Shared Top Border

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

  WebTSPDT

[ Home ] [ Directors A-L ] [ Directors M-Z ] [ 1,000 Greatest Films ] [ 21st Century ] [ Film Noir ] [ Ain't Nobody's Blues ] [ Recommended Viewing ] [ About ] [ Links ]
 
         
 
Peter Jackson
Director / Screenwriter / Producer
1961 - 
Born October 31, New Zealand
Key Production Countries: New Zealand, USA, Germany 
Key Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Epic, Horror Comedy, Fantasy Adventure, Sword-and-Sorcery
Key Collaborators: Fran Walsh (Screenwriter/Producer), Jamie Selkirk (Editor/Producer), Grant Major (Production Designer), Philippa Boyens (Screenwriter), Andrew Lesnie (Cinematographer), Elijah Wood (Leading Player), Ian McKellen (Leading Player), Liv Tyler (Leading Player), Barrie M. Osborne (Producer), Howard Shore (Composer)

Recommended: Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Worth a Look: The Frighteners (1996), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)*^, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)^
Approach with Caution: Bad Taste (1987), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)^, King Kong (2005)
Duds: Dead Alive (1992)
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section; ^ Listed in TSPDT's 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films section.

 
 
 
Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ TCMDB ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ The Bastards Have Landed: Official Peter Jackson Fan Club ] [ The Peter Jackson Guide ] [ Your Mother Ate My Dog! ] [ Hollywood Reporter Interview (2004) ] [ DGA Interview ] [ Dark Horizons Interview (2005) ] [ Time Out Interview (2005) ] [ Flickering Myth Profile ]
Books: [ Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings ] [ Peter Jackson: From Gore to Mordor ] [ Peter Jackson In Perspective: The Power Behind Cinema's The Lord Of The Rings ] [ Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson's the Lord of the Rings ]
 
Heavenly Creatures (1994)The Frighteners (1996)The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
 
     
  "Anarchic New Zealand-born director who has made a virtue of the title of his first film - Bad Taste. A few years earlier his films might have been condemned in a body as video nasties - but festival and critical approval has brought recognition and (almost) respectability to Jackson's charnel-house work, a world in which slicing someone's head off with a meat cleaver represents a tame demise... Lord knows where Jackson goes from here, but it's going to be an exciting ride." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)  
     
  "...Just realize that Jackson has rediscovered the serial epic and given it an energy and dread not known since Fritz Lang's Nibelungen. Maybe that's what he does next - Meet the Nibelungen!." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)  
     
  "Jackson's achievement in staying put at home and persuading the Hollywood money to come to him bodes well for his country's film industry. Most successful New Zealand directors have used their first major hit as a springboard for Hollywood. Jackson, remaining true to his roots, has set up his own production base (Wingnut Films) in his home town of Wellington. "I choose to stay in New Zealand earning a fraction of what I could make in Los Angeles because I want to do whatever I feel like doing...The freedom that I have in New Zealand is worth millions of dollars to me."" - Philip Kemp (Film Reference)  
     
  "People always said, 'How can your imagination compete with the [LOTR] books; how can you put things on the screen that are going to be better than what people have in their minds?' I understood the rationale behind that. [But] I started to believe it was possible when I saw Alan Lee [conceptual artist] produce sketches for me that were so much better than what was in my mind. I knew then that it was possible to show things on-screen beyond what people imagined." - Peter Jackson  
     
 
Please note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we haven't seen include Meet the Feebles (1989) and The Lovely Bones (2009).
 6
 

"Jackson's career had moved full circle by the 1990s: he had shifted from making low-budget, cult New Zealand movies to crafting high-budget, cult New Zealand movies. Not only are his latter day films in much better taste than his earlier bad taste outings, but by adapting Tolkien's cult novels, and remaking a Hollywood cult movie of the 1930s, Jackson has cleverly guaranteed that he can conform to the mainstream, yet can still maintain a loyal cult following." - Matt Hills, 501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

 
 
Top 250 Directors
21st Century Top 50 
501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers
 
See Also
Ralph Bakshi
John Boorman
Tim Burton
Stuart Gordon
John Guillermin
Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
Sam Raimi
George A. Romero
Ridley Scott
Ron Underwood
Brian Yuzna
Robert Zemeckis
 
Peter Jackson's Favourites
Dawn of the Dead (1978) George A. Romero, The General (1926) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese, Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg, King Kong (1933) Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack. Source: Rotten Tomatoes (2009)
 
 
 
         
         

 

[ Home ] [ Directors A-L ] [ Directors M-Z ] [ 1,000 Greatest Films ] [ 21st Century ] [ Film Noir ] [ Ain't Nobody's Blues ] [ Recommended Viewing ] [ About ] [ Links ]
[ Recommended Reading Archives ] [ The Shooting Gallery ]
 
Contact Us: bill@theyshootpictures.com.
©2002-2012 They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?