This item is to discuss who is your favorite director.  As we all know, the
director is the real star of any film and directors have theirown styles. 
What director's filjms doyou like the most?

39 responses total.

My favorite directors are Martin Scorcese and Gus Van Sant.  Both make dark
films, which deal with characters who are considerablyless than perfect and
who are searchingin their own ways for redemption.

AmongScorcese'sfilms, my favorites are "Taxi Driver" and "The Last Temptation
of Christ", and though both are strikingly different filsm, the central
characters in both are quite similar in many ways.

Among Van Sant's films, my favorites are "Paris., Texas", and "Until the End
ofthe World"", both dark films about searcing for ansers and inne knowledge.
Or running away from same knoweldge.

  Just one?  Impossible to do.

 I have several.

 Barry Levinson- I like his homey style and the use of what I call the "Tin
Men" gang to flesh out his movies. Good Morning Vietnam, Avalon, and Tin Men
come to mind as 3 of his movies that life wouldn't be worth living without.
Barry also has directed a few episodes of Homicide, most notably his tour de
force called "The Gas Man" starring Bruno Kirby as a crazed killer who stalks
one of the detectives while commiting a string of murders.
  The "Tin Men" gang would include J.T. Walsh, Bruno Kirby, Ralph Timartin

 Bruce Beresford- I think his movie, Tender Mercies was one of the best movies
that I have seen in quite a while. Duvall was magnificent, as usual.

 John Landis- I know he's a little cheap and schlocky, but I like the creative
ways that he puts apes in his movies when he can.

 Stanley Kramer- I liked the Caine Mutiny, which I believe was a groundbreaker
for that kind of film.

Actually, my favorite Barry Levinson film is "Diner", set in Baltimore 
of the 1950's.  A great movie, actually part of Levinson's "Baltimore 
Trilogy" (the films are all connected and each made with the others in 
mind):  Diner, Tin Men, Avalon.     

I also really liked Rain Man.  Didnt really like Levinson's latest one 
though, the film with DeNiro as a preist who lies under oath.

I can't narrow down a list of my own favorites, but I'd like to
ask the assembled - well, both of you >8) - what you thought of
Levinson's _Toys_.  That one of the favorite flame topics of
the Tori Amos mailing list I'm on, and probably other places as
well.  People either love it or loathe it, I've never seen anyone
who was noncommital about it.

Refresh my memory, please, regarding _Toys_?
Directors...hmmmm. I like Penny Marshall's style. I like Hitchcock's talent
for creating tension by the use of detail.
Pardon me, but some idiot is sending me obscene telegrams. . . . . . . 

   my favorite director is stanley kubrick. i thought "the shining" was
substandard for him, though.

I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to say that out loud, void.
Did I mention David Lynch? He has such a wonderful feel for the absurd.

Orson Welles is my favorite director. He is a master at manipulating film.
Besides _Citizen Kane_, I really loved _Lady From Shanghai_ and
_F is for Fake_. All three movies show his ability to play with conventions.
He used real news film to add to the "reality" of _Citizen Kane_. The
funhouse mirror scene of _Lady From Shanghai_ is one of the most
memorable scenes in film. As for _F is for Fake_, we can`t even tell
what is "real" in this "documentary" of Elmyr, the famous art forger.
All of the movies he directs is like a magic act you can't figure out.

Of course, I have to mention that anyone who can create a mass panic as
Welles did with his famous _War of the Worlds_ radio broadcast shows genius.

It's a shame that he didn't get to direct more.

Here are my favourite directors.
Ridley Scott: Alien, Thelma and Louise, 1492: Conquest of Paradise
              and of course Blade Runner.
David Fincher: Alien 3 and Seven.
Oliver Stone: Platoon and Natural Born Killers.
Coen Brothers: Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink.
Tim Burton: Beetlejuice, Batman, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

  I loved "Citizen Kane", although the other people in this house cannot see
that. 

My favorite directors:

Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Frank Capra, David Lean, Steven Spielberg,
Penny Marshall, Ron Howard, Brian Depalma, Oliver Stone.

Although, frankly, Oliver Stone's persistent re-writing of history
(a la JFK) gets on my nerves at times.

Hmmmm.....I'm having a temp. memory block at the moment, so bare with
me. Steven Spielburg is definatley one. Alfred Hitchcock. The Hughes
bros. Ridley Scott.
    I'll tell you more later.

Who are the Hughes brothers, and what have they done?

Well, remmers, The Hughes brothers have done MenaceII Society, and Dead
Presidents. I can't think of the name of the film they just recently
released. But you've probably heard of those two films.

Heard of 'em, but haven't seen 'em.

