Directors-Re:Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List-Spout

pippin06
Posts 424

8/28/2007 1:57 PM
posted awhile ago

Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

A new list by some random publication has been published...imagine that?!?

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the_greatest_directors_ever_-_part_1

I thought it was simply tailor-made for this group. While you may or may not agree with the order, I liked how they described each director with interesting nicknames and an interesting list, too. Thoughts?

schulen
Posts 10

8/28/2007 3:53 PM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

I don't see the point of such an expansive list.

Trying to word this properly... the 100 greatest directors is, essentially, name every director you can think of with more than one great film under his belt and then order them, right?

Obviously that's not strictly, across the books true, but if you're allowing for 100 directors, you're not making any tough cuts. It's really just, think of directors.

As for the top 10, the important part, I don't see anything very risky there. PJ and Fincher haven't earned their way on there yet, but other than that, it's the list you usually hear.

Generally, at least.

sonofkinski
Posts 34

8/28/2007 4:18 PM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

The "important" part of the list comes directly from its expansiveness, I think. I read about a number of directors that I now want to check out way outside of the Top Ten. The Top Ten, if anything, is the part that interests me the least. It's like any rock magazine trotting out an "...of All Time" list featuring, yet again, The Beatles, Nirvana, and Radiohead. Yay.

Anyway, the nicknames are novel and the "If you must see just one..." example for each is both helpful and interesting given some of the choices made (James Cameron's original 'The Terminator' is picked -- which I like -- as is Sam Peckinpah's 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid' -- which I don't (over 'The Wild Bunch' and 'Straw Dogs'?)).

Random thoughts as I scroll:

95. George Lucas: It's good to see The Bearded One's directorial work not get overrated. The original 'Star Wars' is what it is, 'American Graffiti' has its charms, and 'THX 1138' is a bore. Much more important as a producer and idea "mash-up" man.

82. James Whale: A little low on the list, as usual. Whale's consistently passed over when you think about just how influential -- and still fantastic -- 'Frankenstein' and 'Bride of Frankenstein' are. Probably needs a fuller catalogue to get too high, but he's always in the shadows of the monsters.

74. Tony Scott: Ugh.

67. Federico Fellini: '8 1/2', 'Satyricon', 'La Dolce Vita', 'Juliet of the Spirits', 'La Strada', and an awesome segment in the anthology film 'Spirits of the Dead' based on a Poe story called "Never Bet the Devil Your Head". Fellini needs a bump up the list.

52. Michael Haneke: Instant credibility. 'Cache' and 'The Piano Teacher' are great.

32. Christopher Nolan: #32? Really? Above Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog, and Roman Polanski? Are you sure? For just three movies? Hmm.

13. Billy Wilder: I can't believe it took me until last night to see 'Sunset Boulevard'. Amazing film.

12. Quentin Tarantino: Trade spots with Fellini and I've got no beef.

1. Alfred Hitchcock: Word.

The list made me want to pick at it (obviously), so it does its job.

Notable exclusions:

Terry Gilliam (did I just miss him on the list? WTF?)

Park Chanwook (I'll take 'Lady Vengeance' and 'Oldboy' over 'Memento' and 'Batman Begins', at least.)

Andrei Tarkovsky ('Solaris', 'Stalker', 'The Mirror')

Dario Argento (slightly overrated in general, but can't deny his 'eye'.)

Takashi Miike (greatness that crosses and melts together genres. 'Ichi the Killer', 'Audition', etc.)

Risselada
Posts 1233

8/29/2007 10:45 AM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

schulen:
I don't see the point of such an expansive list.
Trying to word this properly... the 100 greatest directors is, essentially, name every director you can think of with more than one great film under his belt and then order them, right?
Obviously that's not strictly, across the books true, but if you're allowing for 100 directors, you're not making any tough cuts. It's really just, think of directors.
As for the top 10, the important part, I don't see anything very risky there. PJ and Fincher haven't earned their way on there yet, but other than that, it's the list you usually hear.
Generally, at least.

I would say there are a lot of tough cuts to make. In some ways I think it would be almost easier to make a list of the top 10 directors. Yeah there are some tough cuts, but you know who the top tier directors are so you know what you have to pick from. When you start getting past 50, you have a pretty gigantic pool of directors to choose from and I think the decision gets very tough.

