I'm incredibly bored, so I've decided to do a series of small blogs about directors that I enjoy. In honor of the release of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army today, I figured I'd start with
Guillermo Del Toro, one of my favorites.
While not that well known until Pan's Labyrinth, he's been directing for a long while now. He started out in Mexican TV in the 80's, and the first time I heard his name was in the early 90's connected to the film Mimic, but Blade II was the first time I experienced his directing. Now, the movie wasn't the greatest. But. It did have a really cool atmosphere and was, I think, technically impressive.......and it did have Ron Perlman (always a plus). I watched the behind the scenes stuff on the dvd and I really dug Del Toro's style, imagination, and love of film.
A few months later I heard about the Hellboy movie and thought, "What moron will destroy this movie for me....Michael Bay?......Uwe Boll?" When I heard it was Del Toro I was excited to say the least. Time went by, movie came out, and I loved it. It wasn't an exact reproduction of the comics, which upset some of the fanboys, but it wasn't so different as to NOT be Hellboy. I think I enjoyed the film so much because I could see Del Toro's love for the source material and it echoed my own. At this point I began to search out anything he had done.
Except Mimic. I'm sure it's good, but it never appealed to me.
Del Toro is one those directors who is better labeled as a storyteller. His directing is very stylised but not at the cost of telling the story. He brings so much atmosphere to his films, so much attention to detail, and so much imagination that every time I watch one of his films I want make a film, or write a script, or whatever. The utter joy with which he creates is infectious.
He and some other directors of his generation, to me, seem like the classic directors who were great storytellers, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Welles, etc. As opposed to a lot of the other directors out there in Hollywood pumping out turd after turd right into our eyes.*
Okay, so I've gone on long enough. If you like Del Toro, I suggest you buy everything in his filmography. And pick me up a copy of Cronos.
*a special thanks to Lord Spathington for "turds in the eyes"
