What Do The Critics Say?

"A masterpiece from Paul Thomas Anderson. You won't be able to shake it off. Daniel Day Lewis delivers a chilling portrait of greed. He can be charming, cunning, terrifying and pathetic: sometimes all at once. This is a landmark performance." Pete Hammond MAXIM "There Will Be Blood hits with hurricane force. Lovers of formula and sugarcoating will hate it. Screw them. In terms of excitement, imagination and rule-busting experimentation, it's a gusher." Peter Travers ROLLING STONE "An excruciatingly long one-note film, filled with sickening and senseless violence, about a misanthropic oil man and an ego-filled minister." Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat SPIRITUALITY AND PRACTICE "The watershed achievement of both Day-Lewis' and Anderson's careers." Jan Stuart NEWSDAY "It's a refreshing change to see Daniel Day-Lewis get wild and woolly as Plainview, whose fearsomeness and villainy are electrifying." Eric D Snider ERICDSNIDER "Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is the best of 2007, a towering portrayal of searing hatred." Robert Roten LARAMIE MOVIE SCOPE "With references to "Citizen Kane", "Treasure of Sierra Madre", and "Giant", this uniquely American saga about unbridled greed and evils of capitalism is Anderson's most haunting and ambitious work to date." Emanuel Levy EMANUELLEVY

"The best movie performance so far this century? No contest. There's Daniel Day-Lewis' awe-inspiring turn as a greedy oilman in There Will Be Blood, and there is everyone else." Lou Lumenick NEW YORK POST "There Will Be Blood is a chamber drama on the scale of an Old Testament allegory, an epic Western, a parable of rapacious capitalism. It’s sublime—beautiful and ghastly at once. It wouldn’t work without an actor the size of Day-Lewis, who looms as large as the oil derricks that dominate the unruly landscape; he fills the screen and then some." David Edelstein NEW YORK MAGAZINE "A very, very well made film that elicits more of an intellectual than emotional reaction." Matt Pais METROMIX "There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece; Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as a ruthless oilman is without flaw. It seems something beyond acting, in fact." Bill Goodykoontz ARIZONA REPUBLIC "Simultaneously exhilarating and disturbing while leading me to a place I wasn't sure I wanted to go. Amazing photography, and a crazy dissonant score from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood." Jon Popick PLANET SICK-BOY "There Will Be Blood reminds us that the greatest screen performances don't settle for capturing one trait, a dominant emotion or an easy way in." Michael Phillips CHICAGO TRIBUNE "Here is a film that makes its enormous intentions abundantly clear, then follows up on them magnificently, resulting in what seems destined to become a bona fide American classic." Jeremy Heilman MOVIEMARTYR

