Favourite director thread!!!
 

OMG U guyz!!!


So list your favourite directors here, please:

These days I really like Eric Rohmer (Tales of The Four Seasons, Six Moral Tales, The Green Ray) and Hirokazu Koreeda (Like Father Like Son, Air Doll, I Wish, After Life, Nobody Knows) Julie Delpy has caught my attention this year and I'm looking forward to her film Skylab with is getting a UK release soon. Also Bela Tarr is someone I am keen to see more of, it's too soon to call him a favourite as I've only seen Werkmeister Harmonies but it blew me away and made me want to see as many of his other releases as possible.

My criteria for favourite is making four or more films that I love.

Off the top of my head:
Jim Jarmusch
Richard Linklater
Takeshi Kitano
Takeshi Miike
Akira Kurosawa
Abbas Kiarostami
The Makhmalbaf Family
Yasujiro Ozu
Hal Hartley
Shane Meadows
Mike Leigh

haa haaa haaa

okay:

hayao miyazaki

kurosawa

woody allen

cronenberg

that frenchie, whatsisname… the bjork videos guy- be kind rewind-- he's funny. rrr.. can't remember right now. [edit: gondry]

jean pierre melville

almodóvar

fritz lang

carlos saura

antonioni!!

early bertolucci

FELLINI FELLINI FELLINI

kenneth anger (more of an art director than a director but props for style)

john waters

alain resnais -for hiroshima mon amour, not marienbad

BRESSON

tarkovsky

EISENSTEIN

a bit of linklater

1/2 of david lynch

other frenches: ozon, olivier assayas, breillat, the leon the professional guy

michael haneke

ozu

SEIJUN SUZUKI

COEN BROS.

i'm gonna need a break cuz it's lunch time







david simon is not a director proper but "creator" of the wire and somehow he deserves a mention

(cont.)

maya deren

john cassavetes

gus van zandt

scorsese, coppola, etc

jim jarmusch

bela tarr!!!!

wes anderson

kar-wai wong

chan-wook park

kathryn bigelow (i always liked "strange days" and now she's better)

shinya tsukamoto, on the basis of the first tetsuo alone

things work different in tv animation, but shinichiro watanabe for cowboy bebop + samurai champloo

and of course satoshi kon (adios)

and speaking of adios bill, SAM PECKINPAH

phew, long list. also of course of course KUBRICK. how can i forget?

too many to list. i might shoot more names later.

film orgy!

I can't be bothered, sorry.

It changes constantly, but right now:

Federico Fellini
John Ford
Kenneth Anger
Howard Hawks
Fritz Lang
Stan Brakhage
Jean Rollin
Jack Smith
Pedro Almodovar
Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey
Michael Powell

Thanks for participating!

yes!


i've tried, but ultimately he makes me sleep


where do you find his stuff? i've searched for him all over, but nothing. i know people who swear by him.

anyway i'll add this morning:

visconti

de sica

sergio leone

jodorowski

buñuel

ORSON WELLES

oh, gotta go...

I've got a bootleg VHS of Flaming Creatures and Normal Love but as far as I know nothing's ever been officially released outside cine-clubs, either here or in the US. Museum or festival screenings are probably your best/only hope now.

ha ha ha-- i live in the middle of nowhere and the closest good museum would probably require air travel.

but thanks for the reminder, i'll see what i can rustle up… maybe i know someone… hmmmmm...

You can't find his stuff on torrents?

I just found the whole of Flaming Creatures on Youtube so I imagine there are torrents floating around.

im sort of opposed to torrents except for desperate cases but i think with jack smith being that he's supposed to be this quasi-tactile director anything crummy-looking is going to be a huge affront. no? but i know someone who might have access to a film print. i'll have to ask.

anyway was sorting my netflix queue and found a few more names i had (duh!) forgotten

fassbinder

herzog

zhang yimou

jean cocteau

some wayne wang-- he can be pretty shit in hollywood but he's made indie films i've really enjoyed (smoke, chinese box)

ang lee (in spite of that disgraceful hulk)

t&b already said beat takeshi. he's a fucking genius.

DENYS ARCAND

more later...

Anytime.

Jan Svankmajer
Mike Leigh
Woody Allen (up to Crimes & Misdemeanours)
Coen Brothers (up to The Big Lebowski)
Maya Deren
Jiri Trnka
John Cassavetes
Orson Welles
Alexander Mackendrick
Brothers Quay
etc

I know what you're saying but, in the case of something like Flaming Creatures, you really shouldn't let a low grade copy stop you, if that's your only option. Even the original reels are about as lo-fi as it gets. Think along the lines of a really early Warhol film.

When the Sopranos was on, especially during the first dew years, I agreed with people who felt it was better than most movies.

Thing is, episodes had different directors.

There are still a few directors I admire, but I think there are a lot of factors involved in a flick other than the director that make that flick good or bad.

Also, is "good directing" really all that important? I mean, is Woody Allen a good director? Of course. He's been doing it over 40 years, so he'd better know a thing or two. He knows where to put the camera, move people around the frame, etc.

But if his script sucks, who cares?

I think you're right. There are directors who make films their own (Hitchcock, etc) but most of them have far less impact on how they turn out than a producer does. There's a few high profile auteur directors in Hollywood but they're still more common in the indie and arthouse scene, and even there most aren't as powerful or influential as their reputation suggests. Films are arguably more made by committee now than they were even during the height of the studio era. It's just that now the industry is more keen to market films by their director (directors cuts, etc) than they were then.

well of course film is a collaborative medium, just like tv, but notice how on tv it's the producer/show runner that has the most power and gets the credit (e.g., alan ball or david simon or joss whedon) and that's usually a writer.

meanwhile however in film the director has ultimate responsibility, but seeing as how we have these fights between producers/studios and directors all the time (e.g, wim senders having to cut until the end of the world, blade runner having to add the voiceover a la sam spade, lynch having his shit maimed by the delaurentiis, etc) it's clear that the director in america, unlike in the auteur system, is not ultimately responsible for shit.

which is likely why my list of favorite directors is mostly populated by auteurs who have their own imprint rather than capable but invisible hired guns.