Leone's League

[redyred]

Got to drag this thread up again...

John Boorman

Director of Hell in the Pacific, Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope and Glory and The General. It's really annoying that so many of his films aren't released in the UK but are in the US and Europe, despite him being from the UK

[cigar joe]

Yea Boorman is good, there aren't many DVD releases of his films out here either or at least I haven't seen any

[visitor]

Yea Boorman is good, there aren't many DVD releases of his films out here either or at least I haven't seen any

unfortunately his best isn't POINT BLANK
but DELIVERANCE, EXCALIBUR, ZARDOZ(wierd) HELL IN THE PACIFIC(his second best film IMO)   EMERALD FOREST and others are out there on dvd

[cigar joe]

I do have Zardoz, and would like to get Deliverance, but I haven't seen it in the local stores,

[redyred]

I've got Hell in the Pacific, Deliverance and Excalibur. The one I really want to see is The General, his biopic of Irish crime boss Martin Cahill.

[General Sibley]

I love Excalibur, it's beautifully shot.  Great soundtrack too, excellent use of Wagner.

Is Point Blank on DVD yet? 

[redyred]

Is Zardoz actually any good then? I was a little put off by the tacky looking sci-fi plot and Sean Connery. It's about the only John Boorman film you can get over here other than the ones I've got already.

[cigar joe]

Its a bit strange, more Barbarellaish, more a Utopia gone sour theme, its out there, lol.

[bal162]

I didn't see Francis Ford Coppola on this list - he should be on simply for Godfather's I & II, let alone Apocalypse Now and the Outsiders. 

[dave jenkins]

I'm kind of disappointed to see that this thread has become little more than Lists of Directors Beside Leone I Happen to Like.

In an attempt to make matters more interesting, I propose that we follow more closely Grandpa's original idea. He used the term "league" which means more than the fact that all members are of comparable abilities; it also implies that all members are playing by the same rules.  And the limiting parameter that needs to be applied to the set is, IMHO, the use of Cinemascope, or the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

This necessarily excludes many many many good directors from consideration (including my personal fave, Hitchcock) but so be it. Rather than compare apples with oranges, let's instead speak of the relative merits of Golden Delicious, Granny Smiths, Fujis..... In other words, who are, with Leone, the Poets of 'Scope? My list includes (but may not be limited to):

Kurosawa
Lean
Kubrick
Carpenter

[DJIMBO]

Kurosawa, Bergman, Kubrick, Welles, Fellini

[redyred]

I'm kind of disappointed to see that this thread has become little more than Lists of Directors Beside Leone I Happen to Like.

Agreed, hence I've only mentioned a few:

Kurosawa, Herzog, Boorman

[cigar joe]

How do I find who used Cinemascope? Is there an easy way to weed out directors?

[dave jenkins]

Widescreenmuseum.com has info and lists on Cinemascope and other comparable formats.

[David Aaronson]

But Kurosawa's best weren't made in cinemascope at all... in fact, they were made in what some nowadays would refer to as 'Full Screen'.