Speaking of Trivialization and Absurdity . . . - "Who Is the Greatest Director of ...

[Glenn Anders]

Today's IDMb News has the following item which contains several pieces of fresh evidence on the trivialization of the term "Great Director." You will find it half way down, entitled: "Spielberg Voted Greatest Director."

http://us.imdb.com/news/wenn/#celeb3

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

to the majority of the people that visit that board, he is the greatest director. if you come here, it's welles. if you go somewhere else, it'll be another guy.

all the opinions i've seen at imdb seem to be the opinions of young people. they are not wrong, you just went to the wrong forum. it's like going to a club. if you think the music sucks, you go to another club. in 1990, i thought LOVE POTION #9 was a cool movie, and i wasn't wrong, back then, to me, it was a cool movie.

think how screwed up it would be if the masses thought welles was the greatest director of all time. all those people would be coming here. everyone would have chimes at midnight, f-for-fake, and they would be trading them for eddie murphy movies. all the theme parks in orlando would have rides based on welles films. now arent you glad the majority thinks that stevie is the greatest?

[Wilson]

To be honest, I'm amazed Welles even made that list. Empire is a magazine for teens and twentysomethings, judging by their blockbuster laden covers and special editions for Star Wars and its ilk. In the end, at least they know who Welles is. We're a more refined group, you know... :p

[jaime marzol]

yes. i have noticed lately, welles is mentioned more often than before. more kids know about him. more kids know about citizen kane now than they did 20 years ago. it's that glamorized rebel thing, like james dean.

also, i noticed that in the tcm welles thing, everything i heard from tcm, the host, the short they made to promote his films, was right on. did not have that huge gaps of truth i find in other welles programs.

like the third man documentary. i knew that when welles said he was responsible for harry line dialogue, he meant the coockoo clock thing, but the documentary could not resist calling him a liar right up front. that stuff about welles' reaction to working in a sewer i beleive, and understand. any one that has seen a sewer would understand his indignation at clinbing around where turds are floating.

[jaime marzol]

bet if you went back to that imdb list in 10 years welles would be higher up the ladder, and in another 10 years even higher up. remember, all the guys touted as the new welles are gone but orson is still there.

[Glenn Anders]

Gee! Thanks, gang.

You make me feel a lot better, Jaime and Jeff.

But must there not be thousands of ignorant buffs like myself, or just ordinary adult folk, who read that IMDb report, and who will believe that Stephen Spielberg IS "The Greatest Director of All Time." Worse yet, thousands more may believe that Quentin Tarantino isa better director than Orson Welles!

Maybe you are right, Jeff. Maybe the surprising thing is that Welles made the list at all.

We are in The Age of [calculated] Trivialization!

I'll go with your latest post, Jaime: "To the Future!"

Regards.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

yes, glenn, a lot of people with no opinion will go there, read the list, then leave with the opinion that, yes, stevie, and quentin are better than ORSON, because it said so on IMDB. but that person will go to other sites and reform his opinion over and over again. he will also buy stovetop dressing instead of rice. the whole world is full of them.

the best thing you, or anyone with the power of the press can do to battle world-wide cinema ignorance, is to promote people like david bordwell, j. rosenbaum, the film books by bogdanovich, and the Sight And Sound list.

or you could just not give a crap and keep watching what you enjoy. who cares if he's having stovetop instead of rice?

remember, we are the elite that can sit through and entire screening of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT!

[tony williams]

Yes, it is sad. But we should all struggle on. The best work on promoting Welles (apart from Rosenbaum, Krohn, and dedicated others) is still this site which is so educational and informative. As others have mentioned, the poll is directed towards the "cool" (or "awesome" - which is the sland terms now) young audience whom Tarantino aims his sights at.

Viewing my evaluations from the Welles class, I came across comments from certain (not all) members of the younger generation such as "Why are we not watching recent films?" Why are we watching a number of films by the same director?" "Why is the instructor emphasizing the positive aspects of this director?" (as if the Kael, Thomson, blame Welles discourse were not in the ascendency).

I assume that times will change but we do have Wellesnet.com as well as a number of alterantiive internet groups who know the real facts and to whom certain constituencies brought up on Spielberg alone will eventually turn to. Once I had a student who was brought up on the Friday the 13th and Nightmare oin Elm Street films because that was all his local cinema showed. Once he studied film and looked at a number of diverse works not available to him before, his attitude changed and he became a much more well-rounded filmic person.

