WHV Announcement: Boogie Nights and Magnolia (Blu-ray)

I thought Boogie Nights looked great and I'm hopeful that Magnolia will be on par with it.

On the Blu-ray Release Schedule, I've listed "Boogie Nights" for a 01-19-10 release for several weeks, but Amazon still didn't have that release date this morning.  Perhaps later on today, but next Tuesday is coming fast.




Crawdaddy

^ Maybe it's not listed yet because it's currently a Best Buy exclusive?

I just sampled the review copy of Magnolia and thought it looked great. Obviously a full review is going to take some time (and I have another two to finish first).

Magnolia is very much a "love it" or "hate it" film. It has been since it first appeared. At over 3 hours' running time, it asks a lot from viewers, and a fair number think the result just isn't worth it -- among them Kevin Smith, who famously blasted the film online.

The cast is amazing, though, as is the cinematography by Robert Elswit, who would go on to win the Oscar for There Will Be Blood.

Yeah, personally I didn't care for it. It's an interesting, ambitious film in many ways but I found it very indulgent, pretentious and, worst of all, false - the Seymour Hoffman character in particular just doesn't ring true.

It looks good, but I find PT Anderson's style too derivative - it's as if he'd decided to make Robert Altman movies shot in the style of Martin Scorsese. The only one that really worked for me was Punch Drunk Love.

I'd definitely suggest a rental first if you haven't seen this one.
Edited by Worth - 1/12/10 at 1:38pm

My number 1 film of 1999.  Very much a "love it" relationship for me.  Looking forward to the Blu-ray release.

- Walter.

Great to hear!  I have both of these on pre-order with Amazon.ca, both list a Jan 19th street date. 

Yeah, I love it but it's definitely not for everyone.

A postscript to the Kevin Smith story is that he ended up running into P.T. Anderson in a doctor's office (or some odd place like that) and he said that PTA couldn't have been a nicer guy.

Kevin had a very interesting take on MAGNOLIA.  I remember he felt that it was an "open wound" film-  a kind of very personal 'primal scream' from an artist-  and thought that spending $35-million to make such a film wasn't warranted.  When I first saw the film I disliked it and posted as such on the View Askew website, then Kevin saw it and posted a similar response and all hell broke lose.  We had P.T. Anderson fans coming onto the boards and attacking us for daring to dislike a film that they liked, and the View Askew fans retaliating in kind...  It all got quite ugly, stupid and sad.

The upshot is, on repeat viewings I've grown to really love at least 90% of MAGNOLIA since I saw it that first time.  There are still some things in it that bug me (which is to be expected in any film of this length) but I really love the majority of it and am looking forward to owning it on Blu-ray.

Vincent

Quote:
Is Boogie Nights one of the titles you're reviewing? Would like to know what to expect PQ-wise compared to the original DVD. Thanks.

No, I don't have that one. I don't even know whether we've received a review copy.

I admit, I also partcipated in the Newsaskew.com craziness over the film, and I was a late-commenter (I piled on in the 'you tell 'em Stevedave mode').. primarily because I really hated Magnolia, and wasn't at the boards to comment at all on it I was wanting to talk about Kevin Smith films, and the board at that point was flooded with total BS posts about how terrible Smith was.

The problem I had with Magnolia was that I paid money to see it..   I loved Boogie Nights and found it to be a stunning, creative, well filmed work.    Magnolia came off as dark, difficult to decipher without a decoder ring, and had no characters I gave a damn about.

I think PT has one of the best film "look"  I've seen.  I love everything about that.  But, uh, I was completely NOT sold on this flm.

As to the BD, Boogie Nights is a MUST buy for me.

You know, as I read these comments and am reminded of some of the discussions from ten years ago, I'm starting to think that the best thing for "The Film" section of the review might just be a picture of a frog.

I mailed it off to Cameron so you should see the reveiw posted in the next few days.  He also got The Invention of Lying and Whiteout about the same time.  I'm not sure what order he will do them in.

Generally I will give priority to a critically acclaimed catalog title over poorly received new releases. :)

It took me two days to watch this film and by the end of it I still didn't have a clue what it was supposed to be about. All I remember is that all the characters in the film were nothing but waste of skin scumbags, who all should have been slaughtered in the most humourous ways possible. At least then I could have derived some pleasure from the hours of my life that  I wasted watching this film. His other film, "There Will Be Blood" was better, but even there the characters are so repugnant that you cannot have sympathy or empathy for any of them. In PTA's movies, killing the characters is mercy killing because their lives are so devoid of redeeming qualities that their deaths seem like a relief and release from the most awful level of a living hell.

I'm not sure if you're talking about Boogie Nights or Magnolia but I feel that most of the characters in Magnolia actually end up in a much better place than they started and the movie ends on a pretty optimistic note. No doubt that they (and the audience) go through an emotional hell but I think that, by the end, most of them are happy.

I don't see a particularly happy future for alot of the characters in Boogie Nights though.

I was referring mainly to Magnolia. I haven't seen Boogie Nights. It is more than likely that I'm badly mis-remembering Magnolia and how it ends. I only saw it once and it took me two days to make my way through it. I only remember that the characters did not leave me with a favourable impression and that the movie, as a whole, did nothing but leave me with the feeling that I had undergone a negative experience. The only movie I have disliked more than Magnolia is Million Dollar Hotel starring Mel Gibson. At least I could finish watching Magnolia. I couldn't say the same for MDH which was bloody awful.

FWIW (probably nothing), when I saw Magnolia the first time, I thought it was a masterpiece, and I still think that today.  If memory serves,  Douglas Pratt compared it to a symphony in which various independent pieces ultimately work together to create one work, and that's a good description.  Philip Seymour Hoffman said his character was the part he's played that was closest to him in real life.  As usual, he's terrific.  (BTW, who is Kevin Smith to call out someone else on making a movie?  His body of work doesn't inspire confidence in his ability to recognize a good one.)  Rotten Tomatoes does reveal varied reactions from movie critics, but some of them are effusive with praise.  See it and judge for yourself.

I'm willing to bet that Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael couldn't make a movie but that doesn't make their opinion on other movies any less valid.

In the same spirit, let's not waste time rehashing a 10-year-old debate that (as noted in Vincent_P's post above and in the Magnolia Blu-ray review thread), the participants themselves left behind long ago.

(I should, however, thank Edwin for providing further evidence of what I said in the lead-in to my review -- namely, that for some reason there appear to be people who still seethe over Magnolia. Of course, Edwin, for those familiar with his HTF posts, is well-known for seething.  )
Edited by Michael Reuben - 1/26/10 at 9:47am

I definitely recommend checking out Boogie Nights. PTA's movies are generally polarizing but that's the one movie of his that most people seem to like.