Top 10 Directors under 60

*NOTE* this list is not in any particular order, so sorry for the lack of organization.

1. Joel and Ethan Coen
2. Guillermo del Toro
3. Paul Thomas Anderson
4. Wes Anderson
5. Alfonso Cuarón
6. Sean Penn
7. Alejandro González Iñárritu
8. Jason Reitman
9. Michel Gondry
10. Darren Aronofski

Honorable Mention: Alexander Payne, Ang Lee, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, George Clooney

Bergman and Melville?

This week I am awaiting for a Criterion Collection two-disc set of Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows a curiously poignant film from the director of Bob le Flambour and Le Samurai, but it is none-the-less one of the great pieces of war film that I have ever seen. It follows several members of the French resistance during the period of Nazi occupation in France and their trials and sacrafices.

In any case, what brings this post to fruition is that my roommate was watching my copy of Bergman's Shame last night and I found myself thinking about how beautifully these two very different films come together, despite their glaring differences to make companion pieces for one another of war and peace time thoughts and actions.

Again, these two films have little in common, but I believe that there is a linking between the two that is magnetic in nature. If you have seen both films and would like to add some more thoughts to this slim post, please share. If you think there are glaring mistakes in this post, please explain and if you think that there are some other films that could fit in with these films please let me know, because I am endlessly intrigued with war cinema and the actions and consequences that are shown so vividly in them.

Well...

I have been busier than I had expected to be and I apologize for the lack of posts.

Some of the movies I have watched lately:

Love in the Afternoon (one of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales) which is a fantastic piece of film.

Samurai Rebellion which seems to show the viewer what would happen if Ozu and Kurosawa had a love-filmmaker, with a finale to die for.

Burn After Reading The Coen's latest comedy may be the brothers' best post-critical screwball comedy.

Son of Rambow wonderful indie comedy about a young lad from England and his coming of age tale.

The Counterfeiters The Austrian winner of the Best Foreign Language Oscar last year is a powerful story about an interesting concentration camp in WWII.

The Fall by Indian director Tarsem. Visual masterpiece.

Stay tuned for early Oscar coverage and some fall movie picks. The meatier pieces may have to wait until Christmas break.

mi amour...My Love

How gorgeous this woman is, Ingrid Bergman not only is one of the 5 most beautiful (the most beautiful in my opinion) woman in the history of cinema; but, she is also one of the most under rated actresses of the 20th Century. Tonight I spent nearly six hours with Ingrid thanks to the wonderful Turner Classic Movies, and I am so glad that they made these pictures available to young people like myself and others who were not alive at the time of her death, mear years after her last film, Autumn Sonata, made by the other famous Bergman from Sweden, let alone the years when she was making the beautiful films that I watched tonight (Casablanca and an Alfred Hitchcock double feature, Notorious and Spellbound.)

So, in short, thank you Turner Classic Movies, thank you Alfred Hitchcock and thank you Ingrid for the beautiful films that you gave to us.

A Changing of the seasons

As I leave the summer behind for the halls and studies of the school year I would like to say that my post will, in all likeliness, get closer together once the school year is here.

With that being said, I would also like any readers out there to know that starting this year I am thinking about doing some more "meaty" projects on this blog that will entail more than brief plot summaries and what I think of the overall affect of said film. I plan on doing a couple (between two and who knows how many) pieces on a subject that is very near and dear to my heart as a movie fan.

I do not wish to divulge all of what I am planning on doing, but I can tell you that the photographs in this blog will have a lot to do with some of these articles that I would like to write.

With that being said, I will leave you to enjoy the pictures and ask for any suggestions for ideas that I might write about, or movies that I should watch and write about in here. If there is any input at all, it will be greatly appreciated. I hope that this upcoming year will be a time of great films and great insights into them.

Top Trilogies - 1 - The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola

Was there any question? If you've not seen it, do. Sure there's a hick-up in the third installment named Sofia Coppola (an astounding director in her own right). The first two pictures, however, are perfect...perfect, and that leaves little room for any other saga to come into focus.

Top Trilogies - 2 - Trois Couleurs by Krysztof Kieslowski

In 1993 the Polish master, Krysztof Kieslowski, unleashed Trois Couleurs: Bleu on the world of cinema. With its unpeccable use of color and a moving performance by French beauty, Juliette Binoche, he told a story that was at once heart wrenching and heart warming. at the center of the film was the theme of liberty (represented by the color blue in the French tricolor) through loss.

A Year later he would release Blanc and Rouge both of which used the colors of the French tricolor to explore the themes of Equality and Franternity, respectfully. Both films, but especially Rouge staring Irene Jacob, uses lush cinematography rich in the color of the title to help set the emotional and visceral map for the trilogy.

These films are devestating, funny, maddening, and soothing simaltaniously, but more than anything these three films by Kieslowski are, in their very essence, beautiful. No more, no less. In saying that, however, I do not believe we have the right to ask for anything more.