What happens when/if The Dark Knight passes Titanic in money made...?

[rocketpig]

okr said:

And you're right, PT Anderson is one of the young directors who knows how to use music brilliantly and I'll always be thankful that he revived Aimee Mann's career.

Richard Kelly impressed me with Donnie Darko as well (not so much with how he used the music, but which music he used). Haven't seen Southland Tales yet.

I wish we had more talented young directors in Europe, but European cinema is in a state of agony ever since Italy and especially France were the last countries to slowly lose their momentum sometime in the early 80s.

Ironically, many self-proclaimed cineasts among my friends are still arrogant and think all shit comes from NA and all quality comes from Europe. I keep telling them: Along with Asia, NA produces the main part of shit movies but also the main part of quality movies since the 90s until today.

Europe, on the other hand, gave up quality movies - i.e. good movies which you actually WANT to watch - years ago. Only a few directors, such as Spain's brilliant Pedro Almodóvar or UK's Ken Loach, are an exception to that rule.

How Richard Kelly uses music is actually really interesting once you watch his films a few times... You realize that he actually writes the scene around the music and lyrics. He does it several times in Donnie Darko (only really noticable in the Director's Cut after he moved around some songs and added more to fit his original vision) and to a lesser extent in Southland Tales (a real "love it or hate it" movie). If you have the director's cut of DD, watch the opening bicycle scene and listen to the lyrics... It's an interesting take on how to incorporate music into a film. It comes off as too literary at times, but it has a fun effect at others.

I agree on Euro films. I used to love them but find myself watching less and less of them as time passes. On the upside, it's interesting to see how some of them have adapted to moving to Hollywood and working on English-speaking films (Tom Tykwer, for example). The English film business has really taken off with Guy Ritchie, Matthew Vaughn, and a few others so that's a real plus (just watched L4yer Cake last night, OMG at the "Ordinary World" scene in the diner).