The 2014 RopeofSilicon Movie Awards

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s ability to conceive and then execute Birdman on the level he did is unfathomable to me. Of course he had help, but it’s a matter of having the right help to pull all the pieces together and to have the end result be as electric as this film is blows me away. Yet, I don’t want to overlook all the other names on the runners-up list as I feel I could find reason for each of them to take the top spot. However, there was one other thing I noticed about all of them… other than DuVernay, Fincher and Wingard, the other nine names listed either wrote, or co-wrote their respective films. Is there something to this?

I looked back at the six previous years of RopeofSilicon Awards and sure enough, the directors I named Best Director were all directors that also wrote the screenplay. I can only assume there is something personal I take away from these films that ties me tighter to these stories than others. Hell, even with Selma, Gone Girl and The Guest you feel the presence of the director, something of their soul leaking into the story being told or, at the very least, what it is that drove them to make their respective film.

That said, yes, I believe Iñárritu deserves to be named Best Director, but the other eleven above deserve a whole heap of love for the films they created.

I hear Alexandre Desplat‘s music from The Grand Budapest Hotel and it just makes me smile. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Wes Anderson film and it fits the movie so perfectly it’s almost apt to ask, What came first?. It drives the whimsical nature of the film, sets the mood perfectly and is just one more of the overall joys of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I also want to make sure of making a special note when it comes to James Newton Howard‘s Nightcrawler score as I think it is just as responsible for how we interpret that film as the screenplay and performances. Howard’s score doesn’t judge Lou Bloom, it simply accompanies him. If anything, the music is overly sympathetic toward his character, helping us “like” Lou even more than we otherwise might if it was darker and more sinister in nature. The music is almost awe inspiring rather than “Holy shit, look what this ass hole is doing!” You could probably layer this score over Margin Call and find yourself a little more sympathetic to the folks responsible for the 2008 financial crisis than you would ever want to be.