Velvet #2

[mrosa]

... etc., etc., etc.

I don't get the whole Ed Brubaker thing. Every time he gets a new book out, everybody raves about it like it's a landmark achievement for comics, and he gets tons of Eisner nominations. But if his comics were movies, they'd be action B-movies released in the Summer, and soundly forgotten by the time of the Oscars, and they'd surely never go to Cannes. If they were novels, they'd be Lee Childs or James Patterson novels, no doubt successful but not taken seriously by anyone with good taste. But in comics...

I read issues #1 and #2, and Velvet, like Fatale, offers nothing but insipid, unoriginal storytelling. The cliches are so pervasive. Cliches of language, cliches of plot, cliches of characterization. Velvet is a run of the mill action story about a secret agent wrongly framed for murder; everything pans out as expected: Velvet is conveniently next to a corpse when a squad of agents burst in; no one's in the mood for explanations so she beats everyone up and runs away; then turns out she has a dark, mysterious past; she has to stay ahead of the authorities while clearing up her name; meets old friends to help her out, etc... In sum, there's not a single unique beat to this story. It has everything one expects from these stories, every goddamn scene played in exact order: the character making a daring, suicidal escape through a window, the crash through a window, taking down a whole squad, the cryptic director giving the lowdown on the super-duper secret agent's dangerous past to his befuddled minions. This is The Matrix, The Bourne Trilogy, Under Siege, Salt, etc.

All the characters follow what is nowadays the default characterization of comic book characters: they only talk tough and posture, then make veiled threats to each other, and try to be utterly cool while doing it. Sergeant Roberts, in particular, is desperately trying to be a cross of Clint Eastwood and John Constantine. They're all practically devoid of emotions, save those that reinforced their tough coolness, because characters no longer need have personalities, just an aura of kick-ass, bad-ass awesomeness...

And the narrative. It never ends. Always narrating. In that subpar Chandleresque style, often repeating information we can see on the page, sucking up panel space with redundancies. This is more of an illustrated short-story than an actual comic book.

One of the reasons I've grown more and more distant from comics is not just the awful comics that are peddled these days, it's what I see as the wide disconnect between their mediocrity and the adulation they receive. This medium is unique, I fear, for the way it so unreservedly celebrates mediocrity. I repeat, if Velvet were a movie or a novel, it'd come out, make a bit of money, leave hardly an impression, disappear and never be heard of again. As a comic book, I have no doubts it's going to get lots of Eisner nominations next year. I just don't get it, as much as I try to understand what produced this culture, I just don't get it. And it's a problem for people like me who really want great comics: so long as comics like Velvet continue to be extolled as the best being produced by the medium, there won't be any drive to create really great comics.

Comments

[thatnickguy]

So just from one comic, you're calling a death to the medium? If you didn't like one movie, does that mean you'd call for the death of all movies? No, of course not. That's a silly argument. Just because you don't like this comic doesn't mean you wouldn't like other comics. Your argument is no different than a movie buff who complains about this movie or that movie gets or doesn't get Oscar nominations. I was pissed off last year when Cloud Atlas was completely snubbed at the Oscars, but does that mean I'm going to insult everyone else's opinion and tell them their taste in movies are wrong? No, I'm not. Comics, like movies, have plenty of amazing books out there that go unnoticed. With some exceptions like Walking Dead, the superhero market is still the biggest, best selling. And some of those books, like current runs of Daredevil and Hawkeye deserve recognition.

What, exactly, would you consider great, Eisner-worthy comics, then? I haven't read Fatale, but I believe other works by Brubaker such as Criminal or Fatale, were Eisner worthy. Just because a story has familiar tropes or cliches in them doesn't disqualify the possibility of being a good story. Criminal had plenty of tropes in it borrowed from EC Comics' crime catalogue, but the way that Brubaker wrote the CHARACTERS, alone with Sean Phillips' mind-blowing art made it stand out.

But again, I ask. What exactly do you consider great comics? I mean sure, you've got Chris Ware who does things with the medium that no one else ever considered. They're your example of art house movies, really. But what's so wrong with having books like those from Lee Child such? They're highly successful and people enjoy them. The stories here just happen to be told in a comic book setting, where superheroes have always been grossly over-dominant. So anything that differs from it will be considered new and unique, which in this case (and other Eisner-winning examples) is part of the reason for the raving by fans. Not to mention Brubaker is taking parts of arguably his best mainstream work - Captain America - and applying it to a new story and setting where he retains the rights.

