If you believe the Best Director race is down to: Danny Boyle, David Fincher, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant, Christopher Nolan, Andrew Stanton, Jonathan Demme, give or take, it seemed like a good time to reflect back on the varied careers of the major players.
The most fun director to gaze backwards at via YouTube has to be Danny Boyle.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKuhanoH_ds[/youtube]
His style is immediately recognizable, even though he drifts between genres like a freeform world traveler. Boyle has been embraced by Big Hollywood, and now almost by Big Bollywood (though purists reject Slumdog as an actual Bollywood movie). 28 Days Later, Millions, Shallow Grave, Trainspotting are my own personal favorite Boyle films. Slumdog Millionaire very nearly tops them all. Like Fincher, Boyle’s fans may be slightly disappointed if he wins for something as mainstream and likable as Slumdog but hey, you can’t please all of the people all of time.
David Fincher is not known for touchy feely films, in fact, most of his work is distant and cold, icy in fact. This has served him well over the years and put him in good stead with a legion of fans. To me, Fincher has just gotten better with time and though last year’s Zodiac will probably be seen as his great forgotten masterpiece, I feel that he has reached not only a career high with Benjamin Button, but a breakthrough as an artist, as perhaps as a man. Nonetheless, Fincher’s brilliance is always worth a moment or two — here is one of the best sequences in Zodiac:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO19JWoWg-A[/youtube]
Christopher Nolan has really made two great films, Memento and The Dark Knight. The others in between have been good enough but somehow pale in comparison to these two films. He is just getting started, however, and his future looks bright. Still, The Dark Knight also seems like a great leap forward in many respects but specifically with Nolan’s ability to handle a large and unwieldy beast.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2FUWg8DR2U[/youtube]
Gus Van Sant has been making films off the beaten path for decades now but every once in a while his movie steps outside his zone and hits a broader audience. Does that make them better? Who are we to say. To Die For is probably my favorite but Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Privare Idaho are also pretty great. Milk, though, is one of Van Sant’s more mainstream films and like most of his movies, it bears his mark. It is also his most “important” film, one that gets political in a way that will make broad audiences listen. So, though he hasn’t shown with Milk that he’s grown by leaps and bounds as a director, he certainly has broadened his reach and thus, his power.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQWlnj8Ai1U[/youtube]
Andrew Stanton’s best work to date was Finding Nemo. And then there was Wall-E. No one is going to argue that Stanton has grown as an artist. Wall-E is sublime. Nemo is a good second:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ZjERbQfIw[/youtube]
Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon no doubt takes certain liberties, as dramas are wont to do. As such, many had complaints with A Beautiful Mind, his best film prior to Frost/Nixon. I wasn’t one of those who took issue with the differences between the real Nash and Russell Crowe’s character. I never really thought, where reality was concerned, that it mattered that much.
A Beautiful Mind, like most of Howard’s work, is heavyhanded. With Frost/Nixon, though, he steps back and lets the actors do most of the work. Sure, there are many readers here and Ryan who feel it isn’t up to snuff, but to me it is an example of a director doing his best work to date. He won his Oscar for A Beautiful Mind.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoQb6A2YI[/youtube]
No Response for "Directors 2008: The Great Leap Forwards"
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Trainspotting, Fight Club, Requiem For A Dream.
Revolutionary.
Would be amazing to see these 3 directors nominated, and Nolan + Stanton. Take a peek at Wall*E’s extras on the Blu-ray. The man deserves it.
And Van Sant!
Dream list! Van Sant, Aronofsky, Boyle, Fincher, Nolan or Stanton
T.
Woah there…The Prestige, in many ways, is better than both Memento AND The Dark Knight. It is an incredible feat of imagination and storytelling. Either way, he definitely has 3 great films.
Trainspotting is still Boyle’s best film, and while Slumdog is not my favorite of the year or his career, I’m glad to see one of the greatest living directors is FINALLY getting the attention it deserves. I would only be disappointed if it was for one of his (only two) crap films: The Beach and Life Less Ordinary.
Where the hell was the Academy on Trainspotting? I guess it was a little too irreverent for the mainstream. Also despite the hugely flawed screenplay, I think Boyle should have been nominated for Sunshine.
