Week 7 - The top directors working in Hollywood today

Movie Review Writing Part II is due today! (Oct. 27)

So many directors, so little time!

New movies come out every month, and there are many great directors we won't have time to discuss. Some of them appear on this list of the top directors working in Hollywood today. Many of these names may be unknown to you, but you will probably see their movies at the cinema or when they are presented with an Academy Award. In this class, we have already looked at Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino who appear on this list. We will also learn about Martin Scorsese (next week!), the Coen Brothers, and Peter Jackson. Let's check out some of the lesser-known names on the list, and then we'll focus on one of them, Karthryn Bigelow, the only woman director we'll study this year.   Another list of directors

• Ben Affleck - Argo (2012), Gone Baby Gone (2007)
• Ang Lee - Brokeback Mountain (2005), Life of Pi (2012), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) Gemini Man (2019)
• David O Russell - Silver Linings Playbook (2012), American Hustle (2013), The Fighter (2010) Joy (2015) 
• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - Birdman (2014), Babel (2006), The Revenant (2016)
• Steve McQueen - 12 Years a Slave (2013), Widows (2018)
• Alfonso Cuaron - Children of Men (2006) Gravity (2013), Roma (2018)
• David Fincher - Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl (2014), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
• Richard Linklater - Boyhood (2014), Last Flag Flying (2017), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019)   Boyhood PDF  ⤆
• Spike Lee - Do the Right Thing (1989), Malcom X (1992), Summer of Sam (1999), BlacKkKlansman (2018)
• Wes Anderson - Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018) The French Dispatch (2020)

The two directors below are not "Hollywood Directors." However, they are great and well-known, and frequently appear on stage at awards time. 

• Danny Boyle - Trainspotting (1996), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Steve Jobs (2015) Battle of the Sexes (2017), Yesterday (2019)
• Tom Hooper - The King's Speech (2010), Les Miserables (2012), The Danish Girl (2015), Cats (2019)

Blog Post: Choose one of the directors above. The director's name will be your title. Watch all the trailers for that director. Make a blog post that reads ... 

I chose the director ( ... name ...) and I watched the trailer for (... movie title ...). I want to watch the whole movie because ... .
     or
I chose the director ( ... name ...) and I watched the trailer for (... movie title ...) and (... movie title ...). My impression of the trailers is ... .
     or
I saw the whole movie (... movie title ...) by (... director's name ...) at the cinema (or on video or streaming TV). My impression of the movie is ... .

Spotlight on Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow (born 1951) has directed about a dozen movies, but it was her two war movies that made her reputation as a great contemporary director. "The Hurt Locker" (2008), was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning six, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. "The Hurt Locker" is a very tense film about a group of soldiers in Iraq whose job is to disarm explosives. The movie is admired for its realism and for its accurate portrayal of the war in Iraq.

Bigelow's next movie was "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012), about the hunt for Bin Laden by the C.I.A.  It was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one, for Best Sound Editing. Some people found the movie controversial due to its depiction of torture and the implication that torture was helpful in finding Bin Laden. However, the movie strikes a nice balance between being suspenseful and telling a reasonably accurate story about events in Afghanistan and Pakistan leading up to the capture of Bin Laden in 2011.

Bigelow's most recent movie was "Detroit" (2017). About riots in Detroit in 1967, this movie received critical praise, but it did not do well at the box office.

Bigelow was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. (Now there are three women who have won.)

* Kathryn Bigelow was married to director James Cameron from 1989 to 1991. They were both nominated for Best Director in 2010. Bigelow won for "The Hurt Locker."(Cameron's movie was "Avatar.")

"The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty" are available on DVD in the Tsurumi University Library.

[My personal thoughts and recollections about Kathryn Bigelow and her movies were supplemented with details, dates and numbers from Wikipedia. - Kevin]

Kathryn Bigelow Biographies:
Wikipedia
IMDb
Biography.com

Links to trailers and clips to some of Kathryn Bigelow's movies:
Point Break (1991) - trailer; a thriller about a cop who goes undercover as a surfer; starring Keanu Reeves
Strange Days (1995) - trailer; a science fiction thriller written by James Cameron
The Weight of Water (2000) - trailer; starring Sean Penn
The Hurt Locker (2008) - trailer; a realistic war movie; starring Jeremy Renner
The Hurt Locker (2008) - "Drop the phone!" clip 
Zero Dark Thirty (2012) - trailer; a realistic war/C.I.A. movie; starring Jessica Chastain   Zero Dark Thirty PDF  ⤆
Detroit (2017) - trailer; true crime drama related to the 1967 riots in Detroit

Please look at these two sentences:
English is taught at Tsurumi University. / English was taught at Tsurumi University.

All students should do this form:
Simple Present Passive vs Active Sentences

To Do List

1) Blog post as explained above

2) Boyhood PDF*

3) Zero Dark Thirty* PDF

4) Finish Passive vs Active Exercise from last week

5) Do 'Simple Present Passive vs Active Sentences' form above

6) Show me your Writing Part II
7) Movie Writing Part III: Write your comments and opinions about the movie in a paragraph. 

* Boyhood is a movie by Richard Linklater (top list). Zero Dark Thirty was directed by Kathryn Bigelow. ⤆