There have been some (haphazardly) proposed personality tests that are determined by film preferences of certain directors.

Yes, I believe your film preference can say much about your personality, but the directors that you choose to include also says much.

So I have decided to be as all-encompassing as I could. Below are loosely categorized groupings of directors and their most notable films. You can select your favorites and e-mail them to me - just copy the list into email and highlight the films you prefer or write them in if they're not listed.

If you're interested, send me your picks and I'll compile some sort of presentation of the findings.

Enjoy!

The Big Three

Stanley Kubrick - 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Lolita, etc.

Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, Casino, The Departed, The Last Waltz, etc.

Francis Ford Coppola - Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II, III, The Conversation, The Outsiders, Peggy Sue Got Married, Dracula, etc.

Heirs Apparent

Paul Thomas Anderson - Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Punch-Drunk Love, Magnolia, etc.

Wes Anderson - The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, etc

Joel (& Ethan) Coen - No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona, etc

Fast-paced

Quentin Tarantino - Pulp Fiction, Grindhouse, Kill Bill I, II, Reservoir Dogs, etc.

Ridley Scott - Alien, Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, American Gangster, etc.

Oliver Stone - Wall Street, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, The Doors, Natural Born Killers, etc.

The Players

Mike Nichols - Working Girl, Silkwood, The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnal Knowledge, Postcards from the Edge, Charlie Wilson's War, etc.

Spike Lee - Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, Girl 6, Jungle Fever, He Got Game, Mo Better Blues, etc.

Robert Altman - Gosford Park, Short Cuts, The Player, Nashville, MASH, Popeye, A Prairie Home Companion, etc.

Storytellers

Ron Howard - A Beautiful Mind, Cocoon, Willow, Parenthood, Frost/Nixon, Apollo 13, Backdraft, etc.

Sidney Lumet - Network, Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men, All the King's Men, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, etc.

Clint Eastwood - Mystic River, Unforgiven, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby, etc.

Funny Bones

Mel Brooks - Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, The History of the World: Part I, The Producers, etc.

Woody Allen - Bullets Over Broadway, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Deconstructing Harry, Interiors, Annie Hall, etc.

David O. Russell - Spanking the Monkey, I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings, Flirting with Disaster, etc.

Blockbusters

Steven Spielberg - Schindler's List, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan, E.T.: Extra-Terrestrial, etc.

James Cameron - Titanic, The Terminator I, II, True Lies, The Abyss, etc.

Robert Zemekis - Forrest Gump, Back to the Future I, II, III, Cast Away, Romancing the Stone, Beowulf, etc.

Below Radar

Steven Soderbergh - Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven, etc.

Darren Aronofsky - Requiem for a Dream, Pi, The Fountain, The Wrestler, etc.

Spike Jonze - Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, assorted videos, etc.

Nineties Mixer

M. Night Shamalan - The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village, Unbreakable, etc.

Tim Burton - Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Sweeney Todd, Batman, Big Fish, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, etc.

Kevin Smith - Dogma, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Clerks, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, etc.

The Real and the Un-real

George Lucas - Star Wars, American Graffiti, The Phantom Menace, Revenge of the Sith, etc

Errol Morris - The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Mr. Death, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Gates of Heaven, etc.

Michael Moore - Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine, Sicko, Roger and Me, etc.

Somewhere's Else

David Lynch - The Elephant Man, Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr., Blue Velvet, Dune, etc.

Roman Polanski - The Pianist, Tess, Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, etc.

Milos Foreman - Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Man on the Moon, Hair, etc.

Edgy Noir

David Fincher - Se7en, Fight Club, Alien 3, Panic Room, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, etc

Christopher Nolan - Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Imsomnia, etc.

Terry Gilliam - The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Meaning of Life, etc.

Underrated

Peter Weir - The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society, Witness, Fearless, etc.

Hal Ashby - The Last Detail, Being There, Coming Home, Shampoo, Harold and Maude, etc

Robert Redford - Ordinary People, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, Lions for Lambs, etc.