There is another list of greatest directors from the website. They Shoot Pictures Don't They?
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100directors.htm

There are 45 differeces between that list and this one from Total Film. Some of them rather surprising. The Total Film list obviously favors more recent directors.

Here is a list of all of the directors who appear on both lists.

Alfred Hitchcock
Martin Scorsese
Steven Spielberg
Howard Hawks
Francis Ford Coppola
Orson Welles
Ingmar Bergman
Stanley Kubrick
Akira Kurosawa
Quentin Tarantino
Billy Wilder
John Ford
Michael Powell (& Emeric Pressburger)
David Cronenberg
Joel and Ethan Coen
Woody Allen
David Lynch
Jean Renoir
Robert Altman
Sam Peckinpah
Luis Buñuel
Terrence Malick
Yasujiro Ozu
Carol Reed
Roman Polanski
Sergio Leone
James Cameron
Ridley Scott
David Lean
Frank Capra
Preston Sturges
François Truffaut
Werner Herzog
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Fritz Lang
Brian De Palma
John Huston
Nicholas Ray
Jean-Luc Godard
John Cassavetes
Robert Bresson
Federico Fellini
Michael Curtiz
Sergei Eisenstein
Nicolas Roeg
Milos Forman
Kenji Mizoguchi
George Romero
Satyajit Ray
James Whale
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Buster Keaton
DW Griffith
Wong Kar-Wai
George Lucas

Here is a list of all of the directors listed on the They Shoot Pictures list, but not on the Total Film list:

Charles Chaplin
F. W. Murnau
Andrei Tarkovsky
Michelangelo Antonioni
Vittorio De Sica
Roberto Rossellini
Max Ophüls
Jean Vigo
Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Luchino Visconti
Alain Resnais
Ernst Lubitsch
Bernardo Bertolucci
Marcel Carné
Victor Fleming
Abbas Kiarostami
George Cukor
R. W. Fassbinder
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Jaques Tati
Douglas Sirk
Leo McCarey
Vincente Minnelli
Elia Kazan
Joseph von Sternberg
Erich von Stroheim
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Tourneur
William Wyler
Wim Wenders
Chris Marker
Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Alexander Dovzhenko
King Vidor
Stan Brakhage
Jacques Demy
Eric Rohmer
Jean Cocteau
Sidney Lumet
Robert Flaherty
Otto Preminger
Theo Angelopoulos
George Stevens
Glauber Rocha

Here is a list of all of the directors listed on the Total Film list, but not on the They Shoot Pictures list:

Peter Jackson
David Fincher
Steven Soderbergh
Paul Thomas Anderson
Clint Eastwood
Tim Burton
Hayao Miyazaki
Michael Mann
Jean-Pierre Melville
Christopher Nolan
Rob Reiner
Ang Lee
Alexander Payne
Mike Leigh
Sam Fuller
Robert Wise
Michael Haneke
Don Siegel
Spike Lee
Hal Ashby
Sam Raimi
John Carpenter
Richard Linklater
Bryan Singer
Ken Loach
Pedro Almodóvar
Alexander Mackendrick
John Sayles
Tony Scott
William Friedkin
Cameron Crowe
John Woo
Lars Von Trier
Gus Van Sant
Peter Weir
Curtis Hanson
Paul Verhoeven
Alan J Pakula
M Night Shyamalan
Baz Luhrmann
John Sturges
Sofia Coppola
Abel Ferrara

I will admit that it does suck that Terry Gilliam isn’t on either of these!

sonofkinski
Posts 34

8/29/2007 11:42 AM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

"I will admit that it does suck that Terry Gilliam isn’t on either of these!"

Seriously -- what's going on?

I was going to add Jacques Tourner as an exclusion, and saw that They Shoot Pictures did it for me. Then I see names like Fassbinder, Pasolini, and Antonioni. If anything, the notion of "no tough cuts" seems a bit....wrong.

I was reading an essay collection ('A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again') by this author named David Foster Wallace, and in one he spends time on the circuit with a young American tennis player who's ranked #79 in the world. A quote:

"You are invited to try to imagine what it would be like to be among the hundred best in the world at something. At anything. I have tried to imagine; it's hard."

indieabby88
Posts 230

8/29/2007 12:13 PM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

There are some on that list I agree with, and others I don't. I can see that some of the directors on the list are there simply because they "have" to be, like George Lucas, whose latest examples of directing, namely one "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, showed narrowness of vision and too much dependency on special effects over acting, even though he had a pretty damn good cast. He wouldn't make my list of greatest directors, that's for sure.

