Author Topic: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists  (Read 53618 times)

toro913

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2010, 11:16:28 AM »
In order and at least 3 films seen by each director (John Cassavetes, Jacques Tati, Wim Wenders, Ki-duk Kim, Jean-Pierre Melville, Lars Von Trier, Jean Renoir, Jonathan Demme, Olivier Assayas, Anh Hung Tran, Stanley Donen, Peter Greenaway, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Rian Johnson, Michael Winterbottom, Alan J. Pakula, Todd Solondz would all make the list if I see one more of their movies, unless it's absolutely awful.)

Francois Truffaut
Andrei Tarkovsky
Emir Kusturica
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Milos Forman
Akira Kurosawa
Spike Jonze
Francis Ford Coppola
Hal Ashby
Paul Thomas Anderson
Sofia Coppola
Stanley Kubrick
Terrence Malick
Sidney Lumet
Billy Wilder
Wes Anderson
Pedro Almodóvar
Todd Haynes
Sergio Leone
Ingmar Bergman
Jean-Luc Godard
Luis Buñuel
Bernardo Bertolucci
Werner Herzog
Coen Brothers
Mike Leigh
Wong Kar-Wai
David Lean
Federico Fellini
Roman Polanski
Spike Lee
Woody Allen
Martin Scorsese
Robert Altman
Ming-liang Tsai
Orson Welles
Robert Bresson
Alfred Hitchcock
Mike Nichols
Frank Capra
Hayao Miyazaki
Jim Jarmusch
Chan-wook Park
Brad Bird
Cameron Crowe
Quentin Tarantino
Peter Weir
John Huston
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michael Haneke
Alfonso Cuarón
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Noah Baumbach
David Lynch
Richard Linklater
Charles Chaplin
Danny Boyle
David Fincher
Andrew Stanton
Arnaud Desplechin
Terry Zwigoff
George Roy Hill
John Landis
Atom Egoyan
Christopher Nolan
Gus Van Sant
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Ridley Scott
John Lasseter
Curtis Hanson
David Gordon Green
David Mamet
Paul Greengrass
Steven Soderbergh
Howard Hawks
Oliver Stone
Jason Reitman
Peter Jackson
David Cronenberg
Alexander Payne
Yimou Zhang
Sam Mendes
John Hughes
Stephen Frears
Steven Spielberg
Michael Mann
Judd Apatow
François Ozon
Guy Ritchie
Kathryn Bigelow
James Cameron
Tom Tykwer
Ang Lee
Darren Aronofsky
Terry Gilliam
David O. Russell
Mel Brooks
Clint Eastwood
Bryan Singer
Ben Stiller

Verite

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #11 on: September 08, 2010, 05:54:54 PM »
I have a better picture of my tentative  directors list after looking at 200 favorite films to hastily rank my top 100.  Updated my list by cutting it down to 25.  Ranked starting with number one at the top but not numbered.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2010, 02:21:47 PM by Ver Schmer »
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Bondo

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #12 on: September 08, 2010, 10:02:02 PM »
1. Christopher Nolan
2. Danny Boyle
3. Steven Spielberg
4. Kevin Smith
5. Hayao Miyazaki
6. Richard Linklater
7. M. Night Shyamalan
8. John Cameron Mitchell
9. Gurinder Chadha
10. Edgar Wright
11. Jason Reitman
12. Tom Tykwer
13. Andrea Arnold
14. David Fincher
15. Hirokazu Koreeda
16. Makato Shinkai
17. Ki-Duk Kim
18. Debra Granik
19. Akira Kurosawa
20. Stanley Kubrick
21. Alfonso Cuaron
22. Deepa Mehta
23. Quentin Tarantino
24. Terry Gilliam
25. Billy Wilder
26. Ashutosh Gowariker
27. Robert Altman
28. Baz Luhrmann
29. Jean-Pierre Jeunet
30. Ji-Woon Kim
31. Martin Scorsese
32. Morgan Spurlock
33. Mike Leigh
34. Guillermo del Toro
35. Matt Stone and Trey Parker
36. Gus Van Sant
37. Joel and Ethan Coen
38. Denys Arcand
39. Niki Caro
40. The Wachowskis
41. Judd Apatow
42. Paul Greengrass
43. Martin McDonagh
44. Neil Jordan
45. Ang Lee
46. Michael Moore
47. Mel Brooks
48. Charles Chaplin
49. Nicole Kassel
50. Ramin Bahrani
« Last Edit: December 10, 2010, 01:31:27 PM by Bondo »

Clovis8

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #13 on: September 08, 2010, 10:17:57 PM »


5. Kevin Smith
(Chasing Amy, Clerks II, Dogma, Clerks)



I really like Smith and I love many of his films but I bet anything even he would call you nuts if he ever saw his name on a list as the fifth best director of all time. He basically cant direct which he openly admits.

Great writer to be sure, but director?