You say there's way too much inner monologue, but man, have you never read anything by Chris Claremont? That's even worse. From the scans you provided above, I see inner monologue that doesn't describe the action, but adds onto it. She doesn't say that she just crashed through the window, but the aftermath of it and what the suit provided. She doesn't say, "Two guards?!" she discusses (briefly) the idea of surviving. The way you're describing it, I'm expecting it to read like the old Silver Age books, like Spider-Man describing for a paragraph how he climbed through a window. But that's not what's going on here.

[mrosa]

I was pissed off last year when Cloud Atlas was completely snubbed at the Oscars, but does that mean I'm going to insult everyone else's opinion and tell them their taste in movies are wrong?

That's hardly a good comparison. Cloud Atlas was an unusual movie and didn't play well with audiences and critics. It's not an uncommon fate for movies that try to give something different. After all, 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn't well-received at first either.

A better comparison would be for, say, Transformers II getting nominated for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. The point is subpar fiction being rewarded. For all the sins of the Oscars, they still have better sense than that, whereas the Eisners, well, their nominations are a disgrace every year. If the people behind the Eisners were in charge of the Oscars, we'd see movies like The Day after Tomorrow, Escape Plan and Predators 3 nominated all the time.

What, exactly, would you consider great, Eisner-worthy comics, then? I haven't read Fatale, but I believe other works by Brubaker such as Criminal or Fatale, were Eisner worthy.

Honestly? Nothing these days. Perhaps Locke & Key, or Mind Mgmt. But this culture of boosterism and positive reviews has shown creators they don't need to be excellent, just average, to get awards. So I can't think of many comics truly worthy of an Eisner, if an Eisner were to meant anything, which to my mind doesn't when it nominates people like Hickman, Brubaker, Rucka, Bendis, etc.

But what's so wrong with having books like those from Lee Child such? They're highly successful and people enjoy them. The stories here just happen to be told in a comic book setting, where superheroes have always been grossly over-dominant. So anything that differs from it will be considered new and unique, which in this case (and other Eisner-winning examples) is part of the reason for the raving by fans.

We're talking about two things here: first of all, I have nothing against the existence of Lee Child; I'd have a problem if his novels were being nominated for the National Book Award, which they're not. I'd have no problem with Velvet, Fatale, etc. if people realized the average stories they are. But critics and readers insist in turning them into masterpieces. That I have problems with.

Secondly, what's your point about the dominance of superheroes? What, am I supposed to feel blessed with the fact that nowadays we have more non-superhero comics? They're just as awful. In fact, many are worse. Because superheroes still gave us Miracleman, Watchmen, Zenith and Doom Patrol. Not a single non-superhero comic book is even in the same league. Something is not miraculously better just for not having superheroes, I'd be nice if people realized that.

You say there's way too much inner monologue, but man, have you never read anything by Chris Claremont? That's even worse.

Just remember, you're the one saying that that the great comics of nowadays aren't that different from the comics of 30 years ago, not me. I have no reason to defend Claremont, his monologues were tedious, but I don't think it's a good defense of modern comics to say, "Well, you should see how awful it was in the past then!" I don't care how awful it was in the past, what I care is how modern comics could be better now.

Velvet is giving an interminable monologue during a fight. Would you be satisfied with Salt narrating while running away? or Jason Bourne narrating while he's beating up a squad of bad guys? Or 007 narrating while he's trying to get out of a deadly contraption? You probably wouldn't. In fact the directors knew beforehand you wouldn't, that's why you don't see such things in the aforementioned movies. But in comics... It's this culture of permissiveness that I'm talking about, comic book readers make allowances for things that would be rightly derided in other media. And so long as that happens, creators won't have any motive to improve.

[thatnickguy]

I'm sorry, but you lost any kind of footing in your argument by comparing this to Transformers 2. TF2 was an abomination of film, failing in special effects, characters, writing, plot, etc. It was completely nonsensical with little to no flow and horrible contrivances. Which is just like the old cartoons, but still. I would say this argument is more comparable Jack Reacher (heh, speaking of Lee Child), which I'd seen recently.