Trainspotting is a classic that revived Iggy Pop, introduced the world to Underworld and launched careers. They don’t make them like that anymore.
I heard there was a book sequel called Porno. LOL
T.
rachel getting married was AWFUL! What is the buzz about?
It still amazes me that Kelly Macdonald got her start in Trainspotting, and what a fantastic actress she has become since. We watched No Country for Old Men in a class recently and no one had any idea that she was the same actress.
I read Porno. It’s okay considering how horrendous it could’ve been but I still wish Irvine Welsh hadn’t written it. I’d rather he left their fates up to our imagination. If Boyle gets to make the movie, I’m sure he’ll do a good job but it’ll still be nothing more than a nostalgia trip. I feel the same way about 28 Months Later; Just do something else!
“If you believe the Best Director race is down to Danny Boyle, David Fincher, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant, Christopher Nolan, Andrew Stanton, Jonathan Demme, give or take…”
ok, but if you’re asking me to believe in Ron Howard can we add Santa Clause and The Easter Bunny to this list? Or at least Darren Aronofsky.
In addition to the six directors already mentioned, I think Aronofsy, Sam Mendes, Courtney Hunt, Martin McDonagh, Charlie Kaufmann and Mike Leigh all turned in finer efforts than Ron Howard this year.
A Beautiful Mind, like most of Howard’s work, is heavyhanded. With Frost/Nixon, though, he steps back and lets the actors do most of the work.
uh-oh, is this praise? To qualify as a Best Director this year, just refrain from your usual heavy-handedness and get the hell out of the way. Let the actors do all the work.
Great news for John Patrick Shanley.
It’s a matter of opinion. I didn’t include Aronofsky because The Wrestler, though great for many reasons, doesn’t feel like the director’s very best work to me. Is it better than Requiem for a Dream? I don’t know. I know you hate Ron Howard and Frost/Nixon – but to me Howard shows growth as a filmmaker with this film, which is why the movie is going all the way (I think), not for the win but for a nomination. You all seem to be more in line with the Independent Spirit Awards than the Oscars!
Mike Leigh? No way is Happy Go Lucky as good as Frost/Nixon. I don’t even think Frozen River is as a whole and complete film. I haven’t seen a handful of films yet but to me, for my sensibilities, Frost/Nixon stands out as one of the year’s best – but again, my tastes are more mainstream, less artsy fartsy than Ryan or many of the readers here.
Seems kind of presumptuous… if I didn’t know any better I’d think the DGA already happened.
I haven’t seen The Wrestler yet, so that’s just me making a guess. And throwing in Mike Leigh was me doing my “I Spit On the Grave of Frost/Nixon” shtick.
I don’t hate Ron Howard. I think he’s probably a terrific fellow and Arrested Development proves he has genuine genius for a certain type of thing that doesn’t start with M-O-V-
I don’t have a lot of affection for Frost/Nixon because it seems to me like a big to-do about nothing. Take a really insignificant and inconsequential event from the live of one of our weakest slimiest presidents, and falsify it up with a lot of dramatizing that never happened in order to make him look like some sort of tragic Caesar or even a warped Caligula.
There are lots of events from Nixon’s life I’d be fascinated to see depicted on screen. A flimsy tedious interview with one or two pseudo-revelations isn’t one of them. And no amount of padding will make me any more curious. Fully 30 minutes or more of the movie is all about David Frost being a playboy. Another 30 minutes shows Nixon being a pompous bore. ok, so?
The mostThe only dramatic sequence in the movie — the midnight confessional phone call — never took place.Taking liberties with John Nash’s life is not so bad, because really, who cares? But this is a movie that pretends to be a searing examination of a historic milestone. It was no milestone, because there was no confession.
In the movie Ron Howard and Peter Morgan have Nixon admitting he “…was involved in a ‘cover-up,’ as you call it.”
On the actual interview tapes, what Nixon says is, “You’re wanting to me to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!”
That’s the real quote. But it’s been bastardized to provide a moment of completely fake drama for the movie. And, sadly, this is the “history” people will leave the theater believing.
