Best Directors: 2009

I'm going to apologize in advance for my blogging laziness. Going into this, I had grand notions of intricate posts full of cinematic wisdom. Then, as usual, reality intervened, and instead of getting The Alien trilogy interpreted as a treatise on an evolving cinemascape, or the effects of the Hays Code on Rebel Without a Cause, I'm just going to talk about directors for a little while; specifically, the five directors nominated for this years Best Director Oscar. So, I suppose you can consider this part of my continuing Oscar miniseries. I'll let you know who they are, what they've done, what I think of them, and why their achievements this year merit awards consideration. So, here we go, in alphabetical order:

Kathryn Bigelow
Films (in bold are the ones I've seen):
The Hurt Locker
K 19: The Widowmaker
The Weight of Water
Strange Days
Point Break
Blue Steel
Near Dark
Breakdown

What I think:
I honestly wasn't overly familiar with Ms. Bigelow before The Hurt Locker. I was aware of her, mainly due to her relative fame as a female director of stereotypically 'male' movies. Most of her films operate within a genre (usually action or horror), though they tend to subvert the cliches inherent to their specific fields. For me, watching The Hurt Locker was a complete revelation: it was almost shameful that I was hitherto unaware of such unadulterated talent. Obviously, I can't speak on Ms. Bigelow too well, as I've only seen one other of her films, but that one (Near Dark) is very much worth seeing. Near Dark poses as a vampire movie, while quietly sneaking away to play in the Western playground. Her take on the cowboy-mainstreet-shootout trope is absolutely priceless (hint: it involves a Semi and a flaming Bill Paxton with razor-sharp spurs).

Why she deserves the nomination:
The Hurt Locker is one of the most effortlessly tense and draining films I've seen in a while, and a large part of that is due to Bigelow's stylistic sensibilities and unbeatable sense of pacing. Plus, in the middle of all the action, she draws forth virtuoso performances from her three leads (Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty), and never allows the story elements to be usurped by the action set-pieces. She doesn't just deserve the nomination: she deserves to win.

James Cameron
Films:
Avatar
Titanic
True Lies
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Abyss
Aliens
The Terminator
Piranha 2: The Spawning

What I think:
It seems like I spend at least half of my life defending James Cameron these days. So, let me put it this way: he's not a great director. His movies can be hackneyed and cliched. He prioritizes concept and visual conceit over emotional substance and nuance. That being said, he's been redefining the medium of film since 1986. The man may be arrogant, but his arrogance has led to some of the most awe-inspiringly insane movie stories of the past 30 years (seriously, if you haven't seen any of the making-of footage for Titanic, youtube that crap: he literally rebuilt the friggin' Titanic. That's a big ship). In his later years, his writing has become dreadfully sub-par (though the scripts for Terminator 2 and Aliens are, in my opinion, tightly wound and proficient enough), but he has yet to sacrifice his artistic notions for easier work, and that endears him to me like crazy.

Why he deserves the nomination:
Avatar may not reinvent the story-telling wheel, but it does redefine what is possible for movies to show, and I respect that. Keeping a film of this size on the tracks and managing to make it both understandable and entertaining is one hell of an achievement. Plus, he's one of the most hands-on directors working: youtube footage of Cameron running through sound-stages, steadicam belted on, and see what I mean.

Lee Daniels
Films:
Precious
Shadowboxer

What I think:
I really don't have anything intelligent to say here, as I think it's just about impossible to speak on a director having seen only one of their films. I thought Precious was competently directed, even if it strayed into overly stylistic territory at times. Not that there's anything wrong with style: the film just felt as if it were trying too hard to be a 'director's movie."

Why he deserves the nomination:
Anyone who can coax such amazing performances out of a debut performance (Gabourey Sidibe) or a BET talk-show host (Mo'Nique) deserves some recognition.

Jason Reitman
Films:
Up in the Air
Juno
Thank You For Smoking

What I think:
Jason Reitman is solid. I can't say it any better than that. He's a very meat-and-potatoes sort of director: he gets the story told without unnecessary flourishes, and that's admirable. His films are always smart, quickly paced, and sharp as a tack. My one qualm would be that, every now and again, he seems to be trying to hard to be quirky. It could be the material he tackles, it could be the actors, but I can't help but think that Reitman embraces his 'indie director' a little too tightly. That's a tiny complaint, however: he's on a three-for-three role, here, and has yet to make a bad film.

