Terry Gilliam .... specially as he was such an important part of the visual nature of MONTY PYTHON, that got us so very involved and laughed at so many silly gags, a huge ... absolutely HUGE throwback to a lot of American vaudeville stuff in the early days of the 20th century.

Tim Burton, by comparison, had has been a lot more popular in America, because his kind of humor was making fun in someways, at a lot of American film in the 30's, 40's and 50's, and a lot of this is kinda lost in the whole process ... by comparison, I would say that Terry Gilliam is considerably more literary and artistic, although I would not wish to suggest that Tim is not as good as Terry ... they are both excellent.

The only knock I have on Tim is that he is not as original as he thinks ... I have not enjoyed a lot of his films as they do not seem to me to be "serious", and sometimes it is as if they are being done ... just for fun. I, very much doubt that Terry does films, just for fun, they all have a very deep and personal direction and attention, that is often times very scary ... his psychic visual moments are very fast and scary, but because they are in a thing that we think is not serious, the detail on it is left behind.

My feelings are ... that Tim is trying to be cool and please an American TV audience, rather than create a work that is original and capable of sustaining its ideas and concepts.

BUT, in the process, you get some things that are just outstanding ... BEETLEJUICE would probably not be as much fun were it not for the actor going crazy and nuts about everything he did ... and the funniest thing, just to give you an idea how intelligent and attentive the actor is, he ended up in a production of a Shakespeare play ... and what does he do? The reverse of what Tim Burton does ... he pulls up a Monty Python, something only an American could probably devise and have fun with ... and if you don't see him delivering his lines while "horsing" around, you have not seen the best moment in that whole film!

Kudos go to Tim, for allowing the actor to go free and crazy in his film, something that Terry Gilliam has been famous for, from the first day ... probably something he learned from Monty Python, that you must let the actor "live" his character as long as possible, because it gets zanier and zanier as time goes by ... and you see all the time in Jonathan Pryce, in Robin Williams, and quite a few others, although I am of the opinion that many of the American actors were not as well versed, or comfortable in the art of the ad-lib and improvisation ... which is very evident in a lot of the American arts ... Broadway will do yet another musical revival instead of something original!

All in all, a tough vote and sell. Tim Burton, does deserve some credit for his work ... although I do not think that he has continued to create such insane and amazing films, like Terry has ... but perhaps that is my taste for the work, and not necessarily a knock on the director at all ... visually and film wise, Terry is much more in touch of the cinematography of it all, than Tim is ... and Terry's visuals have always left us ... just wow'd to not end.

Nice poll, though ... it really brings out the nuts and bolts on their work.

My error and I corrected it ... thx for the help on that!

Hard to say ... his films, in America, are not always well received ... for example, SANTA SANGRE almost went directly to video, and I only caught it because the video store I frequented for many years had a nice selection of foreign films. They did not have THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, and later they came up with a used copy of EL TOPO, that I was told no one had selected, except me ... I had not seen the film yet, but it had been a darling in many film festival, as weird, off kilter stuff, usually is.

And this is the hardest part ... I was going through a couple of film places online, and none of his films were listed that I could find, and doing a search? ... even worse.

Europe has a better relationship with artistic works, from visionaries and it is likely that it comes via their usual respect for a lot of film (except one group of folks, that always thinks someone put salt in their coffee! Ahhhh, the drink of the devil 500 years ago!) and these things are better respected, even for their strangeness factor.

I have seen only the Shape of the water by Del Toro. Beautiful.

Tim Burton doesnt excite me.

Del Toro, by far.

Pacific Rim (one of my favorite films)

The Shape of Water (amazing)

Del Toro's only misfire is Blade 2. It's a waste of his talent and the studio's resources. Hard to believe he made that film. 

The Hellboy movies are fun, but I've never had a great interest in the character or the comics.

That said, I was disappointed when he stepped away from the Justice League Dark project for WB.

For me, TWELVE MONKEYS is a film that is hacked from last century to this one, and it hurts its story, that is so fragmented that the "love story" doesn't make sense at all, and in the middle of it all, the rest of the story is left behind ... and I think this is all just another famous fight by Gilliam with the studio when he turned up with a film that was too long! 

I like THE FISHER KING a lot, and think that the acting in that film by the leads is incredible and totally far out, and the OSCAR ends up in the hands of someone else ... how's that for irony! But she was good!

BARON is a very strong film for my imagination because in one scene it makes a marriage of theater and film, like no one else can, and lights up the images in your head like crazy ... you and I never thought of "theater" as being as strong as the images film can produce, but in one head turn, it's like ... it doesn't matter, it's the same thing ... and the whole film vibrates really well in that area between theater and film vision, something that is hard to do and even harder to put into words. Theater relies on its WORDS to live, and if things are not delivered with a really strong visual effort, things tend to go downhill and bore the audience to pieces ... whereas film can cheat and change images faster and prevent your mind from getting bored so fast ... and is the main reason why folks in America do not frequent theater, other than the silly redos of musicals in New York. It's hard to believe that folks are happy and satisfied with those shows ... yet again!

I find that both Toro and Burton, do not have that strength and continued life that the films continuously show.