My point about the dominance of superheroes was just that the medium was overpopulated with that genre for too long. So for me, I'm relieved to see things like crime or spy comics finally getting a chance again. Are they all award winners? No, but I'm enjoying them. Criminal or Fatale are really GOOD comics, but I wouldn't call them the greatest of all time. My favourite example of a great comic in that genre would be Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptations. Good stories which are greatly elevated by Cooke's art and panelling.

The Eisners are a recognition for good, new comics. Criminal deservedly won last year's Best Limited Series for Last of the Innocent, which it absolutely deserved. Read it? And did you think Saga was undeserving of its awards as Best New Series and Best Continuing Series? Because I sure as hell think it does. What about Chew? Chew is still a great comic. Locke and Key I definitely agree with you - which, it too, was nominated for and won several Eisners.

Honestly, I don't see the point in being, well, so snobby about it. Not every comic is going to be the same and they're great for difference reasons. Every year, the Oscars are filled with controversy over both nominations and winners. But the choices are usually - USUALLY - arguably deserving to be there.

[thatnickguy]

As for inner monologue? Comparing them to movies isn't fair. They're completely different mediums with their own strengths and weaknesses. You could say that novels are JUST inner monologue (depending on the novel). So using that same argument, maybe these comics don't have ENOUGH inner monologue. Why using pictures at all when there should be more inner monologue?

So why should we make allowances? Why can't comics just have a little inner monologue? We can have BOTH silent action panels AND monologued panels.

[arilou_skiff]

"Velvet is giving an interminable monologue during a fight. Would you be satisfied with Salt narrating while running away? or Jason Bourne narrating while he's beating up a squad of bad guys? Or 007 narrating while he's trying to get out of a deadly contraption? You probably wouldn't. In fact the directors knew beforehand you wouldn't, that's why you don't see such things in the aforementioned movies. But in comics... It's this culture of permissiveness that I'm talking about, comic book readers make allowances for things that would be rightly derided in other media. And so long as that happens, creators won't have any motive to improve."

Not going into the entire "Are comics overvaluing mediocre stuff?" (yes, I think they are) but I don't think a narration box in a comic-book is neccessarily the same as a voice-over narration in film. (Much less an actual intradiegetic narration)

For whatever faults it has, comics are not films: They're not "books" either, but their own medium, with it's own conventions, rules, and techniques.

[mrosa]

Oh, no, not just one comic. This, Fatale, The Manhattan Projects, Panzerfaust, Thief of Thieves, Incognito, Criminal, Bedlam, etc. What I speak of is a general symptom, this culture of boosterism is everywhere, any new comic gets immediate rave reviews. And I'm quite frankly fed up of it.

[mrstatham]

Hardly. Those books generally have big-name creators attached, and in the instances of Brubaker, Rucka, Hickman and others, it was a big deal that they were going back to doing CO stuff after tenures at the Big Two, and it's generally perceived as something rather special because *most* people consider them to be rather skilled writers. THAT'S why the books get great reviews. And some of them don't have big names attached, like Pretty Deadly, whose writer only really has the somewhat acclaimed Captain Marvel to her name. I don't see the 'culture of boosterism' anywhere, I see big name creators actually helping out the smaller companies by taking books to them. It's bullshit - absolute bullshit - to suggest EVERY comics gets rave reviews. From here alone, Manhattan Projects is a base breaker. As is Bedlam, or Morning Glories, and so on. It just feels like you're twisting facts to suit your own argument, and/or railing on people who enjoy these books unnecessarily.

[mrosa]

It's bullshit - absolute bullshit - to suggest EVERY comics gets rave reviews. From here alone, Manhattan Projects is a base breaker. As is Bedlam, or Morning Glories, and so on.

Like I wrote above, judging from main review sites like CBR, Newsarama and Comics Alliance, the verdict is that, yes, these comics are universally praised. I love SD, but it doesn't have the visibility these places have. And it's clear the choices of the Eisners are in line with their opinions, not SD's opinion.

[sadoeuphemist]

Uh, the Matrix and Bourne trilogies both won a bunch of Academy awards, and Salt and Under Siege were both nominated, so ... I don't get what your problem is here?

