News of a Paul Thomas Anderson film is greeted with the kind of clamour reserved for Terrence Malick in cineaste circles, so a first look at the trailer of The Master is definitely worth a couple of minutes of your time. Click here to watch it.

With his four-for-four strike rate after Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, Anderson is held up as the heir apparent to Stanley Kubrick - a meticulous talent with a handy knack of against-type casting and a grand vision. In other words, we really like him. The Master is another to a close eye on.

So what can we learn from trailer? It's got a few of those Malickian traits - disembodied dialogue, long languorous shots, sand nipples (okay, not sand nipples) and Bartok-like strings from Jonny Greenwood - but the camera lingers longest on Joaquin Phoenix's sailor Freddie Quell.

We're assuming his interrogation - the second movie grilling of the day and one that's milder than 007's - takes place in the light of torpedo-based jinks gone wrong. We're assuming Quell, cast adrift from the navy, then turns drifter and falls under the spell of Philip Seymour Hoffman's charismatic demagogue. Not like Bond, then.

The Master is Anderson's first since 2007's There Will Be Blood. Expect less milkshake drinking and a jump from turn-of-the-century California to '50s middle America. Empire will be laying its eyes on footage from the film in Cannes tonight so check back tomorrow for our first impressions.