in re: short cuts/nashville, i must say when first i read about what
magnolia's structure was going to be, i was a little worried that it would be
derivative of nashville and short cuts. while the catastrophic events in
both short cuts and magnolia do give some pause for that, i would hope that
it is only a short pause, as it was for me. first, yes julianne moore was in
short cuts. and, henry gibson, who played haven hamilton (the country
singer) in nashville, as well as michael murphy, who was also in nashville,
both show up in magnolia, which i think is a more direct acknowledgment of
the fact that magnolia does have predecessors. i also think that in some
way, in his extra-filmic references ("this is the part of the movie. . ."),
and talk of coincidence, that in a certain way, he's again acknowledging all
of that.
all three do deal with the fact that people's lives touch each other, but
there's more of a randomness to altman's films; peoples lives cross each
other simply because. i'm not slighting it in the least; i personally
thought both films were brilliant. magnolia, on the other hand, is very
strongly thematically linked in the characters, which is what, in the
"intertwining" aspect, sets anderson's film apart. at the end of the day,
we're really just talking about the way the films are structured, and
anderson, i think, largely acknowledges the debt owed to altman. the most
important thing, for me at least, is how anderson builds on that, and makes
such a beautiful film. i mean, if he couldn't write, couldn't direct, and
the structure of the film was it's only strong point, then, yeah, it'd be
unforgivable. (i don't mean this to sound as though i took amy's comments as
an attack; i thought she had a good point. . .i'm more or less responding to
some reviews i've read that do attack anderson for this)
on top of that, though, i must voice my one complaint about altman:
stylistically, visually, he's one of the most boring directors around (again,
i speak as a fan). it's just a preference for documentary-style
cinematography.
i would highly recommend buying a dvd player to anyone who a) doesn't have
one, and b.) is a fan of pt anderson. he has provided commentary on both
hard eight and boogie nights (excellent, excellent, excellent! both of
them!), and it's incredibly entertaining. he has a lot of humility, and he's
a really enthusiastic fan of films. a lot of his sentences start out with "i
ripped this off from. . ." if somewhat coyly.
frogs, fish, and thousands of other things have rained anomalously on land,
including bloody meat. in some cases, it has been a matter of a hurricane
just picking up fish and dropping them on harbor towns, but in the recorded
cases of frogs, it's been a bit more bizarre. after all, it was only frogs
that were dropped, and all of a certain age and size. hurricanes/tornadoes
lack the faculties to discriminate; generally it would just pick up
everything and drop it. if you look around in some "unexplained" books,
you'll find numerous listings of anomalous rain, many of which are even
documented in newspapers and have eyewitnesses, rather than just urban myths.
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