(yes, if you were wondering, I had to merriamwebster it for the spelling)

so...we all know how this fascination for directors among movie buffs got started, right? To sum it up very grossly, the "Cahiers du Cinéma" folks decided to give their almighty "auteur" stamp of approval to the directors who, according to them, were able to inject some of their personality in their movies. An approach which was relatively easy to implement for neo-realist Italian directors or the French "Nouvelle Vague", but could prove a lot trickier (and gimmickier) when applied to the Hollywood studio system. In any case...it's always fun to look for these peculiarities for any given director. It's even more fun when said director is, according to all tasteful and snobbish folks, a talentless hack with nothing worthwhile on his/her resumé.

So, let's do it, folks. Pick a director in your subject line, any director (you don't even have to like him), and identify the traits that make him special, that could qualify him as an "auteur". I may do a few myself to get the post started.

first, let's get something straight: I hate Luc Besson. He's trash to me. But it's my watching of "The Transporter" the other day, which I'm sure y'all know he wrote and executive-produced, that gave me the idea of this post.

I'm not familiar with (the director) Corey Yuen's oeuvre, but I would guess, from his track record, that he is the one to praise for the (masterful) choreography of the fight scenes in that movie. And I thought it was positively hilarious that the blame for everything else could be put squarely on Besson's chubby shoulders. All the following elements can be found, in one way or another, in his filmography:

- the cheesy, anal fascination for the big blue sea (the scene when Jason Statham saves the heroin by taking her on a nice little scuba-diving escapade...I had to laugh out loud at the way it came from nowhere)
- the love for kitschy, trippy, 80s sounding music (the "Big Blue" reject theme he used for the aforementioned scene added to the hilarity)
- the simplistic, new age hippie sentimentalism
- the taciturn, mysterious, Male Super-Hero
- but most of all (and this is linked to my previous point): the not-too-subtle homoeroticism (if you need proof, just remember the oil fight scene, with a Bruce-Willisesque shirtless Jason Statham)

I couldn't stop laughing.

p.s.: even with the fight scenes, I most probably wouldn't've watched the whole thing had it been shot near Santa Monica, instead of the south of France

he has a pretty simplistic, black & white (albeit colorful) sense of comic book morality that i find kinda refreshing.

i'm always surprised at your hatred for him. i thought he was a god to you Frenchies. i mean, i know the guardians of haute cinema loathe him, but otherwise i figured him for a more laddish George Lucas.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

- Luc Besson is an asshole ... and a winning bitch ..
- French people HATE succesful people unless they are Über- humble like Zinedine Zidane

>- French people HATE succesful people unless they are Über-
>humble like Zinedine Zidane

but I'm not like that, honestly. It has more to do with your first reason, and also the fact that I hate wide-eyed sentimentalism.

Also, to be a little more detailed about his assholishness, when people point out his movies are stupid corny, Besson has the habit to dismiss them, with hateful contempt, as 'petty intellectuals who don't know how to have fun'. I hate that attitude, too.

>Also, to be a little more detailed about his assholishness,
>when people point out his movies are stupid corny, Besson
>has the habit to dismiss them, with hateful contempt, as
>'petty intellectuals who don't know how to have fun'. I hate
>that attitude, too.

i definitely hate that.. and i got a lot of it on this board over the past summer when i expressed my contempt for The Hulk and Charlie's Angels Full Throttle.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

he was whinning again about 2 journalists who have booed one of his movies at the 1983 Cannes film festival ..
I just wanted to throw a chair at him !!

A lot of my compatriots consider "Amélie" a masterpiece, too. You know my stance about that. I just don't like corny hippies.

even though i can understand your aversion to the excessive sentimentality. but i really like Jeunet. i just have an affinity for all these French comic booky directors, i guess. i think i even like Brotherhood of the Wolf a lot more than i should have.

i need to see that Asterix film, come to think of it...

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

lol

>i need to see that Asterix film, come to think of it...

if anything, watch "La Cité de la Peur", the first movie Alain Chabat directed...it was much, much funnier (but, when I think of it, it might not be *that* funny if you're not familiar with his previous work on TV...it might be quite pathetic, even)

i saw it and i didn't really experienced the whole "les nuls" phenomenon ... And i liked it

thanks

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

>A lot of my compatriots consider "Amélie" a masterpiece,
>too. You know my stance about that. I just don't like corny
>hippies.

i hated french people for a couple weeks after watching that shit.

