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Podcast

The Big Picture Podcast: Licorice Pizza

In this episode Gabriel and Tom discuss Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest meandering opus, Licorice Pizza (2021). A tale of love, lust, ambition and pinball with two stellar central performances by newcomers Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman as an unlikely couple struck by cupid’s bent arrow. A sweeping, fast-paced romp through a sun-drenched and pot-infused San […]

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Feature Parting Shot

Parting Shot: Uncut Gems and Where to Find Them

In a podcast almost as heady and packed as their latest film Uncut Gems (2019) and cheekily titled “Seduce and Destroy,” after the particular brand of sleazy pickup artistry promoted by dating coach Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), Josh and Benny Safdie talked to Anderson about, among other things, how their […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

There are numerous gods in Paul Thomas Anderson’s nihilistic nightmare rendering of the American Dream. Oil, Money and Power are the deities worshipped by both oil baron Daniel Plainview and his nemesis, the serpentine preacher Eli. Throughout the film, iconography and symbolism that can be attributed to the Almighty reveal the duplicity and manipulation at […]