“I think directors should at least take acting lessons to see what’s going on. And I think all actors should direct to see what a director has to go through.” – Penny Marshall
Welcome back everyone! Voting is in its last minutes as this post goes live but I’d like to thank everyone for participating in a heavily-voted on second round. It wasn’t easy, but we whittled 64 directors down to 32 of our super-favorites.
Unfortunately, we now must eliminate another 16. Say your prayers and hold onto your film stock. With each match, I’m going to write a little conversation between two of the director’s characters.
The rules of the tournament are still the same but I guess I have two things to bring up:
1.) Let’s try to keep conversations out of the matches themselves so that members can navigate the actual voting areas. I’m going to help by making separate subheadings for Match discussions (which hopefully will encourage all discussions) as well as a General Discussion tab to make it all easier to collapse if you just want to quote. If you mess up and post somewhere by accident, that’s fine but let’s cut down on it if possible.
2.) Uh, this hasn’t come up in other Avocado tournaments but I noticed some people were voting for both contestants in matches. I guess there’s nothing I can do to stop you, but I strongly discourage voting for both contestants as these matches are getting pretty close and I want the person moving on to really reflect the will of Avocado voters.
On that note, I’d like to say another thing. We’ve already seen great directors, personal favorite directors, and directors from entire groups/communities eliminated from the competition. Tempers may flare hot because of this, but please remember: this is the Avocado’s “favorite” director. We’re not voting on which directors deserve funding for their next projects or what voices need to be heard. The directors that are still in are not inherently better at making movies than anyone else. People are voting based on what films they’ve seen that have made a deep impression on them, because any conversation on art is going to be super-subjective and every election is going to be a popularity contest.
All I ask is that we respect each other’s opinions that are uttered in good faith and work towards a more inclusive cinematic future. Besides, if you’re really bent out of shape over someone getting eliminated, they probably have done something really terrible so pick your poison I suppose.
With that said, here are….
The Fallen
Jordan Peele
Greta Gerwig
Mike Nichols
F. W. Murnau
Miloš Forman
Rob Reiner
Alex Garland
Amy Heckerling
Ang Lee
John Ford
Sergio Leone
Spike Jonze
Richard Linklater
Barry Jenkins
Buster Keaton
Brian De Palma
Michel Gondry
Denis Villeneuve
Rian Johnson
Robert Altman
David Cronenberg
George Miller
Darren Aronofksy
Peter Jackson
Christopher Guest
Frank Capra
Terry Gilliam
Edgar Wright
Bong Joon-Ho
Penny Marshall
Sam Raimi
Jonathan Demme