I hated my people too when it was out (and folks were lining up to see it 10 or 12 times in a row, and kept blabbering about how great it was)

but we're all closet euro-philes, so i don't hold it against them too much.

i NEVER do that.

only films i've done that for over the past decade are Being John Malkovich, Amelie and Kill Bill

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

you like Queen, too. I still got love for you.
Btw, I hated "Malkovich", too.

>I still got love for you.
>Btw, I hated "Malkovich", too.

i thought i remembered you saying that you liked it, even though you thought Adaptation was much, much much better

>you like Queen, too.

even worse... i think i like The Darkness

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

And I went too see "Adapatation" with quite the negative mindset because of it, which made for a very pleasant surprise.

While we're at it...you should go write the Spike Jonze reply.

>even worse... i think i like The Darkness

I haven't seen or heard anything yet. Not really looking forward to it, from what I've read.

but then i thought it might be more apt to do it under Charlie Kaufman. even though he's a scenarist not a director, i think he's an auteur in his own write (pun intended, of course)

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

Adaptation sucked ass.

Nick Cage was doing his usual neurotic character schtick.

Just didn't work for me. Christopher Plummer was bomb though.......

******************************

"To Each His Reach"
-George Clinton

______________________________________________________________________________

"To Each His Reach"

but.....

Fuck aliens.

and i was the weird guy : "you didn't see Amelie yet ???"
people were saying that movie changed their life ..
And the way they kept saying that's how a perfect vision of Paris ... I was answering "no tags and an arabian guy named Lucien ???"

>And the way they kept saying that's how a perfect vision of Paris

Kill me. Sissified bohoish hippified punks, all of them, for saying that.

>and i was the weird guy : "you didn't see Amelie yet ???"
>people were saying that movie changed their life ..

same here. I boycotted it. I didn't see it before I moved here (I caught it on cable).

or "Friends"

or Spike Lee's Brooklyn, even

i don't begrudge the artists the right to create their own little idealized dreamworlds, as long as they have a good story to tell there

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

>i don't begrudge the artists the right to create their own
>little idealized dreamworlds, as long as they have a good
>story to tell there

well...when I said it used to kill me, I was referring specifically to the kind of comments people were making about the movie. No matter how you slice it, those comments about it capturing the essence of Paris were stupid. I don't necessarily hold it against Jeunet et al, because I don't think they were even trying to "capture the essence of Paris".

But the movie is wack regardless.

ie the whole idea that this film captures some sort of better, "purer" time in the history of Paris (and the tacit right wing sentiments lurking under such ideas)

btw the Forrest Gump analogy right dead on.

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i just hate the phenomenon ... Just like i hate "les bleus" ...
You know the way every single person thought football was a game with a ball two teams of eleven and les Bleus wins at the end ...

>- the cheesy, anal fascination for the big blue sea (the
>scene when Jason Statham saves the heroin by taking her on a
>nice little scuba-diving escapade...I had to laugh out loud
>at the way it came from nowhere)

I don't remember seeing this in The Professional or The Fifth Element.

>- the love for kitschy, trippy, 80s sounding music (the "Big
>Blue" reject theme he used for the aforementioned scene
>added to the hilarity)
Okay.

>- the simplistic, new age hippie sentimentalism
Okay to that one too.

>- the taciturn, mysterious, Male Super-Hero
What about La Femme Nikita? The Messenger?

>- but most of all (and this is linked to my previous point):
>the not-too-subtle homoeroticism (if you need proof, just
>remember the oil fight scene, with a Bruce-Willisesque
>shirtless Jason Statham)
Again, this is neither in La Femme Nikita nor in The Professional.

1Love,
Shuggy

of his. I just thought it was funny that they were all in this movie, which he wasn't directing. I'm thinking Corey Yueng might have thought his executive producer was a little too invasive on the shooting...

edit: and you could also reach and say that Space replaced the Big Blue Sea in "The 5th Element"

>first, let's get something straight: I hate Luc Besson. He's
>trash to me.

so you didn't like the professional?

but if I had to pick one, I would say it's the least bad of the lot (can't bring myself to call it the best of anything)

plus the climactic scene in the apartment.

i could have done without the r kellyisms, but overall i'm lovin it (c) jt

granted, I'm a nerd, but not enough of one to invest much time in analyzing Renny Harlin's movies. But I'd like to point out one trait of his that consistently amazes me: he's the most sadistically violent blockbusters' director I can think of. There's at least one completely gratuitous, cringe-inducing scene in every movie of his I saw.