Beavermoose

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2010, 10:40:02 PM »


5. Kevin Smith
(Chasing Amy, Clerks II, Dogma, Clerks)



I really like Smith and I love many of his films but I bet anything even he would call you nuts if he ever saw his name on a list as the fifth best director of all time. He basically cant direct which he openly admits.

Great writer to be sure, but director?

If he directs films that one likes doesn't that make him a director one would consider good?

Bondo

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #15 on: September 08, 2010, 11:20:40 PM »
I really like Smith and I love many of his films but I bet anything even he would call you nuts if he ever saw his name on a list as the fifth best director of all time. He basically cant direct which he openly admits.

Great writer to be sure, but director?

What does it mean to be a great director to you? For me it means "makes great films," end of sentence. It doesn't mean makes technically great films, it doesn't mean has great mise en scene, it doesn't mean anything more than this director has both made some of the greatest films and has a generally high quality of film across his or her body of work (obviously limited by what I have seen). I'm simply not qualified (nor interested) in judging it in any other way. Could Kevin Smith's films all have been even better if he had found someone else to direct, maybe...and that director might be even higher, but that is a counterfactual world and I'm ranking based on this world.

I'm not trying to be combative here, I just don't really understand what criteria other people are using if not this.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2010, 11:22:47 PM by Bondo »

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #16 on: September 08, 2010, 11:53:45 PM »
I really like Smith and I love many of his films but I bet anything even he would call you nuts if he ever saw his name on a list as the fifth best director of all time. He basically cant direct which he openly admits.

Great writer to be sure, but director?

What does it mean to be a great director to you? For me it means "makes great films," end of sentence. It doesn't mean makes technically great films, it doesn't mean has great mise en scene, it doesn't mean anything more than this director has both made some of the greatest films and has a generally high quality of film across his or her body of work (obviously limited by what I have seen). I'm simply not qualified (nor interested) in judging it in any other way. Could Kevin Smith's films all have been even better if he had found someone else to direct, maybe...and that director might be even higher, but that is a counterfactual world and I'm ranking based on this world.

I'm not trying to be combative here, I just don't really understand what criteria other people are using if not this.

I don't consider him to be a very good director at all. His films do not display any hints of quality direction. He basically sticks a camera on a tripod and films some stuff and then edits it together. I also don't think he is particularly skilled at wrangling actors. He is a great writer, though maybe not in terms of structure. It is his writer's voice that I love to death. Chasing Amy is a beautiful film almost entirely because of the brilliance of its writing. It's direction is serviceable at best. If I were to put together a list of favourite directors, Smith might be on it purely because I love a good number of his films, but if I were to compile the list based on what I think of the quality of the direction as well as personal taste for their movies, Smith wouldn't be there. As such, if I put together a Top 50 Directors list, I'd probably find some median between the two and Smith would end up somewhere around #30. I love Clerks and Chasing Amy, and I cannot ignore that. I love what he brings to his films, but I am also aware that what he brings to his films has everything to do with his writing, and aside from some low-budget charm, has nothing to do with his directing ability.
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1SO

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #17 on: September 09, 2010, 02:11:37 AM »
I'm not trying to be combative here, I just don't really understand what criteria other people are using if not this.
10+ years ago I read the script to Dogma a couple of years before the film came out.  It was great.  Reminded me of Peter Jackson's The Frighteners.  Jackson is a great director, and as one he brings a style to his projects that Smith has never demonstrated.

By contrast, I read Basic Instinct before it came out.  Terrible.  Just trash.  But when I saw the film, I was really entertained.  Paul Verhoeven's direction brought a lot to the project.  Made garbage watchable.  Made it fun.

A completed film is the end result of many creative artists, and a director is just one of these.  A great director can elevate a bad script and a terrible director can cripple a great script.  Your argument is that the film and the director should not be separated, which maybe is only the case with Robert Rodriguez who directs, writes, edits, composes the score, helps build the sets and probably makes the coffee.  But even he is at the mercy of Jessica Alba's acting inability.

flieger

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #18 on: September 09, 2010, 02:17:14 AM »
By contrast, I read Basic Instinct before it came out.  Terrible.

Whoa whoa whoa! I will not let this flagrant Eszterhas-bashing go unchallenged! The man is a genius!   :(

Bill Thompson

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Re: Filmspotters' Top 100 Directors 2010: FYC and Your Lists
« Reply #19 on: September 09, 2010, 08:07:13 AM »
I like Smith's work, but as a director he's useless bordering on bad. He has no voice, no style as a director, and in my mind that is necessary for me to consider you a good director. To use an example, someone who people hate, Michael Bay, has a clear style to his direction, I may not like it, but he has a style and he is trying to do something with his camera. Or to go in the other direction, Ozu ever did much with his camera, but he had a style with it, it was obvious that he was saying something and impacting the film with the lack of movement in his camera. Smith is neither of those, he has no reason for just leaving his camera alone, he does so because he's lazy and admittedly doesn't know how to direct.

The answer to why he isn't a good director is obviously Cop Out, or what happens when someone hires Smith for his directorial abilities alone.