New Directors Pantheon

As far as I can tell (and I’m sure the internet will politely correct me if I’m wrong) the only real significant challenges to the Director Pantheon outlined by Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929 – 1968 came from Pauline Kael who outright rejected the whole idea of auteurism and Sarris himself when he opted to reappraise the work of Billy Wilder. This is why The Sarris Canon has been held up as “the canon” for nearly a half-century, unmoved by time.

Though women like Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber flourished in the early, pioneering days of cinema, Sarris’ decision to focus on the post-sound world left Ida Lupino as the lone female name in his whole book. And even then she is relegated to the “Oddities, One-Shots, and Newcomers” section. His decision to focus on American Cinema also resulted in many great foreign directors either not making the cut, or being included solely for work done in their non-native tongue. And it should go without saying that people of color and (uncloseted) queer voices are nowhere to be found.

Of course the establishment of that original canon helped to bring once neglected names like Hawks and Hitchcock to the forefront of serious cinematic discourse. Without Sarris’ book and the works of critics like André Bazin, we would likely still be holding up only the stuffiest of the stuffy as worthy of study. They made it OK to take genre seriously. But now those once controversial names have become The Establishment. They are the names that you cannot make a list without first consulting. That is why we asked our contributors to put forth 25 names rather than the traditional 10.

Even if someone had chosen to include all 14 of Sarris’ Pantheon Directors, they would still need to come up with 11 more to fill out their list. And for those 11 names they could choose from the entire span of cinema history, regardless of genre or medium. No nation, gender, age, orientation or race was off-limits and it was up to the participant to determine what made a "great" director. Even those original Pantheon Directors were not off limits. Our hope was to create a New Pantheon where old names and new names can sit side by side and be part of the same conversation.

Of course nobody is going to be completely happy with this list. It still overwhelmingly favors straight, white males. And now it also has the added taboo of favoring the living to the dead! But I do think that this list is a step in the right direction. If anything it is a starting point for debate. Like the best criticism, this should start a conversation. And like Sarris’ original list, it is meant to make people seriously consider names that they might never before have considered. Please enjoy and don’t forget to check out all the wonderful ballots for countless other names worthy of your attention.

You can download all of the submitted ballots as a pdf by clicking HERE. Don't know who a particular list-maker is? Click their name and find out more!

Honorable Mentions: Ernst Lubitsch, François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, John Carpenter, Luis Buñuel, Michael Powell, Pedro Almodóvar, Spike Lee, Woody Allen

Scorsese on Celluloid

We have many names for what we do – cinema, movies, motion pictures. And…film. We’re called directors, but more often we’re called filmmakers. Filmmakers. I’m not suggesting that we ignore the obvious: HD isn’t coming, it’s here. The advantages are numerous: the cameras are lighter, it’s much easier to shoot at night, we have many more means at our disposal for altering and perfecting our images. And, the cameras are more affordable: films really can be made now for very little money. Even those of us still shooting on film finish in HD, and our movies are projected in HD. So, we could easily agree that the future is here, that film is cumbersome and imperfect and difficult to transport and prone to wear and decay, and that it’s time to forget the past and say goodbye – really, that could be easily done. Too easily.

It seems like we’re always being reminded that film is, after all, a business. But film is also an art form, and young people who are driven to make films should have access to the tools and materials that were the building blocks of that art form. Would anyone dream of telling young artists to throw away their paints and canvases because iPads are so much easier to carry? Of course not. In the history of motion pictures, only a minuscule percentage of the works comprising our art form was not shot on film. Everything we do in HD is an effort to recreate the look of film. Film, even now, offers a richer visual palette than HD. And, we have to remember that film is still the best and only time-proven way to preserve movies. We have no assurance that digital informaton will last, but we know that film will, if properly stored and cared for.

Our industry – our filmmakers – rallied behind Kodak because we knew that we couldn’t afford to lose them, the way we’ve lost so many other film stocks. This news is a positive step towards preserving film, the art form we love.

Martin Scorsese, 2014

Monuments Men: Cinematic Graves

In addition to being a film geek, I am also a comic book geek. As such, I follow comic book writer Matt Fraction's Tumblr. Recently he posted a photo of filmmaker Chris Marker's adorable grave and it started me down a Google hole of looking up the graves of famous filmmakers. Many were rather plain, others were quite opulent. Here are the Top-5 that I came across in my searching. It might cost a pretty penny, but I hope some day to visit all of these sacred cinematic shrines. Did I leave out any important ones?

Chris Marker

Happy Birthday, Lubitsch!

