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Steve McQueen, though I haven't seen 12 YEARS A SLAVE yet.
Fincher.
Aronofsky.
Sam Mendes.
Tarantino.
Judd Apatow, although THIS IS 40 was a pretty wide miss.

As far as DPs go, I'll try and see as much as I can from:

Deakins, obviously.
Reed Morano.
Brad Young.
Rodrigo Prieto.
Emmanuel Lubezki.
Chris Doyle.

http://youtu.be/Mx9z99YJ_7s

Has there been a Taxi Driver episode yet?  If not, I might just need to fly out to LA so I can spread my love for it all over your podcast... And couch cushions.

To put a button on the Scorcese thing so I can move on to yelling about Gravity... Just remember that he made all those movies while supporting a hefty cocaine habit. Ha.

Also... Scorcese's early stuff hits me like a ton of bricks.  Much more so than a lot of other directors.  He definitely lost that punch as he got older and moved away from making movies about working class NYC characters... But shit, man. Taxi Driver connects with me like few other movies.

Let's not pretend that Gravity is a great movie.  I enjoyed it, but it's a popcorn flick.  Disposable entertainment.

I don't know if this is in response to my post.  I didn't mention anything about Cuaron standing on the shoulders of earlier directors.  Every director is the product of those that came before them.

I'm not saying that Scorcese is solely responsible for DeNiro's performances, but it can't be a coincidence that when DeNiro and Scorcese team up, we're given some of the greatest performances of all time.  We're not talking about good performances, here.  We're talking about the type of performances that shape the way we think about acting.  Performances that change the way acting is taught.

As far as output is concerned, Cuaron made his first feature in 1991.  That's 22 years ago.  In that time he's made 7 films that range from good to great.

Let's look at the first 22 years of Scorcese's career, starting with Who's That Knocking At My Door? in 1967.  By 1989, he had directed TWELVE films, including Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ... And was in the middle of shooting Goodfellas.

Not even close.

I'm not going to go with movies that I just happened to SEE in my teens, because that's cheating and there are FAR FAR FAR too many.  In chronological order, I'll start with:

Fight Club (1999) -- One of my favorite movies of all time.  The first time I went to see it was with a buddy that was way more of a rebel than I was.  He lived with his parents in a tiny railroad apartment on the top floor of a building on 83rd and 1st, and we'd often hang out on his rooftop drinking 40s and smoking weed until the sun came up.  This is the dude that I would run around the city with on weekends, and on October 15th 1999, we randomly decided to go to the movies.  We snuck into Fight Club, not expecting much, and grabbed the last two seats in the place, 4th row on the aisle.  What an experience.  The movie was too big, too loud, and mildly distorted due to the angle we were watching it at.  More importantly, it was the first movie that I felt was talking to ME.  I had never seen something that spoke so clearly to my teenage rage, angst, and crushing insomnia as this one.  We left the theater in shock, and walked down to the Barnes and Noble on Astor place and bought the book.  I stayed up the entire night and read it in one sitting.  It now sits on my shelf almost 15 years later... Tattered and worn and signed by Chuck Palahniuk.

I'll come back later for the other two.

Enjoyed this movie well enough.   It totally satisfied my desire to see Captain Kirk share a few scenes with...

-- Branco

I'll throw my 2 cents in and say the the screen on the full size iPad is leaps and bounds beyond the screen in the Mini. 

I also use an Eye-Fi card, and it's amazing.  Even more amazing for me, in that I use it in an all-Mac ecosystem, so when I snap a picture it automatically goes to my phone, and then into the cloud where it's snatched by the desktop back home.  Pretty swanky.

- Branco

I'm a little late to the party on this thread.

Something that is hardly mentioned is the difference in sound design between shaky-cam and more conservative scenes.  I find that I often enjoy the sound in the shaky-cam scenes more.  I guess the lack of coherent picture to match allows more creative freedom on the sound end.  It really allows the sound effects to shine.

- Branco

Oh, and HFR is stupid.  It looks like shit, and it's a pain in the ass to work with.  Even the name "HFR" annoys me.  It's 48fps.

- Branco

I hate musicals.  Should I see this movie?

Let me clarify.  I hate the moment in musicals when the transition is made from speaking into song.  I can feel the gears shifting in the actors' heads and it drives me bonkers.  I'm intrigued by the fact that they recorded all the vocals on set for this flick, though, and it sure looks pretty.  I guess my question is about how the music is handled.  Is it more intimate than most musicals, or is it the usual dancing-in-the-streets nonsense?  Is it both?

- Branco

I'm just skimming this thread.  I can't believe that there have been FIVE Twilight movies.  Good for those fuckers.

- Branco