Right from the start, the directors kind of ruled the world of film. They were paid well and by the 1930s they were getting “film by” credit and before too long that credit was before the title (in fact, mandated that way by agreement with the DGA). They formed one of the powerful early guilds and their guild was one of the first two to begin giving out their own awards. Writer-directors started to rise in the 1940s (lead by Preston Sturges and John Huston) and that would become the standard for most of the great foreign directors. In the 1960s the auteur theory would come along and propel a number of directors to the top of the film world when it came to critical appreciation of the medium. Today we are still in an era of truly great film directors, from those who came up through the medium in the 70s (Spielberg, Scorsese) to those 70s type independent minded directors who missed that era and came right after (Coen Brothers, Almodovar) to the great directors who made their mark in the 90s and later (Tarantino, Nolan, P.T. Anderson). Following not too long after this post will come finally my 3.0 version of the Top 100 Directors of All-Time.
Academy Awards
21 May, 2022
Best Adapted Screenplay: 2011
Posted by nighthawk4486 under Academy Awards, Erik, film, lists, literature | Tags: adapted screenplay |[2] Comments

“Smiley shrugged it all aside, distrustful as ever of the standard shapes of human motive, and settled instead for a picture of one of those wooden Russian dolls that open up, revealing one person inside the other, and another inside him. Of all men living, only Karla had seen the last little doll inside Bill Haydon. When was Bill recruited, and how? Was his right-wing stand at Oxford a pose, or was it paradoxically the state of sin from which Karla had summoned him to grace?” (p 316)
My Top 10
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- The Descendants
- Hugo
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II
- The Ides of March
- My Week with Marilyn
- Jane Eyre
- Moneyball
- Incendies
- The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
note: A solid Top 5 and Top 10. (more…)
18 June, 2021
A Century of Film: Disney
Posted by nighthawk4486 under Academy Awards, Erik, film, lists | Tags: animated film, century of film, disney, film, marvel comics, pixar, star wars, tim burton |[11] Comments
A Century of Film
Disney
The Studio
It began with a man named Walt and a mouse named Mickey. But of course neither of those things is actually true and that’s part of the image that lies behind the company that is not only the most successful movie studio at work today but pretty much an all-encompassing way of life that can not be ignored. (more…)