JimBell
Posts 149
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4/26/2007 3:19 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: NEW Group, Top 5 current directors.
Do any of these deserve to be in the Top Five? Terry Zwigoff -- Ghost World; Crumb; Art School Confidential. Terence Davies -- Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988); The Long Day Closes (1992); The Neon Bible (1995); House of Mirth Richard Eyre -- Iris (2001); Stage Beauty (2004); Notes on a Scandal (2006). Tony Scott -- Top Gun; Ture Romance (1993); Crimson Tide; Enemy of the State (1998); Spy Game; Man on Fire; Déjà Vu (2006); Emmma’s War (2007) Robert Benton -- Bonnie and Clyde (1967; also screenplay); Kramer vs Kramer (1979); Nobody’s Fool; The Ice Harvest; The Human Stain. Barry Levinson --The Natural; Rain Man; And Justice for All; Bugsy; Diner; Wag the Dog. John Sayles -- Passion Fish (1992); The Secret of Roan Inish (1994); Sunshine State (2002) Honeydripper (07) Stephen Frears (b. 1941, England) My Beautiful Laundrette (1985); Danerous Liaisons (1988); The Grifters (1990); The Snapper; Hero; High Fidelity (2000); Dirty Pretty Things; Mrs. Henderson Presents; The Queen. Edward Zwick (b. 1952) Blood Diamond (also Producer); The Last Samurai; Glory; Courage Under Fire; Legends of the Fall. Curtis Hanson -- L. A. Confidential (97); The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (92); Wonder Boys (00); In Her Shoes; Lucky You (07). Sidney Lumet --12 Angry Men (57) Serpico (73), Murder on the Orient Express (74), Dog Day Afternoon (75), Network (76), Prince of the City (81), The Verdict (82), Running on Empty (88), Find Me Guilty (06), and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (07). John Madden -- Proof; Shakespeare in Love; Mrs. Brown; Killshot (07) Neil Jordan -- The Crying Game; The End of the Affair; Breakfast on Pluto; The Good Thief (02); The Brave One (07) Mike Leigh—Secrets & Lies (96); Career Girls (97); Topsy-Turvey (99); All or Nothing (02); Vera Drake (04) Anthony Minghella (b. 1954, England) The English Patient (96); The Talented Mr. Ripley (99); Cold Moutain (03); Breaking and Entering (06). Wrote screenplay for all of these. Atom Egoyan—Exotica; The Sweet Hereafter; etc. Clint Eastwood—A Perfect World; Unforgiven; etc. James Ivory -- A Room with a View (1985); Howard’s End (92); The Remains of the Day (93) Jefferson in Paris (95); The Golden Bowl (00); Le Divorce (03); The White Countess (05); City of Your Final Destination (07) Jonathan Demme (b. 1944, NY) Melvin and Howard (80); Married to the Mob (88); Silence of the Lambs (91); Philadelphia (93); Neil Young; Heart of Gold (06, documentary).
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JimBell
Posts 149
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5/19/2007 3:10 PM
posted awhile ago
Re: NEW Group, Top 5 current directors.
My fav working directors are, in no particular order, - Jonathan Demme
- Christopher Nolan
- Peter Weir
4 and 5 --I don't know (Robert Benton? Baz Luhrman? Stephen Frears? Neil Jordon? Mike Leigh?) PS. Talking about “my fav directors” assumes that directors have such a large influence on film production that they can stamp each film with their signature style, which you like. Possibly—just possibly—this assumption is wrong. For one thing, in the past, Hollywood producers were assumed to have the most influence on a film. I’m not enough of a film historian to know if this is true, but it seems to be. For example, when Orson Welles submitted The Lady from Shanghai at 3 hours long, the film was summarily taken from him, turned over to a hired editor, chopped ruthlessly to its present length, and released without the director’s approval. For another thing, since the early days of cinema, many people assume that stars have the greatest effect on movies. For example, in the 40s studios advertised the chemistry between Bogie and Bacall and other on-screen duos. Nowadays, a Tom Cruise film is likely to be known as a Tom Cruise film regardless of who the director is. For yet another thing, David Mamet claims in his book on making films that the biggest influence is the editor. To be clear, as a screenwriter and director, he says that the director has a lot of influence, and in order to manifest the director’s ideas, he needs a dedicated crew. Mamet has unfailing praise for the dedication and competence of the workers on film crews. But the biggest lessons a director will learn are in the editing room. The editing room shock will influence how he shoots extra material, how he visualizes scripts—just about everything he does. You can empirically test how much influence directors have on the movies you like. List all of the top movies you’ve seen in the last five years. Then look up the director for each of them. If directors have a huge influence on the films, you should have the same directors names coming up over and over again. One hitch in this test is that if you are a savvy movie-goer, you may have decided that certain directors are brilliant and then watched their movies through biased eyes. But this is not a huge factor because your heightened expectations could just as well lead to disappointment. Until this year, I paid almost no attention to who directed a film. I listed the 5-star movies I’d seen over the last five years (58 of them), looked up the directors, and counted how many times names appeared. The results: Appeared once: 53 (August, Zwick, Campbell, Zemeckis, Michell, Haggis, Frears, Annaud, Niccol, Zwighoff, George, Eyre, Preminger, Levinson, Coppola, R. Scott, Dmytryk, Scott, LaBute, Anderson, Crowe, Spielberg, Hill, Sayles, Kasdan, Minghella, Davies, Siodmak, Shepard, Radford, Polanski, Penn, McCarthy, Jones, and so on.) Appeared twice: 1 (Christopher Nolan) Appeared three times: 1 (Jonathan Demme) My conclusion is that the director has little to do with whether the film will be a 5-star viewing experience for me. Why? Many factors affect a movie. Script is crucial. Also, the Hollywood star system can work to the good—as when Nicole Kidman gives a riveting performance as a gangster’s moll in Billy Bathgate—or to the bad—as when Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai reminds you constantly that you are watching Tom Cruise acting. Theme is often a make or break factor: for example, no matter how good Denzil Washington is in Man on Fire, and no matter how appropriately frenetic the cinematography is, I object to the theme of violence and revenge. And you can list more factors, and more factors, and more factors. The director is only one, albeit the one who is supposed to be in charge. But being “in charge” does not necessarily translate into having much influence. Let’s look briefly at a parallel example where there is a lot of rigorous research: teaching. The teacher is supposed to be in charge of students’ learning, but factor analyses reveal results such as the teacher accounts for 15% of the influence on students’ achievement. While directors may have little influence on whether I love a film, they have some influence. You can do another empirical test of this. Look up each of the directors who made your favourite movies, skim down the films they have made, and see what percentage of the films that you’ve seen you’ve liked. You have to have seen a lot of movies for this to work. When I did this (yes, it takes a long time!), I discovered that almost all the films I’ve seen by Peter Weir, I’ve liked, from Picnic at Hanging Rock to Witness to . . . So a few directors have an approach to the screenplays they select and the films they make which, over the long haul, enables you, if you’ve seen many movies, to say the person is “one of my fav directors.”
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walktheearth
Posts 26
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6/17/2007 10:42 PM
posted awhile ago
Re: NEW Group, Top 5 current directors.
I'll be the shallow, narrow minded poster: 1. Quentin Tarantino: Resevior Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, both Kill Bills, and Death Proof! 2. Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Teenenbaums, The Life Aquatic. 3. Woody Allen (His stuff isn't as good as it used to be, but still better than most) 4. Martin Scorsese: His entire body of work is great, The Departed has capped it off recently. 5. The Coen Brothers: Unique vision, great performances, great story telling.
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