Directors You Hate

[cagedwisdom]

George Lucas certainly has imagination, but I also think he's probably more than a little bit crazy. And the amount of good films he's been involved in is pretty balanced out by a lot of terrible films. I don't really see him as a director I hate despite his bad films though.. At least he's spiced things up a bit. He did executive produce Captain EO, which is a great example of something gone horribly, horribly wrong. I love that about Lucas, in a way.

[prowler]

I thought the story of The Fall was pretty weak up until the end when I finally got the slow-motion black/white introduction sequence and how the separate stories were intertwined.. I didn't really get it until they sit and watch the movie at the end.

uhh sorry dude but that was pretty obvious from the start.

[cagedwisdom]

Yeah, I don't really know what happened there.. I knew that the dude was hurt as a stuntman in a movie, and yet I totally had no idea what was going on with that first clip. I knew that most of the people in the fairy tale were people from the hospital/life around them, but I didn't really see any parallels until the end (probably because most of the characters in the hospital/life around them were given about 5 minutes of screen time total, which I guess is the main problem with the story).

I dunno, I thought it was a magnificent film, but pretty much everyone I've shown it to/talked to about it thought it was pretty mediocre. I guess I'm a sucker for the visuals.. Which I already knew I was, so there you go.

[Quicky]

I'll side with Yoshiking in admitting that I also only got the b&w scene at the ending .

[Katya]

There are some directors I don't like (Michael Bay, Stephen Spielberg etc) but I don't hate them except some Turkish directors. Those Turkish directors make so incredibly stupid movies that I feel embrassed for my country's cinema instead of them. If I had the authority I'd illegalize filmmaking for those idiots.

[Stain]

There are a heck of a lot of filmmakers whose work doesn't impress me much, as some of you might guess. However, there are only three that I have seen in person that I wanted to punch right in the face.

The first one is Joel M. Reed, the writer/co-producer/director of Blood Sucking Freaks... just for that one movie. Throughout the '80s, the press vilified horror films as senseless violence/gore and misogyny; the truth, of course, is that the main problem with most of those pictures is not that they are sick but that they are boring. Many of the slasher movies of that period are done so very much by rote that it's actually kind of amusing. Blood Sucking Freaks, however, really is genuinely sick. I saw it in 2001 as part of a festival of B horror flicks, then as I was walking out I saw Reed in the lobby getting ready to do his Q & A with the audience. I wanted to immediately grab him by the lapels and scream in his face, "YOU SICK BASTARD! I'D LIKE TO HIT YOU!" Somehow I refrained from doing so. I do so despise people like that who give all us horror fans a bad name...

The second one is Godfrey Reggio. Observe:

http://www.spike.com/video/naqoyqatsi-director/2457009

If you made it all the way through that without laughing or gagging... well, congratulations, I guess. When I saw him in person giving a Q & A for a screening of Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, he uttered a lot of the same lamenesses that he said in that video... plus he treated us to a little aside about how all of us connecting and interfacing with each other through our computers will lead to "technofascism". I think every Luddite idiot like this guy should be given a stiff dose of polio and none of Dr. Salk's vaccine.

The third one is Jonathan London, the director of that towering masterpiece of modern times, Gay By Dawn. Hopefully you haven't seen that particular short. If you haven't, you can probably guess how stupid and juvenile it is just by the title. If you must see it, you can find it on YouTube where you can find my comment in which I mention I saw him at the screening and wanted to punch him, which is followed by a comment from London himself about how I'm a punk and how he'd kick my ass and how I must be jealous of him blah blah blah... which is exactly what I would expect from a person who'd go to the time and trouble to make a film called Gay By Dawn.

[cagedwisdom]

Huh, I love the qatsi trilogy (Naqoyqatsi isn't that good, but what the hell), but Reggio kindof.. Steps on the message those films are trying to get across there. Might as well just let the film speak for itself, and not include all the bullshit he wraps it in.

"It has no narrative structure because I feel our language no longer can describe the world we live in."

No, the films have no narrative structure because the images and music speak for themselves. Obviously words could describe it too, because he's pretty much sitting there saying the exact same things as the films say. With words. Sheesh.

[Spunkie]

The second one is Godfrey Reggio.

Really, what exactly bugged you about Reggio? I'm used to see filmmakers seeming idiotic whenever they open their mouth. But the film is there for us to interpret the way we like. Just watch or read Lynch's interviews, his statements are spastic most of the time. His movies are also debatable, but the amount of talent he pours in visuals and mood surpasses all behind the scenes.

[Stain]

The second one is Godfrey Reggio.

Really, what exactly bugged you about Reggio? I'm used to see filmmakers seeming idiotic whenever they open their mouth.

See above. I am a software engineer by profession, sir, and by that ridiculous statement about the Internet he's implicitly accused me of being a fascist, since I'm one of the people whose job it is to build and maintain computer systems. That was so insulting and lame... and was particularly hard to take since Koyaanisqatsi was the first "art" film I went to see all by myself. (I was just a boy. I must have been about 12.)

[paulofilmo]

I don't hate François Ozon, but he is like an itch.