Yakuza Bengoshi

Most who? I'm guessing you implicitly mean most Americans. If so, it just goes to prove how myopic most Americans are about cinema. Most Americans have never even heard of truly great contemporary directors like Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Haneke, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Lars von Trier, Aleksandr Sokurov, Ming-liang Tsai, Hirokazu Koreeda, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Anh Hung Tran, Abbas Kiarostami, or Bela Tarr, much less seen a cross-sample of their work to compare it against that of Ang Lee. So what is their point of comparison? John Woo, Robert Rodriguez, Danny Boyle and Kevin Smith? If so, sure Ang Lee is good, but that's not really saying that much.

Matthew Ackerly

I'll forever think of Ang Lee as the man that f*cked up The Incredible Hulk.

MikeDeN2K

Then you must not have seen many movies in your lifetime. That's a shame.

Matthew Ackerly

I guess not.

Gobear

I'm not getting the Ang Lee hate here. He makes intelligent, sensitive films that reach an appreciative audience. It seems to me that his great sin is that his audience is too broad and middlebrow ("Ugh, the plebs like Ang Lee; alert Andrew Sarris at once!"). Plus, he made a superhero movie that was shown in multiplexes--pass me a Gitane and an espresso lest I faint!

Really, I hardly think it's fair to sneer at fellow film fans whose exposure to world film may not be as broad as others. Film appreciation is a life-long activity, and teaching each other and introducing each other to good films is far more productive than pretentiously dismissing the opinions of people whose film habits don't mesh with one's own.

Plus you left out Pedro Almodovar, Zhang Yi-mou, Zhuangzhuang Tian, Chen Kai-Ge, Im Kwon-Taek, Kim Ki-Duk, Bahman Ghobadi, and Jafar Panahi. (The White Balloon is by far the best film out of Iran, IMO)

And Lars Van Trier is NOT a great film director. He made one good movie ("Breaking the Waves"), and then spiraled into irrelevance. Dogme 95 is the worst idea to hit films since theaters stopped putting real butter in the popcorn.

hanshotfirst1138

I've heard of all the above directors (almost) and seen many of their films. I'm also 20 years old. Lets not generalize . And fail to see how John Woo, Robert Rodriguez, Danny Boyle, and Kevin Smith are unskilled. Smith is juevinle but capable of maturity, Rodriguez is the current king of trash, John Woo is one of the cinema's most skilled pulp stylists (well, he was anyway), and Danny Boyle is a an extremely skilled craftsman. By "most" I mean the dozens of positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes from professional film critics. Most of mainstream suburban American doesn't give a damn about the guy.

I agree, I mean, when you've seen thousands of films or only a handful, a great film is still a great film. If someone has never been to film school and seen Bergman or Fellini and they sit down and enjoy Seven Samurai, does this mean that Kurosawa-san pales in comparison? The above was talking like it was Michael Bay or Joel Schumacher or Uwe Bowl or something; John Woo, Robert Rodriguez, Danny Boyle and Kevin Smith aren't Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, or Ray, but they're hardly hacks.

Your spelling is unique; do you use a different romanji system than I do, or are you Asian (don't take offense)?

Gobear

Nope, just a white boy who lived in South Korea for many years. For Korean names, I use the McCune-Reischauer transliteration system (I detest the Ministry of Education system because it is clumsy and is apt to mislead non-Korean speakers into mispronouncing words), and for Chinese I use Pinyin. I inserted hypens into the first names because someone who doesn't speak the language might think Chen Kaige's first name is pronounced CAGE, instead of KY-GUH.
I didn't mention any Japanese directors, so no romaji necessary.

Yakuza Bengoshi

I didn't express hatred for Ang Lee. In fact, I said he was good in comparison to many of his peers. I own The Ice Storm, Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.

I took exception to the appeal to authority in the statement "Most wold argue that he's one of today's most gifted directors" by challenging the relevance of the cited authority. Nothing more.

Where did I claim that I was providing an exhaustive list of gifted directors? I listed a healthy sample of currently working directors that I regard as (1) gifted as demonstrated by a body of work, and (2) under-appreciated in the United States. I'd agree with you that Pedro Almodovar and Kim Ki-Duk are gifted. I'd disagree with you about whether the gifts of Zhang Yimou, and Chen Kaige put them among the the top tier, and I've seen no more than one or two films from each of the others on your list and thus have no definite opinion.


Now who's dismissing the opinions of of people whose film habits don't mesh with one's own? I think Medea is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Dancer in the Dark is my favorite musical bar none. Riget I & II are engrossing television, and though I found Dogville extremely flawed, it's better and more original than 99% of the stuff coming out of Hollywood.

Yakuza Bengoshi

I didn't try to pick completely incompetent hacks. Smith undoubtedly understands (understood?) how to appeal to a certain segment of the cinema market and sqeeze every dollar out of it. Woo did some great work in his HK days. Whether Rodriguez is the King of Trash or John Waters is, I suppose is a question of what trash heap you're talking about, but again I don't think he's particularly great in a larger sense, or at least he hasn't proven himself to be yet. Boyle is uneven as a director and a screen writer.

You do realize that Rotten Tomatoes provides an extremely skewed view in that almost all of the sources cited are American writers of either (1) media corporations with an incestuous relationship with Hollywood, (2) Hollywood PR houses, or (3) semi-amateur outlets that generally provide favorable reviews, right? What's generally ignored by Rotten Tomatoes is the opinions of (1) academic American critics generally, and (2) non-Americans as a whole.

hanshotfirst1138

Hmm. Maybe I'm stuck with Wade-Giles; you'll see me over at the Asian DVD guide from time to time, so they might have taught me a bit differently. Wouldn't romanji apply to all Asian names, not just Japanese? My knowledge is extremely limited, so forgive me. Lilywhite suburb American. What can I say?

I don't claim to be an authority on anything. I simply took exception to the yardstick measuring Ang Lee as though he were Michael Bay or something. They guy's pretty damn talented, I think.

Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige have had rather erratic careers, but on form (Raise the Red Lantern, Fairwell My Concubine), I think that they're well deserving of being ranked among the finest (Killing Me Softly not withstanding).

There seldom IS anything original coming out of Hollywood.

Yakuza Bengoshi

The appeal to authority which I took exception to was the unspecified "most". Had you said, "I think Ang Lee is great", I wouldn't have bothered to respond.

EEz28

Confirmation of The Ice Storm on criterion's blog

Sparrow

Excellent, I'm looking forward to the release.