The Brits disagree with me, of course.

A recent poll in Empire magazine ranked Spielberg as the greatest director of all time. The runners-up in the top ten include (in order) Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Akira Kurosawa, Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, Orson Welles and Woody Allen. I find it difficult to believe that voters who would list Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino as the 7th and 8th greatest directors ever had even seen a film by Akira Kurosawa. I assume Empire's readership skews fairly young. I find the inclusion of Tarantino particularly amusing, considering that he’s directed a total of four films (five if you count Kill Bill as two). By the by, of the 20 major films Martin Scorsese since 1972's Boxcar Bertha, I’ve liked 11. There are also more (5) that I haven't seen (compared to only 2 for Spielberg), which leaves only 4 that I haven't liked. Probably not coincidentally, on my list of stinkers is his one Tom Cruise flick: The Color of Money.