So last night I was randomly wikipedia-ing 
Craig Thompson (points if you know who he is), and when I saw his picture, I said, “Holy crap! He looks exactly like Sufjan Stevens (points if you know who he is)!”
The more I looked, the creepier the similarities became. Besides both having
- windswept hair the color of dew beaded raven down
and
- piercing, limpid green eyes that allow us to peer into their unfathomable souls
but they also were both
- Fundamentalist Christians who had a crisis of faith that they explore through their art
- beloved of hipster females
It is bizarre! How could they have so much in common? Really, there was only one answer.
THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON.
It’s like Paul Dano’s “brother” characters in There Will Be Blood. Just as Paul Thomas Anderson used tricky casting to keep Oscar judges on their toes, the Brooklyn-based Jewish indie media conspiracy has done the same thing to keep the hipsters at bay so they don’t take over the universe as is their wont.
Speaking of Paul Dano, he and Wil Wheaton are the same person.
So let’s talk about the music. As you probably know, the score is by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood (the musical equivalent of stunt casting) and it’s gotten a lot of press for that reason alone. But Greenwood has serious chops – this is one of the best scores I’ve heard in years. I’m sure it would have gotten an Oscar nomination, if the Academy hadn’t judged the score ineligible (apparently because Greenwood reused sections of a preexisting composition that he’d written for the BBC in 2004). A lot of my fellow film music nerds are pissed off about this, but I don’t particularly care… Greenwood doesn’t need the money, fame, or validation, and the score itself has received plenty of media attention already…
Just saw There Will Be Blood yesterday, and it’s all that I’m going to be thinking about for a while, so here goes. Warning: this is commentary, not a review. Reviews are supposed to help you decide whether to see a movie, and have an obligation to avoid spoilers. If you’re looking for a review, here it is: go see the damn movie as soon as you possibly can. Then come back and read the spoileriffic ramblings after the jump.