- "Die Hard 2": when John Amos cut that poor guy's throat, out of the blue. Did the guy have to be there at all?
- "Deep Blue Sea": there's no shortage of random sadistic violence in this one, but I'll give a special mention to Samuel L getting cut (literally) in the middle of his vibrant pep talk. The mad scientist getting rammed into the big window, in front of his wife, too. If he has to come up with a plot involving genetically enhanced sharks to get his point across, Renny will do it.
- "The Long Kiss Goodnight"..now, unfortunately (or not), I only very vaguely remember this one. But I know it was outrageously violent for no reason. And I know Renny's hard-on while directing his wife in this brainless fest must have reached Jeff Stryker-like proportions.
- "Cliffhanger": the introduction scene, the one that explains Sly's initial trauma. That moment when he holds the girl's hand over the abyss, and progressively slips...did it REALLY have to last that long? And I just know Renny had to be masturbating behind the camera, when doing shots of the girl-about-to-bungee-jump-without-the-bungee-part's face.

Imho, it's the viking in him.

see, since this post started i've been trying to analyze Michael Bay and Renny Harlin, but my mind just repels them

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We can all list a million of his quirks/fascinations. Lets go:

1. People who open car trunks (trunk shot in ALL his movies)
2. The word fuck
3. homage (loose term) to 70s blaxploitation film
4. kung-fu movie references
5. hong kong action film references
6. stories told out of order

let me think of more...

1Love,
Shuggy

but you did a damn good job

I would add: cool, collected speeches (or conversations) suddenly turning into FUCK-ladden screaming outbursts. Edit: anger management issues?

>3. homage (loose term) to 70s blaxploitation film
>4. kung-fu movie references
>5. hong kong action film references

These all point to his past as a video store clerk. Edit for addition: his penchant for resurrecting B list actors' careers.

And I would say his love for blaxploitation could be expanded to a fascination for Black culture in general.

but don't put the chicken before the egg. i don't think he was a film dork cause he worked at a video store, i think he worked at a video store cuz he was a film dork.

but fascination with black culture...for sure. dude has said that he always felt 'black inside.' then he went up to spike lee and said he knew more about black people then spike did (funny, if you read the latest Vibe, they interview Tarantino and he MAD puts his foot in his mouth bringing up Spike).

1Love,
Shuggy

you mean the way he tossed off the backhanded Spike diss while defending Jackie Brown?

you know... i don't know what to say about all that. truth is, the more i hear about the story, the more i take QT's side on it. Spike was on some bitch shit.

the whole Barron Claiborne thing on the other hand... i don't know what to say about that.

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Spike's name is first brought up cause Quentin was like, 'Jackie Brown got 40 million from a 12 million...Spike couldn't do that!!!" and the interview was basically like, "Why'd you bring up Spike??? Cause he's black and this is Vibe?" Whereas Tarantino was clearly like "Uh uh uh..."

I think Tarantino still thinks he's black, and is probably arrogant as hell about it. But it was a shit move for Spike to be so loudmouthed about issues when Tarantino was trying to keep their business private.

Don't know about the other reference you made though...Claiborne?

1Love,
Shuggy

>Spike's name is first brought up cause Quentin was like,
>'Jackie Brown got 40 million from a 12 million...Spike
>couldn't do that!!!" and the interview was basically like,
>"Why'd you bring up Spike??? Cause he's black and this is
>Vibe?" Whereas Tarantino was clearly like "Uh uh uh..."

yeah, i thought it was odd that he brought Spike into it like that, too. but i figured it was just because his movie made more than any Spike Lee movie, and yet they're calling Jackie Brown a "failure," a tag that Spike doesn't get sadded with

>I think Tarantino still thinks he's black, and is probably
>arrogant as hell about it.

definitely. did you see the new Playboy interview most people like to think of QT as this big nerdy geek, but he is trying to mythologize himself as this big tough guy/wild man. he goes into this story about how he beat up some taxi driver because "he was a big black guy, and they're used to white guys backing down, but i don't back down. especially not to big black guys."

