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It feels like you've been sucking a lot of helium since you've returned. I've always wondered if it was as pleasurable as some say.

I wouldn't bag on "female directors" as a whole if more of them made movies about people getting owned or Kristen Stewart being awesome, and fewer movies about dysfunctional families getting together to squabble over a turkey dinner that are shot with all the brown-hued 1.66:1 visual panache of someone setting up an 8mm camera in the Brady game room circa 1974.

I'm SOOO glad that now it is time for me to get off a computer and go see Dolemite.

Speaking of female directors, I loved Darnell Martin's I Like It Like That, and I may be the only person on earth thinking that Cadillac Records has a chance to be really good. I love movies about that era of the music biz anyway, even when they're not great.

Lex, no love for the ownage of Charlize Theron in the female-directed (Karyn Kusama) Aeon Flux?

Or Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break, which is a Lex film if I ever saw one, not to mention her equally visually-striking Strange Days and Blue Steel?

I like all those that you mention, including Aeon Therownage.

Seems I was talking up Strange Days a lot recently after revisiting it on HBO; Definitely like Bigelow, big Hardwicke fan, also like Coppola a lot and Peirce somewhat. But they all have slick, cinematic sensibilities (Peirce probably less so in general, but Stop/Loss was competent in the action bits and shot very well) and are less likely to make domestic dramas that play like nicely written short stories where someone just threw a camera up in the corner.

(I have the same complaint about 90% of actors-turned-directors, most of whom are male.)

Look, I'll say it outright if Lex won't-- Kathryn Bigelow OWNS, dammit, and Strange Days really holds up.

It's worth at least glancing at Alexander's imdb page. She's quite candid about her gender.

how can you talk bigelow without mentioning one of the most badass vampire movies ever made: NEAR DARK

geeze guys, get with the bigelow programmo

perhaps female directors get stuck doing domestic melodramas because noone thinks they can direct movies like Punisher? self fulfilling prophecy. Bigelow has had successes, but I bet she has to work a lot harder to get her latest project greenlit than a male action director with a similar level of successes.

Is she working on Ender's Game for Marvel now? or is that just another of the unfounded rumors swirling around town?

yancy -- there are some good moments in 'cadillac records' but if you're familiar with the era, at all, what they do to the chronology of musical events will drive you crazy...and, i'm not talking little esoteric things but some pretty big events are all out of timeline...

'Bigelow has had successes, but I bet she has to work a lot harder to get her latest project greenlit than a male action director with a similar level of successes'

ya think?

here's a clip in which the lovely and amazing kathryn talks about her journey with the cult classic 'near dark' (there's other stuff in there, too, funny how much of the cast went on to become early cameron staples)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhK3f-uP8ek

having seen 'point break - live!' here in l.a., i will never be able to look at that movie again.....

scooterzz: Thanks - I haven't really studied up on Chess Records, so I might very well miss those timeline issues. I'm used to forgiving a lot from this genre. Some of the ones I like (both fact-based and fictional) have few champions -- Why Do Fools Fall in Love, The Five Heartbeats, Grace of My Heart -- and I'm not blind to their flaws. I'm hopeful for this one because of Martin, Jeffrey Wright, Mos Def and what looks in the trailer like a decent recreation of the period, production-wise. We'll see!

Kathryn Bigelow's films have tended to flop, is why she isn't a bigger name. Not knocking her work, which I enjoy, but I'm pretty sure her only hit movie was Point Break. And that wasn't exactly a blockbuster. $43 mil in 1991. And that's her highest grossing film to date. And one of only two films she's made that broke $10mil, period.

Pretty much any male director with her track record would be where she is now or worse - which isn't so bad, really. She still works, she's just not in the top tier. She had her shot at that with K-19 and it didn't go over.

I'm looking forward to Hurt Locker though.

Anyway, is Punisher War Zone any good? It's a Punisher movie so if it is, it'd be breaking a trend. I really like the actors involved though so I'm hopeful.

PastePot, according to Devin Faraci at CHUD:

"if you're the person who laughs and applauds at the sight of an old lady's head being turned into a smoking, meaty crater, you're going to fucking love Punisher: War Zone."

Bigelow's triumph is that despite none of her movies doing particularly well at the box office, they're all very good and people respect that. Strange Days is probably my fave. Wonderful stuff and makes me yearn for the days of "Juliette Lewis - FILM STAR!" as opposed to "Juliette Lewis - Kickass Mothafucka on the Stage" (her official name, I believe).

Speaking of female directors, I loved Darnell Martin's I Like It Like That, and I may be the only person on earth thinking that Cadillac Records has a chance to be really good. I love movies about that era of the music biz anyway, even when they're not great.

