Best film director

[hans de vries]

well, that seems to have been a real threadkilller

 

[Mark Nicholson]

Sergio Leone.

 

[Bill Anderson]

There are some really decent names being slung around, but, no Ed Wood!
OK, his early work?

Have any of you guys watched Benjamin Buttons in reverse? Pretty decent film- it'll make you cry till you laugh.

TOM- I couldn't agree with you more.

 

[Jason Murphy]

well, that seems to have been a real threadkilller

Nothing like Matthew Barney to kill threads. Probably also helps when more than a handful of people have seen the films.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that the art world and the cinema world have different aesthetic criteria when it comes to the audio-visual moving image. That said, I believe (as you may have alluded to) that much video art is made (and often received) with a total disregard for and ignorance of cinema as an art form. Which I suppose wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't know some great avant-garde filmmakers from the 1960s who were working through many of the same artistic issues then that many video artists seem to be working through now.

Admittedly, video IS a different medium from film, but it's not so different that it removes itself completely from the concerns of cinema, aesthetic or otherwise.

To bring this back to Matthew Barney, it seems clear to me that with Cremasters 1-5 and Drawing Restraint 9, he's working with cinema as his medium, and I guess I simply don't believe that he should be given a pass just because he comes at it from the art world (where he clearly has superstar status) and not the film world. Much of the sculpture and performance work within his videos is interesting, but the videos themselves are not.

Just for clarification, I don't see either the use of video or being a solo filmmaker without a crew as remotely being an impediment to producing great works of cinema. There are many excellent examples of both.

 

[hans de vries]

Nothing like Matthew Barney to kill threads. Probably also helps when more than a handful of people have seen the films.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that the art world and the cinema world have different aesthetic criteria when it comes to the audio-visual moving image. That said, I believe (as you may have alluded to) that much video art is made (and often received) with a total disregard for and ignorance of cinema as an art form. Which I suppose wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't know some great avant-garde filmmakers from the 1960s who were working through many of the same artistic issues then that many video artists seem to be working through now.

Admittedly, video IS a different medium from film, but it's not so different that it removes itself completely from the concerns of cinema, aesthetic or otherwise.

To bring this back to Matthew Barney, it seems clear to me that with Cremasters 1-5 and Drawing Restraint 9, he's working with cinema as his medium, and I guess I simply don't believe that he should be given a pass just because he comes at it from the art world (where he clearly has superstar status) and not the film world. Much of the sculpture and performance work within his videos is interesting, but the videos themselves are not.

Just for clarification, I don't see either the use of video or being a solo filmmaker without a crew as remotely being an impediment to producing great works of cinema. There are many excellent examples of both.

Even though a huge point is always made in the art world of the material a work is made of, I don't think the difference between video and film is the reason why artists don't produce cinema, which ofcourse they do when they step over into the world of cinema like Julian Schabel; and I guess that's an important point for me; Julian Schnabel stepped over, Matthew Barney didn't; Barney uses cinema, rather than making it (I haven't seen all of it but I thought Cremaster 1 was excellent). I'd say that some things in art are acceptable that would be weird in cinema and vice versa; in artvideo's camera handling, editing and image quality is usually pretty poor; the use of all kinds of things in cinema like imitations of 19th century music and the obligatory dose of sex and violence to "engage the audience" would be pure sin in art. I'm sure that many video artists won't have studied avant garde cinema; likewise, most cinema composers have chosen to ignore the fact that more than a century of innovation in classical music has gone by, probably because they're afraid their young audience will run away; I remember that in one of the films in the trilogy rouge, blanc blue the wife of a recently deceased composer was followed; if I'm not mistaken this movie at the time was considered to be an arthouse movie; well, the fact that what the composer had made as a composition for the European Union turned out to be some kind of Romantic symphony killed the pretense of Art house for me, though I realized it's the kind of thing you're allowed to do in cinema in order not to lose the audience.
Also, it's only quite recently that storytelling has returned to the art world, which for the longest time was another sin; I think cinema and art mostly are very different worlds (with which I don't mean to say that cinema isn't an artform, I'm talking in the lines of theatre, literature, art, cinema etc. being different forms of art)

 

[Bill Anderson]

As far as thread killing goes, Mathew Barney's work isn't exactly impenetrable, it's full of pop memes- kinda like his wife's music. Innovative, but it's cinema preciously marketed as something else. It's small wonder few care to talk about it. And don't think it's obscure because it's considered too much for the average joe to understand or be interested in- just take a look at the SF MOMA box office when reams of (Kiki Smith) excrement were on display. Barney is fluff.
My idea of hell is a looped Jin Me Yoon retrospective- I'd rather eat Kiki's byproducts.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Sergio Leone.

 

[Peter Strietmann]

I think regardless of whether Barney's work is art or cinema, good or bad, it has stimulated extreme reactions from it's audiences. This fact alone leads me to believe that it has some merit. His work has never followed the confines of the status quo. He pushes almost everything he does to an extreme. I have never known anyone to work as hard as he does.

 

[Bill Anderson]

They all work hard, and they all deserve to be called artists.
I like Barney's work, or what I'm allowed to see of it, but
I'm not convinced he's the Avant-garde heavy he's often
billed as- that's just art speak for two thumbs up-
it's all box office pandering whether it's MOMA or Cineplex.
How would Eraser Head or Last Year at Marrienbad play
if they were released today? How do we separate the likes
of Barney from Bela Tarr or David Lynch, and on their
good days, Lars Von Trier and Gus Van Sant? Peter Greenaway?
or any single take from Theo Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze? Not by calling him an artist.

 

[kunal Jankee]

Careful, Murphy, or you'll be accused of being an ELITIST. :laugh:

I agree with you, though. Compare the work of Malick and Spielberg on their late 1990s World War II films, which came out the same year. Spielberg gave us "Saving Private Ryan," a by-the-numbers, NASCAR-style Hollywood product, complete (literally) with a waving American flag as its final shot. Mind you, I do think the film was in impressive in one respect: the opening D-day scene on the beach was a tour de force as an action set piece.

Then look at Malick's masterful and thoughtful "The Thin Red Line," which actually ponders why we as humans put ourselves through such ordeals, and how exactly we navigate through them.

One film is a masterwork of contemplative art and philosophy, the other is a mass-produced product. To me, this is a straight-forward "Pepsi Challenge," and Spielberg loses very badly, when put head-to-head with a true master like Malick.

I agree with you Tom,Malick vision stricked me when first I saw "The thin red line",I didn't know him before..