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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Best film director

I agree about the craft bit. Forget the story/script/seriousness/whatever. Getting a film done to a certain standard is a most difficult challenge. Its actually quite easy for a director to alternate their styles or pickup a good script instead of a bad one..Thats the easy part. Plus a director really should be able to direct anything..
 
It's part of what I think makes this list so tough.

How much is great writing and great acting which would just happen naturally irregardless of the director's talent? And on the other hand I look at someone like Terry Gilliam who creates visually stunning worlds but I wouldn't describe as an A rate 'director' per say. Or to an extreme you have George Lucas who has never been a good 'director' but has been an amazing visionary and thinker--Indiana Jones, Star Wars... was he a great producer? But that's not the term we normally assign to producers.

I'm more than happy to just say they're all great artists.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
you have George Lucas who has never been a good 'director' but has been an amazing visionary and thinker--Indiana Jones, Star Wars... was he a great producer? But that's not the term we normally assign to producers.
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depends.. depends on where you are
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Tarkovsky (managed to get 2 films into my top 10 so he's a shoe in), Kubrick (Hit or miss. Love Full Metal and Orange--could mostly care less about everything else), Spielberg (I'm sorry but I consider craft a huge part of directing and when it comes to craft I put Spielberg at the very top of the list. Also he made Munich which is one of my top 10 films of all time--something I can't say for Malick.), Clint Eastwood, Gilliam, Malick, Hitchcock, Aronofsky, James Cameron (but I don't know if I actually like him as a director or just producer/writer), Ridley Scott, Miyazaki, Kurosawa, David Fincher (I think he's pushed film visually for the last few years), Wachowski brothers (Their writing is awful but I think their directing is good, they got a passable performance out of Keanu Reeves for gods sake! :D), Fritz Lang, Tim burton.

A few people who do direct phenomenal movies/television shows but I don't particularly mesh with their directing:

Coen Brothers
Woody Allen
Quintin Tarantino
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Just bombs for Iran then? :001_huh: And if Americans are so in the centre of everyone's attention, why do I never see David Lynch? Mulholland Drive is one of the true milestones of American cinema. Saving Private Ryan compared to this...need I say more?
 
Steve G said:
Saw an advance screening of "The Hurt Locker" this week, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. An amazing bit of film making, in my opinion. Even better than "Redacted".
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Redacted! Are you for real. That was a real miss for me. i didn't find it interesting at all, thought the performances were very average. The only thing i liked about it was getting to hear some of U2's new music beofre the album was released. The hurt locker on the other hand, that's a great piece of filmmaking!
 
The scene in Mulholland drive of the audition where you first see the whole audition and just seconds later you really believe you're in a love scene; the scene in Wimpy's, where they play with delayed reactions so excellently. They are outstanding
 
hans de vries said:
hmm, I'd hoped for something better than that. what about some comment on Mulholland Drive, arguably the best contemporary American film?
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Lynch is one of my major influences. While Mulholland Drive is definitely a great work of his, I prefer Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet. Mulholland Drive is similar to Inland Empire in that both works transcended from "reality" into a bad dream, something no director can do better than Lynch.
 
hans de vries said:
Just bombs for Iran then?
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I would need to see a larger body of work for more Iranian directors before including them on my personal list. Perhaps you could be helpful and compile a list of films which you think best demonstrate a few director's worthiness?

And if Americans are so in the centre of everyone's attention, why do I never see David Lynch? Mulholland Drive is one of the true milestones of American cinema. Saving Private Ryan compared to this...need I say more?
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While I absolutely loved Mulholland Drive I don't think it should or can be compared to something like Munich. I found Mulholland fascinating and intellectually stimulating it didn't resonate emotionally with me. It was more like a puzzle to be solved. Two completely different movies with completely different objectives.

I thought about Lynch but he actually falls under my favorite writers not directors. I don't feel like there is anything particularly exceptional in his directing but I wouldn't at all object to someone having him on their list.
 
Some people here should get a basic information (just don't want to say an education)

about so many and totally different movie directors from all over the world.

Also if they have any chance to see some of those mostly different type movies then maybe

would change their mind, think and talk about movies in a totally another way.

For a good start I could recommend the page named:

Strictly Film School>>>Directors>>>
 
thanks for the list Sanjin! There's obviously still loads to see! I haven't found Kiarostami's daughter's name yet, but I will.
Gavin, the most important one's are Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panahi. (you should definitely see Kandahar and A Taste of Cherry)
As to Mulholland Drive, it is one of the few films that has really made a lasting impression on me. I tend to distinguish between what has a direct emotional impression, and what does even more. I have seen Lord of the Rings at least 50 times, the way I have seen Star Wars at least that often when I was a young boy. There is something in there that strongly appeals to my old boyish urge to flee into heroic phantasies in imaginary worlds; when it's well done it never fails to work for me. Pirates of the Carribean was magnificently done, and very funny; seen it at least 20 times.
But since my studies in literature and art school I've become bored with stories that so clearly go from a via b to c, where you usually can see it coming light years ahead. the film world tends to stick too long to forms that are outdated in other art forms; most film music, for instance, is an imitation of 19th century classical music.
What I love is when more is done with the form, and Mulholland Drive is obviously very strong there.
Maybe I don't have a lot of insight in directing, but the Wimpy's scene, I should think, would not be possible without excellent directing?
 