[mrosa]

Nominated for technical awards...

You're comparing an Oscar for sound editing or visual effects with an Eisner for Best ongoing series or Best writer? You really don't see the difference?

I don't understand; am I talking a different language here, or are people deliberately trying to derail this discussion with what I hope is feigned obtuseness?

Please, let's be serious.

[sadoeuphemist]

The Eisners do not have the same cultural cachet as the Oscars. The films you've named are, aside from their Academy awards and nominations, critically well-received and have won a bunch of other awards like Saturns and so on so forth. But you've elevated the status of Eisners so high in your head that you don't think anything these days deserves an Eisner! So literally whatever they nominated you'd still probably be mad at it.

People still like media even if it isn't particularly innovative. They will give various awards to it. So ... calm down?

[venatosapiens]

Attempting to engage with your argument on its own terms and disagreeing with your conclusions is not the same thing as derailing an argument. You've got an opinion about the state of modern comics. That's fine. But please don't treat others like we're being obtuse because we don't fall in line with your ideas.

[mrstatham]

I really, really don't see the problem, except that from what I can tell, you must have almost impossibly high standards that a book must reach before you'll rate it. You state that it's a medium that celebrates mediocrity, I say you're being far, far too harsh on dozens upon dozens of books and condemning them just because you don't see the appeal.

I'd reaaaaaally love to know what you're reading that must fit your standards, because I can just imagine my wall of trades being replaced with yours and currently seeing four or five books; Granted, those would be Locke and Key trades, but seriously; I don't see your problem at all, although than you just dislike Brubaker's writing style and think this translates into the death of the medium; Because I see a - if not innovative - at least pretty fucking interesting story with a female lead, which is still rare, these days. With Fatale, I see something like American Vampire - a steadily unraveling set of stories spread across the history of 20th Century America with a consistently fascinating lead.

But.. No. You don't like them, so let's throw them all in the furnace and have a completely empty and void market.

[mrosa]

I really, really don't see the problem, except that from what I can tell, you must have almost impossibly high standards that a book must reach before you'll rate it.

I honestly don't know what to reply to someone who thinks it's sinful to have high standards...

[mrstatham]

I think it's ridiculous to have the standards you appear to have. I never said I have anything against high standards, but it's clear that yours and mine are very different. Mine just don't feel impossibly unfair.

[stolisomancer]

It isn't "sinful," but you're painting a picture of yourself as someone who has dealt himself out of the game. If your standards are so high that you're having a hard time finding anything you actually like, to the extent that you're getting annoyed with other people for what they like, that's an internal problem.

[venatosapiens]

Also, "not taken seriously by anyone with good taste?" What does that mean? What does it mean to not take a piece of art seriously? That's incredibly intellectually lazy to dismiss something just because it doesn't fit your idea of "good taste." That's the kind of thinking that led to the critical elites ignoring the entire medium of comics for sixty years because they were disposable trash, not fit to be taken seriously by people of "good taste."

You can take something seriously and not like it. You can take something seriously and recognize that it has appeals that may not speak specifically to you. You can take something seriously and break down why you think it's damaging or poorly constructed or whatever. But dismissing modern comics out of hand because they aren't movies and aren't novels? You're smart, dude. Do better.

[mrosa]

Also, "not taken seriously by anyone with good taste?" What does that mean? What does it mean to not take a piece of art seriously? That's incredibly intellectually lazy to dismiss something just because it doesn't fit your idea of "good taste." That's the kind of thinking that led to the critical elites ignoring the entire medium of comics for sixty years because they were disposable trash, not fit to be taken seriously by people of "good taste."

I'd say comic book writers contributed to the medium not being taken seriously for 60 years more than any elitism. For one thing, as interviews with veterans show, these people didn't think they were creating art in the first place. If they didn't think so, why should an outsider think differently? Self-respect before respect. Secondly, comics creators decided not to fight censorship and actually created a rating system that infantilized the medium for decades. You reap what you sow. Third, when good comics started being produced they were almost immediately admired - the period between the creation of Watchmen, The Sandman and Maus and their acceptance was minimal. Perhaps your sinister critical elites were just waiting for something good to come along. Fourth, that was a problem mostly with American comics, Argentina and Europe were doing just fine academically.

