Best wishes to good directors

I love good directors.  Ones who challenge the medium and create works of art that are outside of the proverbial box.  That’s why I hate it when I see a film by a director that I admire that does not seem to display their full potential.  Either they get land blasted by critics for not recreating their former state of glory, or they are coddled by Hollywood so much that they are not stretching themselves artistically (I am talking to you Lucas).  Anyway, here are some of my best wishes to some directors that I know have the talent and potential to truly be masters at what they do…

Michel Goudry–He won us all over with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  I remember being moved so much after seeing this film that it made me want to get involved with filmmaking.  He does the “old-school” camera tricks and then re-invents new tricks to avoid as much post-edit work as possible.  He defines creativity when it comes to moving pictures.  Science of Sleep fell on deaf ears (a noble effort but not for mainstream audiences) and then Be Kind Rewind was just…cute, and that’s all.  My wish for him is external material.  He needs to get a hold of a good book and adapt it to screen or work with someone like Charlie Kaufman again to give him material with content that can match his creative vision.

Guy Ritchie–Our friend of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and SNATCH.  Oh what delicious films.  Then he came out with Swept Away and Revolver…they…just didn’t work.  Now here is a guy that knows how to make the camera explosive and he has a gift for writing crackling dialogue.  My wish for him is to ease off of the big concept objective and simplify the script.  (There is a huge influence of Kabala and Philosophy in Revolver that chokes his film to death).  Keep the influences, but allow the story to breath on it’s own without the overarching need to preach to the audience.  I hear RocknRolla is a return to his former style and material, keep your fingers crossed.

M. Night Shyamalan–I know this guy is good.  He brought back true suspense in The Six Sense–I thought we had killed suspense off for cheap thrills and gore.  I was one of the ones that liked his other works too, until I saw The Happening.  That was just awful.  We all can feel him trying to make his points and scare us like he did before, but as I said, we can feel his need to impress us bleeding out in his films and it is depressing.  My wish for him is to escape his name.  Everyone knows what to expect with him now that his name dictates the style of film that we are about to watch.  I would suggest allowing other directors to use his material–I would applaud him if he was simply credited as a screenwriter.  He needs to relax and get back to basic storytelling.  I hear his next project will be an animated movie–good idea.

There will be more warm wishes to come this Holiday season.  Support the indie directors out there, and keep rooting for the good directors.

Does it matter? Digital vs Film

Earlier this month, Roger Ebert wrote on his blog about his views on digital projectors. Im going to write on his coattails about this.

Recently, the film studios have decided to help fund digital projectors our theaters. This is due to the fact that many more movies are jumping on the 3D bandwagon. So to cash in on their investment the studios have decided to help front the bill.

Before I read Ebert’s blog, I would have told you that digital projectors where a nesssary evil for me to get my 3D fix, but outside of that it was a degression to the format. Why? Because I have a tendency to be an elitist and nostalgic. I felt fine with my view till I read Ebert’s thoughts. I have seen a couple of movies on digital that weren’t 3D, and I could tell a small difference. The titles on the screen were sharper and there was a small “difference” in the picture. I couldn’t tell you why, or what the small difference” was, or if it was something i just wanted to see. All i know is that halfway through the movie I had forgotten about the “diffrence.”

What may be the true loss in digital projectors is the magic. This may be totally cerebral, but there seems to be a magic about a series of pictures being projected through film, onto a screen. Does this really affect my theater expriance. I can’t hear the projector. Can i really see the flicker of the projector? Id like to thinks so, but who knows.

I think what it comes down to is that good movies will still be good in digital and bad movies will stil be bad. My only concern is if older movies will be converted to digital. I recently saw Back to the Future at a local theater that shows older movies, on the weekend. As a kid, I wore out this VHS tape. There was something about seeing it on the big screen for the first time. I cant put it in words, but it was an experience that I had never had with that movie before. The only diffrence was the theater. So, as long as I can crowd into a theater with total strangers and the smell of stale popcorn, I think I’ll be ok.

An annoyance

Let’s talk shop.  What do remakes tell us?  Some look at it as a great thing–a new vision for a popular story.  A modernization of a film so that it can appeal to a new audience.  This sounds good–I love what they have done with such films as 3:10 to Yuma, the Batman franchise, Solaris, and many others.  It gives new energy and more depth to these characters and plots.  There are moments when I am actually happy they are revamping the Terminator movies…

But…

I know they have plans to also remaking The Birds, Ghostbusters, All the King’s Men, The Dirty Dozen, Easy Rider, and Gaslight.  What does it really teach us?  Instead of adjusting our perspective to meet the art, we adjust the art to meet our perspective.  Of course films can become outdated, but shouldn’t we as a film audience try a little to understand the perspective of the time in which the film came out?  My brother went to see a screening of “THE BIRDS” and he said that many of the young students simply laughed at the “cheesy” effects.  You know, those cheesy effects that were revolutionary for 1963.

Perhaps I am just being a stickler because I have a deep heart for film history.  Perhaps I am cynical because I don’t want to see a remake of Kurosawa’s “THE SEVEN SAMURAI,” coming out next year. Perhaps we should start talking about remaking “CASABLANCA”.  Perhaps…