Langella constructs/creates/fabricates an incredible performance. But it doesn’t look, sound, smell, taste or feel like Nixon to me. Langella and Howard have made something, but it’s not anything about Nixon. It’s about a cotton candy confection spun on the idea of Nixon that Peter Morgan made up out of whole cloth to generate some sparks on a stage.
Worst for me, there was no consequence for this supposed “confession.” The only penalty Nixon paid for his lies was to collect $600,000. It’s an ugly little epilogue to a hideous little man’s life. For me, it’s not worthy of all the hoopla.
I would argue that Christopher Nolan has made 6 great films. He hasn’t made a bad one yet. Maybe you should say he has made 2 amazing films (because both Memento and The Dark Knight do stand out) and 4 great ones, because those other 4 that you don’t mention are very good.
Sure, there are many readers here and Ryan who feel it isn’t up to snuff
That made me laugh for some reason.
And I agree with you when you say “Christopher Nolan has really made two great films, Memento and The Dark Knight.” I really don’t think The Prestige can even be compared to these two. Sure, it was pretty good and an interesting watch, but I find it to be so overrated (especially that cop-out twist). I know some that would argue that Batman Begins is as great a film as TDK or Memento but I thought it was one of the biggest snoozers I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how Nolan managed to make the sequel to that extremely boring movie so much more amazing, but he did.
To my rant above I’d like to add:
Is fakey history Oscar baity? You betcha.
I also thought Nolan’s Following or whatever it was called was pretty boring and pointless as well. I would never in a million years say he has made 6 great films. Far from it. He has made 2 great films and a few pretty good ones.
alright, I’m down off the ledge.
Seriously, Frost/Nixon so reeks of Oscar it’s not even funny (and I mean that literally, as in “it’s sad”) So it won’t surprise me at all when it scrapes together some nominations. Sure, I’ll feel a little sick and sorry for whatever much better movies got kicked out to make way for F/N — but if they can’t edge out F/N in the nominations process, they’d have scant chance of winning anyway.
So a nomination for F/N will just make predicting the winner that much easier. Because we’ll only have 4 reasonable movies to choose from, instead of 5.
For the record, I wasn’t saying I think Happy-Go-Lucky is any better or worse than Frost/Nixon. Only that I feel the hand of an immensely talented director behind HGL, however misdirected that talent might be in this instance. Leigh and Howard are both doing a spiffy job juggling turds this year. But at least Leigh didn’t insult my intelligence; he meant well.
Ron Howard has admitted he voted for Nixon. Maybe he thinks this is his Atonement. If he appeared before the credits and broke down like Vanessa Redgrave, that might redeem the movie, for me.
[me, sheepishly: hey, how did I get back up on this ledge?]
Here’s something I wonder, maybe someone can answer. In the movie, David Frost shows Nixon videotapes of the nightmare devastation being rained down on Vietnam and Cambodia, and shows “movie Nixon” looking all emotionally wrecked and contrite. Does anybody know if that actually happened in the real interview, and how did “real Nixon” really respond?
Nolan’s remake of Insomnia: muy underrated.
Cop-out twist in The Prestige? What madness. I’d be happy to hear an explanation of that one.
I’d say Stephen Daldry is still in the race…
And his first work is awesome!
ok, fine. Don’t think I don’t notice everybody crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the crazy man preaching on the corner.
(Psssttt! Is the crazy preacher guy gone yet?)
Just kidding, Ryan. Actually, I don’t know the answer to your question, but it’s an interesting one. I’ve been thinking about trying to catch a little bit of the real Frost/Nixon interview off youtube. If I find anything out in relation to your question, I’ll let you know. It’s hard for me to believe Nixon was really all that torn and contrite about Vietnam, but I don’t know that for a fact. Yet.
Ron Howard is the master of mediocrity. But even if Frost/Nixon’s purpose of existence is Oscar nomination, atleast they did not campaign like a whore. Against all odds, it seems to be where it is in the race because people actually seem to like it. I personally have little interest in it but will watch it sometime next week.
