Quote from DarkTimes :

When people like Kubrick were making movies, the medium was like putty, ready to be bent and moulded.

OMG you're making it sound like he was one of the brothers Lumiere

The guy was very manipulative, he also stood on the shoulders of great moviemakers that came before him, but he had an unparallaled skill to make great movies that also enjoyed a wide success of public (though this was not always automatically true).

This is also true of The Beatles, whose tunes are still happily hummed along by many younger people that weren't around at the time.

Quote from DarkTimes :

Instead of judging young artists by such an unjust comparison, we should be judging them on how they take that influence and make it their own. We are no longer forging the artform, we are perfecting it.

While he's not much of a 'young artist' anymore Tarantino is an example IMO of another director that in recent times was able to redefine genres to his likings, though I have the feeling his works' appeal is not quite as wide as Kubrick's.

On topic: JJ Abrams hardly enters the rank of art anyway, people like him have a product, they want to sell it, to do that they use a massive amounts of money and marketing, they're just like the majors' executives, since they don't have the skills to do something that has worth for its own sake, they create a need for it.

It may be interesting as an example of success story in a business strategy course, maybe it will have a value for etnographic reasons in the future, well that pretty much sums it up.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

That's what Hollywood does best. That's why they regularily give all their awards to foreign filmmakers like Danny Boyle.

Yep you're right, as many others before and after him, Kubrick quitted Hollywood at some point of his career, but he had to use it to gain a status where he could go on doing whatever he wanted without incurring in too much financing troubles.

Since you mention Danny Boyle... meh. I've yet to see Slumdog, so far his only movies that I like are Trainspotting (the source material was damn good anyway), and Millions: its translation of magic realism to an english suburban environment is quite nicely done 28 days is a dog though.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Have you not seen any Cohen Brothers films?

Of course! Their best works are great, I really liked No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There and of course many of the lighter ones like Fargo or The Big Lebowski.

As I said it would be certainly crazy to say there are no good directors. They're just not able to turn conventions upside down.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Terry Gilliam is another big favourite of mine, American Director-wise.

Not long ago I've heard they're in talks for a sequel to Fear and Loathing, let's keep our fingers crossed (can't find the emoticon for it!)

Quote from NightShift :

Star Trek has always been more on the fantasy side of things (though not as much as Star Wars), but this looks like badge engineering. Or how do they call when the studios take an old household name and glue it on something that has little or nothing to do with what the name used to represent?

That was the case with all the ST:TNG movies except First Contact. The Original Series movies just plain sucked.

The bar's been set low.

Am i the only one who saw that one scene and just thought "Cameron, what are you doing here? House needs your help! "

I hope Star Trek gets a bumpstart, in some ways I think its not reasonable to continue the old franchise (even newer stuff looks old, look at the size of the computer screens , doesn't look like the future), but a complete "restart" may be a good idea. Always liked the way Star Trek people approached problems, very relaxing (TNG, lots of diplomatic talking :tilt