Who are your favorite filmmaker(s)?

[Winslow Leach]

Oh yes, I am aware of Anthony Hopkins and think he's an incredible actor (ever seen Magic? ). I must see 'The Elephant Man' when I can get around to it. Heehee, yes, I must admit, I do like twisted, off-beat films!

Magic spooked the H - E - Double Hockey Sticks out of me!

 

[sarah_yzma]

It's Steve Oedekerk for me. That's amazing stuff right there.

 

[Speed Tracer]

I'm also a very big fan of Joel and Ethan Coen.

Blood Simple - "Gimme a call whenever you wanna cut off my head. I can always crawl around without it."

Raising Arizona - "There's right and there's right and never the t'wain shall meet."

Miller's Crossing - "I'm praying to you! Look in your heart. I'm praying to you... look in your heart... look in your heart! You can't kill me... look in your heart."

Barton Fink - "We're only interested in one thing, Bart. Can you tell a story? Can you make us laugh? Can you make us cry? Can you make us want to break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay!"

The Hudsucker Proxy - "This is a face only a mother could love. On pay day."

Fargo - "The heck do ya mean?"

The Big Lebowski - "I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself."

O Brother, Where Art Thou? - "You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers."

The Man Who Wasn't There - "Time slows down right before an accident, and I had time to think about things. I thought about what an undertake had told me once - that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, 'What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it's gone?'"

Intolerable Cruelty - "I just love trains! I love trains!"

The Ladykillers - "Madam, we must have waffles! We must all have waffles forthwith! We must all think, and we must all have waffles, and think each and every one of us to the very best of his ability."

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Ang Lee, Peter Jackson.

 

[anytimepally]

My favorite director is Alfred Hitckcock

Everyone else is surrounding theirs with a little more explanation, so why not me? Before I saw Hitchcock movies, I never thought about the architecture of a film.. granted, I was young when I saw my first (The Birds), but it was the first time I ever looked at a movie and said "how did they make that happen".. it was really the first time I realized movies weren't like real life... looking at it now, of course, it's easy to see the birds are superimposed, but as a seven year old, I had no idea ... later, I saw more of his movies and more, and even had a VHS boxset of all his old British films which, for the most part, are tighter and better written than much of his later work.. I particularly prefer the 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much (which has yet to have a decent DVD release outside Europe) to the 1956 version... of course you can now see two of these films, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes in wonderful Criterion Collection editions, which are a little on the expensive side (condering public domain versions of these films can be found for under $5) but the picture quality is more than worth it! ... Interestingly, he later remade The Lady Vanishes as "Into Thin Air," an episode of T.V. series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.. with just the barebones of the story in tact and everything else COMPLETELY changed.. both are quality productions, though... my two favorites are Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Strangers on a Train (1951).. the thing I love most about these movies is the subtlety of the insanity in major characters, Bruno in Strangers.. & Uncle Charlie in Shadow.... they seem like normal, well-adjusted people and every once in a while, they just lose it... Bruno's is particularly brilliant, because he has everyone believing he's perfectly normal except Guy.. Uncle Charlie's sublety comes as much from the aloofness of his own family, because when he zones out and goes on his crazy rants, you'd have to be an idiot not to know a screw or two is loose somewhere... but that's part of the brilliance of the film, co-written by Hitchcock's wife, that the family could never in a thousand years believe him capable of something like what he did, so they brush off his rants as nothing... Another thing I like about Hitchcock was that he wasn't afraid to experiment.. Rope, shot in eight 10-minute takes is probably the most famous example.. Farley Granger, one of the lead actors, didn't think the experiment worked, and sure it is a little gimmicky at times as Hitchcock looks for new places to move the camera into darkness at the end of takes, but it's still a great film and perhaps even his best work of art... Lifeboat, a film set almost entirely on the open water (in which he still manages a cameo) is another great example of his willingness to do things differently.. but he'd always been an experimenter The Times of London wrote a review of his 1927 silent film The Ring, saying that he filmed scenes that other directors "would have refused to touch," and said Hitchcock was "eager to experiment in what seems to him to be potentially a new art."