There are a number of directors whom i adore and the list seems to be
constantly growing . Among the Hollywood one's clearly my favourites are 
Spielberg , Scorcese , Brian de palma  ( especially his Untouchables and 
Body Double ) .I feel spielberg's greatest films were 'Schindler's List'
and 'Color Purple ' . When it comes to film with epic dimensions none can
equal
him.The combinatiopn of Scorsese and De Niro have worked wonders on the
celluloid .
"THe  king of comedy  " and " The raging Bull " are a treat to watch .
Among the European  filmakers I am a great fan of Bernardo Bertolucci
especially in 'The Last Emperor ' and 'The last Tango in Paris ' . 
Being an Indian I have also been captivated by the images of Satyajit Ray and
his highly emotional look at Indian life 

Speilberg does seem to have the golden touch.

  to revivve a dead item...

   Speilberg- Love/Hate. I loved Always, Schindler's List, Close Encounters,
and Duel. The other ones, like ET was cloying and sappy, Jaws, was Ok, but
I didn't/don;t like it. Maybe I've just seen it too many times. We have cable
and TNT/TBS shows it every 3 weeks or so it seems.

  Scorsese- Everything that I have seen was great. He cannot make a bad film.
I just saw Taxi Driver last week on HBO, and I was on the edge of my seat even
though I've seen it as much as I've seen Jaws. I loved his part as the man
who was going to kill his wife which proves Scorsese is a good actor as well.
I have been holding off on seeing Raging Bull, but I have no good reason for
it, because I have it on tape.

  Norman Jewison- I really like "In the Heat of the Night". It still sparkles
and crackles with tension and Jewison exploits tat by using Steiger and
Poitier to thier fullest potentials. I'd like to see it uncut one of these
days.

  (more later)

Akira Kurasawa, Hitchcock, George Lucas (when he doesn't write the script),
Orson Welles, Hayao Miyazaki, Juzo Itami, Pedro Almodovar.

favorite director: federico fellini, primarily for '8 1/2', 'la strada', 
'amarcord' and 'la dolce vita'.
now, i choose fellini as my favorite over two other mise en scenesters 
whom i think are superior -- francois truffaut (the 400 blows, jules and 
jim, fahrenheit 451, shoot the piano player) and kubrick (we all know.) 
-- for reasons of personal taste. these latter two directors can, i 
think, match aesthetic body blows with any other director on the market 
and come out on top. 

hitchcock, kurosawa, bertolucci (for a long time i didn't think much of 
this cat. to assuage any doubts, see 1900, il conformista, the last 
emperor, ...and 'last tango in paris' takes the cake), scorsese, woody 
allen, ingmar bergman (doubters please see 'wild strawberries'), fritz 
lang, and the coen bros i lump into that '2nd tier' with fellini.

in all his time here on earth, spielberg is responsible for one good 
movie: empire of the sun
the rest is crap.

mention was made of the hughes bros, and i've got to reiterate it 
because menaceIIsociety was one of the best movies made in the 90s.

mike nichols, responsible for mediocrity like 'regarding henry' and 
'postcards from the edge' and 'primary colors' (and and and) at least 
got to start out his career with two big bangs: 'who's afraid of 
virginia woolf?' and 'the graduate'. stellar. then his star collapsed, i 
guess.

what can be said for directors who produce a handful of gems atop a 
mountain of detritus? take 'the godfather' I + II. what has f.f. coppola 
done with his life since those two? 'apocalypse now' is usually argued 
to be good, i s'pose.

et cetera.

Your list of favorites has a lot of overlap with mine.

Among directors who are *currently* practicing, I'd give high marks
to the Coen Brothers, Mike Figgis, Atom Egoyan, Martin Scorsese,
Stephen Soderberg, and Paul Thomas Anderson, just to name a few off
the top of my head.

yeah, soderbergh . . . i have such love/hate for him. i first caught his 
name when i got all jiggy 'n' excited about _gray's anatomy_, then i saw 
'kafka', which was fun and very euro, but i wouldn't want to run through 
it a second time.
'the limey' really caught my attention because of all the flash cuts 
used to pull character development and emotional reactions from 'between 
the frames' to the fore. that movie was chock full of highly nutritious 
characters.
he's remaking 'oceans eleven' with brad pitt and clooney and julia 
roberts. which is sorta bizaare.

Sounds like you've seen more Soderbergh than I have. Missed "Gray's
Anatomy" (can't stand Spalding Gray) and "Kafka".  I loved "The
Limey" and "Out of Sight".

A remake of "Ocean's Eleven" is the most bizarre concept I've heard
of in a while.  Seems to fit Soderbergh though.

Another current director I like a lot is Henry Jaglom.

         *gasp*

                    *gasp*

  *gasp*

               *gasp*

you don't dig _spaulding_gray_?? ?   ?      ??   ??  ?

