"The American Cinema" Anniversary Redux

[Eleven]

The bloglink in my signature has said "American Cinema" Blog-a-thon for a while, and I thought it would be cool to get anyone interested from Match Cut involved as well.

Basically, it's the 40th anniversary of Andrew Sarris' "The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968," which itself classified 40 years of movie history by directors and evaluated them into categories. Whether one likes it or not, the basic premises of the auteur theory have become quite influential and discussion of directors has been a major part of film discourse since. Far from going to the polemical extremes of Sarris' French progenitors or the most hardcore auteurists of today, I was hoping to get a wide range of evaluations of directors from the past 40 years from as many bloggers/writers as possible.

This confluence of director-centric writing has been due at the arbitrary date of April 14, and I've already gotten such luminaries as Matt Seitz and our own Philosophe_rouge on board. I realize people have Top 100s and, you know, real life, to contend with, but I was just seeing if anyone here was interested in contributing. Feel free to click the link in my sig for more details.

MCers so far:

Raiders - Jonathan Demme
Bosco - Tobe Hooper
MadMan - Quentin Tarantino
Boner - Paul Thomas Anderson
Meg - Steven Soderbergh
Grouchy - John Carpenter

[Raiders]

I'm all over this.

[Boner M]

I might participate. Sounds great, anyway.

[Sven]

I would so love to do one on Verheoven, but with my top 100 and schoolwork, I'm afraid I'd rush it to a lackluster finish.

[Raiders]

Heh, I could always do Demme. But, I may decide to pick someone else.

[Raiders]

Heh, I could always do Demme. But, I may decide to pick someone else.

Nah. I'll just do Demme. Sign me up!

EDIT: I guess he should be Far Side of Paradise maybe? I'm open to suggestions on his placement.

[Eleven]

I would so love to do one on Verheoven, but with my top 100 and schoolwork, I'm afraid I'd rush it to a lackluster finish.

Don't let the "deadline" be a burden, it's mostly just for the blog-a-thon. I'll link to Match-Cut that day if anyone has one finished, but I could certainly see this as being an ongoing project. If you want to do one, by all means take your time and focus on quality rather than timing.

[Sycophant]

Awesome, Eleven. I'll try to read some of Sarris's book and see if I'm to the task.

[Eleven]

So you can pretty much choose any director in the American film scene since 1968 you want to write about, preferably if you've seen a vast majority of their filmography. There's also a special "Fringe Benefits" category for foreign directors who have still made American films in addition to foreign ones, like, say, Alfonso Cuaron, now Michael Haneke, and Tsui Hark (I'm looking at you for that, Davis). It would cool to analyze how the change affected their output.