10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Greed

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thing he knows, sends the boy off to a school for the disabled by pretending to take him on a train ride and then jumping off the train as it departs the New Boston station, leaving the boy aboard.

The other character who challenges Plainview's dominance is a drifter who arrives claiming to be a long-lost half-brother. Seeking nothing but brotherhood, Henry creeps into Plainview's soul, forcing the only heart-to-heart the latter ever shares in the film. When Plainview realizes he has shared too much, Henry must pay the price for making the invincible momentarily vulnerable.

While the plot moves forward powerfully, it is the metaphor of Plainview as the soul of the new, capitalist America that is handled with gusto by Anderson. These are epic, even mythical themes, and Anderson gives them the reverence often reserved for Greek tragedies and Shakespearean excesses. Yet Anderson is at his core a contemporary master, a post-modern cinematic messiah. He knows exactly how to make this historical stage feel utterly of the moment and relevant to the capitalistic and oilravenous America of today.

Plainview and Eli Sunday together are the heart of America's modern ethos, where money is the only true religion and any religion that has a voice is all about the money. This is a struggle not between Plainview and Sunday, but for hegemony over America's soul.

This is not to say that all capitalism is evil-Plainview illustrates that when capitalism becomes an unholy obsession, it results in a sort of madness, a deadly sin of excess. Ant, not all religion is scornful, only that of charlatans and hucksters, seeking to impose a morality on us that they would have trouble upholding on even their best days.

So, at the end of the film, when Plainview and Sunday clash for the last time, we know that Sunday is the object of Plainview's contempt, not because he is religious, but

January 25, 2008

precisely because he is not. The film's commentary on the necessary obliteration of false piety and putrid sanctimony is the stuff of what America has become today. Who knows this better than the LGBT community?

Many films have been made about fathers and sons and their often fraught relationships. Eli has a biblical struggle with his father that seems as old as Abraham himself. While much of Eli's conflict with Plainview is a struggle of father and prodigal son, it is Plainview's tragic rejection of his adopted son H.W. as a boy and then again as an adult that is truly horrific.

It is the film's final blow in the morality tale about what is valued in modern America: As long as everything serves at the altar of business and patriarchy, life can be good. Challenge those two golden calves-father and money-and everything is disposable, beginning with blood, literally and metaphorically.

Make no mistake, this is a difficult film to watch. It is unrelenting in its insistence upon the truth, it is unforgiving it its deliberate journeys into the darkness of the American dream and human soul. Yet, it is all the stuff of genius, all the fodder of a newly born classic.

Paul Dano (Eli Sunday) was mesmerizing in L.I.E. as the object of a sympathetic pedophile's attentions and as the mute brother in last year's hilarious Little Miss Sunshine. He is astounding here, holding his own against the intense Daniel DayLewis as Plainview.

Dano, who was brought onto the project with only three days to prepare, creates a smarmy evangelical preacher who reminds us that the piety that screams the loudest is the most tainted of them all. Dano, with his boyish face, can transform into an intense exorcist or slithering blackmailer with devillike ease. He has cemented an already great career at so young an age, playing a role that will go down as iconic.

But the film belongs, from start to finish, to Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot) as the self-made oil man Daniel Plainview. This is a performance for the ages and will go down in history along Brando in

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The Godfather or DeNiro in Raging Bull. Reportedly, Day-Lewis prepared for two years to create Plainview, an intensity and professionalism that he has displayed in all his works.

Day-Lewis came to prominence as a gay punk in love with an Indian in the cult classic My Beautiful Laundrette. His early promise has reached full blown genius in There Will Be Blood.

From his superbly modulated voice and diction to his raw physicality and brute emotional repressiveness, Day Lewis has crafted a role that is knowingly theatrical yet never losing focus that what Plainview does and stands for is grittily real. Plainview is a villain through and through and yet the actor's meticulous skills and transformative immersion into the role makes Plainview one of the most human characters on screen in recent memory. Perhaps the only similarly transformative and equally genius performance was Heath Ledger as Ennis in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

It takes a director like Anderson, who is equally intense and intelligent as Lewis, to create cinematic synergy like we rarely see in cinema, in Hollywood even less frequently. If Anderson's Boogie Nights was an homage to sexual addictions, and if his Magnolia was a paean to human frailty, then There Will Be Blood is a full-throttled examination of unrelenting human greed and the ensuing madness that sort of lust begets.

