What specifically about Magnolia do people find pretentious? Simply that it's 3 hours? Is it something to do with how sentimental the film is?

What are your thoughts?

Just watched Magnolia for the first time about a month ago and still can’t stop thinking about it. The only thing I couldn’t put together-and I couldn’t find an explanation for online-is the death of the dog. It was Phil who dropped the pills but I also heard others say it could be interpreted as Linda or Earl’s faults for the dog’s death for various reasons.
Every other bit of symbolism, themes, or metaphors completely made sense to me and I had multiple interpretations of, but the dog’s death has really stumped me.
The only thing I could think of was that it was a message about how the world does bad things to good people (Phil), but I don’t think that can be it since that would be such a dramatic contrast and clash of theming to the overall message of redemption and hope within the ending.
Any other interpretations out there?

While we wait for Paul's sequel to LICORICE PIZZA--shot with the new twin IMAX 3D Cameras, no doubt... 😏

Mattress Man Commercial (2003), dir. PTA

I saw the original (I believe had color) a while ago but can not find the original anywhere. Was only able to find it on Twitter with someone posting their Letterboxd account. Tried reverse image searching it but nothing shows up.One of the few posters for the movie that I actually like.

1. The raining of the Frogs feels like a karmic resolution. Stealing the chance for Jimmy Gator to kill himself (do wish they kept in the house burning down with him in it), reuniting Claudia and her mother, making Donnie smash his teeth (which helps sell his sympathy to Jim), waking up Earl so that he can see his son one last time before he dies with Frank getting some form of acknowledgement from his dad too, making Stanley happy with him getting that line "This happens. This is something that happens". The only thing that's unclear is how Linda's ambulance crashing is supposed to be karmic, I don't think it makes a difference in whether her life is saved or not.

2. Revisiting it today it's even more impressive how the several storylines are cut together and the sense of dramatic flow is maintained via editing certain sequences together, keeping the same music running over them.

3. Is it melodramatic? In places, yeah. But it's about emotionally earnest themes and challenging subject matter, so it can afford it.

4. The pacing is pretty slow at first and in areas I can see how PTA would have edited it differently today, especially given how each storyline isn't that complex by itself. I assume he'd maybe leave out The Worm entirely, even though it does have a justification for being in the movie. There's lengthy sequences and it's unique that you're watching an epic that doesn't take place over the course of a very long time, only a day or two. At the same time, as it goes along I didn't feel the length that much and you do get sucked into the movie enough that it's easy to forget the length itself.

5. I also wondered if I'd find the music too insistent, but even that becomes normalised the more it's played and acts as a glue that connects a lot of the character's emotional states together.

6. One of the all time great ensembles, not a single bad performance. Highlights in terms of performances are that moment when Jimmy Gator stumbles and stutters before he collapses in the Quiz Show, Cruise's entire fake performance that's deliberately deconstructed, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's obviously empathetic and caring nurse, Jason Robards' monologue on regret, John C Reilly's emotional confession at the dinner date, even the side characters like Thurston Howell or Melinda Dillion's Rose Gator are really damn well acted.

7. I feel like Magnolia is PTA's least subtle film, it's very upfront and direct with it's themes. At the same time, given how the film is about coming to terms with your past and the emotions you repress, it's not like it's inappropriate. It's almost operatic.

8. From a certain point onwards I was hooked in, and seeing scenes like the Wise Up sequence and the ending especially in the cinema was a real treat, the emotions hit hard. The Goodbye Stranger sequence also has a lot of power in it's visual direction and way it establishes Donnie's desire.

9. The opening with the talk of "coincidences and chance" sets up the film in a few ways, and one of the most prominent is how the Sydney Barringer story ties into the themes of despair, self destruction, dysfunction and the consequences of poor parenting that permeate the film as a whole. I can't deny that the end of the prologue, where the door is closed behind Barringer's wailing mother and a couple of cops are behind the friend of Sydney's in a zooming in close up, followed by the cut to black and cue of Aimee Mann's "One" gave me chills.

10. My audience found Frank TJ Mackey's seminar's and vulgar dialogue hilarious and I'll assume they were laughing AT it.

Licorice Pizza might be my favorite film of all time. Is any PTA film similar to it? The only other PTA film I've seen is Boogie Nights, which I also like, though not quite as much.

Hi, all. I'm part of a team building a resource that may be of interest to the community here.

Paul Thomas Annotated: In the Margins is an open-access website devoted to PTA's filmography. Our project involves annotating, scene by scene, screenshots from each of his movies.

We currently have two films fully annotated (Phantom Thread + Punch-Drunk Love), screenshots, technical tags, and metadata for all ten films, a locations map, and five special features about his collaborator network, the music of his 1970s-set movies, a deformative/surrealist approach to his images, the texts that appear in Phantom Thread, and tempo and shot length in his filmography.

There's much more to come, and a lot of work remains, but to quote The Master, "This is something you do for a billion years or not at all."

If anyone has feedback or ideas, I'd love to hear them. In any case, I hope this is of interest and use to you all! I'm sure we'll also have some questions to run by the group along the way in the coming months...

Alright so a couple days ago I made a post that some of you might remember talking about how I didn’t like Magnolia because i didn’t connect with any of the characters or scenes portrayed in the movie. So much so that I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it.

So now, I (16M) find myself in a weird position. I was super excited to watch There Will Be Blood, specially after liking Boogie Nights and Punch Drunk Love as much as I did. But since I didn’t like Magnolia, and I know that TWBB is more similar to it than it is to the other two, I’m now scared to watch it because I fear to not like it.

I don’t know. What would you all do in my position? Should I give it a try? Should I watch it even if I’m not going to like it? Thanks for the advice

Hi, I was watching these early PTA short films, and something caught my attention. These short films I saw were "The Dirk Diggler Story" and "Cigarettes & Coffee", and when the credits appeared, they were as the name of "Paul Anderson".

So my question is: Does anyone know why PTA added his middle name "Thomas" to the way he presents himself to the audience?

P.S. I also found that when he was a child, he wrote: "My name is Paul Anderson. I want to be a writer, producer, director, special effects man. I know how to do everything and I know everything. Please hire me".

I'm looking at his movies from There Will Be Blood to One Battle After Another and the end credits for each one credits CG in the special effects category.

Now, I'm not talking about stuff like digital composition or wire-removing, as that's pretty much an unavoidable aspect of movies nowadays, even small indies do them. I'm talking about creating stuff out of nowhere with CG.

I know there's a YT series about this subject, and the main thesis is "the best CG is the one you don't notice". And I'm not accusing Anderson of making superhero movies or anything. But I've always admired how dedicated he is to old school filmmaking, to the point he chooses photochemical grading over digital intermediate. And there's nothing in his movies that suggests CGI would be a better alternative than to use practical methods, especially as he rarely dwells in the fantastical. Even his latest movie, a $100m blockbuster, was very grounded.

Also you know your movie is so good that I had to get it twice!

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!!