Filmography (with my recommendations in bold):

Number 13 (1922) **unfinished, but can still be found on DVD**
Always Tell Your Wife (1923) **only half of this film is known to exist**
The Pleasure Garden (1925)
The Mountain Eagle (1926) **no copies of this film are believed to exist**
The Lodger (1927)
The Ring (1927)
Downhill (1927)
Champagne (1928)
Easy Virtue (1928)
The Farmer's Wife (1928)
The Manxman (1929)
Blackmail (1929) **made both as a silent film and a sound film**
Juno and the Paycock (1930)
Murder! (1930)
Elstree Calling (1930) **co-director**
Mary (1931) **German language version of Murder!**
The Skin Game (1931)
Rich and Strange (1931)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Waltzes from Vienna (1934) **no English DVD exists.. the French DVD has English audio, but you can't turn off the subtitles**
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The 39 Steps (1935)
Sanders of the River (1935) **co-director**
Secret Agent (1936)
Sabotage (1936)
Young and Innocent (1937)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Rebecca (1940)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Mr and Mrs Smith (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Saboteur (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Lifeboat (1944)
Bon Voyage (1944)
Aventure Malgache (1944)
Watchtower Over Tomorrow (1945)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
The Paradine Case (1947)
Rope (1948) **his first color film**
Under Capricorn (1949)
Stage Fright (1950)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
I Confess (1953)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Trouble with Harry (1955)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
The Wrong Man (1956)
Vertigo (1958)
North by Northwest (1959)
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)
Marnie (1964)
Torn Curtain (1966)
Topaz (1969)
Frenzy (1972)
Family Plot (1976)

I tried to limit my recommendations a bit.. in truth, I'd recommend them all

 

[Winslow Leach]

Everyone else is surrounding theirs with a little more explanation, so why not me? Before I saw Hitchcock movies, I never thought about the architecture of a film.. granted, I was young when I saw my first (The Birds), but it was the first time I ever looked at a movie and said "how did they make that happen".. it was really the first time I realized movies weren't like real life... looking at it now, of course, it's easy to see the birds are superimposed, but as a seven year old, I had no idea ...

This is exactly how I felt when I discovered my favorite, Brian De Palma. By the time I was ten, I was already a film buff (he said modestly). Even then I preferred classic cinema to much of what was coming out every week (these were the Rambo/Friday the 13th Pt. Whatever years).

One afternoon, I noticed a listing in TV Guide for something called Phantom of the Paradise. Since I was pratically weaned on the old Universal and Hammer horror films, anything with "phantom" in the title sparked my interest.

Ah, those were the days (before a zillion channels) when local stations would run Creature Features and Creature Double Features on Saturday afternoons!

Anyway, I watched Phantom, and when it was over, it felt as if I had been smacked over the head with a 2x4. I was blown away by the colorful images, the split-screen (wow! two scenes going on simultaneously) and the music. At the end, the director's named flashed on screen: Directed by Brian De Palma. I mentally made a note of the name, and scoured the TV Guide for any more of his films.

Phantom really opened my eyes to what film and particularly filmmakers could do with the medium. Before Phantom, I never really paid attention to the director (although I already knew Hitchcock, because at the time Rope, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, the '56 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo were being re-released to theatres, home video and television after years of being legally tied up...plus, I was dying to see Psycho, which I knew about from the various horror books I read). After De Palma, I began appreciating film much more, and started to look for a director's trademark styles (if any).

Sadly, the U.S. still doesn't have a definitive, book-length study of De Palma and his work. There were a few published in the early 80s, but they're long out of print. I managed to get a couple through interlibrary loan, but they were very slim volumes that told me nothing new about any of his films.

In France, there is supposedly a definitive study of De Palma, in which the two authors of the book spoke with the director for hours. For the first time, De Palma sat down and discussed every one of his films, from his earliest shorts to, I think, Femme Fatale (2002). The book also is said to contain hundreds of photos, some rare. Unfortunately, it is only available in France, and one of the authors said in an online chat that there were no plans for a U.S. release. Since I don't speak a word of French, I'm out of luck. But I suppose I could go to the French Amazon site, order it and at least look at the pictures!

