Stop and Start rhythm. Complicated structure. Maybe the audience doesn't even
understand the extensive and disjointed measure of it. Two surprises that made my ears
hurt from smiling so much. Tirelessly impressive and alive.

Every little touch, every tiny detail that's expressive and unique - every little
smudge that's meant to be there seemed to be the glowing nugget of gold, the jewel in a
really big and beautiful crown.

Every story was, in it's own way, my favorite story.

a) John C. Reilly, a nice-guy cop, an accidental meeting with Melora Walters
proves his nice-guy cop persona a turn-on - even for the most emotionally scarred of
women. Melora Walters has a rocky relationship with her father - Phillip Baker Hall - the
host of a kid prodigy quiz show - where the star is young Jeremy Blackman, whose father
(Michael Bowen) is somewhat overbearing, to put it gently. The producer of the show is
played by PT Anderson and David Mamet favorite alike - Ricky Jay, the perpetual
centerpiece of a narrator, speaking like he knows more than we ever will. A former
winner and current employee of a radio-shack-like establishment is William H. Macy.
The owner of the network that shows this show - the dying Jason Robards. He is married
to Julianne Moore, who is having a breakdown of her own. He is attended to by Phillip
Seymour Hoffman, a male nurse whose patience and kindness leads him to help the old
man track down his estranged son, a pro-male sex guru played by Tom Cruise. And
quoting the trailer : “This will all make sense in the end”.

Every song, which I knew by heart going into it (so sue me, I love Aimee Mann),
was a big step, a huge pagemarker in a book I knew I was going to finish, even when it
was painfully slow. And when I finished it - here's another world - one that's living on top
of our own, but doing stuff that's so coincidental and strange, we even deny our own
existence. Here's the idea : An oddball, off-the-wall tapestry that literally hums as it
glows up there on the wall. You stare and stare. You can't look away and in the end, you
realize - it's not a tapestry at all - it's a giant bay window overlooking the fantasy world
we create in our heads, the tragedy world we make our lives out to be (whether right or
wrong) and the action-packed stories we fabricate - the very nature of embellishment.
This film is a reality-based fantasy, a true-to-life tragedy and an honest-to-goodness yarn,
which translates to a glorified story that makes one's mouth gape and drool. And gape
and drool I did.

In a year when I was bowled over by storytellers and outstanding acting and
bursting-into-the-millenium, cutting-edge ideas and techniques, etc. - 'Magnolia' had all
three in spades.

When my movie started 45 minutes late for technical reasons, the managers were
very GENEROUS when they came in and handed out free passes to everyone. When the
film was over and I could hear grumbling, disdain and the very idea that people praised
their free passes because they were disappointed (which is a light word from what I
heard) with the film, I felt GENEROUS that I just sat quietly, smiling and humming
along. The passes will come in handy as I GENEROUSly turn them over for another shot
at seeing PT Anderson's GENEROUS helping of cinematic triumph.

They showed us a ten minute documentary about a race track in Florida. If the
lights hadn't been on, I'd have sworn that it was part of the film (going back to PT
Anderson's statement about "fucking with people" as being his main motive for making
the film). I was glad I saw the race track documentary. I thought about it and as I watched
'Magnolia', I realized that he had sold himself short in saying it "fucked" with the
audience because it was merely a vision of his - nothing more, nothing less. If people
couldn't connect to it - that's alright - I did. And that's enough for me. That made me
happy.

'Magnolia' - to say it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen doesn’t do it justice - to say
it’s not worth listening to your friends, whose opinion you’ve trusted in the past - is an
understatement. Off your asses, into the theater, folks.