Lost among Scorcese, Copolla, Speilberg, and Lucas, my two favorite directors of the 1970's remain Hal Ashby and Robert Altman.

Maybe they didn't make greater movies than the others, but they made more personal movies, at least for me.

RIP, Robert Altman.

I'm so upset I can't even spell Coppola and Spielberg correctly.

Even though the Altman movies I saw were a bit hit-and-miss for me, I respected what he stood for among the filmmaking community and am sad to see him go. To stick to the positive, I thought The Player was an excellent movie with some nice satirical jabs at Hollywood.

My Altman faves:

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. Thieves Like Us
3. California Split
4. MASH
5. The Long Goodbye

Oh wow, Jon -- I didn't know about this until I came here. Bummer. For me the favorites are The Player and The Long Goodbye. I liked MASH, too, but like you, I wasn't wild about Nashville. In fact, there's a lot about his directorial style that I wasn't wild about. But he was one of a kind, and when he was good, he was great.

Most of Altman's movies are unbelievably frustrating, at least at first glance. Many of the ones I have seen left me cold and confused (3 Women especially), but it was undeniable that he was a unique and powerful voice. I have never seen a more liberal, personal or thoughtful director and I am very much going to miss him. His speech last year at the Oscar's gave me hope that he would be around for awhile to come, but at least we still have his fantastic collection of movies. My favorites:

Short Cuts
Nashville
Mcabe and Mrs Miller
MASH

Somehow, I believe that I saw M*A*S*H sometime between being 9-12 years old, which seems awfully young now. The only things that probably stood out for me back then that for a brief second you saw a naked Sally Kirkland and that their was a football game.

7 Sorry, I think there were lots of opportunities to see a naked Sally Kirkland, obviously it was Sally Kellerman as the pre-Loretta Swit Hot Lips.

When I think of Robert Altman I always think of the opening scene in the Player. Fred Ward discussing the opening of Touch of Evil and the continuous moving crane shot.

I think tonight is the tenth straight "event episode" on "Heroes". Like a lot of people here, I really like the show, though it has some obvious flaws. The biggest one is the horrible narration at the beginning and end of most episodes. Trying to jam the context and events of every episode into some half brained take on evolution is annoying. However, I certainly look forward to every episode. I show like "Heroes" demonstrates the huge market for solid Sci-Fi out there, and hopefully we will get some decent copy cats.