Movie Polls

Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

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Please vote only once in each poll.

Movies referenced in this poll:
Hard Eight
Blood Simple
Michael Clayton
Thank You For Smoking
Basquiat

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

[I cannot vote in this poll because I've only seen one of the movies (yikes!). But the one movie I have seen, Michael Clayton, was one of the more disappointing films I saw this year because all the good acting was expended on telling a stale, predictable story. (I explain in a two-paragraph review.)

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

JimBell:

[I cannot vote in this poll because I've only seen one of the movies (yikes!). But the one movie I have seen, Michael Clayton, was one of the more disappointing films I saw this year because all the good acting was expended on telling a stale, predictable story. (I explain in a two-paragraph review.)

Michael Clayton is actually the only movie out of the five movies that were nominated for best director last year that actually was the director's debut feature film.  I actually have not seen it.

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

This one is really tough!  I need to think a bit about it, but the two that I can knock off right away are Michael Clayton (which I enjoyed, but not as much as the other options) and Basquiat (which I was ambivalent about/never really got into).

This leaves three movies which I love, and I can't decide which one to choose...  I need to let this one simmer a bit...

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

Haven't seen Hard Eight, and being a Coen brothers' fan, it's embarrassing to admit I still haven't seen Blood Simple!  It wasn't hard to choose the favorite from the remaining three.  Basquiat was vaguely interesting (mostly watched it for Gary Oldman and to see Bowie play Warhol).  I liked Michael Clayton pretty well, but Thank You For Smoking  is smart, funny, well-cast, thought-provoking.  A pretty damn good debut.

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

I love Hard Eight! But really need to see Blood Simple again.

But Hard Eight is great for Philip Baker Hall and proving that p.t. anderson can make a great film in under two hours.

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

I suppose I should add these films to my Want to see it list... and my netflix queue!

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

Well this poll seems to have petered out already.

I am glad that most of the entries have gotten votes, that usually indicates an interesting poll.

I personally have not seen Michael Clayton or Basquiat, but I had a friend who liked Basquiat a lot.  No one has voted for it and no one has mentioned even liking it really, so maybe that's the weakest debut for all of these directors.

My favorite of the other three would be Blood Simple, even though it's still actually my least favorite Coen brothers film.  Hard Eight is also good, and reveals PT Anderson's recognizable style in it's infancy.  I feel like both of these were these artists weakest films, but these are also both amongst my favorite directors so I still think their weakest films are fantastic!

As for Thank You For Smoking, I also found it to be a good movie, but not a favorite.  The worst part was probably that precocious kid.  I hate precocious kids in movies!

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

I'm not going to vote, having only seen Michael Clayton, but I will say I thoroughly enjoyed that film and felt it is certainly a worthy contender in that category.  All performances was brilliant, and the story, while hectic, maintained its coherency beginning to end.  I'm not a huge Clooney fan, and especially was skeptical of his potential performance given the role of his character, but wow... he knocked it out of the water.  Surely a sign of a great director.

Re:Out 2008's nominees for the Best Achievement in Directing Academy Award, whose debut feature film was your favorite?

seely:

I'm not going to vote, having only seen Michael Clayton, but I will say I thoroughly enjoyed that film and felt it is certainly a worthy contender in that category.  All performances was brilliant, and the story, while hectic, maintained its coherency beginning to end.  I'm not a huge Clooney fan, and especially was skeptical of his potential performance given the role of his character, but wow... he knocked it out of the water.  Surely a sign of a great director.

Looking at Tony Gilroy's resume, he has primarily been a screenwriter for nearly the past two decades.  This was his first attempt at directing that is listed on IMDB.  He was a writer on the adaptations of all the Bourne movies recently.  And he also recently completed a movie that will be coming out next year called Duplicity with a lot of big name actors.  Do you think this guy has a bright future?