So Shirley Bassey is punk now?

Gone with the Wind and Star Wars are older films with multiple re-releases into theaters, including more robust subsequent-run opportunities than Titanic had. The gross for Avatar also reflects its release in multiple formats with higher ticket prices; Titanic was re-released in 3D (and grossed several hundred million…

Yes. It perfectly sums up a film about pain, recognizing the past, and choosing something better. I recognize that it seems abruptly showy to many, but it mesmerizes me every time I watch it.

I have at least appreciated all of his films (The Master has yet to resonate with me, but I respect what it does achieve).

I'd put There Will Be Blood at number 3 and Hard Eight at 7, but this list is hard to argue with.

I've seen both of those Altman films multiple times, actually. In fact, Short Cuts is the only one of his that I really like because it's one of the few where Altman doesn't seem to hold his characters in contempt. Nashville is excellent, except for Geraldine Chaplin's embarrassing character and the general sense that…

Different tastes, I guess. Magnolia moves me to tears.

Magnolia is more ecstatic than Boogie Nights. BN is a terrific film, but Magnolia is Anderson's masterpiece. It openly apes Altman's style but has a deeper emotional core than BN, or anything Altman ever did, for that matter.

Sorry I hurt your feelings again.

1) Yes, I am — one can inspire other filmmakers who more or less make films (that is, the methods of production and, for that matter, distribution) in ways others have already used. He did create (or at least change) a subgenre of the horror film, but he didn't change how films were made.

I wouldn't say it's great, but it does attempt to address the big problem with using zombies as stand-ins for oppressed peoples. And the final image (SPOILERS) of the two men still trying to kill each other as zombies is one of the more powerful in Romero's career.

Sorry I hurt your feelings. But I prefer to remember great directors as they were, not inflate their legacies.

My intent was not to piss on his grave but to question Rife's thesis that Romero was some revolutionary filmmaker. He wasn't; he is important to horror film, and like almost all directors his later work wasn't as good as his earlier work. That would be an honest evaluation, not an attempt to besmirch his memory.

1) I don't know that this counts as filmmaking per se (which I take to refer to production contexts) but I see your point.

So how exactly did Romero change filmmaking forever? By staying in Pittsburgh? Right, because that turned Pittsburgh into the New Hollywood, and now everyone has to film there. Wait, that can't be right.

"your solution is to privilege disenfranchised views…."

Foucault influenced the development of identity politics — through his
challenging analyses of how things like "intellectual merit" have
developed — but it isn't entirely fair to say identity politics
"developed" from him. And he rejected the label "postmodernist" (as well
as post-structuralist, which is a better fit…

"Ideas live or die on their intellectual merits ALONE."

"Straight, white men should shut the fuck up and sit down to even the
playing field. No. That's handling racism extremely poorly, by adding
more racism to it."

"Ugh, can't you just enjoy or not a movie based on its own merits…."