10 Current Directors worth following

10 Directors to acquaint yourself with: We all know Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas when it comes to blockbusters, Oliver Stone when it comes to controvoursey, Woody Allen for comedy but there are a lot of directors that the average filmgoer might not know of who are doing great work in the 21st century. Being familiar with these names of mostly up-and-coming directors will help you make a safer bet next time you’re in the movie theater line or videostore.
1. Fernando Meirelles: “Stick to your village and you’ll appeal to the whole world,” is the philosophy Meirelles preaches to global filmmakers trying to make it in the global era and one he perfected in the landmark 2002 film City of God, a gripping tale of a young photographer trying to make the most of a short-lived existence in the slums of Brazil. His follow-up which transported the Brazillian filmmaker to the shantytowns of Kenya in an adaptation of The Constant Gardener was received just as well this past year. In an ever-increasing global network of film, Meirelles is paving the way for third world filmmakers hoping to import a brand of filmmaking that retains their local flavor.
2. Wes Anderson: Anderson’s films are a delicately textured feast for the eyes and ears. Unique touches like David Bowie songs translated into Portuguese are infused into eclectic film scores and he pays equal attention to visual tones. His films often feature a central character surrounded by a colorful group of characters and by sorting out the kinks in the relationships in his life, he comes to the conclusion that love them or hate them, be greatful for all the people in your life because they come in handy someday.
3. Sam Mendes: His first film, American Beauty, struck a chord with the American public in capturing the depression of suburban conformity and won an Oscar. His second film Road to Perdition, didn’t get quite as acclaim as the first but still had its admirers (including myself, it’s a personal favorite of mine), while three times did not prove a charm for Jarhead, a film injected with just a bit too much testosterone to be effective. Still, traces of his distinct style are noticeable in all three films: Mendes tends to work from the outside in. In three entirely different settings, the Persian Gulf, The Mob Scene in Depression-Era Chicago, Mendes does a wonderful job, first and foremost, of portraying a world and the characters who inhabit it and the story takes off from there.
4. Stephen Sodebergh: First off, I have to admit that it’s kind of irritating how for such a self-proclaimed champion of independent filmmaking, it seems like the sole purpose of some of his movies is to give his friends Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney something to do. Faults aside, Sodebergh is a very innovative filmmaker whose never-ending desire to experiment makes it so that even if he comes up with a dud like Ocean’s 12 or Full Frontal, you have to give him credit for at least trying something new. When he gets it right, like in Traffic, the results can be classic
5. Rob Zemeckis-Stephen Spielberg’s lesser-known protégé has made some of the most memorable classics of the last 20 years showing great range and innovation. He has explored both the fun and serious sides of the sci-fi genre with the Back to the Future trilogy and Contact respectively. His wacky ideas include infusing the gangster film with animated cartoons in Who Framed Roger Robert and (along with co-writer Tom Hanks) basing an entire film on a marooned castaway befriending a volleyball in Cast Away and surprisingly both worked.
6. Kevin Smith-His humor is admittingly low-brow, but as crude humor goes, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more intelligent filmmaker than Smith. To treat his landmark film, Clerks (and now Clerks II) as representative of his work would not be giving him enough credit for his range. Chasing Amy is considered by some to be an insightful take on relationships (personally, I didn’t like it but others do), Dogma is probably one of the best religious satires ever made. While bashed by some, I found Mallrats is a great send-up to adolescent aimlessness. It’s moral is priceless: that the best things in life are the little joys (a new type of pretzel, a signing at the comic store, etc) that are found at your neighborhood mall. And that’s what it comes down to for Smith. Is there anything in life more serious than that?
7. Bryan Singer-Working with small budgets as shown with The Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer demonstrated his ability as a great storyteller. With bigger budgets and biggest casts, Singer has still retained the human element but great special effects were added. He has done much to resurrect the superhero summer blockbuster with X-Men and Superman Returns (my review of Superman Returns was bad, but I think that Singer did a good job with what was given to him), by bringing realism to the genre. I’m not certain of this but it’s a good bet that pretty much everything from The Hulk to The Fantastic Four to Batman Begins took cues from him.
8. Peter Weir-For the 1985 hit film Witness, one of the very few films to use Pennsylvania’s Amish country as its setting, Australian Peter Weir was brought over to Hollywood for the project because they wanted someone with an outsider’s sensitivity and that has been one of his trademarks. Weir shows extroadinary attention to detail in his films, which helped make 2003 sea epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, set during the Napoleanic Wars, one of the best period pieces to date. He also has a great track record of single-handedly transforming the careers of leading actors he has worked with: Harrison Ford in Witness, Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society, and Jim Carrey in Truman Show
9. Alexander Payne-Payne is a UCLA Film School grad who studied abroad in Europe during his undergrad days. It was there where he picked up a fondness for Italian neorealism and he is now basically this generation’s answer to The Bycicle Thief. His last two films, About Schmidt and Sideways have both won multiple accolades, and his first two Citizen Ruth and Election, a high school comedy made with MTV films have developed cult followings. Schmidt and Sideways are marked by brilliant casting choices and a humor that comes from the subtleties and joys of life and they are emotionally affecting in a way few movies are.
10. Edward Zwick-With Glory, Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai and the upcoming Blood Diamond, Zwick is most at home making the epic. He is great at period pieces, capturing time and place, and the quality of the art direction in his films (The recreation of 19th century San Fransisco for the opening of Last Samurai, for example) gets taken for granted all too often. He infuses films with wonderfully intense action scenes, and for making his films borderline action/period piece hybrids rather than period pieces, he is often overlooked by the academy, although he did win an Oscar as producer of Shakespeare in Love.

