Top-10 Directors Working Today.

[CoolioD1]

David Fincher is an interesting choice, but Social Network and Zodiac are the only movies he's made in 21st century that get my dick hard. The rest are mediocre IMO.

[Jake Gittes]

During those 18 years of Spielberg's career prior to Schindler, four of his films received a Best Picture nom (three of them huge blockbusters) and he himself was nominated for Best Director three times, for a huge blockbuster each time. You are free to wake me up whenever one of Bay's films receives a single Oscar nomination not in a technical category.

[The Stingray]

"I am just disagreeing with you! In America, we have the freedom of SPEECH! The right to DISAGREE!"

[BK007]

I'm just going to take this as, if _______ director was announced as the director of _______ movie, how much would it sway you?In that case, I'm going to go with David Fincher. I found Se7en overrated, believe it or not, but his last four movies, IMO have knocked it out of the park and he has me sold for the foreseeable future. Chris Nolan is of course exciting to watch as he is the most commercial lauded director but still holds his integrity. Brad Bird's first live action movie was pretty good, and of course his animated output is stellar so his name is on my list.Despite not thinking Looper was the bee's knees, Rian Johnson is another director I've been keeping track of, hopefully he doesn't go all Hollywood superhero blockbuster because that'd be a waste.Duncan Jones has only made two films, but because they have been in my wheelhouse, I'd say he also makes the list. As you might be able to tell sci-fi is a genre that almost always gets me excited. Others include Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Peter Jackson, Wes Anderson, JJ Abrams, Zack Snyder, Chris Sanders, Martin Scorsese.

[The Stingray]

And you know this because you have spoken with them personally? Because guess what? I have spoken to a few of them.

I have spoken to all of them.

[baumer]

"I am just disagreeing with you! In America, we have the freedom of SPEECH! The right to DISAGREE!"

One of my fave movies.

[baumer]

I have spoken to all of them.

Fair enough then. I guess the ones I spoke to lied to me.

[Jake Gittes]

And yeah, a "quieter film with a more serious subject" worked out well for Roland Emmerich, didn't it? Bay isn't much better. The only dramatically powerful scene in any of his movies is the shower room shootout in The Rock. That was 16 years ago, and that film had the best script and the best cast Bay ever had. He makes cheesy, flashy entertainment, sometimes well, sometimes not so much. But since after The Rock, he's made it perfectly clear that he doesn't at all care for drama and he sure as hell doesn't care for subtlety or character. When the Academy has yet to give Nolan a directing nomination after almost 15 years, the only scenario in which Bay is ever going up that stage to receive a statue is when he's 75, friends with everyone and likable enough to be given a honorary Oscar for staging all those $200 million monsters back in his day and keeping it going for two-three decades.

[baumer]

And yeah, a "quieter film with a more serious subject" worked out well for Roland Emmerich, didn't it? Bay isn't much better. The only dramatically powerful scene in any of his movies is the shower room shootout in The Rock. That was 16 years ago, and that film had the best script and the best cast Bay ever had. He makes cheesy, flashy entertainment, sometimes well, sometimes not so much. But since after The Rock, he's made it perfectly clear that he doesn't at all care for drama and he sure as hell doesn't care for subtlety or character. When the Academy has yet to give Nolan a directing nomination after almost 15 years, the only scenario in which Bay is ever going up that stage to receive a statue is when he's 75, friends with everyone and likable enough to be given a honorary Oscar for staging all those $200 million monsters back in his day and keeping it going for two-three decades.

Well written post. That's your opinion and you are entitled to it.

[BK007]

I don't understand the need to rip on Bay. You don't like him, clearly a lot of people do.Does he want to make a quieter film? Maybe, who knows, but doing what he's good at, or what we know him to be good at, doesn't cause any problems.And remind me who the Stingray is again? Spoken to all the directors, huh? You must be a hotshot young lad. One great quality I can think of, is I don't find any directors obnoxious, or perhaps it's because the media doesn't think those stories are noteworthy. Even Cameron is no match for some of the actor egos around Tinseltown. LaBeouf, for example.

[The Stingray]

I can only give you 1 'like' per post, Jake. But if I could I'd give you 10.And yeah, Falling Down is absolutely awesome!

[The Stingray]

I don't understand the need to rip on Bay. You don't like him, clearly a lot of people do.

Does he want to make a quieter film? Maybe, who knows, but doing what he's good at, or what we know him to be good at, doesn't cause any problems.

And remind me who the Stingray is again? Spoken to all the directors, huh? You must be a hotshot young lad.

One great quality I can think of, is I don't find any directors obnoxious, or perhaps it's because the media doesn't think those stories are noteworthy. Even Cameron is no match for some of the actor egos around Tinseltown. LaBeouf, for example.

Yeah, I am. Right now I'm preparing a $200m remake of Citizen Kane in 3D and 48 fps. Its gonna be nuts.

[baumer]

Yeah, I am. Right now I'm preparing a $200m remake of Citizen Kane in 3D and 48 fps. Its gonna be nuts.