But dismissing modern comics out of hand because they aren't movies and aren't novels?

I did no such thing. I merely compared a similar technique - narration - that comics overuse and movies don't. To my mind it'd be positive if comics stopped using it, but nowhere did I say I wanted comics to be more like movies, nor did I dismiss comics for not being like movies and novels. Although I certainly don't think the so-called best comics have the same ambition that the best modern movies and novels have.

[doodleboy]

Ok, for the comics code basically after Seduction of the Innocent came out, either comics had to made a code to police themselves or the government was going to do it, and of obviously control of censorship being given to the government instead of comics themselves would be pretty bad.

Movies did the same thing with the Hays code. After the Fatty Arbuckle scandal either the film industry had to censor themselves or the government would do it. They only dropped the code to compete with television.

Short answer is the comic industry made the comics code because they had to. You can't fight back against mass public outcry and still have an industry you control. It wasn't out of a lack of self-respect.

[doodleboy]

Fatale is a homage to the Noir Genre and Velvet to the espionage genre, they play in that Sandbox using those tropes. Fatale tries something different by making the femme fatale sympathetic, and adding Cthulhu mythos elements. Velvet works by making the main character Ms. Moneypenny instead of James Bond. Brubaker, like alot of writers, draws upon the stuff he liked when he was younger. That isn't going to resonate with everybody, and that's fine. People have different tastes.

I think just complaining about everybody else is being unnecessarily grumpy. I don't really care that much for Brian K Vaughan's Saga myself. It's too random for my liking. I don't feel the need to call other people plebeians for liking it. I also didn't like the first season of Legend of Korra, it had a non-existent character arc. Same there.

At the end of the day it's all just entertainment. If you didn't get anything out of a particular story, doesn't mean others haven't. Like the comics that you like, and let other people like what they like. Hell share the comics that you genuinely enjoy on this site, I'd be interested in reading them. Scans Daily works better when people share comics that they're excited about to get more people reading those comics, rather then sharing crossover events they hate and then complaining about it.

And there's always going to be a dirge of mediocre titles, that's the same with every medium. Every once and a while you can find something that's different and fantastic. Especially in this day and age where we have access to content from around the world, and access to comics from the past seventy years.

[mrosa]

Fatale is a homage to the Noir Genre and Velvet to the espionage genre, they play in that Sandbox using those tropes. Fatale tries something different by making the femme fatale sympathetic, and adding Cthulhu mythos elements. Velvet works by making the main character Ms. Moneypenny instead of James Bond.

Velvet shows that Mrs. Moneypenny is as boring as James Bond. And Cthulhu and mobsters don't mesh well at all. But to get back to the question of women characters, I find Fatale fascinating for a single reason. With Jo, the protagonist of Fatale, Brubaker manages to ruin the one thing that makes femme fatales genuinely interesting. In a cinema populated by women whose purpose was to be swept off their feet by Cary Grant or whatever, the femme fatale actually showed agency, personal objectives, cunning, courage and intelligence. Certainly, she used her sex appeal to bring the hero into her web, but afterwards it was through her manipulation of events that she gained more and more control over the life of the hero, who became an unwilling tool to achieve her purpose. This probably reached its zenith in the brilliant movie Out of the Past, where Robert Mitchum, hopeless to untangle himself from a woman who's made him accessory in a complex murder scheme, has no other alternative than crash a car with both of them against a tree.

Now Jo is this anodyne thing - nice, innocent, upstanding - that has the supernatural power of making men lust after her. In other words, she doesn't really have to lift a finger to manipulate men, she just has to to be; she doesn't need agency or objectives, she's pretty much a blank slate because men will get into trouble over her anyway. That's why the story constantly passes her from one man to man, like a joint in a hippie circle, because she has no purpose, she doesn't want anything, she's going nowhere. I don't know if this makes her more sympathetic or not, I don't care, I don't care about sympathy, men in noir aren't sympathetic either so it's fair. But for a comic book that is so often praised for its feminism, I think it's ironic that it's escaped most people how Jo is a weak representation of everything that made femme fatales such fascinating characters. Yes, they're probably not very sympathetic, these dangerous, amoral, sensual women, but at least they had agency, they had objectives, they knew what they wanted, and they were willing to risk a lot for it. Isn't that infinitely better than bland Jo? You people tell me, I usually find all these conversations about female characters a bore, in that regard I don't share SD's obsession with feminism, the portrayal of women in comics and diversity, mea culpa, I just care about quality, that's why I don't get excited when Mrs. Moneypenny starts acting like James Bond, because to me it's the same rubbish. But I am curious, how do you square your admiration for Brubaker's championing of diversity, etc., with the fact his whitebread Jo has nothing on the rich complexity of Brigid from The Maltese Falcon? What exactly are you praising him for, because from where I'm standing, his women are reactionary when compared with the taboo-breaking femme fatales from 70 years ago.

