A meme on movies

[yendi]

sweinberg provided this meme, a hella long (but fun) one. From the link in the meme, you can go fill it out yourself. Pick your favorite -- not necessarily the "best" film for each director. Remember to pick movies they actually directed -- folks like Albert Brooks, David Mamet, and Harold Ramis all had me almost picking films that weren't eligible.

Woody Allen	Love and Death
Robert Altman	The Player
Paul Thomas Anderson	Boogie Nights
Michael Bay	Bad Boys
Kathryn Bigelow	Near Dark
John Boorman	Tailor of Panama
Albert Brooks	Defending Your Life
Mel Brooks	Blazing Saddles
Tod Browning	Dracula
Tim Burton	Big Fish
James Cameron	Aliens
Frank Capra	It Happened One Night
John Carpenter	The Thing
Joel Coen	The Hudsucker Proxy
Francis Ford Coppola	The Godfather: Part 2
Wes Craven	Scream
David Cronenberg	The Brood
Cameron Crowe	Say Anything
George Cukor	The Philadelphia Story
Joe Dante	Gremlins
Jonathan Demme	The Silence of the Lambs
Brian De Palma	The Untouchables
Stanley Donen	Charade
Richard Donner	Superman
Clint Eastwood	The Rookie
Blake Edwards	A Shot in the Dark
David Fincher	Fight Club
Victor Fleming	Tortilla Flat
John Ford	Stagecoach
Milos Forman	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Stephen Frears	High Fidelity
William Friedkin	The French Connection
Terry Gilliam	Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Curtis Hanson	Bad Influence
Howard Hawks	To Have and to Have Not
Walter Hill	48 Hours
Alfred Hitchcock	Rear Window
John Hughes	Ferris Bueller's Day Off
John Huston	The Maltese Falcon
Ron Howard	Willow
Peter Jackson	The Frighteners
Jim Jarmusch	Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
Neil Jordan	The Company of Wolves
Elia Kazan	On the Waterfront
Stanley Kubrick	The Shining
John Landis	Kentucky Fried MOvie
David Lean	blythe spirit
Spike Lee	She's Gotta Have It
Sergio Leone	A Fistful of Dollars
Barry Levinson	Toys
Richard Linklater	Slacker
Sidney Lumet	Deathtrap
David Lynch	Blue Velvet
David Mamet	State and Main
Joseph L. Mankiewicz	Sleuth
Michael Mann	Thief
John McTiernan	Die Hard
Michael Moore	Roger and Me
Mike Nichols	Biloxi BLues
Frank Oz	Little Shop of Horros
Alan Parker	The Commitments
Arthur Penn	Bonnie and Clyde
Roman Polanski	Chinatown
Sam Raimi	Spider-man 2
Harold Ramis	Caddyshack
Rob Reiner	The Princess Bride
John Sayles	Eight Men Out
Martin Scorsese	Goodfellas
Ridley Scott	Alien
Tony Scott	The Last Boy Scout
Ron Shelton	Bull Durham
Jim Sheridan	In America
Kevin Smith	Mallrats
Steven Soderbergh	Ocean's Eleven
Steven Spielberg	Raiders of the Lost Ark
Oliver Stone	The Hand
Quentin Tarantino	Kill Bill Vol 2
Gus Van Sant	Good Will Hunting
Paul Verhoeven	Starship Troopers
Peter Weir	The Truman Show
Orson Welles	Citizen Cane
James Whale	Bride of Frankenstein
Billy Wilder	Double Indemnity
Robert Wise	The Haunting
John Woo	The Killer
William Wyler	Roman Holiday
Robert Zemeckis	Romancing the Stone
Fred Zinnemann	From Here to Eternity
Edward Zwick	The Last Samurai
Create a survey!

Yeah, I know that a few of those might come as surprises. In some cases, it's simpler a matter of which film I can watch over and over (thus the more mainstream Craven and Raimi choices, even though their earlier, edgier stuff was probably better). In others (Bigelow), it came down to a coinflip. And for others, just call me weird. And much as I think Brazil may be the best piece of filmmaking ever, I just can't watch it on a whim -- it's exhausting. And picking my favorite Michael Bay film is a bit like picking my favorite way to have my penis chopped off.