That is something I'd pay to see.

[Hatebox]

I'm not sure I agree, but I remember this snippet from Cracked.com:

#1. Michael Bay: Secret Auteur

Michael Bay has long been held up as the mascot and spiritual leader of the dumbing down of American popular culture. Internet commenters hate Bay with the depth and ferocity of three-and-a-half William Wallaces.

He can make Transformers movies that rape their childhoods, but he will never take away our freedom to call his movies "soul cancer" or make statements like "Michael Bay is an AWFUL director, who's [sic] name should NEVER be brought up when speaking of TRUE cinema."

When he's not filling movie theaters with his trademark just-way-too-many explosions, Bay is known for casting underwear models instead of actresses, treating the top four buttons on his shirt like sarcastic suggestions and generally being the sort of middle-aged child who rarely exists outside of the second act of body-switching comedies.

The Truth:

If you think that Michael Bay movies suck, I'm not going to convince you otherwise (mostly because I agree with you about every one of his movies in which Nicolas Cage doesn't save the world). But it's at least worth noting that many professional filmmakers and film theorists don't agree with us. For instance, James Cameron, the most successful action director of all time, admits to having "studied his films and 'reverse-engineered' his shooting style." Apparently those rapid cuts from one angle to another that are the hallmark of Bay's "lazy" filmmaking style are technically way more difficult to pull off than ... well, not doing that.

The quotes about him being an AWFUL director and a soul carcinogen are from the comment section of an essay in which a respected film theorist claims that "Armageddon is a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color and shape." The essay was written years after the release of the movie, when Bay's second and third films were released as part of the Criterion Collection, a series of collector's edition DVDs curated by serious film scholars for fans of challenging art movies.

Where we see a car crash of colors and noise being filmed by an unskilled dumbass pointing his camera at whatever is exploding the loudest, some surprisingly great filmmakers and serious film scholars see an idiot savant. We ridicule his one dimensional characters, but film theorist Jeanine Basinger thinks we're missing the point, claiming that Bay's films are supposed to create "a kind of abstraction and unreality that is found in musicals." While we might see his constant cuts as an assault on our short attention spans, Basinger believes that his rapid cutting is the closest thing to abstract expressionism in modern Hollywood films.

In fact, you can make a shockingly strong case for Bay as auteur. For instance, it was long assumed that the plot for Armageddon was sketched out by Hollywood producers while doing cocaine and exploding LEGO cities with fireworks. In fact, it was Bay's vision from beginning to end. He came up with the idea while attending Wesleyan University (one of the best, and most liberal and artsy liberal arts colleges in America). He was taking "a geology course with this tectonic expert" who said, "Calamities happen; it's the plumbers who will fix the world." Bay loved the idea that the blue-collar workers would be forced to save the day if the world ever faced a geological disaster. He just changed the plumbers to oil-rig workers, put them on a giant rock hurtling toward Earth and added the line "Talk about the wrong stuff" because he's a bit of an idiot.

Just a few years out of college, Bay was already considered one of the best visual storytellers working in the world of TV commercials. He created the first "Got Milk?" ad, and won the two most prestigious awards in the advertising portion of the Cannes Film Festival. And that was all in his first year as a professional director.

Once he made the jump to feature films, he was immediately unpopular with critics and people like me. The Rock is the only of his movies that is rated over 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. His most poorly reviewed film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (21 percent), is also his most successful at the box office. And according to a bunch of people who take film a lot more seriously than I do, it's because modern art isn't for everybody.

[baumer]

Thanks for posting that Hatebox. I'll wait for the inevitable snobbery from our expert panel of professional film makers here who will disagree with that post and use the rotflmfao happy face.

[fishstick]

i`ll take Bay over Fincher any day. Bay movies are fun. I didn`t enjoy any Fincher movie save Seven which was awesome. But BB was a boooooooooooooooore and Blanchett was ridiculous as latex-faced "teenager" :rofl: Also, Maramania = best insomnia cure ever.

[Ozymandias]

Martin Scorsese - The Departed(best of the decade), Shutter Island, the AviatorDavid Fincher - TSN, Zodiac, Girl With Dragon Tattoo(I like the original better though)Ridley Scott - Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven DC, American Gangster, Prometheus.Steven Spielberg - Lol, almost everything hes made. Don't really need to say anything, the guy is a legend and can always count on him to give something good.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Shpongle

[The Stingray]

Thanx for sharing Hatebox. Nothing new under the sun though. Bay IS very good at handling action, never he said he wasn't. I just think he sucks at everything else, and the spectacular final 30 min of TF3 does not compensate for the awful 1h and 30 min that came before it.

[baumer]

i`ll take Bay over Fincher any day. Bay movies are fun. I didn`t enjoy any Fincher movie save Seven which was awesome. But BB was a boooooooooooooooore and Blanchett was ridiculous as latex-faced "teenager" :rofl: Also, Maramania = best insomnia cure ever.

Fish, who is the woman in your signature?

[The Stingray]

Looks like Nicola Peltz.