Review of The Brothers Grimm

The Brother's Grimm might not succeed as the definitive postmodern compendium of fairy tales that Director Terry Gilliam made it out to be. The plot's finer points and its references to fairy tales get easily lost on the viewer. At the same time, the movie works as a playful ride fueled by the odd couple chemistry between its two stars. Heath Ledger and Matt Damon play brothers Will and two witch doctors who travel the 18th Century German countryside offering their services as witch doctors. In reality, they're con artists who elaborately plot hoaxes. The main plot is that the two brothers are forced to play witch doctors for real when they are hired to clean out a forest that they discover is truly haunted. Terry Gilliam, who is somewhat of an acquired taste for being more of an art director than a storyteller, achieves more impressive and less distracting visuals than usual and imbues the film with touches of humor. Overall, the film works.

Summer Movie Awards

Best Picture-
Little Miss Sunshine-One of the few movies in which the phrase, "You'll cry, you'll laugh, you'll jump for joy" isn't just a movie cliche. Coming from Sundance Film Festival, the movie opened at 1.4 million dollars but broke into the top 10 two weekends later and stayed there for 7 weeks for a reason: it's just that good and word got around. Within the structure of a typical road trip movie, Little Miss Sunshine is an emotionally resonant film that contains some very dark moments en route to higher highs.

Runner-Up: Prairie Home Companion-The biggest misconception about Prairie Home Companion was that it was a film about Garrison Kiellor, but that's also it's greatest strength. Those familiar with the director know that Rob Altman uses the film as a springboard for meditations on art, life, and death. On top of a great soundtrack, humor and color come from all sorts of colorful characters (Maya Rudolph as the frustrated stagehand, Kevin Kline as the bumbling private eye or Meryl Streep and Lilly Tomlin and the chatty Johnson sisters, etc.) within a great ensemble

Best Pure Comedy: Talladega Nights-From the comedic team that bought us Anchorman (writer/director Adam McKay and Will Ferrell) comes a solid follow-up that certainly has its funny moments. The primary thing that distinguishes Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby from regular comedic outings of the frat pack is assembling a great cast of comedic talent that can surround Will Ferrell and keep up with him line-for-line as he veers off what's written in the script (if there's one at all). Might have been a little less funny than Anchorman but it makes up for it with heart in the endearing father-son relationship between Ferrell and Gary Cole.