Why he deserves the nomination:
Up in the Air is almost minimalist in its spare storytelling style. Reitman effortlessly evokes the life of a man with nothing to tie him down while subtly introducing contemporary relevant themes, and never tipping the balance of comedy and drama.

Quentin Tarantino
Films:
Inglorious Basterds
Death-Proof
Kill Bill
Jackie Brown
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs

What I think:
I think it's embarrassing that I haven't seen Jackie Brown. I'll try to get on that. Quentin Tarantino is an auteur by any definition. His films are completely distinctive, unique pieces that both embrace and subvert the genres in which they occur. Think about it: Pulp Fiction is technically a gangster/crime movie, Kill Bill is technically a kung-fu movie, and Inglorious Basterds is technically a WWII movie. But none of them really feel like it, do they? Tarantino's visual style is endlessly inventive and wickedly, maniacally gleeful. No other director working today can use violence as a comedic punchline the way Tarantino can. He's easily my favorite director on this list.

Why he deserves the nomination:
Well, he's Quentin Tarantino, for starters. All levity aside, Inglorious Basterds is fresh, witty, and hugely entertaining, as well as dark, gruesome, and incredibly tense. It's a completely unique vision that deserves a reward.



Can I just take a moment to point out how diverse this lineup is? Normally, Oscar nominates five middle-aged white men. But this year, we have:
-a woman, only the fourth in Academy history, after Lena Wurtmuller (Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (The Piano), and Sophia Coppola (Lost in Translation)
-a black man, only the second in Academy history (after John Singleton (Boyz in da Hood). That's right, Spike Lee has never been nominated. Not even for Do the Right Thing.)
-a young man: Reitman is only 32. Fewer than ten directors have been younger than he is for their nominations.
-a gay man (Lee Daniels). Though this is one of the Academy's more welcome minorities, it's still relatively rare. Famous out directors who have scored with the Academy include Pedro Almodovar (Hable Con Ella), Steven Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Reader), Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk), Rob Marshall (Nine), Franco Zefferelli (Romeo and Juliet), and John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy)
-a Canadian (James Cameron). I'd insert a Canadian joke here, but there are quite a few Canadian directors worth their salt (Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley are the first that come to mind, but there are others. I just haven't done the research on this one).

Honestly, not a bad slate. If I had a ballot, it wouldn't look like this (I'd leave off two of these directors for two different ones. Who gets left off is a mystery we won't solve until my Best of '09 post comes out...Which is late, I know, but I'm still missing some movies), but I can't complain. At least Clint Eastwood didn't make it on here, right?


What do you think? How familiar with these directors are you, and do they deserve to get the nominations? Which directors do you think got left out this year?

In Appreciation/Defense of James Cameron

So, there seems to be some sort of Avatar backlash building on the horizon, so I thought I'd take a moment to praise James Cameron, and, to an extent, defend my viewpoint on his latest offering/career in general. Cameron is an ubiquitous enough director that anyone who reads this should have at least passing familiarity with his filmography. His films are as follows:

Avatar (2009)

Titanic (1997)

True Lies (1994)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

The Abyss (1989)

Aliens (1986)

The Terminator (1984)

Of this list, I've seen everything but The Abyss and The Terminator. I should obviously get to viewing the latter, as I've seen all of the four-film series but the first. The former, however, seems to be lesser Cameron (pretty, technically innovative, a little bit silly), so I'm fine with having not seen it for now, though it is on my rental queue.
If I'm forced to describe James Cameron as a film-maker in exactly one word, that one word is...

