P.S. on the Empire Magazine List

In which the news gets worse. Because the list gets longer.

Turns out ol' Ingmar does make the roster after all, down at #36, and Charlie's right above him at #35. Let's not get carried away, though. These pipsqueaks ain't got nothing on Robert Zemeckis (#22), Tony Scott (#28), George Lucas (#31), or Ron Howard (#33), and they're both huffing and puffing to keep ahead of M. Night Shyamalan (#37). Non-Anglophone directors merit a whopping 5 out of 40 berths (Kurosawa, Leone, Truffaut, Lang, and Bergman). Jesus.

It has been pointed out to me that this list is a poll of Empire's readers, not an editorial edict, but I still blame the editors. Remember when people used to read a magazine to learn something, instead of using it as a wicked-queen mirror to reflect whatever it is we already think? Empire can now sell a bunch of copies with a list that's even more wack than I thought, when, at least presumably, they might have had an opportunity to teach their large audience something about film instead of assuring them that they have little or nothing left to learn. (How do I know that Kevin Smith is just bubbling under at #41?)

Anyway, as I suspected, the people at Cinemarati are generating much more interesting alternate ballots.

(Anybody think I got the Dwarf-o-Meter wrong today? Maybe it's 90% Grumpy and 10% Bashful after all.)