In an age with announcements for teasers of trailers for trailers, we have to say we're big fans of how Paul Thomas Anderson and The Weinstein Company are going about the campaign for their new film, "The Master." A brief clip/teaser arrived during Cannes, on the same day that footage from the film was screened on the Croisette, and now, unannounced in the middle of the night, a second teaser trailer has cropped up on YouTube, as noticed by Badass Digest, and it's pretty swell.
Joaquin Phoenix's troubled ex-Navy man Freddie is still front and center, hitching a ride on the back of a truck in a glorious 180 degree pan, and Jonny Greenwood's metronomic score is still present. But there's also some new elements, with Philip Seymour Hoffman's title character, the charismatic leader who turns Phoenix's life around (indeed, by the clip's end, Phoenix is looking more respectable, in some ludicrously high-waisted trousers), turning up in both voice and body, and Amy Adams, as The Master's wife, also makes her first appearance. And the stress-test type quiz at the end once again reinforces that, yep, this is certainly a film about Scientology, to some degree at least.
It continues to look absolutely beautifully shot, and once again, all the signs are there that PTA has created another world that we just want to immerse ourselves in for as long as possible. We've got a little while to wait — while the film is rumored to be playing Venice this year, it doesn't hit theaters until October 12th. But this steady drip feed of clips is only going to keep growing our anticipation.