Ok everybody, here we go. The MAJOR Award for Best Director of 2012. The auteur who did the best job with their film this past year!
The Nominees are: Paul Thomas Anderson, “The Master”, Katheryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty”, Ang Lee, “Life of Pi”, Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained”, and Behn Zeitlin, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”.
Click through to see which one of these incredible directors won!
Ang Lee, “Life of Pi”
In “Life of Pi”, Lee hits a home run in every way a director can. The performances he features in the film are great, including the one from the CGI Tiger. The film is astonishingly beautiful to look at. It’s well-edited and well-paced. It has a deep tone to it… a thoughtful tenor beneath the action we’re seeing. He’s created a movie that is spiritually moving, thought-provoking, awe-inspiring, and entertaining. While many “deep” movies trip over their own feet being too intellectual, or wind up “stuffy”, “Life of Pi” entertains along the way to enlightening and that’s no easy feat.
The level of difficulty in “Pi” was definitely a factor in consideration here. It’s a movie which basically revolves around a single major scene (the boy and the tiger on a life boat), and all the complications that result from it. Not only does Lee keep it fascinating, he also creates a spiritual journey that the character goes through simultaneously. Keeping those two aspects of the film going at once isn’t easy. Surrounding it all is a world more gorgeous and vibrant than anything else you’ll find at the movies this year.
More than any of the other candidates this year, I felt Lee’s presence in a positive way. He was an artist behind the canvas, and he painted a wonderful picture.
The others were great as well. Paul Thomas Anderson crafted the year’s greatest think-piece, a puzzle that I’m still happily waiting to fully unravel. Katheryn Bigelow crafted a razor-sharp thriller with a great lead character who powerfully reflects the toll the intelligence game takes on a person. Quentin Tarantino did what he does best, and served us up a violent, stylistic serving of pop culture entertainment, and Benh Zeitlin makes a film of the highest calibre in his directorial debut. I can’t wait to see how he follows it up.
But Lee outshone them all this year. He created a gorgeous film that will entertain and challenge viewers. One that will awe you as you watch, and leave you thinking about it long after seeing it.
Ang Lee, the FMR MAJOR Award winner for Best Director, 2012
Fogs' Movie Reviews 
I guessed it! Yes. so glad you chose Lee. Congrats to him on this amazing award. You’re right in that this one presented plenty of difficulty in bringing it from the pages of the book to the screen in such a beautiful fashion!
Hooray. 🙂
You guessed it huh? We should have some kind of pool next year as to which I’d pick, I’m thinking that I would clean up at that! LOL 😀
Meanwhile, yeah, Lee did an incredible job with this material, I’m still amazed by what he brought together…
So am I forgiven for excluding Affleck now? What ever happened to #TeamArgo? 😀
You do like to egg me on, don’t you. See, I had just decided to let you pass on skipping Affleck. Figured I’d given you enough of a hard time over that and your inclusion of The Grey in the wrong category (Best?) and your exclusion of Dench in the “leading” actress role. and then…then you had to poke a stick at my disdain for you snubbing Affleck. You, sir, are NOT forgiven. LOL
I did guess that you would pick Lee out of the fine choices you had. and I was right. however, Affleck deserved to be here over Tarantino for director. At least Affleck can direct himself and act good at the same time. Tarantino…not so much. #HorribleCameo.
I still stand by my decision. Unwavering…and Unforgiving. 😀
#TeamArgo
Heh. 😀
I like egging everyone on.
I stand by my decisions as well, of course. 😉
hahahaha! Good stuff
Nice, nice choice.
Thanks! Appreciate that.
How wise you are. The movie was a masterpiece and in the hands of a lesser director, it would not have been. Can’t wait to see what this film looks like on Blu-ray!!
“How wise you are”
LOL. That was an unexpected thing to hear. 😀 I literally did a “Wait… what?” double take. 😀
Thanks though, Al. I appreciate it! LOL. This movie WAS really really great, and to me, Lee was the star.
That was unexpected. I thought you’d be giving it to Anderson.
Well… obviously I admire the film (I did include him here for a reason), but the Master’s audience is SO restricted… I mean that movie is going to alienate about 90% of all potential movie goers… I just couldnt do it. I appreciate art films, I appreicate thought provoking movies, but this movie was just about as inaccessible as it comes.
So while i still like and appreciate him, I couldnt hand him the Lamp. You know?
Nice to see this go to Ang Lee. He did so many things right with this film that even if you dont think he adapted the book well, I think he still managed to grace the screen with the heart and spirit of that story and did so in the most gorgeous way possible. An absolute visual feast!
Yeah, it certainly was gorgeous to look at wasn’t it?
Im not sure how he did or didn’t do in relation to the book, I’m just concerned with what made it to the screen… and what made it to the screen was awesome.
Glad you concur here, Ric!
Of your nominations, I’d personally go with PT Anderson, as I felt he directed the SHIT out of The Master. Pretty much that movie’s only issue was the fact that the plot pretty much goes nowhere in the end, but everything else with that movie was just meticulously crafted.