Nolan has made 1 magnificent film (Memento), a very good film (TDK) and 2 utterly disposable films (Batman Begins & The Prestige).
About Boyle, I have to say that after watching Slumdog, there might be something to the co-director Loveleen Tandon talk. The movie and even the screenplay are extremely ‘in’ on all the Bombay street culture, and I don’t buy that a westner who came to Bombay for the 1st time to direct a movie could make such a film all by himself(imagine Ron Howard making City Of God) albeit the view that the movie presents is definitely somewhat exaggerated and westernized. I think the role of Loveleen Tandon must have went much beyond an interpreter and some credit might be due.
Ryan, it sounds to me like the problems you have with F/N are with the screenplay, though, not with the direction or the acting. To me, it is about this one moment in time, when David Frost got what no one else could get – Nixon on camera agonizing. At the end when they say it was all about the closeup, what was great (to me) about that is that Nixon’s had some powerful losing moments on camera due to the closeup – our politicians now are more trained for TV and more trained for the closeup specifically. I haven’t watched all of the real Frost/Nixon tapes but what I have seen shows me that the movie, and/or play have, as you say, taken something fairly benign and blown it all up into something important.
What it is, to me, is a good look at how the media blows things up and makes a story about something simple, like a look caught on camera.
At any rate, watching Frost/Nixon I wasn’t thinking about the historical record and I wasn’t really thinking about Watergate or the Nixon presidency – but about this character as drawn by Peter Morgan, Frank Langella and Ron Howard – and to me it’s fascinating. Is it about a good guy? No. Is it about feeling sorry for a bad guy? Maybe. Oliver Stone’s Nixon did that to a marvelous degree and I think I bring to F/N a bit of what I know about Nixon via Stone’s interpretation of him.
Either way, Watergate and Nixon remain endlessly fascinating to me. Thus, the movie is fascinating whether it is 100% true or not, whether it stands on the “right” side of history or not. If it about these two people, the media and the closeup – it worked for me on those levels. It is also one of the few movies I’ve seen this year that I will probably watch any time it comes on cable. I put most of this on Langella’s intriguing, endlessly watchable performance but the movie itself is, for me, an interesting experience. I don’t know why. Probably because I’ve seen All the President’s Men about 100 times and Stone’s Nixon maybe twenty times.
Noah R.
It still amazes me that Kelly Macdonald got her start in Trainspotting, and what a fantastic actress she has become since. We watched No Country for Old Men in a class recently and no one had any idea that she was the same actress.
yeah i was rather surprised it was the same person too. at first i was like. ‘oh someone has the same name’. ha ha…
You’re really selling Christopher Nolan short. The Prestige is a great film, by any measure.
And Batman Begins is the best superhero origin story there is. ‘Begins’ is every bit as good as TDK in terms of characters, story, vision, etc. It just lacked the villain(s) needed to keep the attention of the common folk.
Ryan Adams
ok, fine. Don’t think I don’t notice everybody crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the crazy man preaching on the corner.
crazy man on the street corner would win the Documentary category. long may the ‘crazy’ man reign !!!!!
Finding Nemo was better than Wall-E. Loved Wall-E don’t get me wrong it was fantastic but Finding Nemo was the best film of 2003 and one of the top tier animation films since the history of animated films began. Seriously watch it again and try not to laugh at EVERYTHING Ellen D. says.
Boyle’s Best: Slumdog, RU: Trainspotting, HM: 28 Days Later
Howards’s Best: A Beautiful Mind, RU: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (seriously) HM: Frost/Nixon
Nolan’s Best: Do I even need to say it?, RU: Memento, HM: Batman Begins (although I do think The Prestige was also very masterful)
Van Sant’s Best: To Die For, RU: Milk, HM: Paranoid Park
So overall I would say the Oscar deserves to go to Boyle or Nolan as they both directed their best work this year however Van Sant directed 2 of his 3 best this year so why shouldn’t he have a valid shot.
However if I had an Academy vote and were these the final five I would have to go for Nolan as I am what some people on this site would inaccuratley describe as a fan-boy. In reality I am just a fan of one of the most incredible, exciting and flawless films of the past 5 years.
Peace.
