A few of my favorite directors have already been covered in these appreciation thread deals, but I think it's just about time Steven Soderbergh gets his due, what with Che coming soon and all. Not gonna go all Holden Pike on you guys here, but I think Soderbergh deserves some first-class treatment, too, so here we go
With all due respect to John Cassavetes or John Waters or whomever else you want to throw out there, Steven Soderbergh is the king of independent filmmaking. A true pioneer of the medium, Soderbergh's one of the last great artists working in movies today. Bold, willing to take chances, uncompromising in his vision and remarkably versatile. He can perform nearly every role in film production, from behind the camera or in front of it. Just as comfortable and adept filming a big-budgeted blockbuster as he is an experimental art house lark, I guess you could say he's sold out a bit. But if Ocean's Eleven is selling out, is that really such a bad thing? And anyway, he'll invariably follow something like Ocean's Eleven with something weird and wonderful and he'll reaffirm everything his fans love about him. Every film he makes carries with it his own unique stamp and yet they're all surprising and different from one another and that, I think is his greatest strength. Soderbergh doesn't cling to one genre as a safety net the way so many other filmmakers do; his specialty is that he has no specialty. His style is that his style is always changing, constantly adapting to the films he's making.
Actors love him. He's got an almost Altmanesque quality to him in that he's so respected within the industry, literally anyone would jump at the chance to work with him. George Clooney has starred in six of Soderbergh's movies to date and the two of them own the Section 8 Film Production company together which has churned out more than its fair share of compelling flicks over the past few years. He's got a lovely group of other actors that he uses in a reperatory capacity and he surrounds himself with the best possible crew, as well. Ex-Captain Beefheart drummer Cliff Martinez is a frequent collaborator, having composed the understated, pitch-perfect scores for nearly all his movies.
And, of course, he put indie films as we know them on the map and while it's conceivable that revolution could have happened without him, well, it didn't. It happened because of him. It all started in 1989 with sex, lies and videotape. Soderbergh supposedly wrote the film in eight days, having spent the previous few years bouncing around Hollywood as an editor-for-hire. sex, lies and videotape is remebered for the tremendous impact it had on the independent filmmaking movement and just overall making alternative movies like that more accesible to the masses. But lost in all that cultural signficance hubbub is the fact that sex, lies and videotape is a fantastic, richly comlex movie with four phenomenally affecting lead performances and a very tight script. A great debut, to be sure.
Over the course of the last two decades, Soderbergh has tried his hand at everything from biopics to a barrage of successful remakes to oscar-bait melodramathons and all the while he's managed to mix in the occasional spectacularly experimental and stylistically out-there audience-perplexer. Take Full Frontal, a French New Wave-inspired film, shot entirely on digital video back when nobody was shooting entire films on digital video. Or how about The Good German: A film noir throwback so convincing that, had it not been for the sex and violence, could easily pass for the real thing. And Schizopolis and Bubble and yeah - what else can I say? I've already mentioned his ability to work within a vast variety of genres, but, man, that really can't be said enough. The guy can literally do anything
Coming up next on his slate is obviously this Che movie which, if nothing else, should at least be interesting. Then he's got The Informant, starring Matt Damon, which is based on the true story of corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre. And then things get really interesting with The Girlfriend Experience, which is a film about a high-class call girl starring 20 year old hardcore porn sensation Sasha Grey.
Anywho, here's how I'd grade his stuff thus far...
sex, lies, and videotape, B+
Kafka, C+
King of the Hill, A-
The Underneath, A
Gray's Anatomy, B
Schizopolis, A
Out of Sight, A-
The Limey, A-
Erin Brockovich, B
Traffic, B
Ocean's Eleven, B+
Full Frontal, B+
Solaris, C
Ocean's Twelve, C-
Bubble, B-
The Good German, B
Ocean's Thirteen, B-
So, yeah, Soderbergh's the man. Probably cracks my top five favorites, but it's close. Share the love, MoFos
With all due respect to John Cassavetes or John Waters or whomever else you want to throw out there, Steven Soderbergh is the king of independent filmmaking. A true pioneer of the medium, Soderbergh's one of the last great artists working in movies today. Bold, willing to take chances, uncompromising in his vision and remarkably versatile. He can perform nearly every role in film production, from behind the camera or in front of it. Just as comfortable and adept filming a big-budgeted blockbuster as he is an experimental art house lark, I guess you could say he's sold out a bit. But if Ocean's Eleven is selling out, is that really such a bad thing? And anyway, he'll invariably follow something like Ocean's Eleven with something weird and wonderful and he'll reaffirm everything his fans love about him. Every film he makes carries with it his own unique stamp and yet they're all surprising and different from one another and that, I think is his greatest strength. Soderbergh doesn't cling to one genre as a safety net the way so many other filmmakers do; his specialty is that he has no specialty. His style is that his style is always changing, constantly adapting to the films he's making.
Actors love him. He's got an almost Altmanesque quality to him in that he's so respected within the industry, literally anyone would jump at the chance to work with him. George Clooney has starred in six of Soderbergh's movies to date and the two of them own the Section 8 Film Production company together which has churned out more than its fair share of compelling flicks over the past few years. He's got a lovely group of other actors that he uses in a reperatory capacity and he surrounds himself with the best possible crew, as well. Ex-Captain Beefheart drummer Cliff Martinez is a frequent collaborator, having composed the understated, pitch-perfect scores for nearly all his movies.
And, of course, he put indie films as we know them on the map and while it's conceivable that revolution could have happened without him, well, it didn't. It happened because of him. It all started in 1989 with sex, lies and videotape. Soderbergh supposedly wrote the film in eight days, having spent the previous few years bouncing around Hollywood as an editor-for-hire. sex, lies and videotape is remebered for the tremendous impact it had on the independent filmmaking movement and just overall making alternative movies like that more accesible to the masses. But lost in all that cultural signficance hubbub is the fact that sex, lies and videotape is a fantastic, richly comlex movie with four phenomenally affecting lead performances and a very tight script. A great debut, to be sure.
Over the course of the last two decades, Soderbergh has tried his hand at everything from biopics to a barrage of successful remakes to oscar-bait melodramathons and all the while he's managed to mix in the occasional spectacularly experimental and stylistically out-there audience-perplexer. Take Full Frontal, a French New Wave-inspired film, shot entirely on digital video back when nobody was shooting entire films on digital video. Or how about The Good German: A film noir throwback so convincing that, had it not been for the sex and violence, could easily pass for the real thing. And Schizopolis and Bubble and yeah - what else can I say? I've already mentioned his ability to work within a vast variety of genres, but, man, that really can't be said enough. The guy can literally do anything
Coming up next on his slate is obviously this Che movie which, if nothing else, should at least be interesting. Then he's got The Informant, starring Matt Damon, which is based on the true story of corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre. And then things get really interesting with The Girlfriend Experience, which is a film about a high-class call girl starring 20 year old hardcore porn sensation Sasha Grey.
Anywho, here's how I'd grade his stuff thus far...
sex, lies, and videotape, B+
Kafka, C+
King of the Hill, A-
The Underneath, A
Gray's Anatomy, B
Schizopolis, A
Out of Sight, A-
The Limey, A-
Erin Brockovich, B
Traffic, B
Ocean's Eleven, B+
Full Frontal, B+
Solaris, C
Ocean's Twelve, C-
Bubble, B-
The Good German, B
Ocean's Thirteen, B-
So, yeah, Soderbergh's the man. Probably cracks my top five favorites, but it's close. Share the love, MoFos
Last edited by Swedish Chef; 12-15-08 at 04:02 PM.