Neither, for that matter, would Baz Luhrmann. I've never understood people's attraction to his movies, which I find ridiculously over-the-top. "Moulin Rouge" has become increasingly bearable with repeated viewings, but mostly because of the beautiful production values. "Romeo + Juliet" I thought, was far from impressive, just one more nail in Shakespeare's coffin.

M. Night Shyamalan's place on this list is also a mystery to me. The more I look at this list I think it's a mixture of actual great directors with directors who have a place in modern pop culture, whether or not that place is positive.

Risselada
Posts 1233

8/29/2007 1:47 PM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

indieabby88:
M. Night Shyamalan's place on this list is also a mystery to me. The more I look at this list I think it's a mixture of actual great directors with directors who have a place in modern pop culture, whether or not that place is positive.

Yeah, and I think this is evidenced by the fact that Peter Jackson and David Fincher are in the top 10!!!!!!!!!! They don't even make the They Shoot Pictures list at all!

sonofkinski
Posts 34

8/29/2007 1:57 PM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

It's probably obvious to say, but each (and every) list has to be aware of its audience. One appearing in a popcorn (?) mag like Total Film is better off serving its readership by championing the director of 'Fight Club' over, say, the short film experimentation of Stan Brakhage. A niche 'net list like They Shoot Pictures is more likely to draw fire based on the exclusion of the latter from people that...well, post and blog on Spout.

indieabby88
Posts 230

9/2/2007 12:43 AM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

That's true. Still, I think most people would agree that M. Night Shyamalan doesn't belong on any list of great directors, no matter the audience.

And Murnau really ought to be on the Total Film list.

JimBell
Posts 94

9/2/2007 3:29 AM
posted awhile ago

Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List

Having read the major review on cordless drills, I told the guy at House of Tools that I wanted a DeWalt drill, and he burst into laughter, saying, "If I sold a hundred of each drill, I would get 3 Makita's back, 3 Bosch's back, and maybe 40 DeWalts within the year."

Why the difference? ?The offical drill testing review forcused on torque and battery longevity (what they could test); the HOuse of Tools guy focused on repair record (what he could know about).

The same goes for lists of directors: If you don't list your evaluation criteria, there will be a lot of spinning wheels and wasted words.

Peace,

JIMBELL

pippin06 Posts 424	8/28/2007 1:57 PM posted awhile ago Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List A new list by some random publication has been published...imagine that?!? http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the_greatest_directors_ever_-_part_1 I thought it was simply tailor-made for this group. While you may or may not agree with the order, I liked how they described each director with interesting nicknames and an interesting list, too. Thoughts?

schulen Posts 10	8/28/2007 3:53 PM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List I don't see the point of such an expansive list. Trying to word this properly... the 100 greatest directors is, essentially, name every director you can think of with more than one great film under his belt and then order them, right? Obviously that's not strictly, across the books true, but if you're allowing for 100 directors, you're not making any tough cuts. It's really just, think of directors. As for the top 10, the important part, I don't see anything very risky there. PJ and Fincher haven't earned their way on there yet, but other than that, it's the list you usually hear. Generally, at least.

