Woah. We knew that the Weinstein Company was about to unveil some footage from Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" in Cannes tonight (and we'll have our reactions from that for you later), but we just got a nice surprise, courtesy of the Twitter account of Megan Ellison, with the first bit of footage from the film, the director's first in five years.
Focusing on Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie, a drunken navy man, this clip sees him being questioned by a superior officer after some kind of incident, as it cuts between Phoenix at the beach, and in what seems to be a submarine, all set to a nifty percussive score that we assume is by the film's composer, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. This is all before Freddie meets the title character (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who runs a religion rumored to be modelled on Scientology. The clip feels both very Paul Thomas Anderson, and something slightly different (check out that fish-eye lens!), and it's a nice little taste of one of our most anticipated films of the year.
"The Master" (and yes, naysayers, that is the official name) also stars Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Jesse Plemons, Kevin J. O'Connor, W. Earl Brown, Lena Endre, Ambyr Childers and more, and The Weinstein Company will open the film on October 12th 2012. Check the clip out below. [The Master]