There Will Be Blood scoops nine awards from LA and NY critics
Story by Jack Foley
THERE Will Be Blood emerged as the big winner at two separate awards ceremonies over the weekend (December 8-9, 2007), picking up a total of nine awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association and New York Film Critics’ Online.
The new film from Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, also scooped three runners-up prizes to strengthen its claim as a strong Oscar contender.
At the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association (LAFCA), the film won Best Picture, Best Director (for Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Actor (for Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Production Design (Jack Fisk), Best Screenplay (Runner-up, Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Music (Runner-up, Jonny Greenwood) and Best Cinematography (Runner-up, Robert Elswit).
While at the New York Film Critics’ Online (NYFCO) awards it took Best Picture (tied with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Best Actor, Best Director, Best Cinematography – Robert Elswit and Best Film Music.
A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, There Will Be Blood is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom.
The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon.
When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston.
In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centres around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike.
But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value – love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son – is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.
In other awards handed out by the LAFCA, French star Marion Cotillard was named best actress for her role as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose.
And Romanian film Four Weeks, Three Months and Two Days won two prizes – for best foreign language film and best supporting actor, for Vlad Ivanov.
The Golden Globe nominations will be announced on Thursday (December 13, 2007).