and request for a debate on the subject EXACTLY what the article is there to create?. Its always a personal POV with no level of accountability or fairness. Which is what makes it so maddeningly good.

I actually like some of Todd Haynes stuff and think Coen Bros stuff is equally as patchy as his career. Anyone actually see The Ladykillers and not puke?

As for Penelope Spheeris - No h...way! A sphincter says what? Decline II Metal Years is great thou.

.

I found the recent Paul Merton series about the early days of Hollywood very interesting as a piece of history, particularly about the silent period. I have a friend who has taught film studies, and he says some of the best films ever made were in that period, and that Erich von Stroheim, for example was one of the greatest directors of all time.

But.. I can never persuade myself to watch these films, and even the cinema buffs I used to meet in film societies were never that interested in them, apart from perhaps the comedies.The only director I noticed in the Best list who worked in the silent era was Hitchcock, but it's his sound films which live on.

It may well be my loss, but film does seem unusual in that a whole era is more or less forgotten, even by the fans. Yet the best popular music of that era, whether it's Jerome Kern or Louis Armstrong still has a strong following.

'La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc' at the NFT with piano accompaniment and it was very moving. believe it was shown there again recently with a group of musicians providing a soundtrack. If they are watched in the way they were intended ie not merely silent then they are great

Strange FACT - the film was believed lost in a fire but turned up decades later in a janitor's closet in an Oslo mental institution

That the Best and Worst feature has become the magazine's Last Of The Summer Wine - maybe time to put it to bed.

I nearly started a thread yesterday when I opened the magazine and flicked through the lists.

No Wells, no Ford, no Huston, no Preminger. And as you say, no going back to the beginning - didn't a Mr C Chaplin invent a lot of what followed (plus the odd bit of writing, acting and composing)?

Worst of all, it seemed very US/UK centric. Only Tati from France, so no French New Wave (no Truffaut, Chabrol, Malle, etc.) and no Italians (no Fellini, Visconti and Pasolini), no Germans, no Russians (no Eisenstein or Tarkovsky) and no Bergman(!). And as said in the OP, no Kurasawa.

Making a couple of good movies shouldn't get you on the best of list when so many were left out. Or is it thought pretentious to watch films that aren't in American/English?

be some odd choices with lists especially one as broad-ranging as this but to miss out - in the best category - the following is just perverse.
- Frank Capra.
- John Schlesinger - Billy Liar, A Kind of loving.
- Alexander Mackendrick - The original and only Ladykillers and very possibly more Ealing comedies though not sure about this.
- Francesco Rosi - great Italian director, oddly not as lauded as some other overblown critic proof Italian directors; Three Brothers his masterpiece.
- Francois Truffaut & Eric Rohmer.

Am certainly with Gordon Kerr on Bill Forsyth as well.

We could go on and on.

and his other magnum opus "Three Chords"

(Fetches coat and exits...)

has Tim Burton actually made a decent film in years? Can he still make a decent film? I was under the impression that I rated him until I actually thought about it - Planet of the Apes? Alice in Wonderland? Big Fish? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Sleepy Hollow? Sweeney Todd? His Batman films? (God - that first one... soooo excited about it, and then the most major sense of disappointment ever - well, until The Phantom Menace, that is) All awful, in my opinion. Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands were a long time ago. Did like Ed Wood though.

Columns like this are like 'best album of all time' lists and supposed to generate debate and controvery, so it is just doing its job.

Having said that, this one really wound me up: a best director list without Michaelangelo Antonioni in it? Unthinkable.

I know you can't fit everybody in, but really... No Don Siegal, Peckinpah, Robert Rodriguez, David Fincher, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Kevin Smith, Vittorio de Sica, Maurizio Nichetti...

Not even Tarantino who, being very much a marmite director, could have been on either list.

Worst of all is the absence of Robert Zemeckis on the 'worst' list purely on the basis of Forrest Gump. (Not a personal opinion - hasn't it been proven scientifically to be the worst film ever? Or did I just dream that?)

The Worst: No Richard Curtis?

The Best: No Hayao Miyazaki?

If ever there were a thread to drag Kermode out of lurk mode.. Someone suggest William Friedkin in either category along with a well-reasoned argument.

as ever.
No Howard Hawks in best? Tim "Bloody" Burton on the wrong page entirely?

Dearie me...

*tries to resist bait*

Yes, it was the omission of Howard Hawks that really astonished me. He directed two my favourite romantic comedies (Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday), two of my favourite westerns (Red River and Rio Bravo, and one of my favourite detective movies (The Big Sleep). Surely, a more impressive body of work than most of the directors listed under "Best," no?

Best/Worst proclaims Kubrick the greatest while, in the letters page, Barry Barnett (plausible, unlikely) declares him no more than a maker of workmanlike gangster flicks who got lucky.
He believes 2001 is a boring, pretentious, nonsensical, rambling, sludgefest whereas I (for what that's worth) regard it as a masterpiece (I'll give you pretentious Barry, and I can see how many people find it boring).
Meanwhile, on the recent Desert Island DVDs thread several people chose Blade Runner as their all time favourite film. In our house we don't think of Blade Runner as a great film or even a good film. Or even a bad film. We think of it as spectacular failure, albeit with some nice visuals.
All different and all happy to be different. Lovely.

The "Best vs. Worst" two pages is the thing I most dislike in The Word, even though I -always- read it, to have my prejudices confirmed/denied.
I imagine it's quite good fun to do, shouting suggestions across the office and squabbling a bit, probably best done just before the finished mag is due to go to press.

Be that as it may, something better should now replace it. At the earliest opportunity, in my view, though it's certainly not a subscription killer for me.

But the worst thing in this month's Word is.... the motoring review.

And at number two it's that old Tommy Cooper gag which can still raise a chuckle, especially if you do his voice in your head.
But the best thing in this month's word is.... the picture of Gil Scott Heron chosen for his obit.

I suppose if the sausage sandwich game can go anything is worthy of review..