DJMonsterMo | 3:44 PM |

Comments:

Empire's Top 20 Directors List

I thought I wasn't going to have to go on another movie-related rant for quite some time. Unfortunately, Empire magazine has forced me to do so with their poorly informed top 20 list of top all-time directors. Granted, this is based on a readers' poll... 'poorly informed' and 'Empire reader' go hand-in-hand. Not that all the directors listed are bad directors; many are among the best active directors. However, many of them should not be on an all-time list.

Here's their list (with my commentary):
20) Sam Peckinpah (Wow, maybe Empire readers have seen movies before 1975. Imagine that!)
19) Billy Wilder (Good selection.)
18) John Ford (Should be higher on the list.)
17) Sergio Leone (Decent choice, but not in my top 20.)
16) Oliver Stone (Ditto.)
15) Francis Ford Coppola (Only had 2 good movies not named Godfather: Apocalypse Now and The Conversation).
14) James Cameron (I just choked on my own vomit.)
13) The Coen Brothers (Decent, but again, not in my top 20.)
12) Sir David Lean (Would be lower on my list.)
11) Clint Eastwood (Ditto.)
10) Woody Allen (Ditto.)
9) Orson Welles (My #2)
8) Quentin Tarantino (Popularity contest.)
7) Peter Jackson (Again, popularity contest.)
6) Akira Kurosawa (My #3)
5) Sir Ridley Scott (Is this a joke?)
4) Stanley Kubrick (Good choice.)
3) Martin Scorsese (Good choice. Would be lower on my list.)
2) Alfred Hitchcock (My #1)
1) Steven Spielberg (Most popular or well-known director, perhaps. Greatest? Not a chance in hell.)

My List:
HM (alphabetical):
Robert Bresson, Luis Bunuel, Frank Capra, John Cassavetes, Charles Chaplin, Vittorio De Sica, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Werner Herzog, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Buster Keaton, Krzysztof Kieslowski, David Lean, Mike Leigh, Kenji Mizoguchi, F.W. Murnau, Sam Peckinpah, Satyajit Ray, Alain Resnais, Roberto Rossellini, Martin Scorsese, Béla Tarr, François Truffaut, Wong Kar-Wai, Wim Wenders, Billy Wilder
10) Andrei Tarkovsky
9) Yasujiro Ozu
8) Federico Fellini
7) Ingmar Bergman - Woody Allen idolizes him
6) Jean Renoir
5) Jean-Luc Godard - Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and Oliver Stone would be nowhere without him
4) Stanley Kubrick
3) Akira Kurosawa - Spielberg and Peter Jackson can't approach his mastery of epic cinema
2) Orson Welles
1) Alfred Hitchcock - Arguably, along with Welles, the most influential director of all time

For your reference:
Note, these selections are based on a director's film representation in the Top 10 film poll, not a poll of top directors per se.
Sight and Sound's Critic's Top Ten Directors (from a poll of the world's leading movie critics)
1 Orson Welles
1 Alfred Hitchcock
3 Jean-Luc Godard
4 Jean Renoir
5 Stanley Kubrick
6 Akira Kurosawa
7 Federico Fellini
8 John Ford
9 Sergei Eisenstein
10 Francis Ford Coppola
10 Yasujiro Ozu


Sight and Sound's Director's Top Ten Directors (from a poll of the world's leading movie directors)
1 Orson Welles
2 Federico Fellini
3 Akira Kurosawa
4 Francis Ford Coppola
5 Alfred Hitchcock
6 Stanley Kubrick
7 Billy Wilder
8 Ingmar Bergman
9 Martin Scorsese
9 David Lean
9 Jean Renoir

blog comments powered by Disqus