MoFo Director's Cup Interest Thread

As I posted in the Future of HoF thread, I was thinking about starting a similar idea but focusing instead on single directors for the tournament. The idea is that we choose a director and 5 of their films will be nominated. There are no restrictions on how many people can join, the only requirement is that you watch all 5 of the films and write something about each of them in the thread or subthreads. The goal of these is to develop a better understanding of each director as a group, and generate interesting auteur (or anti-auteur) focused discussion.

Since only 5 films will be nominated, these would run for about half of the time that a normal HoF runs for, and I expect that many people will have seen several of the films beforehand, but I hope to also highlight lesser seen gems of great, popular filmmakers. If you're interested in joining one of these, let me know in the thread. Also if you have any suggestions for improving this idea, let me know there as well and I hope we can start something cool.

I've included 5 directors in a poll as candidates for the first one of these if it is to happen, you can vote on these or suggest your own candidates for consideration. I don't want the candidates that I chose off the cuff here to make people wary of joining. My suggested candidates are:

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Mubi

I'm definitely interested in this, but why no Tati?

Tati only made 6 features, and I thought it would be more interesting to choose a director with many more than 5 films. So when it's over, there's still a lot to explore but you'll be better prepared and get more out of the exploration. I've seen all of Tati's films and I didn't want to pick a director whose films I've seen all of. Also that would make for way too many Jacques.

Makes sense, I had no idea how many features Tati did. I don't know much about him tbh.

I voted for Sternberg, because Underworld is one of my favorite gangster pictures. I haven't seen any of his other films however.

I haven't decided who I'm voting for yet but I'm leaning towards Sternberg too. Yeah Tati has 6 features, 3 of which I love (Playtime, Parade, M. Hulot's Holiday) 1 of which I like a lot (Jour de Fete) and 2 of which I mildly dislike (Mon Oncle, Traffic)

this is a great idea. i'm going with Rossellini just because i have three of his films sitting unwatched on my shelf and one on my hard drive.

Great idea, I'd definitely participate regardless of the director who gets voted in, they all look interesting. I've only seen one Demy and Tourneur, and then a handful of Ford. I'll have a think about this and probably cast a vote later.

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I'm not going to vote as I'll go along with whatever you all pick. Any of those guys look interesting to me

I'm down for this. Good way to expand my horizons. I voted for Ford but will participate regardless.

Bluedeed great idea. If you give this your all, I think this could become an important feature at MoFo. I voted for John Ford. I would be in for this, depending on the director.

I noticed your list was very light on American and British directors. What no Hitchcock? no Billy Wilder? If this is going to be an arthouse project, then I would pass on it, but wish you luck.

Or Ken Loach, or Mike Leigh

Most people have seen films by Hitchcock and Wilder, especially the former. I think the idea would be too explore new directors and mainly older artists that people may feel deserve more exposure, and in most cases those happen to be more artistic directors. That's not to say artistic equals foreign or weird, John Ford is on the list and I'd imagine bluedeed would have been equally happy to put someone like Howard Hawks up there, there's plenty of great artistic directors that are American/British and/or make mainstream accessible films

Very much interested in this!

Except for von Sternberg, I've seen at least one film from each director on the list so far. I'm interested in exploring all of them, but my vote goes to von Sternberg.

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

Except for The Blue Angel and Ana-ta-han, all of von Sternberg's films are American. Except for four very minor films at the beginning of his career and a sword and sandal flick at the end, all of Tourneur's films are American or British.

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I had forgot his name but yes, Von Sternberg did many films in America. I've seen Morroco and Blonde Venus, that I know of. I don't keep a list of films that I've seen so I often forget film titles. I've also seen The Blue Angel.

I've seen a few of Jacques Tourneur films: Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, Out of the Past (which was in the Noir Hof).

I see Tourneur did a lot of Noir films. SO count me in on Tourneur and Von Sternberg as well as Ford.

I'm in. Not seen any films by Von Sternberg or Rossellini but want to see more early Hollywood films so voted Von Sternberg.

If we do von Sternberg, I am going to lobby hard for Underworld to be one of the five films. It's one of the best gangster pictures I've seen, and earliest, and I just think most of the people doing this with us will really enjoy it.

Besides nominating the best work from a director...another goal should be to showcase fine examples of the directors auteur stamp... also to showcase films that are atypical or juxtaposed of the director's style. So I'm nominating Jet Pilot for von Strenberg.

I'm in.I've only seen John Ford's films out of those 5.

Sounds interesting. I think I'll watch from the sidelines for now.