WP.

I agree with your comments on De Palma's skill as a director, but again, i'd put him in the same superficiality boat as Hitchcock. I think you've already predicted that anyway.

Don Lope.

I agree with your comments about the progression of Kinski's character in Aguirre. However, most of that is down to the writing and directing, kinski wouldn't have decided those things, that's Herzog. Kinski had an amazing allure and was an amazingly interesting actor on the surface, but he's always just Kinski and that's why i'd say his just "performing", performing himself, his own issues, his own idiosyncracies. His work is wonderful as a result, but he doesn't inhabit his characters, he overcomes them, overbears them and turns them into part of his own personality. That's why i wouldn't rate his work as character acting. Of course he was brilliant for what he was though.