it and take it for himself, he will and does. He takes the land and extracts the oil from it like you take food and drink and extract subsistence from it. What does he tell Eli at the end (some wonderful sweet dairy creation that currently escapes my memory)? And before that, he also said "I drink your water... I drink the blood of lamb..." See, drinking again. Drinking up. Even he gets the eating/greed metaphor. Oh, and DDL also is constantly chewing the scenery, so that counts too.

Sorry for being long winded, but did anyone else take note of all the eating in the movie? Does it have meaning? Should I drop my English major?

What this effectively did was, when I watched the movie, right from the beginning I viewed Daniel Plainview as an evil character... Even as an allegorical representation OF Satan. A part of me doesn't like that I had that assumption throughout the film... I really want to go back and watch it again differently, seeing him as a flawed man instead of all-out evil. But a part of me really loved watching it with that assumption, because it made any scene with Eli and Daniel EXTREMELY symbolic and compelling--especially the baptism scene, which to me carried so much weight because it was like the devil being forced to get baptized. And then at the end, when he "exposes" Eli as a fraud... forces Eli to admit to being a false prophet... I found that extremely interesting when I was watching it from an almost allegorical standpoint.

Anyway, did anyone else view the movie that way? I'd love to hear people's thoughts.

(Oh, and again... I definitely don't think this is the only or even the best way to watch/interpret the film. It's simply the mindset I had the first time I watched it.)

- "Dad, look at my shoe!" Cf. Eli's brains on DP's shoes in the last scene, drawing a clear visual connection between the implied metaphor, blood of the lamb vs blood of the earth.

- Gotta love the shoulder grab and the DDL laugh that follows.

- They got some quail!

- "So..." - "So." - "So, so."

- What exactly are the places that DP mentions as a destination for the pipeline? What does this tell us about the location of Little Boston? Somebody have a Google map to link to?

- Dillon Freasier is great in this: "how much will we pay them?" - "Who's that?" - (is that Dillion trying to remember the line or HW trying to remember their name?) "The Sunday family."

- Great reaction when DP says "quail prices."

This scene shows us that HW is more than just a pretty face to have along: DP is grooming him, teaching him, and confiding in him. As their first real scene together, it stands in brutal contrast to their last scene together (bastard in a basket). Here, the affection between the two is palpable. Like the panoramic countryside, opportunity is before them, and DP explains just how he's going to take advantage of it -- and already there's the seedling of trouble, in DP's greedy assertion that he's planning to underpay the Sundays.

I figure the deleted campfire scene must have come either before or after this one?

http://www.marfafilmfestival.org

http://www.marfafilmfestival.org/#events

Dammit--I wish I had a way to go! What's the point in my even living in Texas if I can't get to this????!!!!