Risselada Blog

This is a copy of a post I made a couple months ago in the directors group.  But It hought I might like to have it in my blog too.

For this next post I would like to reveal part of my freakish nature.  This might seem like a complete waste of time to many of you but it is just part of my obsession for chronicaling and rating and making lists in regards to movies.  I have been working on a personal algorithm to help me calculate who my favorite directors are.

If you are interested at all my pathological quirk of developing this algorithm, here is the way I calculated it.  I have a list of all of the movies I have seen and most of them I have assigned a rating between 1 and 10.  For each director of any movie I have seen I have extracted three points of data.

A = the average movie rating of all of the movies I have seen by that director

B = the number of movies I have seen by that director

C - the total number of movies that director has made

Just extracting this data has been difficult.  For one I am not counting "shorts" which IMDB classifies as any movie that is less than 45 minutes.  I just never rate these films.  I find it more difficult to rate a short as compared to a feature length which has more to absorb.  Also I do not include movies for which the director has done just one short segment.  Then I have to decide if I am going to include movies in which the director has "co-directed" or in which there is more than one director.  Also should I count movies in which the director is uncredited?  Is there any point in counting movies that the director did that aren't even available anymore?  What about movies that the director has rejected after it was made for whatever reason?  OK, so these are difficult questions that I will have to decide as I revise my data.  But this is the general data for my algorithm.

And now for the final formula.  The final score I give to each director is calculated like this:

((((B*A)+((((A-5.5)*(B/C))+5.5)*(C-B)))/C)+(((B-1)*0.5)*A))/(1+((B-1)*0.5))

Ok if you can follow that you might just be as crazy as me.  Basically what this means is that directors are penalized to some extent (penalized if they are good but actually get a bonus benefit of the doubt if they actually do suck) for having made movies that I have not seen yet.  So the more movies they have made that I haven't seen, the more their score drops.  The more movies of theirs I have seen and the higher the percentage both increase the strength of the average score.

So far I have only calculated data for directors for whom have at least one 9 or 10 star movie I have seen.  I'll add more data for the other directors whose movies I have seen later, but their scores would not be high enough to break into the top 25 or so anyways.

Here is my list of top 25 directors of all time based on my algorithm.  I am only including directors for whom I have seen more than one of their movies.  (I have also removed a few directors that I just didn't consider relevent for whatever personal reasons)

1. Joel and Ethan Coen
2. Bruce Robinson
3. Hal Hartley
4. Jim Jarmusch
5. Stanley Kubrick
6. Paul Thomas Anderson
7. Terry Zwigoff
8. Quentin Tarantino
9. Terrence Malick
10. Ming-liang Tsai
11. Terry Gilliam
12. Sergio Leone 
13. Whit Stillman
14. Alejandro González Iñárritu
15. Terry Jones
16. Errol Morris
17. Mel Brooks
18. Todd Solondz
19. Robert Zemeckis
20. Wes Anderson
21. Werner Herzog
22. Frank Darabont
23. John R. Cherry III
24. George Lucas
25. Akira Kurosawa

Under discussion:

Grindhouse  (2007)

Grindhouse

I find it kind of disappointing this movie didn't get as much attendance as was expected.  But hopefully it won't dissuade studios from trying "different" stuff like this.

I see that the two movies have been released on DVD separately.  I haven't done too much research, but I hope the original Grindhouse trailers shown in between the movies are available somewhere on there and that you can watch the movies back to back with the same experience as in the movie theatre.  Actually the best part about that was the advertisement for the Mexican restaurant!  Mmmm yummy!

There is a shitload to say about these movies.  Too much really.  I loved them all though.

Planet Terror was interesting for the film effects.  I mean specifically the effects that emulated mistakes in the film itself.  I assume some of these are usually generated through actual filming and some come when the copies and transfers are being made.  Some of them looked wobbly like the lenses weren't focusing up right.  Some looked like there was some mistaking in exposure or chemicals.  The most interesting one to me was when a wipe of red tint swept across the screen and then slowly the correct colors faded back.  I know I've seen a few of these effects before, but not some of them.  I can only believe that these were real goofs that I would have experienced if I was watching cheap grindhouse cinema in it's heyday.

I also loved the whole Osama Bin-Laden thread because I realized how so many of these grindhouse type movies had plots that were just the most simple and direct relating to the world news at the time.  I guess that was to try to make it feel like it was alive and now!  But really they reach so far into such a huge and complicated current event situation that it just seems completely absurd.  Whoever is the major evil in the world at the time is going to be the target.  But the movie and characters are so absurd already, it makes it even more absurd that they would try to make such a big reference.  You know what I'm saying.  I'm sure there were thousands of Grindhouse movies in the 80's where everyone was going against the Soviet leaders.

As for Death Proof, yes the beginning is often quite boring, but it does make me believe it's the same kind of slap-dash filler that you would find in movies like this.  One thing about Tarantino though that just totally pisses me off.  He's so smug about his cool movie and music references that he needs to have his characters talk about and tell you how cool they are.  Maybe he doesn't realize that talking about it too much makes it less cool.

I will say that the best thing about Grindhouse is Tarantino's paring with Kurt Russell.  Although I'm sure it would have been interesting if Stuntman Mike had been cast with Mickey Rourke or Sylvester Stallone as I've heard were other choices.  Russell is just so fun to watch, and it's a real joy to hear him spout Tarantino's dialogue.  The parts where he turns to look right into the camera are precious.  And my favorite part in all of Grindhouse is right after Stuntman Mike gets shot.  He pulls over and is crying like a little girl, trying to find his booze to pour on his wound and guzzle down.  As a villain he is both a disturbed badass, and a total wuss.  I love it!

And don't forget Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu!

Rating: 9/10