Spoil­ers, as always. My sis­ter and I went to see There Will Be Blood yes­ter­day. Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, on which the film is based, is lit­tle in evi­dence, thank­fully. I do not enjoy Sin­clair, because his nar­ra­tives expect the reader to sym­pa­thize with his Social­ist views. I am a mis­er­able fail­ure at sym­pa­thiz­ing with Social­ists. I was wor­ried that There Will Be Blood would be all anti-​​​​industrial in theme, and it mostly wasn’t. The first three acts are really quite good. Plain­view is com­pe­tent and knows it. He puts on a hard sell, but he doesn’t swin­dle peo­ple. He expects only what is com­ing [ . . . ]

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