Kino
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Post by Kino on Feb 11, 2008 1:20:00 GMT
Wetdog, now that you're back: a) To emerge in the last decade or so (most promising). Do you mean give or take since the year 1990? "Emerge" as in first notable film (short or feature-length) or debut film (short or feature-length) that falls in your timeline?
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Feb 11, 2008 2:06:47 GMT
I meant since the mid-'90s, but I deliberately left it open to interpretation. And by 'emerge' I meant come to some kind of notable attention... and take that to mean whatever you will.
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Post by Mike Sullivan on Feb 11, 2008 7:17:20 GMT
I won't list it in the manner you all have.
I'll list my five favorite filmmakers.
Martin Scorsese Woody Allen Billy Wilder Alfred Hitchcock Akira Kurosawa
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Mar 9, 2008 21:42:26 GMT
I have two new and more precise categories.
Identify the top five Old Mastaz and the top five Yung Bludz.
Who are the top five active filmmakers over the age of 70?
Who are the top five active filmmakers under the age of 40?
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Post by svsg on Mar 11, 2008 4:13:17 GMT
Just curious.... why aren't you interested in the list for 40-70 age band? Anyway I'll come up with my list soon, though I can't claim to have seen many movies of the directors that come to my mind immediately. Are we allowed to choose directors even if we have watched just one or two movies of theirs.
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Kino
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Post by Kino on Mar 11, 2008 8:43:54 GMT
I have two new and more precise categories. Identify the top five Old Mastaz and the top five Yung Bludz. Who are the top five active filmmakers over the age of 70? Who are the top five active filmmakers under the age of 40? What if there's an old master way past his/her prime making average, below-average, bad, and/or forgettable movies? (Not like there's any directors like that coming to mind, but just in case.) Do we count them?
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 11, 2008 11:59:30 GMT
I can only think of Godard for the first category.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Mar 11, 2008 15:52:41 GMT
I have two new and more precise categories. Identify the top five Old Mastaz and the top five Yung Bludz. Who are the top five active filmmakers over the age of 70? Who are the top five active filmmakers under the age of 40? What if there's an old master way past his/her prime making average, below-average, bad, and/or forgettable movies? (Not like there's any directors like that coming to mind, but just in case.) Do we count them? No, I was thinking more of a present-tense top five. Which filmmakers would you be most excited to see a new film by? That's the approach I'd take. Who the best are in each category right now. And remember Rohmer retired last year. svsg, if I asked for a general top five almost all the filmmakers mentioned would be between the ages of 40 and 70. It's not that I'm not interested, I'm just trying to shift the focus.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 11, 2008 18:33:37 GMT
By this (good) notion, I'd have to say, for the young'ns:
Christopher Nolan - Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins and The Prestige all this decade? Yup, count me in. For The Dark Knight and anything beyond...
Darren Aronofsky - Incredibly ambitious; and though synopses alone don't get my mouth watering for his upcoming projects, you'd have to say he's getting better and better. Thus far.
Paul Thomas Anderson - He's seems as enthusiastic about film as Scorsese, and he seems to know exactly what he wants; whatever of early flaws, I rank his films in reverse chronological order, which is a good sign indeed. I've no reason to think he won't get better.
Shane Meadows - Perhaps not ambitious or grounded in theory enough to become a great. In fact, I'm alost certain he won't; but if we're going by "rushing to the cinema to see new films by [name]", he has to be one, because of the milieu he depicts (northern England council house estates), and his effective portrayal of power relations between violent men. I like that sort of stuff.
Sofia Coppola - made my favourite film ever. And two other brilliant films. As much the stylist as her dad, and very subtle. I love the quiet montages of Marie Antoinette. I can't think of a more hypnotic film about loneliness in the city than Lost In Translation.
possibly: Harmony Korine - perhaps a preumptious choice, considering I'm not impressed by Mister Lonely's trailer; but I'm downloading it at present, and will watch it immediately.
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Pherdy
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Post by Pherdy on Mar 12, 2008 12:07:41 GMT
To the initial question.
a) Wes Anderson. Christopher Nolan. Sam Mendes. Alexander Payne. Marc Forster.
b) Martin Scorsese. Ridley Scott. Coen brothers. Tim Burton. Kim Ki-Duk.
c) Martin Scorsese. Francis Ford Coppola. Sergio Leone. Stanley Kubrick. let's kick in Paul Verhoeven for fun.
No why's here. Taste of the moment.
