"Junun" To Stream Exclusively On MUBI Starting October 9th

Variety reports that subscription based streaming platform MUBI has nabbed exclusive streaming rights for Paul Thomas Anderson's new 54-minute documentary Junun, and it will be available to watch following the film's bow at New York Film Festival on October 8th. For those who don't know, MUBI functions sort of as an online movie theatre, where 30 films are available to stream at one time, with one dropping off and another replacing it each day.

In the Variety piece, PTA is quoted as saying, "We�re huge fans of MUBI and wanted to be a part of what they do. Hopefully people will discover both the music that�s been made by Shye and Jonny and a great place to watch films." Notably, this is the most overt embrace PTA has ever publicly given to viewing films in a digital format. 

So there you have it. A new film from Paul Thomas Anderson will be ready to be seen by the general public in just two short weeks. Now would be a good time to stroll over to MUBI.com and consider subscribing.

C&RV

New PTA Film, "Junun", To Premiere At NYFF

There's been a slight (and pretty cool) epidemic, as of late, of world class filmmakers slipping their movies completely under the radar until they are edited and finished and premiering at festivals (see: Noah Baumbach). The latest director to add to that list is one Paul Thomas Anderson whose mysterious India exploits with Jonny Greenwood were actually the fruits of his first-ever documentary.

That's right... PTA made a documentary! The film is called Junun and will premiere at the 53rd New York Film Festival in the Special Events category. It comes in just under an hour long and here's  NYFF website has to say about it:

Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2015, DCP, 54m

English, Hindu, Hebrew, and Urdu with English subtitles

Earlier this year, Paul Thomas Anderson joined his close friend and collaborator Jonny Greenwood on a trip to Rajasthan in northwest India, where they were hosted by the Maharaja of Jodhpur, and he brought his camera with him. Their destination was the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort, where Greenwood (with the help of Radiohead engineer Nigel Godrich) was recording an album with Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and an amazing group of musicians: Aamir Bhiyani, Soheb Bhiyani, Ajaj Damami, Sabir Damami, Hazmat, and Bhanwaru Khan on brass; Ehtisham Khan Ajmeri, Nihal Khan, Nathu Lal Solanki, Narsi Lal Solanki, and Chugge Khan on percussion; Zaki Ali Qawwal, Zakir Ali Qawwal, Afshana Khan, Razia Sultan, Gufran Ali, and Shazib Ali on vocals; and Dara Khan and Asin Khan on strings. The finished film, just under an hour, is pure magic. Junun lives and breathes music, music-making, and the close camaraderie of artistic collaboration. It�s a lovely impressionistic mosaic and a one-of-a-kind sonic experience: the music will blow your mind. World Premiere

Notably, as you'll see in the photographs in the above link in this post, PTA shot this one (at least in part) digitally. We can't wait to see what his first outing in that format yielded. With Pinocchio potentially getting underway soon, the fact that PTA has kept busy with this and the Joanna Newsom music video is very exciting. Stay tuned!

(Thanks to Joe for the heads up)

C&RV

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(This was updated to reflect the film's running time as well as a fuller synopsis)

UPDATE: AND TICKETS TO THE PREMIERE ARE AVAILABLE HERE.

LISTEN: "On Cinema" Masterclass with Paul Thomas Anderson

[UPDATE: You can listen to a much higher-quality recording HERE.]

Some late Monday evening business for y'all.

Audio has finally surfaced via our old friend Modage, the hour-long masterclass discussion PTA partook in during the 52nd New York Film Festival earlier this month. Hear it in its entirety above. We have not yet screened it for spoilers, so listen at your own peril.

Refresher: The clips PTA selected for the talk were from Jim Abrahams and David & Jerry Zucker's Police Squad!, Neil Young's Journey Through the Past, Alex Cox's Repo Man, Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, the music video work of Emily Kai Bock, and Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen.


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IV (theatrical premiere): 45 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates

Inherent Vice To Screen At AFI Fest

After a vibrant world premiere at the New York Film Festival, Deadline reports that Inherent Vice is heading west; the film is set for a gala screening at the AFI Fest in Hollywood on November 8th in The Egyptian Theatre.

The fest runs November 6 - November 13 and will feature a talk with PTA as well, so keep your sights on this one!

Join the film on Twitter at @seeinherentvice
On Facebook

And at www.inherentvicemovie.com

IV (theatrical premiere): 58 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates

First Look At Reese Witherspoon In "Inherent Vice"; Bigfoot Speaks More

The New Yorker

Hey there - few things to take care of, so let's get right to it.

-Above is a pretty groovy illustration from the most recent issue of The New Yorker for a piece about the New York Film Festival, which begins this Friday, September 26. Some critical thinking has led us to conclude that the two blue figures are from Gone Girl while the two green figures are from Inherent Vice.