I like how you mention Demme but fail to show a clip or talk about him in depth. He has a better shot at a nomination than Stanton, I think.
I agree, anonymous, that Demme has a shot – I am not doing my DGA predictions at this time! At any rate, is anyone going to make the claim that Rachel Getting Married is anywhere near as good as Silence of the Lambs?
Geez, I had no idea people hated Ron Howard/Forrest Gump so much till I started coming to AD. What’s up with that?
If [Ron Howard] appeared before the credits and broke down like Vanessa Redgrave, that might redeem [Frost/Nixon], for me.
Ryan, would you be satisfied if Ron turned away from the camera and urgently exclaimed, “I have my doubts”?
Actually, I liked Frost/Nixon and thought Howard did a good job. It certainly won’t be in my top 10, but I do think it’ll get nominated for best picture because, like it or not, that’s what films like this are for. I think it’ll strike a chord with mainstream audiences.
RE: Mik, #18, cop-out twist
The Prestige had one of the cheapest endings I’ve seen in a long time and it almost made me feel as in the Nolans had cheated me.
Sorry, I’m writing this on the fly and if I had was to take the time to explain it all in my own words I would probably ramble on endlessly. But I wanted to reply to you so I’ll copy and paste a post I quickly came up with on the IMDB message board for the film to help me out (original: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/board/nest/121423946)
When I first saw this film, I was befuddled. How did we go from a period piece set in a world of illusion to a sci-fi reality? I’m all for mixing genres, but this goes beyond mixing. It’s as though Nolan and company went to great pains to give us a reality, and then for the Big Gotcha, they broke with their own illusion. I don’t see it as clever. The craft clearly evident up to the big reveal just makes the idea of this machine even more displaced.
All that painstaking construction in story and time and place… were in the service of a cloning device? That leap in logic is a cinematic cheat. I have a hard time recommending this movie when, in Nolan’s world, complexity and the twist trump everything else.
It felt so out of place that suddenly, in the midst of the audience having been built up to see that all the “magic” performed is really a series of illusions, based in reality, and that the two magicians are competing to see who can create the better illusion, suddenly a reality-defying machine is used to perform a trick that ISN’T an illusion at all…
Maybe I was misinterpreting the message of the movie, but one of the key points that I had been picking up for most of the film was that everything is not as it seems. Then that whole idea was torn apart.
I would have prefered an ending in which it was revealed that the whole machine thing really was an elaborate illusion.
Anyway sorry to take this off the topic at hand. Now I must end my rant.
If anything, the cleverest prestige of this film was that it misdirected us all throughout the film to believing that everything is explicable by the laws we have in our society. There is a slight of hand or a ‘get-out’ to every trick. So if you fall for that and believe it, you’ll probably be angered by the sci-fi answer that in itself makes perfect sense and completely works for the film in a narrative and dramatic way. It perhaps wouldnt exist in OUR WORLD, but then, the film isnt OUR WORLD as such, its a world where teleportation and cloning exists (which could still happen in our world to be fair). Its our fault for making us think that the two worlds were the same. The smart bit of the film is that the second misdirection (ie the fact that we do have ‘real magic’ in the film afterall) actually makes the unveiling of Borden’s trick much more impressive and have a much deeper impact.
Consider this scenario:
1). Angier DOESNT find Tesla, who doesnt get his funding and as such doesnt get the teleportation/cloning device. The end of the film occurs when Cutter says “He must have a double” and then Angier responds “Yeah, thats it, probably a double, like that Chinese bloke” and when they approach Borden he says “Yeah, you’re right, it is a double, you got me. Its my twin brother actually, we’ve been living this life for ages. Well done guys”.
2). Borden actually is using clones too, thus Borden doesnt need the explanation for the trick as he already knows it, he doesnt go behind the stage, he doesnt fall for the trap, he isnt imprisoned…Whats the point in that?! If Borden were using clones too…why would he send Angier to Tesla? He only did so because he either didnt think that Tesla was capable of making such a machine, or he never considered that Angier would be able to fund it.