Nah. Saw him live at the Michigan Theater once, and he came
off like an obnoxioius egotist.  Your mileage may vary.

reckon so. he has all that i love about nyc (which isn't much), just 
like woody allen.
was that the -it's a slippery slope- monologue?

i heard an interview with him on npr once (don't remember who the 
interviewer was, i stick my tongue out into the darkness and recollect 
'terry gross' but that ain't no guarantee) and it was disappointingly 
boring. seems like a chap who is 'on' when he's performing and way off 
when he's not.

My best favour is "forest gump" ,I think the light point in this film attract
me is the perform of tom hanks,I like it very much.I have seen this film for
nearlly 8 times,but i would never feel it boring.The pure love to the girl
jennie moved me very much.his heart is so close to god ,so i think all his
success is be given by god's bless.
who love this film like me?

times have changed.
here's my new list of favorite directors:

harmony korine got a foot in the velvet curtain by writing Kids, which was
directed by photographer larry clark. this is, all told, a pretty great movie.
is it more effective for people who knew kids like these when they were teens?
i don't know. i knew kids like these, and it was pretty effective. (turns out
korine and clark are in-production on another movie called "Ken Park").
korine has directed Gummo and Julien Donkey-boy, which i recommend without
comment.
anyway, i think korine is one of the most creative people around these days.

michaelangelo antonioni:
some kind of master. he's got a long resume, but i've only seen "blow up" and
"l'avventura". "blow up" i've been a fan of for years now, although most folks
don't have the patience for it. it's got a glacial pace. so does
"l'avventura", which i finally saw a few weeks ago, and damn if that ain't
one of the sharpest flicks i've ever seen.

i may bring up more directors when i think of them. a lot of moviemakers look
back on the obvious sources like hitchcock and try to emulate with empty
mechanics. that sells tickets in kansas city, i guess. a question for the rest
of you bbs'ers: are you pleased with many of the new releases that hit the
screens these days, whether we're talking hollywood or indies or foreigns?
or are you disgruntled and half blind like i claim to be? looking at the list
of directors people cite as favorites in this item, i'd guess that grexers
by and large don't think much of movies other than something to do with idle
time -- except that i won't think of this item as a fair distribution of
grexers.

David Cronenberg is one of my absolut number one pick (if he has written the
script) just watch eXistenZ is that a bizar movie or what?

nah, it's samwiched between matrix and 13th floor in terms of imbalanced
ratios of clout and writing and glam.
didn't cronenberg die of autoasphyxication?

My favorite director is fincher.

nobody mentioned Tsui Hark i c ... well he' s the best

Could be, but I never heard of him.  What nationality is he?
What kind of films does he make?  I live in the US, and I
don't think his films are shown much here.

My favourite director is Ron Howard and Robert Altman, both in my opinion did
an excellent job in their respective movies, I watched the oscars and I was
glad to see Ron Howard win not one but two oscars, He is very talented and
I wouldlike to see him win more oscars.  Robert Altman is to me one of the
best of the best.  He should always win oscars in my opinion.  Gosford Park
was way awesome, I didnt get to see the end but the rest of the movie was
awesome it was a like  a roller coaster ride, you always screamed at the
screen and people kept shushing you(you know its a good movie when people are
shushing you) 
so thats my two favourite directors...what's your opinion on them?

nepotism.

     There's many great directors. It'd be difficult to make 
     a list of them because many would be out of the list.
     I can mention some great directors:
 
     Federico Fellini, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese,
     Hitchcock, Antonioni Michelangelo, Bergman,
     Frank Capra, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bogdanovich,
     Chaplin, Coppola, Roger Corman, John Huston,
     Costa-Gravas, Kurosawa, David Lynch, Alan Parker,
     Nagisa Oshima, Sam peckinpah, Bob Rafelson,
     Otto Preminger, Sydney Pollack, Paul Mazursky,
     Soderbergh, Tarantino, Lina Wertmuller,
     Ridley Scott, Arthur Penn, Fritz Lang.

     These are my favorite ones.

 
     I forgot to add these:

   Wim Wnders, Orson Welles, Luchino Visconti, Sam Mendes.

Speaking of Visconti, his long-unavailable "The Leopard" (1963)
will soon be available on DVD.  I've seen only the badly-dubbed,
truncated American release and am looking forward to the Italian
version, which is reportedly much better.

Lots of great directors listed in #36 and #37, as well as some
that I don't care for all that much.  I'll give recognition to
the silent era by adding a few names:  Charles Chaplin, Buster
Keaton, D.W. Griffith, Carl Dreyer.  Oh, and of course there's
Hitchcock.

     It was good you mentioned the silent era.  
     These directors are classic and we can consider 
     masterpiece all their works.  
     Hitchcock also made films in that time. I got 
     to watch "The Ring". 

         

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