- The one star of the film that has spoken rather freely about his impressions from the set is Josh Brolin, who plays Bigfoot Bjornsen, of course. He had some interesting things to say in a piece about the film found in The Los Angeles Daily News recently. The bullet points:

"I read the book as fast as I could before I saw Paul, which means I might as well have not read it," Brolin, 46, admits, "I was so confused by the time he came, I was like stuttering through the whole thing. It was like trying to have a meeting after you've taken a bong hit or something.

Brolin describes the story's vibe as something in "Manson territory."

"It's during the time of of the shattering of the �Right Stuff� mentality into whatever revolution that conjures in you, whether that�s the assassinations or the sexual revolution or drugs, all that. It�s that transition," he says.

"This guy Bigfoot is one of the favorite characters I�ve ever played... He�s a guy that, five years earlier, would have looked like one of the �Right Stuff� guys. But because of his refusal to adjust to any future that doesn�t look like he wanted it to look, he�s kind of pathetic.� 

"It�s a really circus experience,� Brolin says of the production. �It feels like traveling from city to city and putting together skits. You never really know if it�s going to work when you finally do it. And then if you�re doing something like Pynchon, which just naturally has that structure anyway, it�s sort of double wacky.� 

- Last, but certainly not least, The Film Stage has obtained our first look at Reese Witherspoon as Penny Kimball in Inherent Vice. Click below the fold and see at your own discretion.

(Thanks to our readers for bringing some of these to our attention!)

IV (theatrical premiere): 78 days

IV (world premiere at NYFF): 9 days (!)

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 

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NYFF Director Shares New Photo of Joaquin In "Vice", Further Impressions of the Film

Hullo.

We tossed this up on our social media outlets but were a couple days late to getting it on the ol' site, so here it is: Kent Jones, the director of the New York Film Festival, where Inherent Vice will premiere in 42 days' time, has shared a brand spankin' new photo of Joaquin Phoenix as Doc Sportello, which you can see above. In addition, he went on to reveal the personal response he had watching the film.

On the selection process...

I saw that there were a lot of good movies from American filmmakers. First of all, three great New York movies: Time Out of Mind, Heaven Knows What, and Whiplash. Then there�s Birdman, which is another kind of great New York movie, and a great Broadway movie by the way and a beautiful movie about theater. And then there's Gone Girl and Inherent Vice. Gone Girl is this panoramic, phantasmagorical, acid trip of a movie that keeps shifting gears for an amazing cinematic ride. Inherent Vice is also, in a completely different way. It�s like being in a time machine, going back to the time of mutton chops and Neil Young.

On watching Inherent Vice for the first time...

Wild movie. You know, it�s the first [Thomas] Pynchon film adaptation, and it really catches his tone. It really catches the antic nature of him: the crazy names of characters, the nutty behavior, and then also the emotional undertone. It has the flavor of Pynchon. It has this Big Lebowski element to one side of it, but the emotional undertone, the desperation, the paranoia, and the yearning in the film... [Paul Thomas Anderson's] an absolutely amazing filmmaker and it�s incredible to see him responding to someone else�s creation and then building his own creation out of it. He sort of did that with There Will Be Blood, but not really. It�s his own movie, inspired by the novel Oil!

I was born in 1960, but I certainly remember 1971 very well and I gotta say, from the minute the movie started to the minute it ended, I was back�way back�to the point where I was thinking �Gee, my son was born in the �90s.� So it�s a different kind of relationship that he would have. It�s an amazing piece of work, and at this point Joaquin Phoenix and Paul have something so rare between them as an actor and director, and Sam Waterston�s daughter, Katherine, is in it, and she�s riveting every minute she�s on screen. It�s quite a film.

IV (theatrical premiere): 111 days

IV (world premiere): 42 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 
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First Glimpse of Josh Brolin in 'Vice'; Film Clocks In At 148 Minutes

At last! We have a rough first glimpse of what Josh Brolin will look like as Bigfoot Bjornsen in Paul Thomas Anderson's forthcoming Inherent Vice, via a small piece on the film in the most recent edition of Entertainment Weekly:

Following the Oscar nods and "Is it really about Scientology?" innuendo that greeted his 2012 film The Master, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson takes a left turn into '70s noir - and a cloud of marijuana smoke - with his psychedelic crime romp Inherent Vice. Adapted from Thomas Pynchon's gonzo 2009 novel, Vice stars Joaquin Phoenix as Larry "Doc" Sportello, a shambling SoCal PI investigating the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend's wealthy boyfriend. Along the way, he uncovers a pileup of conspiracies and faked deaths, heroin cartels and pimps. The cast includes Josh Brolin as a hippie-hating L.A. cop, Owen Wilson as a surf-band saxophonist, and Reese Witherspoon as a deputy DA and Doc's part-time squeeze.

