Thursday, November 18, 2010

born 18 November 1970

Anna Loos, Brandenburg an der Havel, East Germany, actress/singer

Chao, Madrid, Spain, actor

Chinami Nishimura, Chiba, Japan, actress/animation voice talent

Constance Craemer, Düsseldorf, West Germany, actress

Elena Martínez, Barcelona, Spain, actress

Elizabeth Anne Allen, birthplace unspecified, Amy from “Buffy”

James Jewell, Albany, New York, download supervisor/doomed agri-science student

Jennifer Aguilar, Houston, Texas, graduate student

Jethro Rice, state of Massachusetts, minister without portfolio

Lorna Paz, Cartagena, Colombia, actress

Martin Forsström, birthplace unspecified, Swedish actor

Megyn Kelly, Syracuse, New York, lawyer/atrocious but pretty Fox News anchorwoman

Mike Epps, Indianapolis, Indiana, actor/comedian

Ottó Ulmann, birthplace unspecified, Hungarian actor

Peta Wilson, Sydney, Australia, actress

Rashed Obaid, birthplace unspecified, Kuwaiti film editor

Roméo Sarfati, birthplace unspecified, French actor

Zsolt Gazdag, Nyíregyháza, Hungary, actor



Today I salute the nine filmmakers who have made more good movies than I can narrow down to a single choice. Several of these guys are capable of laying a serious egg; sometimes a decade or two will pass between worthwhile endeavors. But all of these people get a lifetime pass from me.


Ethan & Joel Coen

Francis Ford Coppola

Martin Scorsese

Paul Thomas Anderson

Robert Altman

Stanley Kubrick

Terry Gilliam

Wes Anderson



4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the shoutabout. Quite an undistinguished lot I find myself in. Mike Epps? Couldn't it least have been Omar Epps? Mike Epps always impressed me as someone who is probably a total asshole in real life and would've been regardless of fame. I'd be astounded if this wasn't true.

    I'd like to add another 9 to your 9:
    Spike and Woody- serious eggs and lifetime passes personified in these would be authorities on their corners of NYC.
    David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch- sometimes mood matters as much as story.
    Wong Kar Wei and Shohei Imamura- sometimes prettiness, sentiment and artifice convey as much emotion as mood.
    John Sayles- to go with your Americanny vibe.
    John Cassavettes- w Gena Rowlands- greatest filmmaker/muse partnership this side of Fellini/Masina

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  2. btw,
    Barton Fink
    Godfather
    Goodfellas
    Magnolia
    The Long Goodbye
    A Clockwork Orange
    Time Bandits
    Life Aquatic

    what say you to my nine?

    I so miss these sort of extremely dorky exchanges.

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  3. Regarding your favorites from my list of eight, I am in agreement with you on four. (Though McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Twelve Monkeys, The Royal Tennenbaums, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore would be four films you could show as entertainment at my drink-befogged Irish wake, and they'd sum up my tastes with precise concision.)

    I have a very slight preference for The Godfather: Part II, just because. I have immense regard for Magnolia, but Boogie Nights has Burt Reynolds and a disco dance sequence, so that just barely puts it ahead.

    A Clockwork Orange has to take the prize for the film that blew me away the most the SECOND time I watched it. (Granted, the first time was in the side room of my high school girlfriend (who hated it) on a rented VHS tape, and the second time was in Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood itself, before a packed house, in honor of Warner Brothers' centenary, as the back half of a double feature with The Exorcist.)

    I literally cannot choose between Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski. But there are two Coen brotehrs, so I get to keep both. (Barton Fink I am so ambivalent about that I almost don't like it, in spite of still thinking it's great. I've given it several chances to win me all the way over, but it has yet to happen. I am excited, though, to know that the Coens have a sequel - Old Fink - planned, set in leftist New York in the sixties, which they're waiting to do until Turturro is actually old enough.)

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  4. Oh, re Kubrick, I forgot to say, it's Full Metal Jacket if I can only take one from my lifetime, and Paths of Glory if I can include stuff from before I was born.

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