The Guardian lists the 40 best directors and is fairly good. David Lynch should be swapped with David Cronenberg, however. Also, Ridley Scott is missing from the list (he ought to be somewhere between 30 and 40), and Peter Jackson’s absence is wholly inexplicable.
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You can make arguments for a number of directors being left off the list – it’s clearly meant to be a list of the best directors *at this moment*, since it ignores pretty much every director who hasn’t done anything noteworthy in the last 6 or 7 years. Except for one of two bones they throw in that direction (Scorsese, mainly). So that would explain why a long list of highly well regarded directors of the past-yet-still-alive-and-making-films are left off – like Scott, Coppola, Woody Allen, Altman, Spike Lee, Spielberg, Jewison, etc etc etc.
It also clearly shows a bias towards ‘most influential’ as opposed to ‘best’, as several people are clearly riding on a reputation of innovation as opposed to having actually made excellent movies (von Trier, for instance.)
Yeah, it would have been nice to see them title it, say, “The World’s 40 Hottest Directors,” instead. They do seem to be focusing more on successes than execrable failures, and I think I like that attitude. But, much like some of its entries, the list seems to be more interested in shaking things up than… Well, hell, I don’t know what else a list like this would do.
But if you’re just interested in starting fights and dissing Ridley Scott, why not tack on 10 more years and do “…of All Time!”?
I don’t think Scott would rank in the top *hundred* directors of all-time worldwide, much less the top 40 or 50. All-time includes an awful lot of legendary directors, after all.
Actually, most of the directors on the list wouldn’t stack up to the top directors of all time – you’d be adding waaaaaay more than 10 to the list.
Ok, I’ve struggled and struggled with this, and I think there’s just too much of a gap between what I was trying to say and what it came across as. So I’m just going to point out that I can, in fact, name more than 10 directors not on that list better than Ridley Scott and leave it at that.