Anderson draws inspiration from a certain hard-boiled Raymond Chandler classic as well as the stoner stalwarts behind Up in Smoke. "Paul said it has elements of The Long Goodbye and Cheech & Chong," says Katherine Waterston, the newcomer (and daughter of Law & Order's Sam Waterston) who plays the femme fatale. "It's hard to explain tonally." (Maybe The Bong Goodbye?) And in a film that swings between suspense and absurdity, prepare for a bit of magical realism. "A piece of fruit plays a major role. It's frozen. And it's my friend," teases Brolin. "Even talking about it now is making me chuckle."

In announcing its full slate lineup, The New York Film Festival provided a nice writeup on Inherent Vice, which will be the fest's centerpiece screening in its world premiere.

Paul Thomas Anderson�s wild and entrancing new movie, the very first adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel, is a cinematic time machine, placing the viewer deep within the world of the paranoid, hazy L.A. dope culture of the early �70s. It�s not just the look (which is ineffably right, from the mutton chops and the peasant dresses to the battered screen doors and the neon glow), it�s the feel, the rhythm of hanging out, of talking yourself into a state of shivering ecstasy or fear or something in between. Joaquin Phoenix goes all the way for Anderson (just as he did in The Master) playing Doc Sportello, the private investigator searching for his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston, a revelation), menaced at every turn by Josh Brolin as the telegenic police detective �Bigfoot� Bjornsen. Among the other members of Anderson�s mind-boggling cast are Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Owen Wilson, and Jena Malone. A trip, and a great American film by a great American filmmaker. 

 The fest also verified a 148 minute run time for Inherent Vice.

There you have it. It's done and it's coming.

IV (theatrical premiere): 119 days

IV (world premiere): 50 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 
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OFFICIAL: "Inherent Vice" To Have World Premiere At NYFF

Mere days after rumors started swirling, Variety is reporting that Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice will in fact have its world premiere on October 4th, at the 52nd annual New York Film Festival, as the fest's centerpiece gala.

UPDATE: As Timothy pointed out in our comments, festival director Kent Jones said in this article that Inherent Vice as �a journey through the past, bringing the texture of the early �70s SoCal counterculture back to full-blown life. It�s a wildly funny, deeply soulful, richly detailed, and altogether stunning movie.� 

You might want to start thinking about booking flights and hotels.

IV (theatrical premiere): 146 days

IV (world premiere): 77 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 
Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates

'Vice' Rumored For NYFF; More Insider Reactions Revealed

Paul Thomas Anderson at the New York Festival, 1997.

With Inherent Vice's theatrical release just a hair under five months away, questions have begun to percolate as to where ( or if ) the film will have a festival premiere. The Cannes Film Festival back in May proved an unrealistic mesh with the film's post-production schedule, with an anonymous source at Hollywood Elsewhere suggesting PTA was more comfortable with a late summer premiere at Telluride, Venice, and/or Toronto film festivals. Any of those festivals could still prove to be where PTA chooses to unveil the new movie, but according to new reporting from Hollywood Elsewhere, a slight curveball may be coming in the near future, with an exclusive 2014 New York Film Festival premiere in the works:

There's convincing chatter about Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, David Fincher's Gone Girl, and [Christopher] Nolan's Interstellar debuting at the New York Film Festival, although the most recent buzz says that Interstellar could play Telluride first. But the other two are thought to be NYFF exclusives.

PTA notably brought both Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love to the New York Film Festival in 1997 and 2002, respectively, so it is not much of a stretch to conceive that Vice could play there as well.

Hollywood Elsewhere also reported yesterday that word about Vice is continuing to reverberate within the industry:

Last night I spoke to a friend who knows a woman who recently saw Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice... Her initial nutshell reaction was that she "didn't get it" because...well, how could I know? But one of the apparent blockages was that it doesn't adhere to a precise narrative through-line that led anywhere in particular (i.e. no third-act payoff). But then she started to understand it a bit more when she began to think about it the next day. A film that's more about the journey than the destination. I told this guy that three months ago an industry friend who'd seen Vice had described it in a similar way, calling it "brilliant and mesmerizing in an atmospheric, non-linear sort of way"as well as "Lebowski-esque"

We'd say that sounds just like PTA.

The 52nd annual New York Film Festival will run September 26 - October 12.
The 41st annual Telluride Film Festival will run August 29 - September 1.
The 71st annual Venice Film Festival will run August 27 - September 6.
The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival will run September 4 - September 14.

Not too much longer and we'll know which -- if any -- of these festivals will score an Inherent Vice slot in their lineup.

In the meantime...

IV: 157 days

Find more information about the film on our Inherent Vice page. 
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