We should thus recognize that there are positive alternatives around for those who wish to find them.

[Orson&Jazz]

I don't know if you had seen the full list, but apparently there are twenty on the list of Empire's "greatest" directors of all time.


01. Steven Spielberg

02. Alfred Hitchcock

03. Martin Scorsese

04. Stanley Kubrick

05. Ridley Scott

06. Akira Kurosawa

07. Peter Jackson

08. Quentin Tarantino

09. Orson Welles

10. Woody Allen

11. Clint Eastwood

12. David Lean

13. The Coen Brothers

14. James Cameron

15. Francis Ford Coppolla

16. Oliver Stone

17. Sergio Leone

18. John Ford

19. Billy Wilder

20. Sam Peckinpah




Sure it kind of burns me that Jackson is ahead of Welles, but oh well. It's great that people recognize and know who Orson Welles is in the first place!

[Roger Ryan]

Given the leanings of the IMDB crowd, I'm surprised at how good that list is! I think all of them have done exceptional work in one genre or another...except for Mr. Cameron (not anywhere near the top 50 in my opinion)...and maybe Mr. Eastwood as well.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Where the hell is Curtis Harrington?
And Nick Ray?
And Jean-Pierre Melville?

[jaime marzol]

also left out:
von stroheim
chaplin
lang
hawks
eisenstein
huston
walsh
curtiz

i like eastwood, peckinpah, coen brothers, oliver stone, but i don't think they are in my top 20.

see that! their list generated all this discussion here, so it's good for something.

and i was glad to see scorsese in that top 20. i don't think he gets enough credit

[etimh]

Uh, Michael Powell?!?! Hello? Bogus list.

[jaime marzol]

damn right, powell and pressburger. black narcissus, the red shoes, peeping tom (powell), theif of bagdad, great films. to me those films are better than anything ever done by
01. Steven Spielberg, 05. Ridley Scott, 07. Peter Jackson,
08. Quentin Tarantino, 11. Clint Eastwood, 12. David Lean,
13. The Coen Brothers, 14. James Cameron, 16. Oliver Stone,
20. Sam Peckinpah

[Orson&Jazz]

Taken from the IMDb site:

Spielberg Voted Best Director
Legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been voted the greatest director of all time. Spielberg - the talent behind huge blockbuster hits including Schindler's List, E.T., Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Saving Private Ryan - topped a poll commissioned by Britain's Empire movie magazine. The 58-year-old beat off competition from Psycho director Alfred Hitchcock and The Aviator creator Martin Scorsese, who came in second and third respectively. Empire's associate editor Ian Freer says, "Steven Spielberg is the closest thing in movies to resemble the impact of The Beatles. A cultural phenomenon, his adventures with sharks, UFOs, whip-crackin' archaeologists and ETs, plus searching historical dramas like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan have defined the movie-going life of an entire generation." Surprisingly, acclaimed film-makers such as Star Wars director George Lucas, Charlie Chaplin, and Tim Burton, fell short of inclusion. The top ten is as follows: 1. Steven Spielberg, 2. Alfred Hitchcock, 3. Martin Scorsese, 4. Stanley Kubrick, 5. Sir Ridley Scott, 6. Akira Kurosawa, 7. Peter Jackson, 8. Quentin Tarantino, 9. Orson Welles, 10. Woody Allen.

I think if the IMDb visitor's had their choice of who would be the greatest director, I am sure most would have voted for Francis Ford Coppola or even Peter Jackson, just by judging how The Godfather has been in the position of the top movie of all time in IMDb's Top 250 movies poll, with a rating of 9.0 out of 10. Peter Jackson's 3 LOTR movies are in the rankings of 13, 9, and 3 with ratings from 8.7 to 8.9. The only Spielberg movies to enter the top 20 is Schindler's List which ranks higher than Citzen Kane at 6 with a rating of 8.8, and Raider's Of The Lost Ark at 19 with a rating of 8.6. Citizen Kane is 14 on this list with a rating of 8.7.



This just shows that all polls are erroneous, flawed, and bogus. There is no way that everyone in this world can agree on what can be deemed as the "greatest". Although I feel that Welles truly befits the title of "great"!