sonofkinski Posts 34	8/28/2007 4:18 PM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List The "important" part of the list comes directly from its expansiveness, I think. I read about a number of directors that I now want to check out way outside of the Top Ten. The Top Ten, if anything, is the part that interests me the least. It's like any rock magazine trotting out an "...of All Time" list featuring, yet again, The Beatles, Nirvana, and Radiohead. Yay. Anyway, the nicknames are novel and the "If you must see just one..." example for each is both helpful and interesting given some of the choices made (James Cameron's original 'The Terminator' is picked -- which I like -- as is Sam Peckinpah's 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid' -- which I don't (over 'The Wild Bunch' and 'Straw Dogs'?)). Random thoughts as I scroll: 95. George Lucas: It's good to see The Bearded One's directorial work not get overrated. The original 'Star Wars' is what it is, 'American Graffiti' has its charms, and 'THX 1138' is a bore. Much more important as a producer and idea "mash-up" man. 82. James Whale: A little low on the list, as usual. Whale's consistently passed over when you think about just how influential -- and still fantastic -- 'Frankenstein' and 'Bride of Frankenstein' are. Probably needs a fuller catalogue to get too high, but he's always in the shadows of the monsters. 74. Tony Scott: Ugh. 67. Federico Fellini: '8 1/2', 'Satyricon', 'La Dolce Vita', 'Juliet of the Spirits', 'La Strada', and an awesome segment in the anthology film 'Spirits of the Dead' based on a Poe story called "Never Bet the Devil Your Head". Fellini needs a bump up the list. 52. Michael Haneke: Instant credibility. 'Cache' and 'The Piano Teacher' are great. 32. Christopher Nolan: #32? Really? Above Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog, and Roman Polanski? Are you sure? For just three movies? Hmm. 13. Billy Wilder: I can't believe it took me until last night to see 'Sunset Boulevard'. Amazing film. 12. Quentin Tarantino: Trade spots with Fellini and I've got no beef. 1. Alfred Hitchcock: Word. The list made me want to pick at it (obviously), so it does its job. Notable exclusions: Terry Gilliam (did I just miss him on the list? WTF?) Park Chanwook (I'll take 'Lady Vengeance' and 'Oldboy' over 'Memento' and 'Batman Begins', at least.) Andrei Tarkovsky ('Solaris', 'Stalker', 'The Mirror') Dario Argento (slightly overrated in general, but can't deny his 'eye'.) Takashi Miike (greatness that crosses and melts together genres. 'Ichi the Killer', 'Audition', etc.)

Risselada Posts 1233	8/29/2007 10:45 AM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List schulen: I don't see the point of such an expansive list. Trying to word this properly... the 100 greatest directors is, essentially, name every director you can think of with more than one great film under his belt and then order them, right? Obviously that's not strictly, across the books true, but if you're allowing for 100 directors, you're not making any tough cuts. It's really just, think of directors. As for the top 10, the important part, I don't see anything very risky there. PJ and Fincher haven't earned their way on there yet, but other than that, it's the list you usually hear. Generally, at least. I would say there are a lot of tough cuts to make. In some ways I think it would be almost easier to make a list of the top 10 directors. Yeah there are some tough cuts, but you know who the top tier directors are so you know what you have to pick from. When you start getting past 50, you have a pretty gigantic pool of directors to choose from and I think the decision gets very tough. There is another list of greatest directors from the website. They Shoot Pictures Don't They? http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100directors.htm There are 45 differeces between that list and this one from Total Film. Some of them rather surprising. The Total Film list obviously favors more recent directors. Here is a list of all of the directors who appear on both lists. Alfred Hitchcock Martin Scorsese Steven Spielberg Howard Hawks Francis Ford Coppola Orson Welles Ingmar Bergman Stanley Kubrick Akira Kurosawa Quentin Tarantino Billy Wilder John Ford Michael Powell (& Emeric Pressburger) David Cronenberg Joel and Ethan Coen Woody Allen David Lynch Jean Renoir Robert Altman Sam Peckinpah Luis Buñuel Terrence Malick Yasujiro Ozu Carol Reed Roman Polanski Sergio Leone James Cameron Ridley Scott David Lean Frank Capra Preston Sturges François Truffaut Werner Herzog Krzysztof Kieslowski Fritz Lang Brian De Palma John Huston Nicholas Ray Jean-Luc Godard John Cassavetes Robert Bresson Federico Fellini Michael Curtiz Sergei Eisenstein Nicolas Roeg Milos Forman Kenji Mizoguchi George Romero Satyajit Ray James Whale Carl Theodor Dreyer Buster Keaton DW Griffith Wong Kar-Wai George Lucas Here is a list of all of the directors listed on the They Shoot Pictures list, but not on the Total Film list: Charles Chaplin F. W. Murnau Andrei Tarkovsky Michelangelo Antonioni Vittorio De Sica Roberto Rossellini Max Ophüls Jean Vigo Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly Luchino Visconti Alain Resnais Ernst Lubitsch Bernardo Bertolucci Marcel Carné Victor Fleming Abbas Kiarostami George Cukor R. W. Fassbinder Pier Paolo Pasolini Jaques Tati Douglas Sirk Leo McCarey Vincente Minnelli Elia Kazan Joseph von Sternberg Erich von Stroheim Joseph L. Mankiewicz Jacques Rivette Jacques Tourneur William Wyler Wim Wenders Chris Marker Hou Hsiao-Hsien Alexander Dovzhenko King Vidor Stan Brakhage Jacques Demy Eric Rohmer Jean Cocteau Sidney Lumet Robert Flaherty Otto Preminger Theo Angelopoulos George Stevens Glauber Rocha Here is a list of all of the directors listed on the Total Film list, but not on the They Shoot Pictures list: Peter Jackson David Fincher Steven Soderbergh Paul Thomas Anderson Clint Eastwood Tim Burton Hayao Miyazaki Michael Mann Jean-Pierre Melville Christopher Nolan Rob Reiner Ang Lee Alexander Payne Mike Leigh Sam Fuller Robert Wise Michael Haneke Don Siegel Spike Lee Hal Ashby Sam Raimi John Carpenter Richard Linklater Bryan Singer Ken Loach Pedro Almodóvar Alexander Mackendrick John Sayles Tony Scott William Friedkin Cameron Crowe John Woo Lars Von Trier Gus Van Sant Peter Weir Curtis Hanson Paul Verhoeven Alan J Pakula M Night Shyamalan Baz Luhrmann John Sturges Sofia Coppola Abel Ferrara I will admit that it does suck that Terry Gilliam isn’t on either of these!