Best Popcorn Movie: Da Vinci Code-The fact was that Ron Howard was in a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't position in adapting the most popular book of the day, and all things considered, whether it was too close to or too far away from the book, it made for good entertainment if nothing else. Ian McKellan, Paul Bettany, and Jean Reno added interest to the movie with parts that support Tom Hanks, and considering how many well-liked French actresses there are to chose from, landing Audrey Tatou was a steal. Howard's picture works as a carefully-paced thriller and the controvoursey behind it all provided some good water cooler talk if nothing else
Runner-Up: X-Men 3-Another movie with high standards to live up to coming in, X-Men 3 was an admirable third leg of a very solid trilogy with the stakes of life and death being raised up a little (characters actually died, that's not supposed to happen in superhero movies?!), good special effects, and I liked the intergenerational theme of the new cast of characters (Iceman, Kitty Pride, etc.) having to step up when the time was right for them

Best Actor:
Paul Giamatti, Lady in the Water-Some people would insist on giving Giamatti the best actor award for everything he does and I'm not approaching the role from that angle. Still, with the stutter and everything, I actually thought Giamatti stuck out strongly as a beacon of well-constructed character acting amid a very bizarre world and cast of characters that M. Night Shamylan created.
Runners-Up:
Greg Kinnear, Little Miss Sunshine-All the actors in the movie were very good, but he has great comic instincts, look at the scene where Kinnear is about to be busted by a cop but saved by porn magazines for what i'm talking about
Jonny Depp, Pirates 2-The movie was mediocre but Depp might have been even more electric in this film than the first. His physical movements and control over his body is a throwback to the great silent comedians and he shines in every scene he's in.

Best Supporting Actor:
John C. Riley, Talladega Nights-It's hard to compare a pure comedy role to a dramatic role like Robbins but more props to him for keeping up with Ferrell laugh-for-laugh at making up his own lines. Besides, is there any truer definition of supporting than Riley's role?
Runners Up:
Ian McKellan and Paul Bettany, Da Vinci Code-Da Vinci Code worked for me, at least, on the strength of the supporting players. McKellan made a very nuanced and sophisticated villain that reminds me of someone who could easily fit into an Indiana Jones or James Bond movie. Despite the fact that he had to show his backside naked (something I could've done without), Bettany imbued the role with a little more of a fragile side than his counterpart in the book had.

Best Actress:
Toni Collette, Little Miss Sunshine-I saw Collette as the glue that held the whole dysfunctional family together. She played the straight woman to everyone else's comic hijinx and hopefully Little Miss Sunshine will get the neccessary exposure this talented actress deserves.

Best Supporting Actress:
Meryl Streep-Prairie Home Companion-Now this was a Meryl Streep performance I really, really liked. With her interactions with Garrison Kiellor, you felt like there was a lot more to her than was being shown, and you really grew to love her character in a sort of "I wish she was my mom, too" way. I loved her non-stop babblings with her sister and loved her singing even more.
Runner-Up: Emily Blunt, Devil Wears Prada-The attention has gone to Streep for the movie and she's even receiving early Oscar buzz but I personally thought that Blunt proved slightly more adept at the acerbic one-liners that the movie is most memorable for.

Best Special Effects:
X-Men 3-Superman saving a flaming plane from gravity and ability to deflect bullets is all well and good but it's hard to top the playground of possibilities special effects special effects you can have when playing with characters who can control ice, fire, metal, and the weather. Highlights include, Wolverine's rampage through the jungle, Jean Grey stopping an army of guns firing at her, and ice and pyro using their powers in a dead heat

Best Animated Film:
Cars-Cars was without a doubt better than....wait, it was the only animated film I saw this summer, but, hey, none of the other ones looked intriguing enough to watch (except Over the Hedge, I do regret seeing possibly the only time that Avril Lavigne, Steve Carrell, and William Shatner will star in the same movie together). Nevertheless, Cars was a fine picture with a relatively bold theme about the importance of community, taking the sceninc route and the need to preserve the finer things in life. Bonnie Hunt, Owen Wilson, and Larry the Cable Guy all had great chemistry with each other.

