After a great deal of discussion on our bests of the decade podcast, we are finally ready to let you in on our director of the decade: Steven Soderbergh. He won an Oscar, made a slew of successful films while keeping his arthouse street cred, legitimized the RED Camera, and pretty much just blew everyone out of the water in the last ten years. But don’t take my word for it, Sunrise provided a great writeup of the man and his decade. Let us know in the comments if you think we chose wisely (or not).
The way in which Steven Soderbergh starts off this decade is with such veracity and force with Traffic and Erin Brochovich, it is a wonder that he not only maintains such consistency towards the end, but implements a fascinating success that is important not only for him as an artist, but for us as an audience.
Leaving the nineties as a “Sundance” poster boy with questionable box office draw, he made a sudden turn with 1998’s Out of Sight and opened the decade with winning one of two Best Director nominations, to which only Michael Curtiz’s 1938 double nomination loss comes close in comparison. While Curtiz was just as much of a workhorse, what makes Soderbergh’s nomination so amazing is the metaphoric weight of self-challenge it represents. This challenge, as it were, is extended beyond his own growth as an artist into the ever-growing challenges he places upon his peers and audience. Read on…
And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the best directors of the decade according to the candler blog. I’m going to do this a little differently than our first installments on