sonofkinski Posts 34	8/29/2007 11:42 AM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List "I will admit that it does suck that Terry Gilliam isn’t on either of these!" Seriously -- what's going on? I was going to add Jacques Tourner as an exclusion, and saw that They Shoot Pictures did it for me. Then I see names like Fassbinder, Pasolini, and Antonioni. If anything, the notion of "no tough cuts" seems a bit....wrong. I was reading an essay collection ('A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again') by this author named David Foster Wallace, and in one he spends time on the circuit with a young American tennis player who's ranked #79 in the world. A quote: "You are invited to try to imagine what it would be like to be among the hundred best in the world at something. At anything. I have tried to imagine; it's hard."

indieabby88 Posts 230	8/29/2007 12:13 PM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List There are some on that list I agree with, and others I don't. I can see that some of the directors on the list are there simply because they "have" to be, like George Lucas, whose latest examples of directing, namely one "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, showed narrowness of vision and too much dependency on special effects over acting, even though he had a pretty damn good cast. He wouldn't make my list of greatest directors, that's for sure. Neither, for that matter, would Baz Luhrmann. I've never understood people's attraction to his movies, which I find ridiculously over-the-top. "Moulin Rouge" has become increasingly bearable with repeated viewings, but mostly because of the beautiful production values. "Romeo + Juliet" I thought, was far from impressive, just one more nail in Shakespeare's coffin. M. Night Shyamalan's place on this list is also a mystery to me. The more I look at this list I think it's a mixture of actual great directors with directors who have a place in modern pop culture, whether or not that place is positive.

Risselada Posts 1233	8/29/2007 1:47 PM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List indieabby88: M. Night Shyamalan's place on this list is also a mystery to me. The more I look at this list I think it's a mixture of actual great directors with directors who have a place in modern pop culture, whether or not that place is positive. Yeah, and I think this is evidenced by the fact that Peter Jackson and David Fincher are in the top 10!!!!!!!!!! They don't even make the They Shoot Pictures list at all!

sonofkinski Posts 34	8/29/2007 1:57 PM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List It's probably obvious to say, but each (and every) list has to be aware of its audience. One appearing in a popcorn (?) mag like Total Film is better off serving its readership by championing the director of 'Fight Club' over, say, the short film experimentation of Stan Brakhage. A niche 'net list like They Shoot Pictures is more likely to draw fire based on the exclusion of the latter from people that...well, post and blog on Spout.

indieabby88 Posts 230	9/2/2007 12:43 AM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List That's true. Still, I think most people would agree that M. Night Shyamalan doesn't belong on any list of great directors, no matter the audience. And Murnau really ought to be on the Total Film list.

JimBell Posts 94	9/2/2007 3:29 AM posted awhile ago Re: Total Film's Greatest Directors Ever List Having read the major review on cordless drills, I told the guy at House of Tools that I wanted a DeWalt drill, and he burst into laughter, saying, "If I sold a hundred of each drill, I would get 3 Makita's back, 3 Bosch's back, and maybe 40 DeWalts within the year." Why the difference? ?The offical drill testing review forcused on torque and battery longevity (what they could test); the HOuse of Tools guy focused on repair record (what he could know about). The same goes for lists of directors: If you don't list your evaluation criteria, there will be a lot of spinning wheels and wasted words. Peace, JIMBELL

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