I couldn't agree more, Yancy.
Was also a huge fan of Martin's "I Like It" (I remember thinking that Jon Seda was going to become a major star and break the Hispanic actor curse), and have been a sucker for music industry bio-type films at least since Floyd Mutrux's "American Hot Wax,"
one of my top-10 movies of all time.

I don't get it, Don... but ok.

Strange Days is pretty good (although - that ending - yeeks!)

Aeon Flux, not so much.

for a movie written by quite the film feminist cameron and directed by a very capable woman, 'strange days' has a creepy little misogynistic streak running through it that panders to the lowest common denominator and lowers the movie in my esteem...but the beautiful and badass basset largely makes up for it.

i wonder if there will come a day when the topic of this thread is no longer relevant. not in my lifetime, i suspect.

(my fave flick directed by a woman: 'the lord of the rings' ;-) )

A quick trip to IMDB reveals something that sorta surprised me, which is that MARY LAMBERT still works fairly consistently. Surprising, because I haven't seen her name on anything feature-wise in years and years. (She was a prolific music video director before and after Pet Sematary.)

I don't think either one is a "good" movie, but her two PET SEMATARY films have this vile, blunt, gruesome MEANNESS that's kind of shocking from a director of either gender; Used to think P.S. was an appalling movie, but it definitely sticks with you and I think she was on to something with that.

I wonder if her (mostly DTV) output since has that some unsettling ugliness. Anyway, can't really make the argument that she's any great auteur or craftsman, but definitely an unsung example of a "chick director" who kinda beat the guys at their own game, at least by creating a horror movie (and sequel) as hardcore as her male contemporaries.

personally i think 'pet cemetery 2' sucks the giant kumara, lex, but i agree about the first 'pet' - it's a nasty little piece of work that gets under your skin and quite effectively builds the horror (to a rather lame finish, i thought), but it captures the spirit of king's novel and fred gwynne (sp?) is priceless in it.

make no mistake: lots of chicks dig horror, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that a woman can bring the gruesome as well as any guy.

(and typepad is officially on my shitlist. die, typepad, die)

Why is it so shocking that a woman has directed a punisher movie? No one is shocked that Joanthan Demme has directed a wedding movie. Just a thought.

I don't think anyone's surprised that a woman is CAPABLE of directing a Punisher movie -- but rather that one has been given the opportunity. Doesn't happen every day.

Whatever became of Nancy Savoca?
Savoca's "True Love," "Dogfight" and "Household Saints" all placed on my 10-best list in '89, '91 and '93 respectively.
I can still remember how nauseated I felt back in '91 when Streisand fanatics cried "sexism" because poor Babs was passed over for a Best Director nod for her execrable "Prince of Tides."
That same year Savoca's "Dogfight" opened and closed without anyone noticing--except me and USA Today's Mike Clark.
For shame.

and me, movieman! you know i love 'dogfight', such a unique, touching romance with pitch-perfect performances from river and lili. savoca had an unconventional style, 'dogfight' is so low-key and un-hollywood...maybe that was the problem

movieman: ditto to everything you said about Nancy Savoca. Her most recent director credit was for a 2003 Showtime film titled "Dirt." I haven't seen it, but she and husband Richard Guay got a WGA nod for their script. Her imdb bio says she's working on a documentary about Gato Barbieri. So at least she hasn't fallen off the face of the earth, but yeah -- we need more movies from her!

There's nothing more disheartening than thumbing through an old issue of Film Comment or something, seeing a name and thinking "Whatever happened to...?" I caught part of a Twin Peaks episode the other night directed by Tina Rathborne. Didn't ring a bell, so I looked her up. She directed a short feature of some kind in '84, the feature Zelly and Me in '88, then 2 episodes of Peaks and... that's it.

Glad to hear that Savoca is still earning the occasional paycheck.
Kind of ironic that Catherine Hardwicke got feted for having the best opening weekend gross for a femme-directed movie when even more talented women filmmakers can't get a frigging job (in or outside the industry) to save their lives.
Sad? Definitely. Sexist? You betcha.

Nah, Hardwicke rules.

THIRTEEN OWNS.

I certainly didn't mean any disrespect to Hardwicke, Lex.
"Thirteen," "Lords of Dogtown" and yes, "Twilight," are all solid movies, but she's never made a movie as good as any of Savoca's Triple Crown films.

Thirteen is pretty god-awful.

WAR ZONE.

MAN UP and enter THE ZONE.

In other news, EVAN RACHEL WOOD OWNS.

Wake us up when you get to Abigail Breslin, Lex (unless she's already too old for you).

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