Today is the great Ernst Lubitsch's (1892-1947) birthday! His films exuded wit and sophistication, and the phrase "the Lubitsch touch" came to define that certain special something that his films had. He was one of the first directors that I remember seeking out in my early high school film-lovin' days, and his movies will always hold a special place in my heart.  Here are a few I recommend:

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Two thieves fall in love and partner up to con a wealthy and attractive woman who gets a little too close for comfort to the gentleman thief.

Ninotchka (1939)

A no-nonsense Russian woman goes to Paris on business and finds herself swooning very uncharacteristically over a debonair man she's supposed to be working against.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Two clerks in a shop in Budapest can't stand each other...little do they know that they've been writing anonymous letters to each other and are falling in love!

To Be Or Not To Be (1942)

A group of actors finds themselves tangled up in a plot to thwart a German spy during the Nazi occupation in Poland.

There will never be another Lubitsch. Pay tribute to this great director and track down some of these titles! You won't regret it!

Salute These Shorts

While I will agree with you that the "shorts" section of The Academy Awards' telecast can be pretty boring, some short films can be pretty awesome. The following is a list of Craig's 15 favorite short films. They span a wide range of genres, styles, countries and even mediums. They are also not in any particular order. Where possible I have included a link to somewhere to view each film online. What are some of your favorite short films? Let us know in the comments!

Scorpio Rising (dir. Kenneth Anger)

The Completist: Jim Jarmusch

A few weeks back I read a tweet where someone was demeaning the quality of the film writing on Letterboxd. Seeing as 'Becca'lise and I are both huge proponents of the site (find us here and here) this came as a bit of an insult. I've personally read many fascinating and insightful pieces on the site and as a result have found certain reviewers that I make a point of regularly reading. One such critic is Simone. I'm not really sure where she finds the time to watch as much film as she does (in June alone she watched 100 films!) but boy do I appreciate the writing that comes out of it. Here's hoping that you do too!

*      *      *

One of the signs you may be obsessed with cinema is that you like to complete the entire filmographies of notable directors. It's easy to knock out the directors who only have a handful of films, especially if they've been released in the past couple of decades. Last year I did Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Guy Ritchie. Sometimes a director's body of work is too large to get to everything, and other times it's too difficult to find the more obscure ones. In those cases, I like to pick 10 of their most well-known titles in the short term and dig into the rest over time. This year I've challenged myself by taking on directors with horror films (I’m such a wimp!) like Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. I've steadily gone through the the Coens and Martin Scorsese over the past year and I’m hoping to be finished with both in the next month or so.

A few months ago, I randomly decided to watch Dead Man, a 1995 black-and-white western starring Johnny Depp. It's beautifully shot and endlessly stylish, but I found the story and tone too opaque to fully appreciate on a first watch. When I looked into the rest of director Jim Jarmusch's filmography, I was surprised to discover that I’d seen two of his films and formed wildly different opinions on them. I enjoyed Broken Flowers and hated Coffee and Cigarettes. It got me thinking that I should explore his other work. What's unique about his filmography is that almost all of his films are currently available to stream:

Hulu Plus
• Permanent Vacation (1980)
• Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
• Down by Law (1986)
• Mystery Train (1989)
• Night on Earth (1991)

Netflix Instant
• Dead Man (1995)
• Ghost Dog (1999)
• Broken Flowers (2005)
• The Limits of Control (2009)

Amazon
• Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)

With all of his works so easily accessible, I decided to make him my next project. It was strange to go into it without already being a die-hard fan like I’ve been in the past. This endeavor was more to understand why he's well-regarded, recognize his place in film history, and identify common themes and stylistic flourishes. I didn't really come out of the project more of a fan than when I started, but I suspect that if I go back and watch Dead Man, I'll have a better-informed and articulate opinion of it than "It's very cool, but I don't get it." His films move along at a languid, glacial pace and don't have much to say. The soundtracks are always excellent. There’s usually a diverse mix of people on screen and the stories he tells are often about people on the fringes of society. I mostly enjoyed the style and atmosphere, attributable to gorgeous cinematography and subdued performances from both amateurs and seasoned professionals. Even though it's hard to deny a lot of his films are deeply flawed, I find the majority of them unforgettable and extremely creative.

It was definitely a worthwhile experience, but what's missing from this and other projects I've completed is an understanding of the person behind the art. To be able to ground Jarmusch's unique style in a specific context and place in history would probably increase my admiration for him. Maybe one day I'll go deeper than his Wikipedia page and read a biography on him. Maybe I'll just leave him a mystery. As much as I want to go back and research him and the other directors I've looked at, I know myself too well. Faced with the choice between reading about films and watching them, I'd much rather spend my time on the latter.

