p e n g u i n d e v i l

A month ago, while perusing youtube in the search for new trailers to watch, I decided to watch the trailer for Avatar. Now, I don’t know if it just looked like crap because of the quality of the trailer. But it looked like crap. You know, like a ridiculously storied, thoughtlessly actioned, crappily animated disaster. Well, just bad. Of course, as it was rolling towards the billion dollar mark, I had the luck to stumble upon a trailer for the newest Terry Gilliam film. Well, well well.

It, of course, it looks utterly fascinating and brilliant and, as is the case with Gilliam’s films, it is certainly doomed to lose vast sums of money. While the lack of popularity of his films causes me to lose no small measure of respect for humanity, the thought that there are studios out there that are willing to put tens of millions of dollars into his hands to make movies knowing damn sure that they won’t ever make any of it back, gives me some level of nice feeling that there must be some people of character in Hollywood (or at least wanting to make their resume look like it has character). for some folks, who, unlikely as it might seem, I assume are studio executives.

Which leads me to think that while most may be unable to realize what a treasure we have in Gilliam, at least I am not alone in realizing that he its the greatest film director ever (or, at least, the greatest crafter of films), on par with Kubrick, who actually has more movies on “the best dozen films ever” list (Gilliam ties Ridley Scott, but Scott has put out some swill that drops him a notch). Gilliam has not a swill under his belt (except for maybe the Brothers Grimm, which is the only one that I haven’t seen… Aside from this new one).

The tally from “The 11 Greatest films of all time list”, for those who are curious:

Kubrick – 3
Gilliam – 2
Scott – 2
Friedman – 1
Leone – 1
Carpenter-1
Reiner-1
Fleming-1

Oh yes, and the films themselves:

Alien (Scott)
The Adventures of The Baron Munchhausen (Gilliam)
Brazil (Gilliam)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
The Exorcist (Friedman)
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
The Thing (Carpenter)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
(This is) Spinal Tap (Reiner)
Wizard of Oz (Fleming)
The Shining (Kubrick)
Blade Runner (Scott)