But Ang Lee’s not a bad pick, he did a hell of a job with that adaptation.
He was great, but at the end of the day… I still wasn’t sure I had my head wrapped entirely around “The Master”. Maybe a couple of years from now when I’ve seen it four times and have my opinions on it firmly thought out, I’ll come to regret not choosing him.
But as of right now, he made a very very well directed film that’s going to leave a lot of people going “huh?” in a bad way. 😦
Great choice. And the right one for me, particularly given the level of difficulty.
I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of glad that Spielberg isn’t on your list. He did a fine job, of course, but as I think about the film it’s almost impossible for me to decide where DDL ends and Spielberg begins. Lee, on the other hand, pulled it off with a first time actor and a non-existent tiger!
Yup yup yup. You’re second paragraph is exactly where I’m at with Lincoln, too. Well, plus the fact that everywhere I DID feel the direction (Like the slo mo opening battle scene and the reaction shot montage after the Ford Theatre shooting) I was groaning. LOL
I really like Ang Lee, so I’ll probably see Life of Pi soon though the whole animal angle is getting me worried – since Cloud Atlas and Moonrise Kingdom every time I see animals on screen I’m getting nervous something TERRIBLE is about to happen.
You’re…. funny with that, huh?
Does it make it any better that the animals here aren’t even REAL most of the time, they’re CGI?
I certainly wouldn’t skip this one just because some animals… you know, get deaded. LOL.
No I’m not joking at all. Kill 20 people for all I care, but kill one dog? Oh, no.
CGI? Dude, I nearly shat my pants I was so worried about Sebastian in The Hobbit 🙂
Wow. You need to update your latest american horror story lead then…
“My threshold for crazy is pretty high up. It takes chicken drumstick fellatio or telepathic sex with Nicole Kidman’s ripped stockings in her panties area to disturb me.”
Proposed Addendum: “Unless they’re going to ^$%& with a puppy, in which case I am OUT!” 😀
Crazy things like that disturbed me but puppies in danger worry me 🙂 I can understand why these two scenes in the films happened but when someone wants to kill a dog on screen? That’s really f–ked up right there.
Great choice. Life of Pi is absolutely one of my favorite films of the year. Hooray for Lee!
Huzzah, huh? Cool. Good to hear.
It was a tough choice, those were five REALLY good choices there, and unlike say, Best Actor this year where there was once clear cut choice, this one was tricky. 😀
Glad you approve, buddy. 😀
Good choice. Lee did a great job with Life of Pi.
Thanks CK! I thought he did too.
Haven’t seen Life of Pi so…no comment.
Roger that. LOL
Ok this one kinda stuns me. Definitely an interesting pick.
Ok. I’m cool with that. Gotta throw some curveballs sometimes.
May I ask who you were expecting? 😀
I think Ang Lee did a great job with the source material, but I just wasn’t feeling the movie itself. I would go with PTA here, but hell, I’m happy that you even nominated him.
He was great. My rationale for not picking him was that the movie wasn’t accessible enough for general audiences, and yet not super duper intelligent and artsy enough for me to say “Screw it, I dont care that people dont get it”. You know what I’m saying?
Knocking these out of the park, man! I loved this and thought Ang Lee did a phenomenal job. I often think with a lot of directors, even those nominated, you don’t actually notice anything out of the ordinary in their direction, but a lot of the effectiveness of this film is down to the direction. I’d like this to win the Oscar but I can’t see it.
Yeahhhhh I’m thinking Spielberg gets it as part of the Lincoln landslide. I could be wrong of course, I dont even think Lincoln is the best amongst the nominees, but it IS the movie I can most easily picture getting the Oscar. Cause it’s that type of film… And Oscar hates risk. LOL
Solid pick. I think Ang is great here. ( Btw did you ever REVIEW fellow nominee ZDT? Just curious.)
Strong group of films; echoing others esp. Tank Sr that Lee took an average film and created a masterpiece.
LOL. No, I never did review ZDT. Opened wide during the middle of the MAJOR Awards, when I was flooding subscribers a is, plus I had my hands full.
Now I’m already moving on to more current releases… so that one may wind up falling in the cracks. 😦 I’m sure we’ll discuss fully on TPMP.
great; can’t wait.
-cheers 🙂
Okay, you may have picked Skyfall but I can forgive you for this choice. Lee achieves something very special here. It’s a benchmark with the use of CGI.
Yeah, Lee was really the standout in my mind. When I pick a winner in this category, I really want to see them active and feel them in the film, and I definitely did with Lee.
My only regret in this category was not nominating Sam Mendes! 😀
A a matter of curiosity, why didn’t you nominate mendes? He did do a fine job.
Yeah, he did, but there was so much other stuff going on that contributed to that movie being great. I felt as if most of these put it altogether in a way that the movie would have fallen apart completely without them.
Best explanation I can think of I think.