-Simone

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE MARTY!!!

MARTY SCORSESE TURNS 70 TODAY! Happy Birthday to our greatest living director. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful films as well as all the work you've done towards the preservation of film.  When you die (many, many, many years from now) we will do our damnedest to get you canonized as the patron Saint of Cinema! 

What's your favorite Scorsese film?

Behind The Shot: Week End

If you've ever seen Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 masterpiece Week End, chances are you'll remember the 8-minute tracking shot of a traffic jam. It's kind of hard to forget. Anyway, I'd always assumed this shot was accomplished by placing the camera in another car and running it parallel to the traffic jam...until I came across this photo on Criterion Corner's Tumblr. Mind. BLOWN.

Devil's Advocate: The Cinema of Quentin Tarantino

In the cinema of Quentin Tarantino there are two distinctly different universes. First there is the "real world" where films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs take place. These films tend to be shot rather simply in  long takes and on real locations. On the flip-side there is the "movie universe" which consists of movies characters in the "real world" would go see, stuff like Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds. These films are characterized by bravura camera moves and highly stylized sets. Up until Basterds, the scale was pretty balanced. Three films in the "real world", three films in the "movie universe". Yet as we can already see in the trailer for Django Unchained, that balance is about to shift in favor of the "movie universe". Is this a good thing?

When Quentin first made the changeover from Jackie Brown to Kill Bill it was like a revelation. We were granted a chance to see an artist spread his wings and soar. Suddenly the dialogue guy was doing action, and doing it well. And if you thought it was a fluke there was the car-chase in Death Proof to confirm it as the real deal. And then there was Inglorious Basterds... Now please don't get me wrong, Basterds is by no means a bad film (I actually saw it twice on opening weekend and own the blu-ray) but to me it feels a bit like Tarantino starting to crest. I don't care who you are, if you're constantly trying to out-do yourself, you are eventually going to find yourself running out of steam.

How do I out-do the House of Blue Leaves and that car chase? WORLD WAR II!

Three years later...

How do I out-do World War II? SLAVERY!

But where do you go after slavery? A Bible story? The story of creation? Is Tarantino going to become the next Tim Burton, hopping from genre to genre, putting his little spin on it (verbose dialogue, graphic violence and anachronistic music), and moving on to the next one? And at what point does style become self-parody? Orson Welles once explained style thusly:

A man goes to his doctor and says, 'I don't know what's the matter with me, Doc, but I just don't feel right.' So the doctor says, 'All right - well, tell me everything you do from the moment you wake up till you go to sleep.' The guys says, 'OK - well, I wake up, then I vomit, then I brush my...' 'Wait a second,' the doctor says, 'you mean right after you wake up every morning you vomit?' The man says, ' Yeah, doesn't everybody?' That's me and my supposedly strange way of seeing things. To me it all seems quite normal.

Has Quentin reached the point where he has to gag himself in order to vomit? Discuss!

The 12 Months of Kubrick

If we are to believe the ancient Mayans and Roland Emmerich, the world is going to be ending in less than 365 days. With the apocalypse so close at hand it is time to reevaluate. It is time to decide what really matters and make every minute count. Seeing as we are Cinema Nerds, we have decided to dedicate 1,549 of those minutes to watching the films of Stanley Kubrick - one last time.

Watched end to end this feat could be accomplished in a little over a day. But where's the fun in that? It'd be over far too quickly. With doomsday looming, our focus should be on stretching things out and making them last. Thus we have decided to watch exactly one movie a month.

Jaunary - Killer's Kiss
February - The Killing
March - Paths of Glory
April - Spartacus
May - Lolita
June - Dr. Strangelove
July - 2001: A Space Odyssey
August - A Clockwork Orange
September - Barry Lyndon
October - The Shining
November - Full Metal Jacket
December - Eyes Wide Shut


12 films, 12 months! His filmography (minus Fear and Desire) fits the Gregorian Calendar like a glove! So let's learn to stop worrying and make this the best countdown to Armageddon EVER! And remember...

The Man Who Changed The Movies

My love of Roger Corman has been well documented. So it should go without saying that I am over the moon excited for this upcoming documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel! And guess what?There's even going to be a screening of it tomorrow at LACMA!

Unfortunately I am going to have to miss it due to work. But luckily for you, the fine folks over at Badass Digest are giving away 2 pairs of tickets! So I highly recommend you get your asses in gear and try to win those babies. I on the other hand will have to content myself with watching this trailer on an endless loop...

