Name the worst of all living film-makers.

[barracuda]

[streeb]

Far as I can tell, Kevin Smith doesn't know or love a damn thing about cinema

[Nordic]

Well, if you're gonna go that direction:

[JackRiddler]

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By the way, everyone, fine choices. It's kind of like, round up the usual suspects. Forgot about Ron Howard, though.

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Bruckheimer/Emmerich/Bay

I kind of want to write a coffee-table book on'em, called Apocalypse Fascism.

If there's actually something we'd positively call a civilization on this planet, these guys will be sure to uproot its history and rape the corpse in the course of blowing up all of the prettiest landmarks.

These guys keep doing Verhoeven's Starship Troopers as a straight story, humor not allowed. They've done the most obvious blockbusters-as-psyops out there, repeated endorsements of the healthful benefits of nuclear war and of the doctrine of the State as a military fist, behind which all must unite to prevail in a forced life-or-death fight against the Other. (The Other's usual flavors are: Alien, Arab and Nature.)

But mostly, of course, it's about timing the explosions according to a formula designed to pulp the brains of vulnerable 13-year-olds. Or as Hugh in his useful moments would say: Recruitment.

One of the best moments in the episode comes when Liz encounters a poster for Transformers 5 with the words “Written By Nobody” printed across the bottom. Sad, but probably close to the truth.

http://screencrave.com/2011-03-25/30-ro ... tv-review/

Independence Day is still an all-time standout for the case that it wouldn't be so bad to just keep nuking the big cities until the liberals shut the fuck up. And the president's speech describing the extraterrestrials' strategy for planetary imperialism, after the alien tries to take over his mind, is a hilarious anti-masterpiece of Republican projection. But not a satire! Then he pilots the lead plane into the final battle! (For similar straight 180-degree reversal of reality and projection of US imperialism on to the designated enemy, see the next Emmerich/Bruckheimer bomb-film, Stargate.)

Remember, Bob Dole called a press conference specifically to endorse Independence Day as great american family entertainment. In the other year of his two-year campaign to attack Secular Hollywood for Christianist votes, Dole put forward "True Lies," in which Schwarzenegger artfully and casually kills 200 allahuakhbar-screaming Angry-Arab suicide guys (and one scheming Asian bitch) in reverse order of their military hierarchy, from #200 to #1. Now that one wasn't the Bruckheimer guys, I don't believe, but long as we're on Dole: it ended with a nuclear mushroom cloud as the ha-ha funny background to the closing kiss, a happy ending because the nuke had been diverted to a disposable target (the Gulf of Mexico? whatever) and we'd learned the Spook Hero is not a cheater, he only ever fucks his wife and only lied to her as a patriotic duty.

In both cases, America prevails against the Aliens by way of limited nuclear war. Talk about an effective way to frighten you into voting for Clinton!

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This thread actually comes because of a trailer I saw at the movies last night, in which god help us, Emmerich does Shakespeare as seen through the lens of the Da Vinci Code. Our local KWH crew will be thrilled to hear it's called Anonymous.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXE_iovifmk

Thing is, the lavish recreation of the Globe and Elizabethan London (and New York City by helicopter always gets thrown in as the right set for any movie, any time, whether or not you'll be blowing it up) totally has me wanting it... And in the middle of that the screen flashes: "A Roland Emmerich Film." He's going to define what a generation thinks about this? Fuck!

Never mind the idea of a living theater company as collaboration -- not unrelated to how movies don't always have lone authors either, with the Emmerich oeuvre as an obvious example. Watch that and you know Eddie DeVere was the one Author and the mean and sneaky merchant-actor ripped it all off. Good guys and bad guys. I was never going to be very loyal to either hard-line, Oxford or Stratford, but if anyone can make me a fanatic Stratfordian, it's probably Emmerich. (And gah, lookit those sets! I'll probably be unable to resist paying him for the privilege. Mission accomplished, I guess?)