Comments

short version of Shelle's favorites

[shellefly.livejournal.com]

Mainly this is an excuse to plug my favorite movie (again), but hey at least I'm honest about my raving fangirlness.

Woody Allen Annie Hall, though Love and Death is a close second.

Mel Brooks History of the World Part I

Tim Burton Big Fish , since, I discovered via IMDB, he didn't actually direct the movie I would have picked. Kidnap the Sandy Claws ...

Frank Capra Lost Horizon

John Carpenter Big Trouble In little China

Francis Ford Coppola The Outsiders

Jonathan Demme Something Wild

Okay, I don't have time to finish this meme, but ...

Terry Gilliam Brazil

Stanley Kubrick A Clockwork Orange

Peter Jackson Heavenly Creatures (yes, I know, flame city ...)

Frank Oz The Dark Crystal

Rob Reiner The Princess Bride

Kevin Smith Mallrats, definitely. "Brenda?"

Steven Spielberg The Color Purple. Raiders of the Lost Ark would be #2.

John Woo The Killers

[shellefly.livejournal.com]

And much as I think Brazil may be the best piece of filmmaking ever

I knew there was a reason I liked you.
There are more, to be sure, but the sentence above is a good start.

[lovingboth]

Hmm, if there were a drop-down menu listing each person's - man's, given there's only one woman in there - films, I'd do this. But...

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[crystalrowan.livejournal.com]

Wow - so many to agree with - except for the Peter Jackson one of course. ;)

I'm not even going to bother doing this meme because it would almost be a true copy of your list. It's nice to see people with good taste.

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[shellefly.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[yendi]

Why would anyone flame over Heavenly Creatures? I loved it.

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[yendi]

And yeah, with Burton, I also found that I couldn't pick the movie I wanted to pick.

[yendi]

Thanks, but I was only speaking the absolute truth. :-)

[yendi]

Heh -- a drop-down of some of those would be insane.

Scott did ask for more directors for the next one. Sophia Coppola doesn't have enough movies to probably make it worthwhile, but Streisand should certainly be on there.

[shellefly.livejournal.com]

Yes, but not everyone has the ability to see the obvious. :)

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[shellefly.livejournal.com]

LOTR fans ...

"You chose another movie over the incredible Tolkien-inspired epic? Sacrilege!!!"

And so on.

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[windswept.livejournal.com]

No flamage on Peter Jackson, I completely agree. Frighteners is good, but it's no Heavenly Creatures.

True.

[windswept.livejournal.com]

I spent all morning on IMDB to fill the damn thing out (see my journal if interested). Even ones I was pretty sure what I was going to say, I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting something obscure but lovable (e.g., Barry Levinson -- I had forgotten he did Young Sherlock Holmes, which has got to be one of my favorite "oh my god it's on TV I can't possibly do anything but sit and watch this now" movies).

Re: short version of Shelle's favorites

[yendi]

I refuse to worry about what any religious zealot thinks of my beliefs. :-)

Re: True.

[yendi]

*nod* I've been pleasantly (and not-so-pleasantly) surprised at some of these movies these guys had done.

[sweinberg.livejournal.com]

You guys are making my day with these comments. The main point of the project was for the movie fans to re-discover "Hey, HE directed THAT??" and then go rent a hundred DVDs. I do apologzize for the lack of female directors. I will definitely address that on the next poll.

[sweinberg.livejournal.com]

P.S. These are the picks of yours that 'impressed' me the most: Woody Allen, John Carpenter, Joel Coen, Alan Parker & John Sayles.

As a huge John Carpenter fan...

[windswept.livejournal.com]

I have to say that while I think "The Thing" is his best directed movie, there is nothing else in his repertoire to compare to the 15-minute fight scene between Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live. NOTH.ING.