Master Woody

Though we haven't seen fit to publish a list like Andrew Sarris, Cinema Nerds definitely has a pantheon of directors who we think are absolutely the bee's knees. One such auteur is Woody Allen.

Needless to say, we here at Nerd HQ are over the moon about the fact that later this month Woody will be the subject of a 3+ hour American Masters documentary on PBS!

Watch Woody Allen: A Documentary on PBS. See more from American Masters.

Part 1 will air November 20th and Part 2 on the 21st, both at 9pm. Not to be missed!

Spike Lee Rising

Well I guess this will mark our first ever sequel to a post. Very recently we were lamenting the fact that Spike Lee had not made a theatrical feature in 3 years. Well here we are 10 days later and out of the blue Spike tweets:

Wake Up. I been up since 430am. On the way to the set of THE NEW SPIKE LEE JOINT.Today is 1st Day of Shooting.Awwwwwwwwwwww Sheeeeeeeeeeeeet

So what is this mystery project you ask? Well according to blackfilm.com it's called Red Hook Summer and will also feature Spike in FRONT of the camera...as Mookie...from Do The Right Thing. Awwwwwwwwwww Sheeeeeeeet is right son.

And if all that wasn't enough: Spike has officially been confirmed as the director for the Oldboy remake. I guess when it rains it pours and thank God cause Spike was due for a sprinkle. Ya Dig? Sho nuff!

Movies of the Future!

In 1990 Lloyd Kaufman directed a film called Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. In the film there is a car chase that climaxes with a car crashing into another car and flipping through the air. While standard for most action films, this was a VERY expensive stunt for a Troma film. So expensive in fact, that they incorporated the same car flip footage into their next film Tromeo & Juliet (and three subsequent films)

CUT-TO: 

Present Day

Action "auteur" Michael Bay is being accused of recycling effects shots from his film The Island into his latest "opus" Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. Check out this video for the evidence: 

Does this mean that Michael Bay is an avid reader of Lloyd Kaufman's Make Your Own Damn Movie and that he is gradually embracing a more economical and personal film style? Can we expect his next film to feature toxic waste and a giant penis monster?

I wouldn't count on it. But damn wouldn't that be an interesting turn of events?

2012...with a bang

If the world does in fact end on December 21, 2012, cineastes will have at least been able to see one more film a piece from three of the (arguably) greatest working American filmmakers. Quentin Tarantino just finished a script, Paul Thomas Anderson is set to start shooting in June and Wes Anderson already has a film already in front of the camera. It ALMOST makes up for the fact that the world won't make it to Christmas.

Oh yeah Batman and The Avengers too!

Still gonna miss Christmas though...

An Honorable Use of 3D

Oh if only this 3D craze would just die already! It's a gimmick, it isn't the future of cinema and in a few years we'll all be watching "I Love the 2000s" and laughing at how silly we all were. You don't need to see The Great Gatsby in 3D! 

That being said, there are some filmmakers out there who could potentially do interesting things with 3D. Jackass 3D was fascinating for it's use of cutting-edge technology to document such crudely simple gags and I cannot wait to see what Martin Scorsese accomplishes on Hugo Cabret. 

Another artist who I am intrigued to see work in 3D, is Japanese wild-man Takashi Miike, who will be debuting his remake of Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

The fact that Miike seems to have mellowed in recent years actually makes his decision to use the format all the more interesting. His earlier films like Ichi The Killer and Dead or Alive were so relentless that use of 3D would likely turn your brain to Jell-O. But as evidenced by this teaser trailer, Hara-Kiri seems to be a film content to take its' time. 

Ideally this will mean action sequences that are much more visceral, because they have been earned through slow build-up. A good Samurai film is one that takes its' time finding the perfect moment to STRIKE! This should also be used as a guiding principle for 3D filmmakers. Not everything needs to be a peak. Sometimes you need valleys.

John Waters: Pope of Trash

On this day 65 years ago, a child was born unto us to save the world from good taste. It has been far too long since he last perpetrated an act of cinematic anarchy. Hopefully a new one is not too far around the corner. Celebrate today by watching one of his many "exercises in poor taste". Bonus points if you watch something other than Hairspray.

Year of the Omnivore

Not really sure why he did this but, Stephen Soderbergh has made a list of all the media he has consumed in the last 365 days. Books, films, plays, TV programs. The only thing missing is music. But I guess then the list would be bordering on OCD. Did someone ask him to do this? Does he do it on his own? Regardless, It is a fascinating insight into the consumption habits of a great artist.

Junkies

"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film."

 -Frank Capra