[ensiform]

Zzzzz. Brubaker is a storytelling master. You can't see why. Okay, that's nice.

[mrosa]

Assuming things as self-evident truths is laziness.

[benuben]

May I ask, what are some of your favorite movies/books? I'm curious.

[mrosa]

I don't think that's going to reveal anything important, but certainly:

Prose Fiction:

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent; Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor; João Ubaldo Ribeiro: An Invincible Memory; Albert Cossery: The Jokers; Elfriede Jelinek: Wonderful, Wonderful Times; Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary; José Saramago: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis; Seeing; All the Names; Raised from the Ground; Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita; Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman; Angela Carter: The Magic Toyshop; Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera; The Autumn of the Patriarch; Euclides da Cunha: Backlands: The Canudos Campaign; Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace; Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment; Notes from the Underground; Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Short-Stories; Eça de Queiroz: The Crime of Father Amaro; The Mandarin; The Relic; G.K. Chesterton: Four Faultless Felons; The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond; Manalive; Franz Kafka: The Trial; The Metamorphosis; The Castle; The Man Who Disappeared; Adolfo Bioy Casares: A Plan for Escape; J.M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians; Dino Buzzati: The Tartar Steppe; Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights; Philip Roth: Operation Shylock; My Life as a Man; The Plot Against America; Don Delillo: Libra; Milan Kundera: The Joke; Life is Elsewhere; The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Naguib Mahfouz: Arabian Nights and Days; Mario Vargas Llosa: The War of the End of the World; The Feast of the Goat; Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees; Invisible Cities; Curzio Malaparte: The Skin; Kaputt; Leonardo Sciascia: Equal Danger; Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum, Arthur Machen: The Three Impostors; The Terror; Lord Dunsany: Tales of Three Hemispheres; A Dreamer's Tale; The Books of Wonder; Antonio Tabucchi: Pereira Declares, etc., etc.

Movies:

David Lean: Lawrence of Arabia; Roman Polanski: Chinatown; William Friedkin: The Exorcist; Neil Jordan: The Crying Game; the Coen Brothers: Barton Fink; Fargo; Blood Simple; The Big Lebowski; Steven Spielberg: E.T.; David Fincher: Se7en; Terry Gilliam: 12 Monkeys; Martin Scorsese: Goodfellas; Taxi Driver; The King of Comedy; Jan Svankmajer: Faust; Alice; The Conspirators of Pleasure; Robert Siodmak: The Devil Came at Night; The Killers; Orson Welles: Citizen Kane; Touch of Evil; John Huston: The Maltese Falcon; The Treasure of Sierra Madre; The Asphalt Jungle; The Man Who Would Be King; The Dead; Jules Dassin: Rififi; Jean-Pierre Melville: The Red Circle; Un Flic; Bille August: Pelle the Conqueror; Costa-Gavras: Z; State of Siege; Missing; Oliver Stone: Platoon; JFK; Ingmar Bergman: The Hour of the Wolf; The Seventh Seal; Bernardo Bertolucci: The Conformist; Novecento; Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather II; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in America; The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven; Mystic River; Hiroshi Teshigahara: Woman in the Dunes; Kinji Fukasaku: Battle Royale; Michael Mann: The Insider; Anthony Minghella: The Talented Mr. Ripley; Christopher Nolan: The Prestige; Peter Weir: Witness; Dead Poets Society; Fernando Meirelles: City of God; Gillo Pontecorvo: The Battle of Algiers; Fritz Lang: M; The Testament of Dr. Mabuse; Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo; The Birds; Rope; George Cukor: Gaslight; Armando Iannucci: In The Loop, etc., etc.