Bad company

People tend to forget how rocky the Bush administration's tenure was, and how its approval ratings were in steady decline up through September 10, 2001. Truth is, from tax cuts for the wealthy, to their handling of the economy, to privatizing social security, to ignoring the flood waters of New Orleans, the Bush administration's political instincts have been consistently terrible -- this, despite the fact that Karl "Boy Genius" was their chief strategist.

And now they believe that Americans -- looking at $5/gallon sometime this summer -- are eager to see oil rigs off the coast of Cape Hatteras and ANWAR. I think they're wrong again.

Paranoid Android

Jonny Greenwood's music, though it goes unmentioned in Roy's review, is a key element of There Will Be Blood.

The movie opens with a shot of dry, bare Western hills. Then we see a man prospecting for silver at the bottom of a shaft. He blasts the hole deeper with dynamite, falls and breaks his leg, and, with a titanic struggle, draws himself back up. Finally, we see him lying on the floor of an assay office, his leg in a splint, signing for the earnings that will enable him to drill for oil. The sequence is almost entirely wordless, but it is framed by music, much of it dense and dissonant. At the very beginning, you hear a chord of twelve notes played by a smoldering mass of string instruments. After seven measures, the strings begin sliding along various trajectories toward the note F-sharp. This music comes from a Greenwood piece called “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” and, although it wasn’t composed for the film, it supplies a precise metaphor for the central character. The coalescence of a wide range of notes into a monomaniacal unison may tell us most of what we need to know about the crushed soul of the future tycoon Daniel Plainview.

In fact it's the best soundtrack since another great guitarist was asked to limn the West in music.

Ramblin' man

It occurred to me last night that preznit's sudden interest in visiting Israel and the Middle East...seven years into his regency....must be because someone told him he'd better start racking up those frequent flier miles on Air Force One while he still can.

There Will Be Blood

Driving home, I was thinking, "Was it a great movie, or a great performance." Yes, I guess. The first hour or so, it seemed as though the camera seemed to alternate its focus on either Day-Lewis' face or the landscape. Both seemed relentless. The music is deservedly acclaimed. Not surprisingly, it reminded me of Neil Young's music for "Dead Man," which had a similar relentless (that word again) tension, though the music in "Blood" is more of a complete, fully realized soundtrack.

The ending is unfairly maligned. I have to get Oil! to see if that's how the book ends as well...

...Probably not, but the ending feels like the last chapter of an early 20th century American social-realism novel, graphic and morbidly funny. The last line the character speaks is perfect, closing out the entire spectacle with a grin.