Hitchcock would be my second favorite director. Psycho is one of my top 5 favorite films of all time. In college, I took a Hitchcock course. Didn't take one note (he again said modestly). I knew everything the instructor had to say, and all the films we watched I had already seen numerous times. But can you believe, in a class devoted to the work of Hitchcock, we didn't watch Vertigo? We watched the Jimmy Stewart version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, but not Vertigo!

For another class, I wrote an 80 page paper on Hitch off the top of my head. The only time I used a book was to quote something from Hitch, one of his actors or a critic.

My favorite Hitchcock films are:

The Lodger
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The 39 Steps
Secret Agent
Sabotage
Saboteur
Shadow of a Doubt
Rope
Stage Fright
Strangers on a Train
I Confess
Rear Window
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Psycho
The Birds
Marnie
Topaz
Frenzy

Did you know that when Hitch set up Transatlantic Pictures, he was seriously considering making a modern-dress adaptation of Hamlet, starring Cary Grant?

 

[zns]

-Jim Henson
-Walt Disney

 

[anytimepally]

Did you know that when Hitch set up Transatlantic Pictures, he was seriously considering making a modern-dress adaptation of Hamlet, starring Cary Grant?

I had no idea, but that would have been... well, interesting to say the least.. Hitchcock always brought out the best in Grant, so it may have worked

Since I don't speak a word of French, I'm out of luck. But I suppose I could go to the French Amazon site, order it and at least look at the pictures!

well, we've all learned a little French from Miss Piggy ... probably wouldn't be much help, though


man... this thread just makes me want to sit around watching movies all day

 

[anytimepally]

He currently has several new films on the horizon, including a prequel to The Untouchables called Capone Rising.

this intrigues me...

I'm also into the work of Sergio Leone, whose films include A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck You Sucker and Once Upon a Time in America.

these are all classics.. I thought it was neat to see at the Oscars this past year that Clint Eastwood still remembers his Italian

 

[Winslow Leach]

I had no idea, but that would have been... well, interesting to say the least.. Hitchcock always brought out the best in Grant, so it may have worked




well, we've all learned a little French from Miss Piggy ... probably wouldn't be much help, though


man... this thread just makes me want to sit around watching movies all day

Heh, yeah.

Another thing about the Hitch/Grant Hamlet, it would have been Hitch's first color feature (obviously this would have been made before Rope). I've heard a few accounts on why this film was never made. One said that Grant himself nixed the idea, claiming he couldn't see himself in a classical role; others say Selznick canned the project, even though Hitch would have put up the money himself. Hitch owed Selznick one more picture, and the producer wasn't keen on an "arty" film. So Hitch put "Hamlet" on the back burner and fulfilled his Selznick contract with The Paradine Case.

Another near miss was Kaleidoscope. This would have been made around 1967, after the failure of Torn Curtain. Hitch was influenced by the New Hollywood and European cinema of the late 1960s, in which taboos were broken, and graphic violence, nudity and profane language could be used on screen. He was particularly influenced by Antonioni's latest, Blowup, the Italian director's first film in English (and a masterpiece, IMO).

Hitch planned to shoot the story of a young, neurotic psychopath whose sexual urges cause him to murder. This would be set in swinging London. A treatment was written, and Hitchcock actually shot color footage of anonymous actors improvising a scene from the treatment. No doubt this film would have helped Hitch at this point in his career, but the suits at Universal were shocked that the director planned to use graphic violence and nudity. They kept waving various properties at him, but Hitchcock stood his ground, and refused to give in until Universal demanded the project be scrapped. A defeated Hitchcock went off to make Topaz instead, which was another failure (although I think it's an interesting film--much better than Torn Curtain).

Later, Hitch shrugged off Kaleidoscope, claiming it "was too much like Psycho." But we know Hitch was too clever to rip himself off and make a direct copy of one of his most famous films. But like Psycho, the film would have been loosely based on the exploits of a real-life murderer.

BTW, the footage Hitchcock shot for Kaleidoscope does exist. I've searched everywhere on the web for it, but no luck.

Hitch did use some ideas from the aborted film when he made Frenzy (the alternate title he planned to use for Kaleidoscope), but the style was much different. Hitch planned to give the earlier film an earthier, grittier, more "European" look, inspired by Italian and French New Wave cinema.