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[Bruce Dazzling]

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This thread actually comes because of a trailer I saw at the movies last night, in which god help us, Emmerich does Shakespeare as seen through the lens of the Da Vinci Code. Our local KWH crew will be thrilled to hear it's called Anonymous.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXE_iovifmk

Thing is, the lavish recreation of the Globe and Elizabethan London (and New York City by helicopter always gets thrown in as the right set for any movie, any time, whether or not you'll be blowing it up) totally has me wanting it... And in the middle of that the screen flashes: "A Roland Emmerich Film." He's going to define what a generation thinks about this? Fuck!

Never mind the idea of a living theater company as collaboration -- not unrelated to how movies don't always have lone authors either, with the Emmerich oeuvre as an obvious example. Watch that and you know Eddie DeVere was the one Author and the mean and sneaky merchant-actor ripped it all off. Good guys and bad guys. I was never going to be very loyal to either hard-line, Oxford or Stratford, but if anyone can make me a fanatic Stratfordian, it's probably Emmerich. (And gah, lookit those sets! I'll probably be unable to resist paying him for the privilege. Mission accomplished, I guess?)

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I've always thought that Sgt. Pepper's Billy Shears was sly tip of the hat to the William Shakespeare/Sir Francis Bacon thingamawhat, but leave it to Roland freaking Emmerich and his ham-fists to tell the "definitive" story.

Oh, and Hugh Manatee Wins, please pick up the white courtesy phone...

[JackRiddler]

Initially, I put all my chips on the Qliphothic John Ford, Michael Bay. Now I'm wondering whether he's just another false face of the shambling horrors, Spielberg and Lucas.

By the way, this has had me laughing all day.

[Canadian_watcher]

M Night Shyamalan always lets me down.

[Nordic]

M Night Shyamalan always lets me down.

Yeah it makes me think he must have stolen the script for "The Sixth Sense". Maybe met the guy who really wrote it, had him killed, you know, a la "Death Trap"

[JackRiddler]

THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008

http://www.buffalobeast.com/134/50mostl ... e2008.html

49. M. Night Shyamalan

Charges: A font of mediocrity, Shyamalan's success as a screenwriter and director is more confusing than quantum mechanics. He peaked with the overrated, not-at-all-surprising The Sixth Sense and each proceeding film's been worse than the last. This year's The Happening was dumber than an inbred moth. A heavy-handed allegory about humanity's self-destructive environmental impact, starring pseudo-scientific killer plants and Mark Wahlberg's flared nostrils, it made us want to recreate a scene from the movie and jab ourselves in the neck with a crocheting needle.

Exhibit A: Gave himself the name “Night.”

Sentence: Surprise ending to next film: it was actually never made!

[gnosticheresy_2]

M Night Shyamalan always lets me down.

[kenoma]

Sam Mendes is fucking vile.

[OP ED]

james cameron.

[Twyla LaSarc]

I cringe when I hear a director cut his his teeth on music video ala Baz Luhrman. It generally means that the story will be trite, possibly making no sense at all, and the camera will never focus steadily on the subject, constantly cutting away in a spastic attempt at 'edginess'.

I will also agree with many of the votes above. Bruckheimer, et al suck and Tarantino is possibly the most overrated and derivative director of our age. Give me Ray Dennis Steckler or Ted Mikels any day. Its shitty but at least its entertaining and mostly harmless.

[DrVolin]

Interesting discussion. I still have to go with Michael Bay though. Jack, get me a pre-order of your book.

[JackRiddler]

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Is it all right that I sort-of liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and very much liked Jackie Brown and (ulp) Inglorious Basterds? That's more than half the smug fucker's oeuvre.

David Mamet. Now there's an asshole who's made some good ones. So it's not impossible.

Also, I fell for The Piano, when I saw it that once in the theaters whenever long ago. But maybe that was a case of Feminist Girlfriend Syndrome?

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