Quentin Tarantino | No 8 | Film Power 100
Director: Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction
Had we put together this list two or three years ago, it would have been a different story. Death Proof, his half of the Grindhouse collaboration with Robert Rodriguez, was a flop, and it looked as if Quentin Tarantino, 48, was on the slide. But Hollywood loves a good comeback, and last year's -Inglourious Basterds was a major smash. His most profitable film to date, it picked up eight Oscar nominations, and suddenly Tarantino no longer looked like a dead weight from some hipster past. It would have been a sad way to go, for no single film-maker has had more impact on contemporary cinema, intellectually speaking, than Tarantino. His 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs, was an icon of instant movie cool, enshrining, and to a great extent instigating, the modern habit of recycling and quoting pop -culture in digestible morsels. His follow-up, Pulp Fiction, won the Palme d'Or, and took his brand of postmodern slickness to a mainstream audience. Since then, Tarantino has acted as much as a curator than a moviemaker. His early attempt at creating a bespoke distribution label fizzled, but he has sponsored film festivals (including the Grindhouse festival in his home town of LA), martial arts -movies (he "presented" Iron Monkey and Hero) and horror (ditto for Eli Roth's Hostel). In terms of his wider impact on film culture, the panel pointed out that anyone whose films can be ripped off by successive waves of directors for nearly 20 years is clearly a lasting and major influence.