The Big Fat List of Directors I Don’t Talk About Enough

I love talking about movies. So do you. Why else would you be here? In the discussion process, it’s very easy to become enthusiastic about certain directors and their films. And the unfortunate byproduct of the genius of these various directors is that it’s easy to fixate on them, often at the detriment of other moviemakers who have plied their craft with similarly deft touches. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve seen at least a few articles about Ingmar Bergman, Buster Keaton, Louis Malle, Luis Buñuel, Martin Scorsese, Edgar Wright, and the Coen brothers. But there is a humongous list of other directors that I love just as much, if not more, than many of the names on that list. Here’s a list of directors that I don’t write about nearly enough.

Ten Great Acting Roles by Directors (in the Films of Others)

Usually, directors are behind the scenes, spinning their vision into a movie. But they don’t always stay there. Occasionally, they’ll appear on screen. Sometimes, it can be a leading role. Other times, it’s merely a cameo. Here are ten great acting performances by directors in the films of others.

Fritz Lang as Fritz Lang, Contempt
Lang’s films- especially his silent films- are some of the best movies ever made. But before I’d ever seen a single film that he directed, I saw him playing the director in the film within Godard’s film, Contempt. How’s that for post-modern cinema? A director acting in a film in the role of… a director. Making it even more off-kilter, he didn’t even play a fictional director. He played himself, and it was precisely what the movie called for.

Film Interpretations of Various Artists

Photoshop is an absolute blast sometimes. It allows you to entertain yourself for hours. And that’s precisely what I did here- I imported film themes into the artistic styles of various artists like Warhol, Munch, Van Gogh, etc… Be sure to click on any of these to get the full-resolution versions, especially the more horizontal prints.

The Last Supper using only Scorsese characters:

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100 Things I Love About the Movies

I passed a milestone recently here at TDYLF. Thanks to the help of the editors over at IMDB, I passed the 100,000 Hits milestone on Sunday (with a whopping 80,000+ of those hits coming just since September 30th). To celebrate, I’m beginning a brand new series called “100 Things I Love About the Movies”. To be sure, there a LOT more than 100 things that I love about the movies. As such, this has the potential to become a series- 100 Things I Love About Horror Movies, 100 Things I Love About Foreign Movies, and on and on. I present to you the first edition of “100 Things I Love About the Movies”.