The Inside Story "There Will Be Blood" joins a pantheon of American motion pictures that explore the powerful confluence of ambition, wealth, family and the magnetic lure of the West. Paul Thomas Anderson’s fifth film plunges the audience into an astonishingly raw and real turn of the century California and revolves around one unforgettable character: Daniel Plainview, a rough and tumble prospector who transforms himself and an entire town through oil. As he ascends from a rugged miner to an imperious tycoon, in the mold of such historical oil pioneers as Edward Doheny and John Rockefeller, Plainview will bring progress and riches to a land that has never known them, at a cost that will blacken his very soul. As portrayed by Academy Award® winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis ("My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown"), Daniel Plainview is a man whose charm, aspirations and uncompromising obsession with remaining self-made will stir up a maelstrom in the Central California town of Little Boston. As oil gushes up from the ground, Plainview will bring changes of operatic sweep to this insular world, pitting belief, hope, love and hard work against cynicism, greed, seduction and monstrous corruption. Shot in Marfa, Texas where the legendary oil-themed "Giant" was filmed decades ago, director and writer Paul Anderson and a devoted cast and crew have crafted a symphonic tapestry of images that appear to come to vivid, visceral life right out of a sepia-toned photograph; yet are completely original and intimately specific to Daniel Plainview's meteoric rise and bloodcurdling descent. 2000 Golden Berlin Bear ("Magnolia") and 2002 Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award winner ("Punch-Drunk Love") Paul Thomas Anderson, has previously directed four films set in the West ("Hard Eight", "Boogie Nights", "Magnolia" & "Punch-Drunk Love"), though each has been its own entirely distinctive exploration of the territory. While in a London bookshop, a homesick Anderson spied Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel "Oil!" It's California-themed cover instantly drew him. Once he began reading, he was compelled by Sinclair’s view of the state in a time when tenacious, risk-taking oil prospectors were changing the then-rural landscape with derricks and oil fields. "The novel is set in an area, Signal Hill, I know well and that part of California’s history has always been interesting to me," says Anderson. "Reading the novel was quite exciting." Anderson was primarily inspired by the novel's first one hundred and fifty pages, wherein Sinclair delves in exquisite detail into the gritty, precarious lives of oil prospectors and oil workers. He was also drawn to Sinclair's pitting of unbridled greed against unchecked spiritual idealism, each with their own insidious consequences. From that foundation of inspiration, he found his own characters of Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday wending in their own directions, towards their own intertwined fates. Anderson began to do further research; prowling through the oil museums that dot California, letting the era’s plentiful, richly atmospheric photographs further fire up his imagination. Anderson also revealed what a thrill it was to discover so much about the era and it's people. "You get giddy looking at all those amazing photos," Anderson notes, "getting a real sense of how people lived their lives. There's so much history in the oil areas around Bakersfield, they’re filled with the grandsons of oil workers and lots of folklore. So we did an incredible amount of research and I got to be a student again and that was a thrill." Inspired by his extensive research of the time period and geography, Anderson came to see Daniel Plainview as a silent, self-reliant man; formed by a deeply individual early struggle for survival, who is suddenly thrust into the chaos and cacophony of gaining tremendous power once he strikes oil. When three time BAFTA Film Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis ("My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown" 1990, "Gangs of New York" 2003 & "There Will Be Blood" 2008) came on board to take the role, Daniel Plainview immediately took on even deeper human contours. Day-Lewis has been called the most gifted actor of his generation. Director Jim Sheridan, who directed him in his Oscar®-wining performance in "My Left Foot", once told the New York Times: "He feels like he’s betraying himself if he doesn't give it one hundred percent. It's not possible, the obliteration of the self, but he comes as close as anyone could." "It's a privilege to work with Daniel Day-Lewis and few directors have had that privilege. I had to work up the courage to ask him, but I always knew there was only one man for the job," Anderson notes. Co-star Paul Dano, who tangled repeatedly with Day-Lewis as Plainview’s chief nemesis and rival, Eli Sunday said, "He blew my mind consistently." Dano would say daily, "I don’t know where the stuff that comes out of him comes from, but it’s an amazing mystery." "I still see something new in Daniel’s performance every time I watch the film. It is an amazing thing," says producer JoAnne Sellar ("Punch-Drunk Love", "Magnolia" & "Boogie Nights"). While there's no doubting the powerful performance Day-Lewis gives, Anderson asserts that the power of the film's performances lies equally in the secondary cast of supporting roles and extras, many of whom were cast from among locals in West Texas. "Without exaggerating, I believe that a film lives and dies by its extras," says the writer-director. "I’m so proud of the work they did. You can have a great actor like Daniel Day-Lewis, but if the person who is standing behind him is all wrong and a distraction, you’re dead." The film is offers a kaleidoscope of wonderful characters and a cacophony of rich images. Plainview's greatest rival in the town of Little Boston is Eli Sunday, who looks like a child but is a bold and fervent preacher in the charismatic tradition. Sunday is played by Paul Dano ("Little Miss Sunshine") who gives a bracingly different kind of portrait, one that draws out the raging inner conflicts between a young man’s yearning for love and adulation with his desire to be a man of God. "There’s a lot of fun stuff to play around with in Eli because he loves language and he's so grandiose," Dano explained. "For me there was a lot of osmosis between what Paul wrote on the page and doing research and looking at pictures and reading the Bible. I think that all kind of came into play subconsciously in creating him." Dano and Daniel Day-Lewis had worked together once before, on Rebecca Miller's "The Ballad Of Jack & Rose" (2005). "Paul was not only familiar with how Daniel works, he was up to the task," says Anderson. "He had the confidence to go head to head with Daniel. They had to feel very safe with each other because things could get out of control, and they did at times." Sellar remembers, "They did keep their distance from one another and maintained that sense of rivalry on the set." Another great character is Henry, played by Kevin J O'Connor, who drew inspiration from several photographs, including one presented to him by Anderson. "It was a period picture of a guy who had been arrested and he had this big mustache," he recalls. "Then I had another photograph from a friend of mine of a guy in a family portrait kind of sitting to the side. And his suit was a little too tight on him and looked like he didn’t belong, like he was just trying to get away with getting a meal. So when I saw those photographs, I decide to lose some weight so I’d look a little hungrier and that was key." Two time Irish Film and Television Award winner Ciarán Hinds ("Rome" 2007 & "The Mayor of Casterbridge" 2004) was cast as Plainview's right hand man, Fletcher. Hinds recalls his initial shock upon reading the screenplay. "It had a whole different feel to it," the co-star of "Veronica Guerin" says. "The themes were biblical and epic, about desire and revenge and emotions driven by ambition. And the style of the writing was such that the flavor just came off the page. It was immediately earthy and very visual." West Texas local Dillon Freasier was cast as H.W., the child whom Daniel Plainview raises as his son in a relationship that is fraught with both physical and emotional peril. Casting director Cassandra Kulukundis ("Ghost World", "Shattered Glass" & "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle") found Freasier in tiny Fort Davis, Texas, where he had lived all his life. Prior to the production, he had never even seen a major American city. Sellar reveled Anderson "wanted someone who already could handle a gun and ride a horse and for whom that whole landscape was second nature, and Dillon turned out to be an amazing find." "Dillon goes on quite an emotional journey and for someone who's never done this before, he's amazingly natural and truthful," says Hinds. "You see the absolute child in him." And Freasier was never intimidated by Day-lewis. "Daniel was awesome," Freasier says. "He was so cool and it was something just to get to meet him. He taught me a lot. He taught me when boxing that you should always duck forwards, never back. I didn’t know that." And how did he go when it came to performing his own stunts? The ten year old admitted: "At first I was a bit nervous about the stunts. But by the time I learned how to do them, I was really excited." Another ten year old, Alpine Texas resident Sydney McAllister was cast as young Mary Sunday, who finds an unlikely and life-long friend in H.W. "She’s very lonely and her dad is kind of mean to her so when she finds H.W. he becomes her one friend," McAllister explained. "He doesn’t care if she’s poor or how she looks. They really just like each other." The cast was completed by numerous extras, many of whom were recruited from among Marfa’s local ranchers and the construction crew, to play Little Boston’s new oil workers. Extra Barry Earwin notes: "I think being blue-collar type people, we appreciated the work ethic of these characters." Synopsis