Also-rans

Gus Van Sant - Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Finding Forrester, etc.

Ang Lee - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain, etc.

Terrence Malick - The Thin Red Line, Badlands, Days of Heaven, etc.

Big Timers

John Ford - The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, How Green Was My Valley, Stagecoach, The Informer, etc.

Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho, North by Northwest, Spellbound, Lifeboat, Rebecca, etc.

Elia Kazan - A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, America, America, East of Eden, Gentleman's Agreement, etc.

Outsiders

Ingmar Bergman - The Magic Flute, Persona, Wild Strawberries, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, etc.

Akira Kurosawa - Ran, Kagemusha, Rashomon, Stray Dog, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, etc.

Federico Fellini - Amacord, Fellini - Satyricon, 8½, La Dolce Vita, etc.

Old Timers

John Huston - The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, Moulin Rouge (1952), The Red Badge of Courage, Prizzi's Honor, Annie, etc.

Billy Wilder - Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Sunset Blvd., The Lost Weekend, Double Indemnity, etc.

Orson Welles - Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Stranger, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, etc.

Next Monday I'll post my favorites - and you'll see some of my cinema deficiencies (as is apparent below).

Bonus: A film addict's checklist. Compare to me or jkottke. Nice. tjc

Editor's note: Whenever I can't think of one specific topic to focus and elaborate on, I just choose a few and discuss each one a little bit. It's my own little Hypertext Bazaar, if you will. Read iDigress, Part 1 and Part 2.

This...

Brooke and I went to Solly Brothers Farm in Ivyland, PA on Tuesday to buy our Christmas Tree. I love Brooke to death, but she's brutal when it comes to picking our tree. Always searching for "the perfect tree," Brooke walks me through each aisle at least four times looking for a tree that "speaks to her." It wasn't too bad this year, but after making her realize that the tree she wanted could have doubled for the Griswold Family Christmas Tree, we finally found one suitable enough for our cozy apartment. We decorated Wednesday night, and I have to say, it looks gorgeous.

That...

I am a Mac and have been since 1997. On Monday, I was robbed of my manhood.

I was informed last month that my school district, in an effort to save money, will be switching from Macs to PCs in the elementary schools. D-Day was on Monday. I turned in my PowerBook G4 and received an HP Compaq 6510B. First of all, the thing is a total piece of crap; it crashed already. Second, it's more expensive than a new MacBook, so that was a complete lie. What the hell?

Frustrated and depressed, Brooke and I have decided to sell our iMac G4 and buy a new MacBook for home use. It's an amazing piece of machinery and quite possibly the best purchase we've ever made.

The Other Thing

Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings ended yesterday. While I have mocked stat geeks in the past, I am a total hot stove junkie. MLB Trade Rumors becomes my home page for the week, and I bounce around from site to site looking for latest updates. The New York Yankees made the biggest splash with their record-breaking signing of CC Sabathia, while the New York Mets improved their team the most. Our beloved World Series Champions, the Philadelphia Phillies, didn't do much, but rumors are swirling around Derek Lowe, Chan Ho Park and Raul Ibanez.

Only time will tell.

Update: On Friday morning, the Philadelphia Phillies signed leftfielder Raul Ibanez to a 3 year, $30 million contract.

The American Coal Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity has launched a clean coal campaign ad for the holidays. Clever, but complete bull. jmj

Dubner over at Freakonomics ties the current situation involving Blagojevich in Chicago with the sumo wrestlers who fixed matches and how the the situational similarities may lead us to a less corrupt political climate moving forward. At least in the short term. eab

Following the Blagojevich situation, Marginal Revolution, after coming across how much a Senate seat is actually worth, asks, doesn't 500K$ seem a bit cheap? eab

And to finish the trifecta of Balgojevich related pieces - The NY Times reports that this sort of corruption has quite a long history. eab

Continuing with Tim's notes on intelligence from Monday, we are now entering the age of mass intelligence. (via kottke) eab

