Oscar Best Movie Poll - Who *Should* Win

[Iormlund]

Why do spaniards hate Israel so much?

It cannot be love of muslims. You guys do have an immigration problem with moroccans, don't you?
And didn't you fight an 800 years war to free yourself from the muslims?
So it must be anti-semitism.

The press is almost unanimously biased against Israel. Why is that I don't know, but since we have pretty much no Jews it might simply be inertia, consequence of a society shaped by Franco's Middle East policy, which was markedly pro-Arab (IMHO probably for pragmatic reasons, such as avoiding embargoes, trade, Catholic integrism, and early on German influence).

[Ideologue]

Maintaining the tone, building a (routinely modified) story out of the footage, and keeping the actors straight is the producers' job?  Then no wonder they get the Best Picture action figures.

I thought you meant the technical and practical challenges, which were certainly considerable. What you mention is certainly the purview of the director, but what's so hard about it? There are lots of other films about boys growing up that maintain tone and build a story, they are just shot conventionally.

But Boyhood was not shot conventionally.

Maybe I overestimate the difficulty.  I mean, hell, not like it really did amount to that much in the end.

[Eddie Teach]

Err, I didn't hijack the thread.

Weren't you the first person to mention the "stop bullying" campaign?

[CountDeMoney]

Hey, at least Lena Dunham wasn't involved, right?

[Ed Anger]

Hey, at least Lena Dunham wasn't involved, right?

Oh, the huge manatee.

[grumbler]

A director "directs" everything in the film. In theory - although that's highly dependent on your personal power - you decide everything that goes in the film, using the "proposals" of all the other professionals. You correct the actors' performances, you ask the screenwriter to change things in the script and approve them, you sit besides the editor and give him instructions, you talk with the DoP to have this or this kind of photography for a given scene, etc... You don't supplant them or their work, but you certainly direct them. So in a way, it's hard to have the best picture without the best director.

However, I'm a believer that "best director" awards should focus only on the only exclusive competence a director has: deciding shots and mise en scène, and then include the director among the recipients of "best picture" awards (nowadays only the producers are awarded).

I think that you can easily have a better film (due to having a bigger budget for actors and professionals) without having the best director.  Directors turn resources into film stock.  With fewer resources, its hard to match the quality of an expensive film's stock.  Really great directors like Leone or Eastwood make the quality differences more moot.

[jimmy olsen]