My favorite directors

It's hard to be lieve I've been doing this for more than a year now and have never compiled a list like this.

Before I get started, some provisos. There are many more than 10 great directors in the world, so many great ones will be left off this list (even Martin Scorsese!) And, just to narrow it down, I've decided to confine this to living directors (meaning Robert Altman, who would be on the top, won't be making an apperance today.)

With that in mind, and in no particular order, here are 10 directors whose movies I will always shell out $10 to see:

Wes Anderson
I've drawn dirty looks from more than a few people when I said I didn't like "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," but after watching it again I have to stand by that. Even so, Anderson's first three flicks are just my kind of comedy, especially "Rushmore," which I must have seen three times during its theatrical run. It seems like years since Anderson's even made a movie, but his Darjeeling Limited, starring Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson, is apparently nearing completion, finally.

The Coen brothers
My fellow cubicle slaves and I went out for a screening of "Raising Arizona" last week and it was just as funny as I remembered. I can only think of one Coen brothers' movie I didn't care for, "The Man Who Wasn't There" with Billy Bob. I even liked their remake of "The Ladykillers," which has one of the best gospel movie soundtracks ever compiled.

Spike Lee
Two of the smaller movie in Spike's body of work really show why I love him so much. The first, the documentary "4 Little Girls," is a surprisingly low-key but very effective movie about the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. And the second, "Get on the Bus," still probably my favorite Spike movie, bottled up all the emotions of the Million Man March in one very entertaining flick. As a side note, though I am not a black man, I was living in D.C. and was vastly underemployed at the time, so I actually went to the Million Man March.

Brad Bird
When pressed to name a favorite movie, I've been known to give 10 different answers, but one of them is always "The Iron Giant." Animated movies just don't get any more charming, and the tots at "Shrek the Third" laughed a lot louder during the trailer for "Ratatouille" than at anything in the main feature. I can't wait to see it.

John Sayles
John Sayles is the second thing, after Rob Reiner's "This Is Spinal Tap," that made me a devoted movie geek. When I first saw Joe Morton as that "Brother from Another Planet" I was instantly hooked. Sayles has made a few lemons over the years, but many more great movies. My two favorites would have to be "Passion Fish" and "Lone Star."

Mira Nair
I was hoping that the presence of Kumar would make Mira Nair's "The Namesake" play wide enough to reach my little corner of the world," but apparently not. I'm still hoping the Macon Film Guild will pick it up in August or so, because it's gotten nothing but rave reviews. If you haven't seen Mira's "Mississippi Masala," with Denzel and the simply radiant Sarita Choudhury, drop whatever you're doing and rent it now.

Hayao Miyazaki
About a year ago I somehow got it into my head that Miyazaki was dead, but luckily that's just one of the many things I've been wrong about. He's at work now on something called "Ponyo on a Cliff," which as far as I can tell is about a goldfish princess, or something crazy like that. Whatever it turns out to be, I'll definitely be there to see it.

Phillip Noyce
Noyce could make this list on the strength of his remake of "The Quiet American" alone. I really wouldn't consider it a remake at all, because it's a thoroughly original vision of Graham Greene's novel. Noyce's "Catch a Fire" was also one of the most criminally underappreciated movies of 2006.

Fernando Meirelles
I probably should have started this list with Meirelles, since he was the one who inspired it with the news that he's going to make a movie of "Love's Labors Lost" by Brazilian writer Jorge Furtado. Loosely based on the Shakespeare play, it follows the travails of a group of international students, and should just be tons of fun. Meirelles probably won't ever make a movie better than "City of God," but I'm hoping he somehow does.

Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron
Since they're such good friends I'm sure they wouldn't mind sharing the last entry on this list (so I can, technically at least, keep it to 10.) Besides, they also shared my title of best movie of 2006 with "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Children of Men." I know del Toro is making another "Hellboy" movie (huzzah!), but I have no idea exactly what Mr. Cuaron is up to. According to the IMDB, it's a semi-autobiographical movie about his family's life in Mexico City in 1971. Sounds great to me.

So there you have it. Like I said at the outset, many, many great directors have been left off this list, so please feel free to add your favorites, and have an entirely bearable Monday. Peace out.