Best Movie I didn't see:
Unlike most critic wannabes, I am not ashamed to say that I did not see every movie that came out this summer. Akeelah and the Bee, about a talented young girl who is too afraid to show that she's smart for being unpopular and starring the usually underrated Lawrence Fishburne, sounded like a worthwhile film I will regret not seeing.

Best end credits:
Clerks II-As an usher in the movie theater, I did see the end credits of many movies while I was cleaning up and Clerks II never dissapointed. Kevin Smith thanks everyone he's ever met for all sorts of things (i.e. He thanks his parents for having sex) as well as people he's never met. He lists 10,000 of his myspace friends in the end credits. Finally, he has a disclaimer that he spends way too much time on the internet

Best Song:
Route 66, John Mayer-A great cover by John Mayer, who while having a reputation as a boy bandish pop singer, is actually a devoted student of past guitar greats and he pays ample tribute to Chuck Berry adding a little more spice along the way
Runner-Ups:
My Minnesota Home-Prairie Home Companion
Bad Jokes-Prairie Home Companion
This Land-Sujfan Stevens

Best Score:
Lady in the Water-The haunting score lingers in your memory long after the film does. M. Night Shamylan's last film picked up an oscar nod for best score, so it might be likely that Lady in the Water follows suit.

James Bond villains

I think the last four Bond films have been fascinating studies of modern forms of evil. It goes without saying that when you make a movie like James Bond you have carte blanche to make the most evil megalomaniac villain that you can think of and that since Bond is set in the real world (unlike Batman or Superman per se) the villains usually touch upon real life themes and chords:

Die Another Day was a study in relation between the West and the rest. The fact that the Korean man made himself look Caucasian and the world as well as the audience took him more seriously as a threatining villain, was a very relavent and interesting statement, to the way that the Western countries like the United States and Great Britain and Europe arrogantly treat the rest of the world with arrogance and disdain. Remember, the Korean villain said he went to Oxford and Harvard which sounded unexpected and far-fetched for someone of his stature. The Korean peninsula was a unified peaceful place before the World's superpowers came in and meddled with their affairs. There was also some underemphasized stuff with Conflict Diamonds which was the focus on last year's Lord of War and is a focus on the upcoming movie Blood Diamond.

The World is Not Enough and Tomorrow Never Dies focus on an oil baron and a media baron respectively and those are both two segments that have grown increasingly powerful over the years and the idea that in the wrong hands they would be the ultimate supervillain is intriguing. The idea of launching a nuclear war so you can have exclusive coverage to the headlines is deliciously twisting.

Goldeneye deals with a lot of the postwar Communist fallout and war brought on by oppressed ethnic minorities which is the cause of many wars today. It was a very good transition out of the Cold War setting into the idea that the new enemies are going to be wars caused by ethnic divisions.

I think the most interesting piece, however, was Live and Let Die. I read somewhere that the movie touched upon a prevalent fear at the time of black power and the potential of the newly independent countries in the Carribean to inspire particularly violent movies in Harlem and Louisiana.

Reviews of Click and You, Me and Dupree

You, Me and Dupree (2006)
Owen Wilson stars as Randolph Dupree, an unemployed drifter with high hopes even though he's just been evicted from his apartment. Matt Dillon stars as his newlywed childhood friend who, along with bride Kate Hudson, agrees to take him in after he winds up homeless. The film is an ideal follow up from The Wedding Crashers winning over anyone who felt that although he reforms and gets the girl at the end, Owen Wilson's character of Jeremy Beckwith was nothing more than a spineless womanizing phony. His character here starts out as little more than a transplanted version of that same character. In an attempt to get some alone time for themselves, the newlywed couple set up Dupree on a date and the plan drastically backfires when he brings her back home and in an attempt to set the mood with some scented candles, nearly burns the house down. However, things turnaround when Dupree starts to show a side of himself that isn't existent in Jeremy Beckwith, and that's when the movie finds its groove. You, Me and Dupree isn't a comedy that moves at 100 laughs a minute but it does have heart. Its humor comes from the relationship dynamics between friends and newlyweds that gets increasingly convoluted as the plot goes on, but finds itself back again at the film’s finale.
Accepted