Balls.
Gigantic, solid brass balls.
There's no two ways around it. No other film-maker working today can come close to the sheer cinematic chutzpah that Cameron possesses. Look at his filmography: he plays almost exclusively in the science fiction sandbox; the most notoriously difficult genre to make, and even more difficulty to be taken seriously. What else do his films have in common? They're big. Hell, epic. People throw that word around like confetti, but James Cameron earns it, while almost no one else working does (I say almost, because Peter Jackson earns it when he wants to, as does Zhang Yimou).
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Cameron's films are good, regardless of actual quality, because of his cinematic daring. He's had some less-than-stellar outings (True Lies being the best evidence of this). Nor am I saying that his films are masterpieces. Indeed, Cameron's writing is hopelessly mediocre.
No, what I'm asking you to consider is his unadulterated cinematic talent. Think of his films as images. Not words. And what images he creates. Cameron is renowned for pushing the ball, technologically and visually. The Terminator, though it failed to play to wide audiences in its debut, showcased the fascinating possibilities incumbent to combining computer-generated imagery with live-action models. Aliens did so too, as well as laying the foundations for animatronics in film that Jurassic Park would so memorably capitalize on. The Abyss and Terminator 2 were some of the first films to utilize completely CG renderings: the liquid terminator from the latter film is still one of the most iconic and impressive technical achievements in recent film history.
So far, Cameron's just been warming up. Playing around. Stretching his legs. Now comes Titanic, a film for which Cameron literally reconstructed the famous ocean liner in anal-retentive detail, then proceeded to flood it, tossing stuntmen at the ocean with reckless abandon. New filming techniques were invented (most notable involving crane/tracking work), and Cameron succeeded in creating some of the most harrowing and exciting footage ever to grace the silver screen. And then, his magnum opus: Avatar. A film that took eleven years to make, Cameron's latest film redefined visual effects capabilities within the confines of dramatic storytelling. Advancements in motion-capture performance, filming digital environments, and 3-D camerawork all owe their genesis to Cameron's single-minded film-making.
One can easily break down Cameron's filmography into two groups: the fantastical and the realistic. Please note that I'm not discussing subject matter here. For instance, I would label Titanic as fantastic, whereas I would label Aliens as realistic. The difference lies in the stylistic choices, coupled with contrasting themes. Cameron's fantastical films (Avatar, Titanic, T 2, The Abyss) have a painterly quality to them, almost impressionistic. The cinematographic style lends a sense of mysticism to the work, allowing Cameron to work within one of his favorite themes: finding the surreal and mystical in the everyday world. This is most obviously manifested in Avatar, in which Cameron creates a fantastic world for his events; indeed, Avatar could also be filed under his realist category, in that it takes a realist approach to a completely fantastical environment. In these films, Cameron reminds me most of a young Jean Cocteau, a French New Wave director whose films were surreal, hypnotic even (a good example of this is his 1946 masterpiece, La Belle et la Bete). Cameron's realist perspective, owes more the Italian Neo-Realism/cinema verite movement. Aliens, despite the plot involving space marines sent to do battle with carnivorous extraterrestrials, plays like documentary footage. His edits are laser-focused, and his cinematography prioritizes function over form. Though it might be cinephile heresy to suggest this, Cameron's realist works bring to mind the filmography of famed Italian Neo-realist Vittorio De Sicca, whose Ladri di Biciclete is frequently shortlisted as one of the greatest films ever made. Indeed, all of Cameron's films are thematic cousins of the Neo-Realist movement, whose goal was to record a day in the life of a man to whom nothing ever happens. De Sicca takes liberties with this: in Ladri di Biciclete, a man is forced, by poverty and the hand of fate, to become a criminal, on the same day that he himself is victimized by crime. Almost all of Cameron's characters could be described as 'every-men'; normal people thrust into extraordinary circumstance. Sarah Connor in The Terminator; a regular woman beset by androids from the future. Ellen Ripley in Aliens; a ship-worker-cum-warrior woman. Rose Duwitt-Bukater in Titanic; rich girl who finds herself bridging a socioeconomic gap whilst dying of hypothermia. Jake Sully in Avatar; a marine who becomes the champion of an alien race. Cameron embraces Neo-Realist themes while rejecting the movement's anti-cinema aesthetic.
Now, allow me a brief tangent. King Kong. 1933. Poor acting, ridiculous script, ham-handedly directed. And routinely included in film conversation as the father of cinema as we know it today. The point of King Kong wasn't its story or its acting: the point was that someone ballsy was trying something completely new. Look at Star Wars: the plot (young man takes on a journey, learns new skills, defeats the bad guys) is as old as spoken word, but Star Wars is undeniably one of the most influential films of our time. Which brings us to Avatar. Not a very original story. Not a great script. But that's the point. As Roger Ebert pointed out in his review of Titanic, "you don't take a $200 million dollar film as your opportunity to reinvent the story-telling wheel." The point of Avatar, or many of Cameron's other films, isn't the snappy dialogue. The point is that a gutsy individual is attempting to take a step into the future of film-making. That's how the medium is advanced: a director has the courage to try something entirely new.
I admit that I might be biased in this area. Both of my earliest cinematic memories involve Cameron films (the first film I remember seeing in theaters was Titanic, and the first film I remember seeing on my own was the Alien trilogy, featuring a trifecta of talented directors: Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher. Analyzing that series, and its stylistic changes, would make a great blog post, but I digress). Still, I can't help but notice something: the worst reviews of Avatar are coming from regular film-goers, whereas pretentious cinephiles like myself are going nuts for the film. Isn't this the inverse of the norm? Aren't regular film-goers supposed to fawn over blockbusters, while pretentious cinephiles turn up their noses and hit the arthouse theaters? What's happening? Here's my best guess: When I watch Avatar, I don't just see a movie. I see 110 years of film-makers taking one giant step forward. I see film history being made. If I'm still writing about films in fifty years, I'll look back fondly on 2009 as a year, like 1939, 1967, or 1977, in which film-making took one big step forward. And hey, I realize that I shouldn't evaluate a film based on its historical significance, but I'm only human, and I love movies more than I love most people. So seeing my favorite art medium begin a new phase of evolution in the space of a three-hour film is just about one of the most exciting, worthwhile things I can imagine. It doesn't matter that the script makes me laugh, or the acting isn't exactly masterclass: I'm watching cinema advance itself. And that's a hell of a thing to watch.

