The best widescreen director?
09-15-03 | 05:31 PM
#27
DVD Talk Godfather
Originally posted by Sierra Disc
David Lean, without a doubt. Go watch "Lawrence of Arabia" sometime and tell me he didn't write the book on widescreen for the ages.
Ridley Scott? Gimme a break. If the cluttered CGI confusion of "Gladiator" is the best example we can come up with, I say "thumbs down". A decent director but not a widescreen master scenarist by any means.
David Lean, without a doubt. Go watch "Lawrence of Arabia" sometime and tell me he didn't write the book on widescreen for the ages.
Ridley Scott? Gimme a break. If the cluttered CGI confusion of "Gladiator" is the best example we can come up with, I say "thumbs down". A decent director but not a widescreen master scenarist by any means.
09-15-03 | 05:46 PM
#28
DVD Talk Legend
Stanley Kubrick.
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I'll go with PTA also. He still shoots his films anamorphically, whereas many like Fincher, Scott, Mendes, et. al, shoot Super-35, which allows for some additional visual information in a 4:3 version.
Of course, the composition is what's important, and whether Panavision or Super-35 is used is irrelevant to that, but I think the films of PTA and others who use Panavision would look worse in pan and scan than a director who uses Super-35. In fact, I missed Magnolia in theaters so I rented the
since it came out a month before the DVD did, and in one scene they had letterbox bars temporarily scroll into the image because there was just no way they could have done it with pan and scan. If only it could have been that way for the whole movie!
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)I'll go with PTA also. He still shoots his films anamorphically, whereas many like Fincher, Scott, Mendes, et. al, shoot Super-35, which allows for some additional visual information in a 4:3 version.
Of course, the composition is what's important, and whether Panavision or Super-35 is used is irrelevant to that, but I think the films of PTA and others who use Panavision would look worse in pan and scan than a director who uses Super-35. In fact, I missed Magnolia in theaters so I rented the
Spoiler:
09-16-03 | 08:47 AM
#30
Moderator
Peter Greenaway
Luc Besson
Bernado Bertolluci
Ken Russell
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, Delicatessen, City of Lost Children)
John Sturges (Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape)
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Luc Besson
Bernado Bertolluci
Ken Russell
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, Delicatessen, City of Lost Children)
John Sturges (Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape)
_______________________
Last edited by Giles; 09-16-03 at 08:52 AM.
I think God invented widescreen so Lean could give us "Lawrence of Arabia".
09-16-03 | 03:25 PM
#34
DVD Talk Legend
I have to go with Lean as well. There are very few directors that are even close... and IMHO Carpenter isn't one of them.
Lean's WS shot compositions in Zhivago, Kwai, A Passage to India, and of course LOA are practically unrivalled.
Lean's WS shot compositions in Zhivago, Kwai, A Passage to India, and of course LOA are practically unrivalled.
09-16-03 | 07:13 PM
#36
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SOOOOOOO John Carpenter! Ridley Scott has become a widescreen sellout, first by going to Super-35 (with its full frame transfer friendly aspect ratio variability), and then to 1.85. I blame his new DOP John Matheison, personally!