Anderson is a master craftsman and a vivid storyteller. He knows how to frame his narratives and he is skilled in the power of

Two shows

Continued from page

McKinnon's portrayal of FitzWilliam, the little British boy who wants to have a vagina, belongs in the annals of television comedy. Her delivery is impeccable, and the lines she's given are unforgettable.

To wit, talking to his/her stuffed magical unicorn: "Won't it be wonderful flying above the clouds shooting stars out of our matching vaginas?"

Or when a social worker from the WishGranters Foundation is talking to the child, who claims to be dying, and. asks, "How long do you have, Fitz William?"

Completely straight-faced, McKinnon replies, "Only a few inches, but it's making me positively miserable!"

For the pop-culture reference prize, however, FitzWilliam's final word far outshines the sketch about young hotties married to old celebrities when he says, "I'll show you. I'll get my vagina one day, and then I'll be the prettiest little English girl since Orlando Bloom!"

Yes, there are sketches that fall flat. Elaine Stritch's guest appearance this season is a shadow of the woman who sometimes appears on 30 Rock, and a couple of others just aren't what they

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the camera over the audience. From the claustrophobia of the mineshafts brimming with promise and wealth to the agoraphobia of Plaineview's empty mansion at the end, Anderson has surely made a modern masterpiece.

The score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is unlike anything recently heard. Gritty and post-modern, electric and eclectic, Greenwood weaves a soundtrack so bold it can only be matched by Plainview's fearlessness.

Finally, it has to be said that Scott Rudin continues to amaze with the impeccable choices he makes as one of Hollywood's most prolific producers. Rudin has not always relied on safe picks and it makes perfect sense that he takes on the difficult genius of Anderson, Lewis and There Will Be Blood.

Although the film is being released now, it is part of last year's cinematic roster, a year in which Rudin shone through in several projects from Wes Anderson's exotic and quixotic The Darjeeling Limited to the Coen brothers' Oscar frontrunner No Country For Old Men. For 2008 and 2009 Rudin has at least 15 projects to be released and they all promise the same artistic and cinematic integrity that he has become so associated with.

If Rudin, Anderson or Lewis never make another film again, they will have already entered the annals of cinema for a long time to come with There Will Be Blood, a film whose title embodies the history of America from its founding. There has been blood, and there will continue to be blood. ♡

could be.

Adding to the general hilarity are segments with show producers Chastity Bono and Rosie O'Donnell up in a balcony like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show, commenting on what they've just seen. These are not cast members playing Rosie and Chas, they are the real deal, and they are hysterical. They almost make up for any of the skits that fell flat that episode.

Unfortunately, Rosie and Chastity are nowhere to be seen on TransAmerican Love Story, Logo's answer to The Bachelor.

Calpernia Addams is a transgender activist, author and actress who entered the public consciousness when her boyfriend,

Pfc. Barry Winchell, was beaten to death

at Ft. Campbell, Ky. in 1999.

Now she's looking for love in all the wrong reality shows, backed up by her best friend Andrea James and sidekick/ host Alec Mapa, who jokingly describes himself as the "Filipino houseboy who changes the sheets."

Ha ha.

Although he's the only person on the show more ethnic than an Italian, the stupid racial joke is the least of the show's problems.

Calpernia has her choice of eight men, all of whom have various levels of experience and comfort with transgender is-

sues.

Jim, for instance, is from Hilliard, Ohio and is himself a preoperative trans man. Another contestant exclusively dates trans women. But talking about the trans porn site he used to run probably won't get him any Brownie points.

And don't even ask about the professional wrestler. Seriously. What a tool. While the show brings up some interesting issues on transgender acceptance, they have all been cheapened so much by the incredibly derivative dating routine that they lose almost all value.

Instead, all of the previews of upcoming episodes and pre-commercial teasers show a bunch of people acting like fools, attaching their lips to anything that

moves.

It's a train wreck. The sad thing, though, is that it will probably be immensely popular, since society has been dumbed down to the point where we actively enjoy watching people cheapen themselves to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

The Big Gay Sketch Show season 2 debuts on Logo on Tuesday, February 5 at 10 pm. TransAmerican Love Story premieres on Monday, February 11 at 10 pm. Logo is available on most cable and satellite sys-

tems.