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| Thursday, June 2, 2005 11:06 AM |
| Movies Again |
 by Fëanor |
- Some folks (Yagathai, the Movie Blog) are saying that the new trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory makes the movie look better than previous ads. We watched the trailer at movie night last night, but the picture was tiny, the sound was low, and everybody was talking, so I didn't really get much out of it, except that I heard one line of dialogue that sounded really stupid. After watching it again this morning--this time with good picture and sound, and with headphones on--I just heard a lot more lines that sounded really stupid. Sorry, but this trailer makes the movie look much worse to me. I was excited when I heard that Johnny Depp was going to play Willy Wonka, but I really don't like the way he's approaching the character here. I'm also not too impressed with what I'm seeing of the kids and the parents (that girl's got nothing on the original Veruca Salt). And it looks like this movie is going to be even more painfully obvious about trying to teach us its morals and its messages than the original film, which is really saying something.
Of course, despite the crappy trailer, I'm bound to end up seeing this film. It's a remake of a film I love, and it stars and is directed by a number of folks whose careers I've been following for a while now. But my expectations have been lowered.
- Movie Blog posted a top ten list of the best film directors of all time, which is the result of a poll by Empire Magazine. I, of course, had to immediately make my own top ten list. The process: I wrote down some obvious choices off the top of my head, then went to my movie list, filtered it so it would display only four star movies, and went over it carefully, picking out all the directors who came up lots of times. I pondered and agonized until I'd cut that list down to ten. Then I tried to order the list from best to least best, but really, they're all so excellent, it's hard to arrange them in a way that satisfies me. They're pretty much all tied for first. Anyway, here it is, the top ten directors of all time, according to me:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- Orson Welles
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Stanley Kubrick
- Ingmar Bergman
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Joel Coen
- Roman Polanski
- Steven Spielberg
Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino, who appear on the Empire Magazine list, were on my list as well, but ended up getting cut in preference to other folks. Tarantino's just a little too young and too hit-and-miss, and Allen is also a little too hit-and-miss. Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson, who were on the Empire top ten list, never even made my list. Both guys have made a couple of great films, but they've both also made plenty of mediocre ones. I love them, but they don't deserve a spot amongst the best directors of all time.
Cutting David Lean, Billy Wilder, and Terry Gilliam from my list was really hard, but they just have fewer great films, and fewer films that I truly love. But the last and most difficult cut was Martin Scorsese. He's truly a great filmmaker, but again, I just don't love his films the same way I love the films by these other guys.
It's true that Orson Welles has fewer four star films on my list than some of the guys I cut, but the great films that he made are so important and excellent, and he's such an amazing director, that he had to stay on the list.
Anyways, there it is. I'm curious to hear what you folks think. Let me know in the comments.
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