Thursday, January 3, 2013

20 Years of Cinema-Watching Part 2: 20 Favorite Directors



I apologize once again for my tardy and lazing in posting. One day, I will set a goal per post theme and stick to it. I was hoping to finish this retrospective of being a 20 year old cinephile by the end of 2012, but hey, I don't got a time machine to start a paradox with thataway and I had endured a heavy sickness during the turn of the year.

I'm still quite woozy but I intend to wrap this up before I turn 21 (because then that'll certainly kill the retrospective). Anyway, I begin by presenting my 20 favorite directors. They are the ones whose work I will always look at or read about or dissect at given moment because they fascinate me. I learn about their styles, their work ethic, their life. They are the ones that inspire me most to write about movies and make movies. In no way is it a list of directors who I feel are the best (because then I'd have Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick top the damned list) but the ones that resonate most with me through their work...

I will provide a photo of them followed by my favorite sequence directed by said person (some of which may include spoilers, so I apologize in advance). No text...

I daresay though that I have more than just 20 favorite directors, so to appease myself afterwards, I will have a heavy honorable mention section to the directors whom also have earned my satisfaction and frequent attention. I'm OCD like that....






















HONORABLE MENTIONS

  • Woody Allen (Annie Hall)
  • George Romero (Dawn of the Dead)
  • Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard)
  • Jim Jarmusch (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai)
  • Penelope Spheeris (Wayne's World)
  • Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)
  • Brad Silberling (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events)
  • David Fincher (Fight Club)
  • Wong Kar-Wai (2046)
  • Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)
  • Rian Johnson (Brick)
  • Jackie Chan (Project A)
  • John Ford (Stagecoach)
  • Ridley Scott (Blade Runner)
  • George Lucas (Star Wars)
  • Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo)
  • Kevin Smith (Dogma)
  • Wes Craven (Scream)
  • Michael Mann (Collateral)
  • Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins)
  • Terry Gilliam (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
  • Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly)
  • Wes Anderson (Rushmore)
  • Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror)
  • Roman Polanski (Chinatown)
  • Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings)
  • Sidney Lumet (Serpico)
  • Michel Gondry (Hyperballad)
  • Jean-Luc Godard (Band of Outsiders)
  • Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai)
  • Werner Herzog (Aguirre: The Wrath of God)
  • Buster Keaton (The General)
  • Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
  • Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses)
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2 comments:

  1. MikeJanuary 4, 2013 at 10:15 AM

    Cool list (and blog in general). Here's mine-

    Coens (they are my favorite directors and I couldn't limit myself to just one)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Ge4F4E9JE

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBqbMZ23n5o

    Martn Scorsese-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b6L1uq_bik

    Michael Mann-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDT1D7ysaeo

    David Lynch-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_VEQI2nS48

    Clint Eastwood (OK, he's pretty inconsistent, but he made 3 of my all time favorite movies)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbiUI9HRzmo

    I'm currently in the process of expanding my cinematic horizons- i.e. watching older/foreign films. So far, my favorite foreign director is Jean Luc Godard. And I've also really liked all the Hitchcock and Kubrick I've seen, but haven't seen enough of them to call them my 'favorites'. The only one on your list that I don't really care for is Sam Raimi, but then again I haven't seen either of the Evil Dead films, which are his most acclaimed. O well.

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    Replies
    1. STinGJanuary 5, 2013 at 5:31 PM

      Very cool selection of favorite directors. Eastwood has his inconsistency, but a lot of the times, he knows what he's doing and the result is fantastic.

      The Coens are my favorite filmmakers as well, with their faults but always some impact on me.

      Raimi, on the other hand, he's the guy who makes modern movies fun. I absolutely love The Evil Dead trilogy and the Spider-Man duology for their humor, excitement and honesty (I pretend Spider-Man 3 doesn't exist, though... Oh please, don't exist) and to see them both begin to get the gritty reboot treatment (especially when it did not fit Spider-Man) hurts me right in the childhood.
      Didn't think Drag Me to Hell, Darkman or the Quick and the Dead were bad neither. Not excited about Oz though. :/

      I also didn't put a ranking for my Top 20, but just for shits and giggles
      20. Brian DePalma (Scarface)
      19. Guillermo Del Toro (fav movie - Pan's Labyrinth; Clip from Hellboy)
      18. John Carpenter (The Thing)
      17. Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future)
      16. Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing)
      15. Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream)
      14. Sam Raimi (Fav movie - Evil Dead II; Clip is from Spider-Man)
      13. Steven Spielberg (Jaws)
      12. Park Chan-wook (Oldboy)
      11. Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker's Dracula)
      10. Akira Kurosawa (Fav movie - Yojimbo; Clip is from Ran)
      9. Charles Chaplin (Fav movie - The Gold Rush; Clip is from City Lights)
      8. Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey)
      7. Ingmar Bergman (Persona)
      6. David Lynch (Blue Velvet)
      5. F.W. Murnau (Faust)
      4. Sergio Leone (Fav movie - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Clip is from Once Upon a Time in the West)
      3. Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
      2. Martin Scorsese (Fav movie - Taxi Driver; Clip is from Raging Bull)
      1. Joel and Ethan Coen (The Big Lebowski)

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