Flawed greatness

[Chris L]

Last scene in There will Be Blood kinda burns up a lot of good will.  Still a great movie, but not super-awesome because of the bowling alley thing, even with the pop culture lexicon barnstormer "I drink your milkshake!"

That ending grew on me, but I would still trade it for the mystery ending behind door #2, or whatever the Deal or No Deal equivalent would be. 

(BTW turns out the mystery ending is directed by Michel Gondry.  Eli slaps Daniel Plainview around with his suddenly enormous hand and rides away on the back of a minotaur that's atop an even larger centaur). 

[erika]

My father, the best father a girl could ever want, is also a self-described neo-con.

[yesno]

I have an interview for something of a dream job...

but it's for the cheap-ass government and I have to fly to DC on my own dime on short notice during holiday season.

[Wes]

Last scene in There will Be Blood kinda burns up a lot of good will.  Still a great movie, but not super-awesome because of the bowling alley thing, even with the pop culture lexicon barnstormer "I drink your milkshake!"

That ending grew on me, but I would still trade it for the mystery ending behind door #2, or whatever the Deal or No Deal equivalent would be. 

(BTW turns out the mystery ending is directed by Michel Gondry.  Eli slaps Daniel Plainview around with his suddenly enormous hand and rides away on the back of a minotaur that's atop an even larger centaur). 

The original ending was that Eli returns as a vampire - this is why he hasn't aged - and offers a dying Plainview eternal life, but only as his vampire thrall. This is where the whole Blood thing in the title was going to come into play. Plainview would seemingly agree to be turned by Eli, but would just be drawing him close enough to impale him with a bowling pin because he couldn't bear to live as anything less than the Master Vampire.

The whole thing fell through when Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis got into a heated argument over what kind of vampire Eli was. Anderson admitted that he hadn't really thought about it and just figured that Eli would be a regular vampire: vulnerable to staking, beheading, sunlight, all that. But Day-Lewis was adamant that Eli should be invulnerable to garlic and stakes and should sparkle in the daylight.

They couldn't come to an agreement, so the whole vampire subplot was dropped.

[Sarah]

Who knew D-L was a Twilight fan.

[Chris L]

That quarrelsome cobbler was onto something. 

[JonFromMaplewood]

Chris L and Wes,

P.T. Anderson should have consulted you guys before making the movie.  I am laughing my ass off here.

Or he should have spoken to directors who can pull off more subtle endings. Richard Linklater's "Before Sunset" would have been a good one to study (still one of my favorite endings ever...even though "Before Sunrise" annoyed the piss out of me).

I would have been much happier if the last time we saw Daniel Plainview, he was sitting at dinner quietly - sad, drunk, and maybe slightly wobbly - and he just fell into his soup. A few bubbles come up, and then nothing.

[jbissell]

Even though "I drink your milkshake" got all the love, "I'm done now" absolutely killed me.

[erika]

I'm a big fan of "bastard from a basket"