My 800th Post or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become a Kubrick Completist + A Few Other Cinema-Related Ramblings

With the clicking of the publish button in my Blogger editor, I officially hand the world, the 800th post here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.  So here it is kids.  What d'ya think?  Not impressed yet?  Yeah, neither am I.  In reality, this 800th post hoopla (at least in my mind there is hoopla, but you just wait for the 1000th post, and see what shenanigans happen then), this posting of no real circumstance, is merely just an excuse for me to ramble on  about things I have not rambled on about in previous posts.  So, with that in mind, please allow me to ramble.

First off, as you may have noticed from my not-so-clever title appropriation of Sir Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (really, how many times have I used that in a post title?  This is the third that I can think of, off hand), I have now finally become what one would call a Stanley Kubrick Completist.  I might just put that on a business card ya know.  I am not really sure why it took me so damn long to accomplish this feat.  Kubrick has been my favourite director for quite some time now, and he is the only filmmaker to make my 100 Favourite Films list five times (2001, Clockwork, Killing, Paths of Glory & Lolita), but for some reason, the title of completist has alluded me until just a few days ago.   I have taken to watching and rewatching all the Kubrick's up on the big screen here at the arthouse cinema I run with my lovely wife.  In the last few years, I have seen on that aforementioned big screen, 2001: A Space Odyssey (the first film I owned on DVD and the first I owned on Blu-ray), A Clockwork Orange (having already seen that on 35mm twice in my life), Lolita (the titillation of toenail painting made widescreen), The Killing and The Killer's Kiss (in a blu-ray double feature one morning), and for just the first time this past year, Spartacus (the only Kubrick I am not totally pleased with - sorry Stanley).  I plan on seeing all the Kubrick's this way.   Eyes Wide Shut is next on the docket.

Anyway, this all brings us to a few days ago and me finally sitting down and watching the new(ish) Kino blu-ray of Fear and Desire, the auteur's first feature film.  Again, I am not sure what took me so long, since I have had the damn blu-ray sitting beside the blu-ray player for months now.  Sheeesh.  But I did finally sit down and screen the thing, and even though Kubrick would later claim to hate the film, calling it amateurish (amateur for Kubrick is still better than the so-called pinnacle of many another director), I quite enjoyed the film.  You can see and feel the ideas that would later come to be known as Kubrickian.  With this film, I also watched Kubrick's three early doc shorts - Day of the Fight, Flying Padre and The Seafarers, from 1951, 51 and 53, respectively.  So, in other words, I am now a Stanley Kubrick Completist.  So there!

Now, in other news.  There are a pair of projects that I spouted off about back around the beginning of the year, that have yet to come to fruition.  The first is a thing I am calling, The Great Re-Casting (though a better name may be forthcoming).  It is an alternate cinematic history thing, where I take an established modern day movie, and recast it using (mostly) pre-1965 actors and writers and directors and such.  The first one I did was for a blogathon last year.  I took Pulp Fiction and recast it as several different films - from a pre-code gangster film to a Busby Berkeley musical to a western, a film noir, a screwball comedy, a Universal horror film, a swashbuckling epic, a melodrama where all the roles are gender-reversed, and even a cartoon short.  This piece was one of my favourite things to write, and maybe one of my best and most creative, if I do say so myself.  The whole shebang can be seen right here.  My goal is to do four of these per year, so I suppose I should get to work, huh?   Percolatin' in the ole noggin right now are alt-cin-histories on Dazed and Confused, Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Jurassic Park, and The Avengers.  Up first though (hopefully by the end of June) will be Star Wars, where we go back to Von Stroheim's silent debacle original version, as well as John Ford's 1940 war film remake, both of which inspired Kurosawa which in turn inspired Lucas.  There will also be a French New Wave one.  Come on, who would not want to see Belmondo, Leaud, and Karina as Han, Luke, and Leia!?  It will all be quite intricate.  To quote John Hammond, we've spared no expense.