hans de vries said:
thanks for the list Sanjin! There's obviously still loads to see! I haven't found Kiarostami's daughter's name yet, but I will.
Gavin, the most important one's are Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panahi. (you should definitely see Kandahar and A Taste of Cherry)
As to Mulholland Drive, it is one of the few films that has really made a lasting impression on me. I tend to distinguish between what has a direct emotional impression, and what does even more. I have seen Lord of the Rings at least 50 times, the way I have seen Star Wars at least that often when I was a young boy. There is something in there that strongly appeals to my old boyish urge to flee into heroic phantasies in imaginary worlds; when it's well done it never fails to work for me. Pirates of the Carribean was magnificently done, and very funny; seen it at least 20 times.
But since my studies in literature and art school I've become bored with stories that so clearly go from a via b to c, where you usually can see it coming light years ahead. the film world tends to stick too long to forms that are outdated in other art forms; most film music, for instance, is an imitation of 19th century classical music.
What I love is when more is done with the form, and Mulholland Drive is obviously very strong there.
Maybe I don't have a lot of insight in directing, but the Wimpy's scene, I should think, would not be possible without excellent directing?
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As regards shot choice, Mulholland Drive, like most David Lynch films, is pretty straightforward. Recent films by Spielberg, Scorsese, Raimi, the Wachowskis (and of course many foreign art film directors, too; yes I have seen Kiarostami) are far more experimental and intricately developed as regards shooting style. Don't think a movie's capacity for complex storytelling is limited by the story or subject matter itself. Don't talk shit about Spielberg when you don't know what you're criticizing; simple stories can be masterpieces of shot choice, storytelling, and acting. Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, for instance, is an extremely simple story without a great deal of subtext but the film itself is constructed in a truly brilliant and extraordinarily complex way as regards range of narration and placement of the audience. The same can be said for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Drag Me to Hell, although neither is quite as neatly constructed a film.

Of course David Lynch is an excellent director and the Winkie's scene is an awesome scene, however simply constructed. Mulholland Drive's successes in general are more complex, but that scene's efficacy can be boiled down to a few things: shot choice, the look of the scene, and the use of subjective sound.

The scene is blocked and shot fairly simply. The entire conversation is shot/reverse at a table, but the camera is mounted on a jib and operated camera-side to give a sort of uneasy (and apparently externally-motivated) motion to the camera, and this suggests either some "outside force" (how Raimi and Carpenter use this kind of motion) or, more likely, the man's internal fears of what he saw in his dream--an indirectly subjective cue aligning us with his experience. Either way it's creepy. The mention of a dream (in dialogue), particularly in a film that literally operates in "dream logic," both aligns you with this character's thoughts and fears and makes you wonder if this horrible "face" really resides behind the diner. It's also worth noting that we only hear these two characters speak; there's no background sound, sound of other restaurant patrons, etc. This furthers the scene's dreamy, interior, sort of feeling and further aligns us with just these characters. The rest of the scene is essentially a steadicam follow intercut with steadicam POV shots (from the man's perspective as he looks around). This is a very simple but very strong cutting pattern, particularly in horror and suspense movies, for aligning us with one character's experience. We have access both to directly subjective cues (POV) and emotional reactions via the MCU steadicam follow. Notably, the ambient sound changes here. We barely hear the men's footsteps until they approach the monster, but the background (street sound) is fairly prominent. It's abstracted and muddled somehow, though; we don't hear any background dialogue or distinct noises; the sounds evoke the experience of deep fear and confusion. It's all loud yet omnidirectional and indistinct noises that are at once oppressive but intangible--overwhelming yet distant. The monster jumping out is presented in a traditional (and very simple) jump scare. We start in a POV shot, which is unsurprising as it's part of the cutting pattern (so it doesn't give the scare away), and it goes on for a second before...boom! a loud, nondiegetic noise and the monster jumps out from nowhere. We then return to see the man (whose experience we're aligned with) dying from fear as the audio grows increasingly more subjective. The cinematography style throughout the film (excepting the third act, which takes place in "reality") isn't overtly stylized and yet it's not quite realistic. The light sources are soft and motivated, but the use of on-lens diffusion and a low contrast stock gives both a dream-like "and Classical Hollywood-like" look to the film that's highly appropriate to its thematic concerns (how Hollywood itself, and not just the movies, is a "dream" that can suck you in and destroy you), but also to this particular scene's emotional ones.

Again, the scene is extremely simple: shot/reverse with uncanny camera movement, then a POV/sympathetic steadicam follow cutting pattern, and then a jump scare. The sound is highly subjective throughout. It's elegantly constructed, but it's quite a straight-forward scene.
 
hehehe, thank you for your candid, and very elaborate post. I guess I never concentrated that much on camera movement. I've noticed that whenever I was most impressed by the way a movie was shot it usually meant there was hardly any camera movement at all, as in No country for old men. I have very little interest in the need for constant movement that's so clear these days. What impressed me very much in the Winky's scene was the delayed reactions of the actor's; I was less interested in the monster, which only worked for me the first few times and afterwards became rather artifical. I guess the simplicity and straightforwardness made it all the better for me.
I am sure there were some spectacular things in Raider's of the Lost Ark; I cannot get past the boyishness of the whole thing anymore
 
I liked Mulholland Drive, and I agree that all those crazy editing techniques worked for the story.

I recently went back and rented Eraserhead, hoping to see the same sort of magic at work. And, boy was that a disappointment. I couldn't get through it, as there seemed to be no story whatsoever, and the entire thing was merely an exercise in annoying the audience.

I guess it was an experiment and a learning experience (for at least one person). But, I did not find it watchable (barely so at 6X speed).
 
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