Despite the fact that the entire story can be told in a 60-second trailer, Accepted is a surprisingly richer comedy than one would expect. Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) is a slightly geekier and less attractive version of Ferris Bueller. Armed with perhaps a little too much confidence and an ability to think on the fly, Gaines is an adolescent who is able to navigate the adult world by using his wits to work around it. Having been rejected by every college he applies to, B decides to doctor a fake acceptance letter for him and friends who are in the same situation as he is, to appease their parents. One thing needs to another, and Bartleby and his friends end up actually founding their own college. Justin Long, one of the six goofballs that comprised Vince Vaughn’s team in Dodgeball, might be a little over his head here being asked to shoulder the load as the film’s lead, but he does have a nerdy sort of charm that works. The film is a decently sharp satire of modern education and is good for a few comedy thrills.

Click (2006)
Click is Adam Sandler’s latest comedic film which hopes to capitalize on the crowd who have followed his bizarre and lovably childish humor since the days of Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. In the film, Sandler plays an architect who has difficulty advancing his career, and happens to come across a magical remote control which can fast forward, pause, and perform many other functions on his own life. Leaving any hint of possible maturation he gave with his slightly more intelligent films 50 First Dates or Big Daddy, Sandler once again reverts to inane bathroom humor that he hopes will be redeemed by squeamish audiences with a warm, fuzzy ending in which a valuable lesson is learned about the importance of family. The problem, however is that, the plot is too disjointed and moves too quickly for us to care much about what happens to the characters. Without a meaningful plot, all that’s left is Adam Sandler’s random humor which occasionally hits but mostly misses this time out.

Review: All the King's Men

This is a review I wrote for All the King's Men that almost, almost got published by the Prince George's Sentinel (in MD) which is a dinky small paper that wouldn't have paid me much and i don't really like their format much anyway, to be honest, but still they were nice enough to offer me the chance to go out of my way to see the movie and write them a review and send it into them. One interesting thing about this review is that, oddly enough, i didn't like the movie, i was planning on writing about the positives and then the negatives but by the time i got through with the positives, i was out of word space, so i just sent it in.:

Admittingly, the bar is set pretty high to start with for All the King’s Men. For one, a picture that was originally acclaimed to the point of winning a best picture oscar doesn’t really call out to be remade unless it can be enhanced with special effects like this past December’s King Kong. The cast is also populated by a cast overstuffed with Oscar-starved actors who armed with dialect coaches are eager to pounce come awards season. Whether this political drama will actually deliver come January is one that most critics are answering no to and while that’s understandable, the film is certainly worth a look.

The 2006 version of All the King’s Men was adapted for the screen by James Carville, well-known political consultant and former host of CNN’s Crossfire. Carville was inspired to delve into screenwriting out of a love for the 1946 book and wrote the screenplay without so much as a glance of the 1949 screen adaptation. Penned by Robert Penn Warren, the Pullitzer Prize-winning novel is a profound epic and by adapting this story to screen, the film benefits from having a classically-concieved story that’s as rich as few other films today are.