Directors gone WILD

Maybe it's just me, but I find this video absolutely fascinating. So go take a look at it. Or, first, I suppose, I should give you some cliff notes. This video is a fast interview with six directors: Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Jason Reitman, and Lee Daniels. I'm assuming I don't have to tell you who Tarantino and Jackson are.
The Others:
Kathryn Bigelow: director of The Hurt Locker, K:19, Point Break, Near Dark, etc.
James Cameron: I shouldn't have to tell you either, but just in case: Avatar, Titanic, Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies
Jason Reitman: Up in the Air, Juno, Thank You For Smoking
Lee Daniels: Precious, Shadowboxer

Now, take a look:

http://video.hollywoodreporter.com/services/player/bcpid6555681001?bctid=57139948001


Back?
I love this conversation. It's really a fairly simple question, a little bit stereotypical, fairly dumbed-down, but the personalities behind these directors shine through so well through it that it's easy to see where each of their films come from.
Let's look at the seating arrangements. I don't know if it was intentional, but it's perfect, and fits the conversation to a T:
On the right side, we have Lee Daniels and Jason Reitman. Both are directors of small, quirky-ish indie movies, both of whom rely on film festivals and Oscar buzz for critical success.
In the middle: Peter Jackson and James Cameron. Inarguably the biggest, ballsiest film-makers around. Both of these men understand the word 'epic' and convey that in their movies. Both fit seamlessly into the Hollywood studio system.
On the left side: Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino. Both film-makers whose goal seems to be making art-oriented auteur films within the constrains of typical genre fare.
In other words, they sat according to the type of films they make. (Funny side note: Kathyryn Bigelow used to be married to James Cameron; they're divorced now. Notice how Bigelow is sitting as far as humanly possible from Cameron. They're going to have to spend the whole award season competing. Love it.)
What makes this arrangement more interesting is that the subject of studio vs. independent film comes up; rather passionately, I might add. Look at James Cameron: when Reitman and Daniels are talking about their films he looks disdainful, almost angry. Their style does not sit well with him. He even goes so far as to insult Reitman's father; in the part where Reitman is talking about Kevin Smith and Ghostbusters, which Reitman's father directed, Cameron says, as an aside: "That's a good reason not to make movies." Reitman twitches a little, but keeps smiling. Jackson, too, seems a little aloof, but I'd say he's just not a fan of the schmoozing with the press scenario. He started as a quirky, indie film-maker, and I think he respects his roots. On the other side, Reitman is trying too hard to fit the role as indie director, and Daniels just looks uncomfortable. Watch Bigelow and Tarantino, though. Bigelow is utterly comfortably, almost serene, and Tarantino loves everybody. Of all the film-makers, they seem the most comfortable sharing the craft with their compatriots.
Odd. Jackson and Cameron have made millions and millions with their films, and Reitman and Daniels are both proudly off-center. But the only two film-makers at the table who seem comfortable are the ones who straddle the line between indie and studio.
Is this as telling as I'd like it to be, or are Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino just nicer, more confident people than the others?