Dec 3 2009PTA and PSH: Together Again

In director-I-like-teaming-up-with-longtime-talented-acting-collaborator news, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp/Wes Anderson and Bill Murray/Paul Thomas Anderson and Philip Seymour Hoffman have plans to again team up on new project, and this time it's one that finally puts Hoffman's emotive Big Boy face front-and-center:

Hoffman will play “The Master,” as in “master of ceremonies,” a charismatic intellectual who hatches a faith-based organization that begins to catch on in America in 1952.

The core is the relationship between The Master and Freddie, a twenty-something drifter who becomes the leader’s lieutenant. As the faith begins to gain a fervent following, Freddie finds himself questioning the belief system he has embraced, and his mentor.

Anderson's treatment of religion was cynical in "There Will Be Blood." Here, the scrutiny isn't specifically directed toward faith-based movements like Scientology or Mormonism that are newcomers compared to established religions. Anderson explores the need to believe in a higher power, the choice of which to embrace, and the point at which a belief system graduates into a religion.

Like most Paul Thomas Anderson films, that sounds really good, Variety. Just so long as it doesn't offend any of my radical Scientology beliefs. Speaking of which, friends, have you guys heard about the best religion whose beliefs can be summarized with the phrase "aliens things"? It's pretty awesome. I'll have to get you a guest pass to my energy structure some time.