I believe Sidney Lumet is way past 70 so he'd be in my old mastaz list.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Mar 16, 2008 0:54:48 GMT
5 Over 70:Theo Angelopoulos ( The Dust of Time) Alejandro Jodorowsky ( King Shot -- dreaming is free) Jan Svankmajer ( Surviving Life) Jacques Rivette ( ) Alain Resnais ( L'Incident) I dithered between Resnais, Polanski and Godard. 5 Under 40:Apichatpong Weerasethakul ( ) Zhang-ke Jia ( 24 City) Carlos Reygadas ( ) Paul Thomas Anderson ( ) Vincenzo Natali ( Splice) Natali pips Aronofsky because Splice sounds infinitely more appealing than The Wrestler. I also have a very good feeling about Lynne Ramsay. Douglas Buck simply hasn't made enough films, and Sisters isn't getting good buzz, but Prologue is a little mini-masterpiece.
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Kino
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Post by Kino on Mar 17, 2008 20:29:04 GMT
My favorites -
a) To emerge in the last decade or so (most promising)
I think these directors are already great or some of the best right now so they're not promising in a greatness-to-come sense, but promising in an all-time-great way.
1) Hirokazu Kore-eda 2) Paul Thomas Anderson 3) Jia Zhang-ke 4) Brad Bird 5) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Honorable Mention: Lynne Ramsay, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jafar Panahi
b) Currently working
1) Hou Hsiao-hsien 2) Chris Marker 3) Frederick Wiseman 4) Claire Denis 5) Errol Morris Honorable Mention: Terence Davies, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tsai Ming-liang, Yuri Norstein, Charles Burnett, Victor Erice, Hayao Miyazaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Su Friedrich, Wong Kar-wai, Chantal Akerman
c) Of all time 1) Yasujiro Ozu 2) Jean Renoir 3) Edward Yang 4) Jacques Tati 5) Andrei Tarkovsky
5 over 70 1) Chris Marker 2) Frederick Wiseman 3) Jacques Rivette 4) Alain Resnais 5) Agnes Varda Honorable Mention: Theodoros Angelopoulos, Ken Loach, Roman Polanski, Yoji Yamada, Jean-Luc Godard, Jan Svankmajer, Manoel de Oliveira, Seijun Suzuki, Im Kwon-taek, Lau Kar-leung, Woody Allen, Peter Watkins (dormant), Isao Takahata (dormant)
5 under 40 1) Paul Thomas Anderson 2) Jia Zhang-ke 3) Lynne Ramsay 4) Apichatpong Weerasethakul 5) Anders Thomas Jensen Honorable Mention: Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho, Xu Jinglei, Michael Polish Honorable Mention (1 great film and their newest ones have positive reviews; raves in the case of Bahrani): Ramin Bahrani, Fernando Eimbcke Honorable Mention (1 film released; their newest ones are in post-production): So Yong Kim, Peter Sollett
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Mar 18, 2008 0:36:45 GMT
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Kino
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Post by Kino on Mar 18, 2008 0:59:27 GMT
Thanks for the great news concerning Davies! Fixed. He'd be in my 5 slot, but Morris' most recent has been getting positive reviews.
I swear I thought I read somewhere that Peter Watkins had a new project, too. It's not showing up on IMDb.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Mar 18, 2008 2:18:59 GMT
Would you mind making threads for Erroll Morris and Chantal Akerman? I've been interested for a good while.
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Post by svsg on Mar 21, 2008 5:00:40 GMT
I am not in favor of sorting or slotting them based on some criterion.
My favorites (in no order) Aronofsky, Darren Coppola, Francis Ford Fellini, Federico Hitchcock, Alfred Ray, Satyajit Tarr, Béla Wong Kar-wai
Runners up Jarmusch, Jim Tarkovsky, Andrei
I badly want to explore these filmmakers Jodorowsky, Alejandro Pasolini, Pier Paolo
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 21, 2008 23:42:21 GMT
I am not in favor of sorting or slotting them based on some criterion. My favorites (in no order)"My favourites" is a criterion as much as any other. I think wetdog was trying to get us to recognise possible future talent and established greats still making good films (many no longer do).
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Post by svsg on Mar 22, 2008 1:00:40 GMT
Fair enough, probably only Aronofsky from my list fits in the young category. And Wong and Tarr are the only others still making movies. These are the only ones I look forward to? Sad state... I need to goout and watch more movies, maybe more indie ones to start with.
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Kino
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Post by Kino on Apr 10, 2008 4:43:59 GMT
seyfried, I'm very eager to see your filmmakers for the different categories. Answering "why" would be the cherry on top (unfair to ask of you since many of us haven't).
