the slate is clean, the new has come the old is gone. and burt is right, you should thank him for reminding us.

thank you burt

Well I'm fairly mainstream when it comes to movies. I tend to avoid the arthouse movies. So here are some of my favorite movie directors. Mind you I don't like all their movies, but enough of them that I put them on my favorite list. I make no pretense of thinking they are the best directors in the whole world nor do I expect anyone else to agree with me. After all this is my list.

And once again they're all pretty mainstream. Nothing artistic here. Though Michael Mann does have a flashy style.

John Frankenheimer. The man could be wildly uneven. Especially in the seventies when he was deep in the throes of alcoholism. But I liked Dead Bang, Ronin, Seven Days in May, Black Sunday and The Manchurian Candidate.

Sydney Pollack. A director who made movies from many different genres. But he made a few that I like alot. 3 Days of the Condor, The Yakuza, Jeremiah Johnson, Absence of Malice.

Michael Mann. His movies are flashy. They use realistic details for style not substance (does that make sense?), but they are watchable (for the most part). Also I grew up in the eighties. Thief, Manhunter, Miami Vice, Crime Story, L.A. Takedown. These are movies and television shows that I watched and still watch. Nostalgia I guess is one of the reasons why he is on this list. Well that and Heat. This description is about as close as I can get to copying a film critic.

Clint Eastwood. That's probably all I need to write. Another actor/director that I grew up watching.

Steven Spielberg. Yes I like him. I'm not ashamed to admit I watch his moves.

Ridley Scott. Very commerical, but ever since I saw Alien in 1979 and The Duelists in 1982 I've been a fan. Even his weaker movies (Legend and Robin Hood anyone?) I end up watching.

Don Siegel. Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955), The Shootist, Charley Varrick, Hell is for Heros. The man was something of a pioneer in the action movie genre. He cut his teeth in the 1940's as a second unit director working with classic actors like Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. He developed an action oriented film style that continues to influence film makers to this day. While many born after say 1980 would probably find his movies ......old fashioned......... I like them.

Good choices. What do you think of Danny Boyle?

I liked 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Slumdog Millionaire. I didn't like that movie set in SE Asia. The Beach? I haven't seen any of his other movies.

His newest movie about the bicycle guy in Utah cutting off his hand looks interesting.

Go out and rent Trainspotting if time permits you. It's a great film.

That's interesting. Is it true that people in your area still find spent .223 blanks lying around from all of the gunfire scenes? (I once read that "Starship Troopers" set a record for blank ammunition fired on a movie set.)

Exactly. And the problem is that Heinlein's brand of politics hasn't aged very well (either today, or 15 years ago when the movie was filmed). It's pretty hard to make a movie out of a utopian novel where the author actually admires the utopian world he's conceived. Verhoeven's approach was a satirical depiction of the novel's militaristic society, which is (I think) probably the best anyone could have done. I realize that "Starship Troopers" is regarded as a classic, but so were Mike Hammer novels (which came out around the same time), and I think it would be quite difficult to make a movie adaptation of those, in this day and age.

I'm actually not the biggest fan of "Total Recall", though it is an enjoyable movie in its own right.

Starship Troopers would of been cooler if they gave the soldiers those powered armor suits.

I wonder what's keeping the studio who owns the rights to Starship Troopers from doing a reboot that goes back to the roots with power suits and nukes? I would think a massive, 3-D, CGI-filled summer blockbuster would make more money for the franchise than yet another straight-to-video crapfest.

Because "Starship Troopers" was unsuccessful (in the U.S., its box office receipts covered only about half of its production budget). It would probably be pretty hard to get investors behind a big-budget reboot.

And yet they've pumped out two DTV sequels. The original was rated R with a B-movie cast with a B-movie script yet made with a blockbuster budget. Put a name in it, with a hot girl, pump it full of SFX, keep it PG-13, and you won't even need to write a good script. Hell, it worked for Transformers. (This is in no way an endorsement of Michael Bay or a suggestion that Michael Bay remake Starship Troopers.)