Thats why it is a working Tesla machine is a perfectly good plot device, it makes sense in the context of the film, it is shown as foreshadowing long throughout the film, it makes OTHER aspects of the film enriched (such as the secret to Borden’s machine), it moves the narrative of the film onwards and it makes the sacrifices of both characters deeper and in Angier’s case much more perverse. That in turn changes the audience’s loyalties and messes with their perceptions.
The fact that it IS a cloning machine and not some convoluted magic trick allows the great tragedy of the film to unfold. The fact that Angier has been killing his own clones for personal glory and his obsession on revenge is counter-acted by the tragic sacrifice of a man who had been living the trick his whole life, eventually hung.
Its not about magic as such, its about humanity, or the lack of it.
People ironically are trying to read too much into this film. The trick of the film is that Nolan convinced us that the film was something it wasnt. It explained all the tricks which made you think that it was a period peice, an expose into magic tricks if you like. He then throws into the midst a reknowned scientist (most people will have at least heard of Tesla by the Tesla Coil), which futher solidifies our mind into the fact that this film is about science and trickey, not magic. Then he pulls the rug from under our feet by turning the film into a sci-fi/fantasy film (which was set up throughout), then, just as we are reeling from that…he steps backwards and shows us the secret behind Borden’s trick. Thus the film moves from period peice, to sci-fi, to tragedy.
It seems unfair to say that the film was spoiled because of a ‘cop out’ twist, when the film is full of these realisations that keep you guessing throughout. I dont necessarily like using the word twist all the time, because it conjours these contrived things just for the purpose of cheaply fooling the audience. Instead I like to consider it to be like a jjigsaw puzzle being unravelled in front of your eyes. For example it took a while through the film before I realised that Angier was cloning himself. Yet once he does it once, that becomes fairly obvious.
A big twist is that the film is not actually a period drama like it seems, but is actually a sci-fi film. Thats something that you realise certainly before the end, but the consequences of this change of genre doesnt sink in until later.
You DO realise fairly early the twist that Angier has killed himself to set up Borden for his murder, in some sense. But I doubt that many people realised the full impact of that until it is pretty much spelled out for you.
The twist that Angier has in fact been killing himself, time and time again for anywhere up to 100 times. Which is more of a horrible realisation than it is a twist. Its quite a sickening insight into the character.
The fact that Angier is also Lord Caldlow is a bit of a twist and isnt incredibly obvious.
The fact that Fallon is Borden’s twin brother may be obvious to some (it certainly wasnt to me, but I do know some that guessed it fairly obvious…from Christian Bale’s cheekbones of all things). But the really deep twist there is the realisation of the utter commital, to the point of sacrifice that these two people had made in order to keep their ‘act’ going throughout the years, be it splitting up their marriage, falling in love with different women, even one going to the hangman’s noose is a pretty deep and intense realisation and one that I’m not sure many people really considered until the end of the film, regardless of whether they pegged Fallon as Borden’s twin early on.
Excuse me if some of this was a bit repetitive. Rather than typing it all out again, I cut and pasted many of it from lots of postings I’d made on the subject at IMDB too.
Just curious… does no one here give Ron Howard credit for the tremendous directing of Apollo 13? You can call his work heavy-handed, but the man took a story that everyone knew the ending to going in and made one of the most pulse-pounding nail-biters of ’90s mainstream cinema.
Totally agree, Jonah. Apollo 13 was the first DVD in my Ron Howard DVD collection. (And the last).
“does no one here give Ron Howard credit for the tremendous directing of Apollo 13?”
The Academy gave him credit for Apollo 13, in 2002.
Thanks for the detailed response, Mik. I get what your saying but the movie still felt off to me. I guess we will just have to disagree.
No worries. I always maintained that there are two schools when it comes to sensible and intelligent film-goers looking at Prestige. Those who went along with the shift into a different genre and loved the film and those who couldnt engage with the shift and therefore couldnt enjoy the film. I still think that those who couldnt go along with the twist should be able to appreciate what a finely crafted film it was, even if they do give exception to how it ended.
While I thought The Prestige was very good techinically, I also found it kinda boring (added to the whole genre/ending ordeal). So ultimately I just though it was an okay film, definitely not a great one.
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