Directors

My favorite directors (by algorithm)

Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I couldn't find a group on Spout about directors.  Great directors.  Directors in general.  Anything.

So for my first post in this group 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

Ok, I'll probably post more geeky lists like this later.  But I don't want to turn off more people than I probably already have.

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

I haven't taken the course in Cinematic Algebra, so I can't begin to enter my stats into your algorithm. XD

But I can say, that You (risselada) have turned me onto Herzog, who is climbing my personal charts of favorite directors.

Can't say I've seen a movie by the Coens I don't like

Little iffy On Jarmusch yet, Need to spend more time watching his stuff I think.

I have a mancrush on Kubrick.

You (risselada) pointed out the brilliance of Sergio Leone to me as well.

I love all of Tarantino's works as well as Rodriguez'

Didn't see Linklater on your list, I love the stuff i've seen of his.

I like the way Frank Miller is helping his stories come to life, whether or not that fits here.

I also love the films coming from the Mexican Threesome - Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

I could speculate more on why I love these people, oh and Sofia Coppola... but Spout runs so damn slow and choppy for me, it fills me with the urge to deficate (oooh movie qoute trivia!!)

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

AndyLaBryn:

Didn't see Linklater on your list, I love the stuff i've seen of his.

Linklater comes up at like #36 on my list.

Thanks for the comments Andy!!!

And I'm glad to be able to turn anyone on to Herzog.  I wish he was higher on my list.  I think he will be as I see more movies of his.  Even though I've seen a lot.  He has a lot more to see.  He is definitely my favorite director of all time to just hear him talk about anything.

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

Previous to making this list via algorithm, did you ever make a list of favorite directors, in order, just out of your head? I'd be interested to know how your calculated list compares with your subjective list.

 Or to put it another way, did you look at the list you had created and say, Wait a minute, I like director #10 more than director #5?

What's the highest female director on the list? 

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

I haven't seen a single Herzog movie.  What should I queue up?  And what's he known for? 

And why doesn't my avatar show up on these posts?

...and where the hell was I?

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

Risselada:

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

Damn.  

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

joem18b:

Previous to making this list via algorithm, did you ever make a list of favorite directors, in order, just out of your head? I'd be interested to know how your calculated list compares with your subjective list.

 Or to put it another way, did you look at the list you had created and say, Wait a minute, I like director #10 more than director #5?

What's the highest female director on the list? 

Yeah if I had made a list just off the top of my head it would be different no doubt.  Some filmmakers I may have named were just weighed down because I hadn't seen a high enough percentage of their movies.  For instance, Vittorio De Sica, Seijun Suzuki, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Samuel Fuller, and probably the Zucker Abrahams Zucker team that made great stuff together and apart and was hard to get an accurrate rating for unlike the Coen brother who are a team but ALWAYS work together.

Some filmmakers that I wouldn't maybe have put so high would be like PT Anderson or Alejandro González Iñárritu.  And that's really just because I've seen most of their movies and they were good, but I dunno if I just want to list them that high....  And like Tarantino is a lot of fun, but there seems something about listing him too high that I just don't like.  Eh.  Hard to say why.

As for female directors, I don't have too many with data entered in yet.  I've got Sophia Coppola but I liked Lost in Translation much more than Virgin Suicides.  Antonia Bird directed Ravenous which I gave a 9, but that's the only movie I've seen of hers.  I am for some reason wary of seeing any more of her films because none of them sound like they would appeal to me.  They all seem very different from this comedy/horror.  The other two were co-directors.  Kátia Lund had a hand in the documentary News from a Personal War and the accompanying movie City of God.  Ágnes Hranitzky is listed as co-director on Werckmeister Harmonies, but who knows how much she actually influenced it.  I don't even know if that person is a female, but just assumed because Agnes is usually a woman's name.

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

Re: My favorite directors (by algorithm)

Windbreaker:

I haven't seen a single Herzog movie.  What should I queue up?  And what's he known for? 

And why doesn't my avatar show up on these posts?

...and where the hell was I?

I don't know what's up with your avatar, but my favorite Herzog movie is probably The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

Other popular ones are Stroszek, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo.  And that's actually just some of his fictional narrative films.  He has many documentaries too, of which his recent Grizzly Man is one of my favorites.