Set on the radical frontier of California's turn of the century petroleum boom, this is the story of the rise of 'Daniel Plainview, a down and out silver miner raising a son on his own, who becomes a self-made oil tycoon. When Plainview gets a mysterious tip from Paul Sunday that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W., to take their chances in dust-worn town of Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday, Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same. Conflicts escalate and every human value: love, greed, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son, is imperiled by corruption, deception, the flow of oil and Plainviews lust for power.

The Verdict "A powerful, emotive film that displays not only the courage and tenacity of those who followed the oil trail, but also how power and greed can corrupt a man and eventually bring him down. I get the impression that those behing the film hoped that "There Will Be Blood" would surpass the reputation George Stevens's iconic Oil fim, "Giant" (1956) guarnered. Unfortunately it won't, mainly because this film is far too dark. That's not to say "There Will Be Blood" isn't a good film in its own right for it truly is. Enriched by its characters and the life breathed into them by a fine, fine cast, Paul Thomas Anderson's film is remarkably good and is only undone by it's final chapter. Very recommended. SOLID 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "THERE WILL BE BLOOD" stars .......
Daniel Day-Lewis ["My Beautiful Laundrette", "In The Name Of The Father" and "Gangs of New York"]; Kevin J O'Connor ["Virtuosity", "The Mummy" and "Van Helsing"]; Dillon Freasier ["There Will Be Blood"]; Paul F Tompkins ["Skins", "Magnolia" and "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy"]; Hans Howes ["Terminal Velocity", "Seabiscuit" and "Lucky You"] and Ciarán Hinds ["Calendar Girls", "Munich" and "Hallam Foe"] as Fletcher Hamilton.
"THERE WILL BE BLOOD" was .......
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson ["Boogie Nights", "Magnolia" and "Punch-Drunk Love"]; screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson ["Cigarettes & Coffee", "Sydney" and "Boogie Nights"]; art direction by David Crank ["Lassie", "Fools Rush In" and "Hannibal"]; costume design by Mark Bridges ["Deep Blue Sea", "The Italian Job" and "Be Cool"]; production design by Jack Fisk ["Heart Beat", "The Thin Red Line" and "Mulholland Dr."]; edited by Dylan Tichenor ["Boogie Nights", "Brokeback Mountain" and "The Assassination of Jesse James"]; director of photography Robert Elswit ["Good Night, and Good Luck", "Syriana" and "Michael Clayton"]; original music by Jonny Greenwood ["Unfaithful", "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "Children of Men"]. Who's Who?

Daniel Day-Lewis Paul Dano Kevin J O'Connor Ciarán Hinds Dillon Freasier Barry Del Sherman Russell Harvard Harrison Taylor Stockton Taylor Paul F Tompkins Kevin Breznahan Jim Meskimen Erica Sullivan Randall Carver Coco Leigh Sydney McCallister David Willis Christine Olejniczak Kellie Hill James Downey Dan Swallow Robert Arber Bob Bell David Williams

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Daniel Plainview Paul Sunday/Eli Sunday Henry Brands Fletcher Hamilton H.W. Plainview H.B. Ailman H.W. Plainview (Older) Baby HW Baby HW Prescott Signal Hill Man Signal Hill Married Man Signal Hill Woman Mr Bankside Mrs Bankside Mary Sunday Abel Sunday Mother Sunday Ruth Sunday Al Rose Gene Blaize Charlie Wrightsman Geologist Ben Blaut

Run Time 158 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2008 - Miramax/Paramount Vantage - All Rights Reserved ©2008 Impact Internet Services & The Movie Pages. All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian, International, Copyright & Trademark Laws.