>Don't know about the other reference you made
>though...Claiborne?

he got into a fight in a restaurant with black photographer Barron Claiborne because Claiborne objected to some comment he made like "i'm surprised that Wesley Snipes gets work in Hollywood because he's so African-looking" and some other comments about the breadth of Negro noses.

apparently, during the fight he hit Claiborne's girlfriend in the face with a glass or something, and they were suing him for 4 mil. i don't know what came of the case, and i don't know who i side with there. i mean... Wesley Snipes DOES have pronounced "African" features. i don't see anything wrong with making a comment about that.

i guess it all depends on how it was said.
>1Love,
>Shuggy

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-Things that he wants you to notice. He knows that you're looking at the details in the background, and he wants you to know that he knows that you know.

example: the charie brown design of the yellow kimono in Kill Bill. The cereal boxes in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. The samurai swords on the airplane.

edit: it's the weed smoker in him

weed smokers don't notice shit.

weed does make you pay attention to details (especially when you listen to music or watch a movie)

it's just that you can't remember what you had noticed afterwards

by the time tarantino acknowledges that you noticed the thing, you'd have forgotten about it.

>weed does make you pay attention to details (especially when
>you listen to music or watch a movie)
>
>it's just that you can't remember what you had noticed
>afterwards

Aint that the truth. And that's why I gotta see it again. BTW I didnt notice any other sam swords on the plane other than Uma's. And I also didnt notice that all the clocks in Pulp Fiction are set 2 4:20

Uma's the only one with a sword, and you wonder how the hell she got a sword on an airplane. The next flight, you see she's still got the sword, but that everyone else has a samurai sword next to their seat, and it appears the plane is equipped with samurai sword holders. Then you chuckle.

________________________________________________________________
"Well," said Powell, grinning, "Now do you believe that we made you?"
The Robots answer was curt and final. "No!" he said
Powell's grin froze. Donovan's mouth dropped open.
"You see," continued Cutie, easily, "you have merely put together parts already made. You did remarkably well, I suppose-but you didn't really create the robot. The parts were created by the Master."
As he left, Cutie turned, and said in a kindly tone, "But don't feel badly. In the Master's scheme of things there is room for all. You poor humans have your place and though it is humble, you will be rewarded if you fill it well." - Isaac Asimov (I, ROBOT)

_o__ __n_y _y__r_

http://keymusic.bandcamp.com/album/apophenia

https://keymusic.bandcamp.com/

- train stations
- weak female characters (either weak as a trait of their personality in the movie, or weak as a movie character...or both)

somebody do the rest for me (I need to stop procrastinating now)

particularly to Vertigo
-split screens

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

I think it's the greatest gimmick ever invented

favorites of mine (not limited to De Palma):

- the prom scene in "Carrie" (which reminds me: De Palma loves him some slow motion too)
- the opening of "The Grifters"
- the "Jackie Brown" scene that leads to Jackie sticking the gun in Ordell's nuts ("is that what I think it is?")

- Hitchcock references

- shoa references

which leads to great saddism inflicted on his characters
- low-brow, vapid salon anarchism
- the former video/ads director syndrom

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fascination with absent/distant parents and the children who pine for their attention

add on

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more of a gimmick: this delayed action trick in his action movies (you know, when something that should take one second to occur is stretched for two minutes or more to show all the different protagonists' actions while it happens...I don't have any precise example in mind, though). I'm not too sure, but I would almost say he invented that trick.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

THE MOON !!!

anyone?

i was actually thinking about it the other night while watching Unfaithful. I know (and hate) most of his idiosyncrasies, but i just can't put them into words.

let me chew on that a bit. Suffice to say all his shit looks like a car commercial from the 80s

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

but I haven't seen Unfaithful. Someone keeps vetoing it every time we go to the video store.

>but I haven't seen Unfaithful. Someone keeps vetoing it
>every time we go to the video store.

my cousin says every time he reads one of Frenchie's posts, he sees Olivier Martinez's face

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[]

...in S.W.A.T. Give up the tough guy roles O.M. o.k.?

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he's making us look bad

so he must being doing something right

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

Richard Gere and Olivier Martinez starring in an Adrian Lyne directed remake...

I think someone's got a case, here

i resisted it a long time myself. finally saw it "by accident" (Netflix sent me the wrong DVD)

there's some nice Diane Lane in there that kinda make it worthwhile, man

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>there's some nice Diane Lane in there that kinda make it
>worthwhile, man

that movie changed my life. now i lust all day after 40 year old housewives.

- "spiritualism"
- long, long shots
- an Hitchcock fetichism too

something that worked really well in his first movie, but has been lame ever since (and what's the deal with everybody being hurt by water? did he almost drown as a kid?)