Is Chris Nolan really the best living director?

Entertainment Weekly just released a staff-wide list of the 50 Greatest Working Directors in Hollywood as part of its Oscar coverage.

While these lists are never something to write home about and the order of said directors could be endlessly debated, the number one spot shocked me.

Christopher Nolan took the top position, with Martin Scorsese at number two.

Number two! Now there’s no doubt that Nolan is highly talented; he is one of the finest new directors of the decade and a truly rising talent who arguably deserves a place in the top 10.

But isn’t it jumping the gun a little to say that the guy best known for making two Batman movies is, in any definition of the word, better than the filmmaker of the iconic “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas,” as well as “Raging Bull,” easily one of the greatest films of all time?

I’m not sure how EW decided on this list, and it doesn’t look to have any collaboration from its two resident critics, but it almost looks like they asked people to shout out names of directors and left it in whatever order they came up with.

That might explain the inclusion of all five of 2010’s Oscar nominated directors in the top 25, with James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow taking spots three and four respectively.

I also wouldn’t disagree with any of the directors on this list (no Michael Bay or McG, thank God), but I guess I would move around a few, futile as that might be.

Paul Greengrass and Darren Aronofsky are fantastic in my book, and neither cracked the top 25. I think Andrew Stanton (47) has made slightly better films than his Pixar counterpart Brad Bird (21), although it is a delight to see Hayao Miyazaki slip in at number 10.

I could go on, and the more I think about it, the more I realize how difficult this is, or even how much I’m beginning to agree with the list.

I think the thing this list most accomplishes is proving that there are directors that in recent years have gone toe to toe with the living legends and even surpassed them.

We can now point to artists like Spike Jonze, Jason Reitman, Danny Boyle, Guillermo Del Toro, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Pedro Almodovar and especially Nolan and come away with a sense of faith and dignity still left in the industry.

They might not have a name like the Revisionist, “New Hollywood” directors of the ’70s, but maybe it’s time to start.

So long as it’s not number one.