Highlighted by CC Sabathia's record-breaking deal with the New York Yankees, 11 Major League Baseball players were either traded or signed with new teams yesterday bringing the Winter Meetings total to 29 players. The hot stove is on fire! jmj

Reusable food delivery containers. You simply swap clean ones kept at your house with the delivery guy when he drops off your food - keeping the cycle going. Somewhat reminds me of the neighborhood umbrella share (Dutch Umbrella) that my neighborhood has. Many of the local restaurants, pubs, stores and coffee shops keep umbrellas on hand that you can take if necessary and then return to any other participating establishment. A movement that has succeeded so wonderfully that many other parts of the city now participate. eab

A new study shows that people who carry a variant of the FTO gene, which is linked to obesity, eat an average of 100 extra calories per meal. jmj

To network and industry insiders the NBC-Leno deal is symptomatic of bigger problems that the network and industry are facing. But does the deal actually relegate the network to second tier status? eab

The Waltz. 1-2-3. 1-2-3.

Something about the waltz has always intrigued me. It seems rarely do you find its presence in contemporary music. How rare? Well let's see.

In my iTunes I have a collection of songs from the 60's and 70's as part of the Time Life AM Gold Collection.

The waltzes I found in that collection are as follows, beginning with what is perhaps one of the most popular modern day pop waltzes there is.

The Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody
Sonny & Cher - I got you babe
Jackie DeShannon - What the world needs now
Tom Jones - What's new Pussycat
Dusty Springfield - You don't have to say you love me
Percy Sledge - When a man loves a woman
The Mamas and the Papas - Dedicated to the one I Love
Steve Winwood - How can I be sure
Aaron Neville - Tell it like it is
The Casinos - Then you can tell me Goodbye
The Vogues - Turn Around, Look at Me - (lyrically very creppy)
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Ooh Baby Baby

Beyond that though I was curious as to how many waltzes I came across in my music collection that is more contemporary (this does not necessarily mean new but anything not a part of the AM Gold Collection). Unfortunately I only have my iTunes at my current disposal so any CD's I have yet to burn will not be included at this time. So if you like the waltz you will probably enjoy most of the list below. I could only get through A-F as of yet (it's a tedious process). I'll update it as time passes.

Oh and I'm not a music major by any means so if I included some tunes I shouldn't have feel free to let me know and send some education my way. Thanks.

And in my small collection of Blind Melon I was somewhat surprised to not find a waltz. Any fan out there know of one they could send along?

Anyway, here you go.

List is in Artist - Album - Song order.

Album, as in the album its on in my collection at least.

AA Bondy - American Hearts - There's A Reason
AA Bondy - American Hearts - American Hearts
AA Bondy - American Hearts - Of the Sea
The Animals - Retrospective - House of the Rising Sun
The Arcade Fire - Funeral - Crown of Love
Badly Drawn Boy - The hour of The Bewilderbeast - Stone On the Water
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin - Marry Song
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin - Cigarettes, Wedding Bands
The Beatles - Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (verse)
The Beatles - Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - She's Leaving Home
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue - One by One
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - We are nowhere and it's Now
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - Land Locked Blues
Cake - Comfort Eagle - World of Two
Cake - Fashion Nugget - Sad Songs and Waltzes
Cake - Prolonging the Magic - Mexico
Cake - Prolonging the Magic - Where would I Be?
Calexico - Feast Of Wire - Sunken Waltz
Calexico - Feast of Wire - Woven Birds
Calexico - Feast Of Wire - Across the Wire
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder - Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant
Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty - Avalanche in B
Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty - On the Night My Love Broke Through
Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty - Cryptomnesia
Cold War Kids - Robbers & Cowards - Pregnant
Cold War Kids - Robbers & Cowards - Lord Have Mercy on Me (hidden track)
Coldplay - Parachutes - Shiver
Coldplay - Parachutes - Sparks
Coldplay - Parachutes - We Never Change
David Gray - White Ladder - This Year's Love
Death Cab for Cutie - The Photo Album - Styrofoam Plates
Death Cab for Cutie - Plans - Stable Song
Death Cab for Cutie - Something about Airplanes - Line of Best Fit
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife - After the Bombs
The Doors - Best of - Spanish Caravan
The Doves - Lost Souls - Sea Song
The Doves - Lost Souls - The Man Who Told Everything
The Doves - Lost Souls - Zither
The Doves - Some Cities - Someday Soon
Eliott Smith - Either/Or - Between the Bars
Feist - Let it Die - Let it Die
Feist - The Reminder - The Park
Fionna Apple - Tidal - Sullen Girl
Fionna Apple - Tidal - Shadowboxer
Fionna Apple - Tidal - Slow Like Honey
Fionna Apple - Tidal - The Child is Gone

