What has Nolan contributed to cinema?  I'll give him kudos for Memento, but he's either a one trick pony or he made it into the Hollywood elite and got lazy and turned into an asshole.  It's not really hard to get a good performance out of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, or David Bowie.  Heath Ledger came up with his own idea for the Joker, so he can take 100% of the credit for that performance to the grave.  The greatest thing Nolan's done was to convince a studio to let a young hotshot nobody make a Batman movie.  But let's see him make An Apocalypse Now or A Clockwork Orange, or anything that remains culturally relevant ever.  We'll wait and see if we have a new generation of directors saying they're influenced by Nolan instead of oh say... Terry Gilliam (take that onyx).  Hollywood died when Coppola's career gave way to Lucas and Spielberg.  There's an artistic vacuum in America right now, and Nolan isn't filling it with Batman movies and remakes.  Our greatest work now is coming out of foreigners like Takeshi Kitano, Peter Jackson, and Alfonso Cuarón, or domestic wackos like David Lynch, who is ten times the director Nolan will ever be.

That's the usual elitist mumbo jumbo I hear from critics who actually have the gaul to say stuff like, "It's just a comic book movie." You do realize that everyone hates and or disagrees with your opinions except a small backroom of niche filmgoers?

Now, I wouldn't go out of my way to flame Gilliam, just because you did to flame my guy, but what are you, Gilliam himself? I've never seen someone blow the balls of a director so much in my life. Yeah, Fear and Loathing is under-rated. This guys been making movies forever. Nolan is relatively new, and everything he's mad has been at least good. Not to mention that everyone who's anyone agrees with me about Nolan. Also, for the record, The Prestige is also fan'f'n tastic.

Where the hell do you get off saying Momento deserves props and then calling him a lazy asshole, and he's on his, what, 5th or 6th highly rated feature film. I bet Gilliam had a track record like that. Again, I won't detract from a director because I'm in an argument, Gilliam is great, but so is Nolan, and when you flame him, you make yourself look ignorant to a lot of people, my friend. Even if you don't compare him to the greats, you must at least admit that he is better than 99 percent of the shit directors out there, and he's still very early in his career.

Also, where the hell do you come up with the crap that "It's easy to make a good movie with good actors." That's one of the most ignorant and unknowledgable things I've ever heard. It's easy to make a good movie with Al Pacino and DeNiro? Have you seen their movies lately? They're crap.

Then you go on to call him a OTP, after you touted his movies as great. I have no problem with you disrespecting me because you think your underground subculture pwns everything well liked and mainsteam, but ffs, don't flame a damn good director for your exentricities. Get right, sir.

Now, Chan-wook Park is a better modern director than Gilliam or Nolan. That's a simple undeniable truth. You don't see me busting up in Dark Knight topics to flame people because they don't know about him, do you?

When I say "director of our time" I don't necessarily mean "best director" I mean "director of our time." Gilliam isn't the director of anyone's time, but if he were, it would be the time of 10 years ago. Nolan is superpopular, and the most consistant, and most anticipated director out there(He's also highly critically reviewed), for the vast hardly-core movie-centric underground crowd of which I am proudly a member. Few directors ever are more consistant. Next time, take your elitist "just a comic-book" type comments and stick them up your craw, sir. Go debate with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Sorry, my whole comment was based on your "director of our times" comment, which I still don't understand.  I like Nolan.  I loved The Prestige, and I love what he's doing with Batman.  It's the next big step in artistic credibility for comic films since X-Men 1 and 2.  And maybe he is better than 99% of directors out there, but I toss that 99% aside and assume we're talking real art here, and when dealing with only that top 1%, I say he's not exactly an auteur yet.  You mention Chan-wook Park and I can immediately visualize that Chan-wook Park style.  Same with Gilliam or Kitano or Lynch or Kubrick, and they all had it very early on.  Nolan just doesn't have it yet.  His body of work isn't representative of a modern ethos that anybody gives a fuck about.  He's not an eminent figure of any modern art movement.  I have no idea what you mean by "director of our times."  And I don't hate comic films.  I guess you just misinterpreted my flavor of elitism.

But if your definition of "director of our time" is "superpopular, most conistent, most anticipated, and highly critically reviewed" then I'd have to give that title to Tarantino or the Coens, and I don't think either of us want to do that.

And don't give me that "the majority of people disagree with you" crap, because the majority of people hated Citizen Kane and Apocalypse Now when they came out, and history proved the majority wrong.  You can pull that argument until Nolan has a flop.  Almost all of Gilliam's movies flop, and I still say he's one of the greatest living artists with a camera.

tl;dr: Wake me up when Nolan makes a BRAZIL.  It was Gilliam's 4th film.

It's not a problem man. Most of the issues on this forum are because of miscommunication. I went off on you because I transferred a lot of the hate I have for certain movie reviewers. My bad dude.

Stop your pissing contest, you two.

You're ruining the previous hilarity of this thread. Bad posters. Bad, bad posters.

Sorry everybody. I started it. Zen stopped it. I'm a dick. You can get back to your necro'd epic win thread.

back to the topic, DTG u've just made me remember when a classmate threw up on all over my back the first week of high school.

What Nolan is "doing" with Batman is what the comics writers have been doing for 2 decades. The cheesy Burton flicks were crap, going along with the campy image Batman had shed long ago. Trust me, Batman movies need no vision, there are a lot of great stories, with characters already well-defined for a Director to work on.
What will establish Nolan as a Director are more movies like "the prestige".

but he and his brother take some credit on that they're great story tellers on their scripts.

I still disagree.