My other long-gestating idea is a series on Ingmar Bergman.  It is titled The Bergman Files, and is actually going to be me becoming a Bergman completist.  There we go with that again.  My plan is to watch all the Bergman's I have yet to see, and go back and rewatch those I have, and white a piece on each and every one of them - even the shorts and commercials and docs and yeah, everything.  This project will probably take about three years to complete - if I ever get started on the damn thing.   And speaking of long-range projects, many of you are probably wondering just what happened with My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films.  Well, the quest has been completed and I am at work on a book detailing said quest.  It will be part film journal, part film history, and part me rambling on and on and on.  You know, like how I am doing right now.  Anyway, said book will (hopefully) be on bookshelves sometime in 2014.  Wish me luck on the publication end of the whole thing.  Oh, and yeah, I have another project going right now as well.  It is a series of pieces on the Astaire/Rogers musicals.  I have already published the first two - Flying Down to Rio and The Gay Divorcee - and Roberta will be coming in a week or two, followed by the rest throughout the Summer.  Lots of stuff ahead.

Then there is this ditty I posted on Facebook back on February 27th:  Here are 51 randomly selected films, of varying degrees of popularity and cinematic impact, that I have never seen, but that I will finally watch in 2013, in no particular order.....South Pacific, Bus Stop, Peyton Place, Westworld, Down Argentine Way, Cavalcade, Wings, Sergeant York, The Bellboy, The Big Knife, The Sun Also Rises, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Robe, The Fury, Patton, Death Race 2000, Zardoz, The Brother From Another Planet, Lady of Burlesque, The Sea Hawk, Royal Wedding, The Snake Pit, Battle Royale, One-Eyed Jacks, The Jazz Singer, Murder My Sweet, The Song of Bernadette, Knife in the Water, Red Dust, The Great Ziegfeld, The Life of Emile Zola, Tron, THX-1138, The Longest Day, Around the World in 80 Days, Hello Dolly, Akira, McLintock, Kitty Foyle, the original Imitation of Life, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The Fly (1958), The Omega Man, Night Nurse, Flesh and the Devil, The Shooting, Wilder's The Front Page, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, Our Man Flint and Showgirls.  Since making this rather bold announcement just over three months ago, I have watched exactly four of these films - Akira, Bus Stop, Westworld, and Tron.  Again, perhaps I best be getting my butt in gear and do the things I say I am going to do.  Hell, another seven of these are sitting in various forms of home entertainment, at home as I type these very words.

As always, my Battle Royale is still ongoing (and the latest one can be found conveniently near the top of the sidebar) and my bi-weekly pieces on sci-fi cinema can be found over at Forces of Geek.  An occasional ten best list can also be found at Anomalous Material, though not as frequently as in the past.  10 Best Motorcycle Movies is on the horizon for there.  There will also be some more Retro Reviews coming soon, and of course, new reviews will still keep coming at a steady rate.  Coming soon are reviews of Shane Carruth's stunning Upstream Color, and Abbas Kiarostami's latest, Like Someone in Love, as well as Linklater's Before Midnight, and Susanne Bier's Love is All You Need.  Maybe a mainstream review or two, as well.    Oh yeah, and don't forget to be back for post #1000, coming on or about May 3, 2014.  How's that for a bold prediction!?  But I am sure you will be along for the ride in the meantime.  At least ya better be.  See ya in the funny papers.  I will leave you with a picture of Ingmar Bergman and Bruce the Shark from Jaws.  Why?  Well, why the hell not!? 

The Most Influential Directors

The following is my official entry in The Most Influential Directors Poll over at Michaël Parent's great movie blog Le Mot du Cinephiliaque.  We critics and cinephiles were asked to name the 10 directors we believe to be the most influential throughout film history as well as the film that best showcases said influence.  My choices for last year's poll (where I extended it to 25 due to my tendency to ramble on) can be viewed here.  As I am sure you will notice, I have made some changes to this new list.  

These changes come about not necessarily because these directors became more or less influential over the past year, but because (and I am stealing a line from Prince now) maybe I'm just like my mother, she's never satisfied.  Whatever the case, I have flip-flopped numbers one and two, changed a few others up and/or down, kicked three to the proverbial curb and replaced them with three that missed the cut last time around.  And please take note that this is not a list of my favourite directors, but of the ones I believe have had the biggest and most influence on film history and later directors.  Granted, there are several crossovers on these two lists, but I digress.  So, without further ado, here are my choices for the most influential directors of all-time.

