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Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 11:25 pm
by The Original BJ
Damien wrote:No Country For Old Men is loathsome, and it's got Asshole's and Douche Bag's paw prints all over it.
Which one is which?
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:28 pm
by Hustler
Ron Howard
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:18 pm
by Damien
A Beautiful Mind is a terrible film, but Akiva Goldman's script is the chief perpetrator, not the doofus behind the camera.
No Country For Old Men is loathsome, and it's got Asshole's and Douche Bag's paw prints all over it.
Coens for the win.
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:07 pm
by Okri
I think Jackson, Bigelow and Boyle are by far the best in their respective categories and I have no problem with their wins.
Lee, Coens, and Polanski might not be my personal favourite (that would be Spielberg, Anderson, and Almodovar) but the wins stand as strong choices.
So it's down to Scorsese, Eastwood, Soderbergh and Howard.
Soderbergh's an interesting case. The film suffers by boiling down a miniseries to about half its length and as dws mentioned earlier, the story strands get truncated a little too much. But despite that, I think Soderbergh's direction provides enough spackle to make it a good film (the casting of Catherine Zeta-Jones, for example, I think is a great maneuver. Is it a great performance? No, but I instinctively believe her).
I tend to dismiss Million Dollar Baby as Eastwood struggling to rise above poor material, though I haven't given it a second viewing to be sure.
Scorsese? Eh. I prefer The Aviator and Infernal Affairs (and Letters from Iwo Jima). I'm glad he has an oscar, though, and in his slate (no Cuaron, Riechardt, de Palma, von Donnersmark, etc etc) it's hard to begrudge a career win.
I voted for Howard. On it's own, it's merely a bad win. In context, it's downright deplorable.
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:54 pm
by dws1982
A Beautiful Mind isn't good, but Howard's work isn't so bad that I feel like I have to vote him, and he'll get plenty of support without me anyway.
Like I said in the other Best Director thread, I think Ang Lee was the wrong director for Brokeback Mountain, but the movie more or less gets by, and he does deserve some credit for the (mostly) excellent performances. Other than Howard, though, the only one I seriously considered was Steven Soderbergh. Viewing Traffic again is a real diminishing returns proposition.
I ended up null voting.
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:52 pm
by Sabin
In my opinion, this award should be reserved for excellence in directing. There is nothing excellent about his direction. Especially when one considers that in this category we have Peter Jackson and Ridley Scott, two craftsmen (both working at the top of their game) and two artists Robert Altman and David Lynch (again, both working at the top of their game). On the basis of his competition, it's a bad win. On the basis of his direction, it's a worse win. Ron Howard is a journeyman director. I would call him a craftsman like Jackson and Scott but in truth the only thing he brings to the table is clout. So does Clint Eastwood, but unlike Clint Eastwood he doesn't bring a sensibility that unconsciously drives his craft. He's just there getting whatever he wants.
Having just seen A Beautiful Mind again recently, I'm forced to reassess my opinion and take into consideration the fact that I know the twist of this ludicrous film. As a director, you are the captain of the story. Obviously this is up to a point, but it was his job to find a way to direct the story in a way such that it didn't seem ludicrous. You say that there were no dull patches. I completely disagree, but there you have it. The love story is completely unbelievable. As a director, he has to take some blame for that. It's completely, not-for-a-moment believable. I'm sure that Ron Howard has enough clout as a director to demand a rewrite or something. There are lots of things in the film that for me personally don't work, including the performance by Russell Crowe which I only like at the end of the film when he's a doddering professor. This specific story is one that I don't like, and as a director he did nothing to really shape it in a direction that would have been stronger. If A Beautiful Mind won for Best Picture but lost Best Director, I would have at least understood. It is beautifully filmed. There are certainly no shots in the movie that really stand-out so it's nowhere near Roger Deakins' best work, but it looks great. And it sounds great. It's the best score that James Horner has done in at least fifteen years...and this is coming as a non-fan. But that is largely the work of a producer in pulling the right elements together. Ron Howard is a director notable for staying out of the way and simply guiding a project towards being as white as humanly possible. This is certainly no exception.
I think for a $60 mil film, it's pretty badly directed because I don't believe the central love story. I don't think anybody can claim that the film boasts a strong, developed central love story. Otherwise, I just personally don't like little things like the story or the acting. But it looks and sounds good in a Who gives a shit? kind of way.
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:39 pm
by The Original BJ
I assume Ron Howard will run away with this.
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:36 pm
by kaytodd
I don't think Howard did a bad job directing A Beautiful Mind. Perhaps some of you who are familiar with the actual work of making films can tell me about the shortcomings of his work as director of this film. But, speaking as a "lay person", I thought the performances were good and I did not notice any "dead spots" even though it was over two hours long. I thought it was beautifully photographed. My problem is with the ludicrous story.
But I had to vote Howard from this group.
Edited By kaytodd on 1270607917
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 8:57 pm
by Sabin
So...Ron Howard?