Today is the 27 year anniversary of the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. His murderer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, is still on death row in the most controversial murder trial in United States history. jmj

How is determining just how good a college quarterback may be in the pros like evaluating a teacher. Gladwell enlightens, in the way only Gladwell can. eab

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 was released to the public Monday, but Mozilla is already targeting Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for a February 2009 release. jmj

I've been enamored with the abilities of the touch pad on my new MacBook. The NY Times though breaks down the wonder that is our own touch pads if you will. eab

Just like everything else, the iPhone will soon be coming to Wal*Mart. jmj

Chuck Klosterman takes aim at the long delayed, greatly hyped, Chinese Democracy in the context needed for a proper review. eab

After 23 seasons with 355 victories and a record 18 Gold Gloves, pitcher Greg Maddux officially retired yesterday. jmj

I was particularly interested in the De La Hoya / Pacquiao fight this past weekend. Being a Pacquiao fan more so then a boxing fan I was hoping Pac Man would pull the upset. For those of you who don't know much about why this fight was a big deal check out the pre fight breakdown and take note of the weight and size disparity between the two fighters. And don't forget to check out the post fight recap to read about Pac Man's dominant performance. eab

Hilarious self defense video. (via cynical-c) eab

(Observer Drujba)

A new study shows that intelligence is a major player in the hunt for a suitable mate.

These biologists believe intelligence, as manifested in things like artistic and musical ability, is such a reliable indicator of underlying genetic fitness that it has been chosen by members of the opposite sex over the millennia. In the ensuing arms race to show off and get a mate it has been exaggerated in the way that a peacock's tail is. This process of sexual selection, Dr Miller and his followers believe, is the reason people have become so brainy.

What does this mean?

It means we, as a race, are genetically programmed to weed out the deficient in favor of the efficient. We are getting smarter because we are designed to promote intelligence. We don't even need to think about it.
Some people will provide anecdotal evidence that suggests beauty, not intelligence, is the major characteristic that governs our mate search. For some, beauty very well may be the characteristic that consciously guides the search, but I suspect that the person seeking beauty over intelligence will find over time and under the glossy exterior of beauty that a severe lack of intelligence is a dealbreaker.
The search for beauty without intelligence may be rooted in the need for power. Having a jaw-dropping mate gives the perception that one is powerful. People who want power convince themselves that beauty denotes this and is necessary to achieve a power position. But this is a bad short-term solution to a long-term problem. Long-term power is derived from knowledge, not beauty. Beauty can help achieve power in the short-term and will not affect it in the long-term, unless there is a genuine lack of intelligence. Just ask Nick Lachey.

Look at the prefrontal cortex on her!

Some in the media are celebrating the brainy renaissance. See: Wired Magazines Sexiest Geeks of 2007.
So beauty is not inherently dumb. That is a bad correlation for anyone to assume. Realistically, they can coexist. But intelligence is the key. So get smart. And get some.

This past Wednesday night, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was lit in New York City in front of the thousands that were in attendance and the millions that watched from their living rooms.

The Christmas season has officially begun in America.