The novel is based on the life of Louisiana governor and champion of the poor Huey Long. The title, in fact, comes from the motto “Every man a King” of Long’s Share the Wealth initiative which he used to redistribute wealth and pull people out of depression. Long was a very curious political figure which the movie to some extent mines with its fictitional protagonist Willie Stark. Played by Sean Penn in a thick accent, Stark comes across as a simpleton with petty desires but has the ability and drive to inspire people with profound sayings such as, “Your will is my strength,” and “You work for me because I am the way I am, and you are the way you are and that’s just an arrangement found in the natural order of things.” However, the core of the film really lies within Jude Law’s Jack Burden, a reporter-turned-right-hand-man for Stark who’s torn between loyalty to Stark’s ideals and his godfather (Anthony Hopkins) and best friend (Ruffalo) who both oppose Stark. Law carries the part ably and through him, the story becomes more of a contemplative study of values and Sothern life reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird or A Time to Kill. If there is one main weakness to the film however, it’s that a lot of the questions of right and wrong, and whether the symbol of an honest politician is a myth, get muddled up through a somewhat confusing plot and a lack of clarity over who’s doing what to whom and why.

All the King’s Men released in the akward buffer between summer blockbusters and the Oscar-caliber season will understandably suffer but is worth seeing.

Lay off Bob Woodward, everyone

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The Late night talk show wars

I was watching David Letterman last night for about 15 minutes because Rachel Ray was on, and I wanted to see what she was all about, and I just can’t stand him. It just baffles me that 10 years ago our country was engaged in a debate over who should be the next Tonight Show host and our only two options were Jay Leno and David Letterman, because neither of those 2 are particularly good.

Jay Leno is a pretty good stand-up comic and seems like a genuinely nice guy but when you get down to it, he’s a poor conversationalist. In other words, he’s a boring guy to talk to and an even more boring guy to watch having a conversation. He asks the guests really obvious and boring questions like “how’s your marriage going?”, “how are your kids doing?”, “what do you like to do with your kids?”, “how do you like to spend Christmas/Thanksgiving/The 4th of July/[whatever holiday is coming up]?” He also asked a lot of people when the Olympics were on if they watched the Olympics and what events they liked and stuff (It’s kind of a promotional thing because NBC broadcasts the Olymnpics), which is funny because most of the guests talked excitedly about the Olympics with him, while I’ve heard a lot of celebrities (like Bryant Gumbel and Charles Barkley) speak out about how boring the Winter Olympics are. For the record, I personally like the Winter Olympics, but I’m getting off track.

I don’t really feel a need to attack Leno because, despite the fact that he apparently gets better ratings than Letterman, I’ve never met a single fan of Jay Leno. Theoretically, some people must be watching somewhere, but it doesn’t seem like criticizing Leno is doing anything more than preaching to the choir. Letterman, on the other hand, has a cult following of people who love him. Just turn on his show and you’ll see that the audience wildly applauds at anything he says that’s even a remote attempt at humor. They applaud twice as much as they actually laugh, which says a lot because laughing is a physiological reaction to something funny whereas clapping is something a brainwashed audience does. He also gets claps for things that aren’t funny, but are things he says that the audience agrees with. He might say “New York is a great city” or something and the audience goes off on. (I have that same problem with the Daily Show. Not so much John Stewart but the way audiences tend to hang on every word of his and clap and laugh too much). The problem is the difference between the actual number of funny things he does vs. the number of times they applaud or laugh. My theory is that he used to be funny, and that things like “Will it Float?” or “Is This Something” were at the time revolutionary. They’re both kind of funny once, but he hasn’t changed his act in years. Conan O’Brien does the same kind of acts like “Celebrity Signatures” or “New State quarters” but each new act gives us a new set of state quarters or signatures. That sums up Letterman as a whole: You know how sometimes a funny comedian tells a few jokes to warm up the crowd so that they’ll laugh at anything for later comedians? Letterman warmed up the crowd ten years ago and those people come back to watch him and laugh at what he does now, but for those of us who just turn on his show now and watch, there’s not much to watch. He’s also a poor conversationalist like Leno (slightly better, though) and he is often rude with and disinterested in his guests.

Conan O’Brien, on the other hand, does have the qualities that a talk show host should have and I think that most people my age know it, even if the demographics don’t reflect it. He is genuinely interested in his guests, self-aware, and he works for his laughs every night.