1) Jean-Luc Godard - It is a common assumption amongst cinephiles that without Jean Luc Godard, modern cinema would, at least the better qualities of it, look a whole hell of a lot different than it currently does.  I believe this is more than just mere assumption, and instead falls firmly into the realm of direct fact.  Jason Kliot, of Open City Pictures and Blow Up Films, says, "Godard to modern film is what Picasso is to modern art—the ultimate daredevil and pioneer, the man who had no fear, the man willing to try anything in any genre and push it to its limits." Along with fellow New Wavers, Godard not only changed the way cinema was made, but also the way we looked at it.  Without Breathless, a groundbreaking work of the art, or films like Band of Outsiders, Contempt and Weekend, we may not have filmmakers like Wong Kar-wai, John Woo, Gregg Araki, Wes Anderson, Gaspar Noe, Catherine Breillat, Chantal Ackerman or Quentin Tarantino.  Just think about that baby.

2) Alfred Hitchcock - I had Hitch in the top spot when I did this list last year, but he has been taken out by Godard.  But this by no means should make one believe that the Master of Suspense has fallen from grace.  In fact, let's face it, this is pretty much a dead heat tie for the top spot really.  An influence on so many directors, from Spielberg to De Palma to Terry Gilliam, Hitchcock has defined what cinema has become lo these past sixty years or so.  I think Hitchcock's influence is more noticeable than Godard's, with more homages having been created to honour him, but I believe Godard's influence is more ingrained in the creation of cinema itself than Hitch's.  But still, without Hitch, we would not have had such great films like Jaws or Dressed to Kill or Play Misty For Me or Peeping Tom.

3) Orson Welles - Godard said that without Welles, none of us would be here.  Can't argue with that.  Always at odds with those in power - Citizen Kane is really the only Welles production that came out the way the director wanted it, without interference from the studio and/or money men - Welles probably had a lot more inside him, but being the cinematic genius that he was, it was always so hard to get things done.  But what he did get done - Kane, Ambersons, Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Trial, his Shakespeare work - is all beyond brilliant.

4) Akira Kurosawa - The man who made the samurai into a legendary hero that transgressed genres and nations and became the symbol of bravery and chivalry - even moreso than the knight of old - one need look no further than John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (a remake of Seven Samurai), Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (based on Yojimbo) or George Lucas’ Star Wars (inspired by Hidden Fortress) to give credit where credit is most certainly due.  The most legendary of Japanese filmmakers who was actually more revered in the west than he ever was in his native land.  Good for us then.

5) Billy Wilder - I don't think there is a comedy today, be it high brow (Woody Allen's Manhattan) or low brow (Bridesmaids) that does not owe something to Billy Wilder.  And this was a guy who could do drama and noir and action just as well as comedy.  Simply put, he was so great at so many things, and without him, what would people like Woody Allen or Whit Stillman look like?

6) D.W. Griffith - I suppose without Griffith there would not be cinema at all.  No, he did not invent it, but he did re-invent it and made it what it became.  I also suppose that with this argument, one could easily make a case for the old Victorian charmer to top this list.  I mean, without him, there would be no Welles, and therefore no Godard, and therefore no modern cinema.  Hmmmm?

7) Howard Hawks - The man that could take any genre, from noir to western to adventure to musical to sci-fi to thriller to the screwball comedy that he near invented if not at least perfected, and make it sing like nothing else before it.  The precursor to such modern day equivalents as Steven Soderbergh and Richard Linklater, Hawks was, and always will be, simply put...The Man.

8) John Ford - The great man Ford claimed that he was just a guy who made westerns, but this modesty aside, he not only made westerns (and other types of films as well by the way) he made the western what it became and still is today - influencing everyone from Anthony Mann to Sergio Leone to Sam Peckinpah to Clint Eastwood to Andrew Dominick.

9) Stanley Kubrick - Kubrick is actually my personal favourite director of all-time, and his greatest masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey is number two on my favourite films list, and I would guess that he sits pretty high up on those lists made by Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Chris Nolan, Tim Burton, the Brothers' Coen and Tarantino as well. 

10) John Cassavetes - Cassavetes' influence may be more on the improvisational style of acting in his films, than on his filmmaking techniques themselves.  Perhaps seeming to be too chaotic and and jumbled for mass audiences, nonetheless, the way Cassavetes and his stable of regulars would reach the deepest and darkest depths of human emotion is, save for perhaps Kazan, beyond reproach.

I could go on, but I will stop there.  To point out some other obvious runners-up though, one need only look at directors such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jean Renoir, Vincente Minnelli, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Luis Buñuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Francois Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, George A. Romero, Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Jacques Tati, F.W. Murnau, Mario Bava, Stanley Donan, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.  Just to name a few.