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Post by seyfried on Apr 10, 2008 5:54:21 GMT
The "why" part takes a while...OK, not really, but I'll just go one category at a time (skipping the first category because I'm such a pain in the ass). Currently Working(Firstly, if we're doing this by recent body of work Scorsese wouldn't make the list; he does based on the entire resume, but for the sake of redundancy I'll exclude him. Also, this is in no way, shape, or form a definitive list.) David Lynch. He's said film is dead...for him. (Whew. He's not Godard.) Fine. And while I think the "sense of liberation" that he claims digital is giving him is great and all there's a sense of something lost in the transmission that I think he might not ever be able to get back ("the 50s are still here...they never went away"...hauntological enough for you?) Nevertheless, I still think he's one of the few, if not the only to really tap deep into the language, the syntax, of cinema - then again, maybe if Antonin Artaud would have stayed around longer to fulfill his "prophecy" we'd have another. As another member here put it, he's "working on instinct a lot of the time" and it's not just that, but he's making art in a way that's built of instincts and cognition. Perhaps, what's doomed to lost is the craft of his work, as if digital technology and all its great sense of liberty and directness will lose the fact that he's still having to compose all of this and work within such deliberate limitations. I just wonder if he'll work as hard - which is probably an awful thing to say given that no director works harder. But I'm rambling, and if I had to make some fucking unique point here (or at least try to) it would be his sound. And I don't just mean the dense milieu. I mean his use of music as "sympton" or sinthome, really (the true meaning is loss in the English translation, dammit). In Blue Velvet you get the common praise in stuff like.."well, In Dreams was great...juxtaposing the violence and dreaminess...and the small-town Americana feel". Yeah, you do, but in Lynch's film music is used to perpetuate characters out of stasis, in the case of Frank it's him lip-syncing words reinterpreting the words for aggression, furthermore recalling Ketty Lester's Love Letters and reinterpreting it for the sake. In these cases, music functions as an element not impervious to the actors - as most films do. Often (and you'll see this anytime you watch a special feature or documentary on his sets) Lynch has his actors perform under the music, and even when not so, it's clear that he's directing more from the feel and cadences inherent to the soundtrack rather than tacking it on in post-production. In the case of Lost Highway, we begin to hear This Mortal Coil’s "Song to the Siren," but the song is cut off and replace by musical sound effects when Fred is unable to perform sexually. The song later appears when the more potent, "attractive" Fred is able to satisfy his sexual yearnings and perform. I'm rambling again, and there's a bit more clarity to be made with the Lacan readings...but moving on.... David Cronenberg I like his new stuff almost in the way I like Mann's new stuff: it doesn't preach. I'm not saying that the majority of their earlier films did it, but in the case of something like Videodrome, its early overstatedness doesn't actual feel particularly useful. He's such a master of tone and style, and these little sharp ends that poked out in his earlier films have been used by him in his recent films. Call them performativism, call them reactions to the death of irony or 9/11, but I think he's making post-film within film. And for that matter, going beyond meta-genre to something more. He's denying agency left and right for his heroes and heroines, and he's telling it with such a flat style that audiences were forced to take him seriously. I think he's going places...again. Michael MannI'm sick of talking about him at the moment. And frankly, if he makes his films like Miami Vice from here on out...he's going to make a lot of people really unhappy. And that's hot. I love how people are obsessed with their jobs in his films (trying to say something there, Mike?). I love how their only way of negotiating this problem is by suppressing it even more. And that, just like everything that wants out -- love, escapism, etc - ...they get out. And want a picture that says a thousand words, well here you go: Alfonso CuaronI saw Zizek's commentary on the Children of Men dvd and I was sold like never before. I mean, I had really loved the film, but had vehemently defended mostly its cinematic elements rather than its texture. But nevertheless, Y Tu Mama Tambien film will always be my favorite. And for my money, nobody's ever made a better Harry Potter film. He's a pupil of the Bunuel film school, and if you see his early films you can see bits and pieces...but he's always been more of an idealist than satirical. And he's always capable of coaxing a level of poignancy with formal elements of film that few modern directors are even trying. He's one of the few that does the long take not just because it looks cool but because it works. Brian DePalmaEh, everybody always hears too much about him....I'll cheat and do one more. Sofia CoppolaInstead of shaking the nepotism, she took it head on with Marie Antoinette. And while I think she slaps us in the face with a few of the anachronisms, I'll never have to apologize for Lost in Translation. How gorgeous of a film is that? I also like Europeans and Asians...I swear!
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