Lists and shorts, 1/2.

Even after the Voice's exhaustive poll, the San Francisco Bay Guardian's year-in-film issue is a mightily impressive reminder of just how strong film coverage in SF's one truly independent alt.weekly actually is. Yes, the Voice is still the nation's biggest and they do know how to sort numbers, but for rich depth and eclectic breadth, the SFBG may well have it walloped this year:

Johnny Ray Huston knocks down three of the year's sacred cows - Mystic River, Irréversible and Capturing the Friedmans - and then kicks 'em around. His list: "best as-yet-undistributed films seen in 2003."

"Whoever said 'Dying is easy, comedy is hard' might've had awards season in mind," writes Dennis Harvey, who then honors comic performances that "struck me as more memorable and skilled than all those involving heavy crying, drug abuse, tragic child loss, and/or Japanese tourism." His list: A straight-up best-of topped by Spider.

This year, someone at every publication's gotta do the docs, and at the SFBG, it's David Fear, who then triple-crowns the obligatory piece with lists: "best baker's dozen" (topped by demonlover), "five for fighting (for): The ones that got away... or never even made it here," and "crème de la crap" (you can pretty much guess the top of that list).

Susan Gerhard introduces her "favorite fictions" and her #1: "As I found with Lost in Translation - which moved from one of my top films of the year to one of my favorite films of all time when I heard the news about Sofia Coppola's marital situation - the very best way to tell the truth is to simply call it a lie." On that very same page is "B Ruby Rich's top 12 (in alphabetical order)."

Millennium Actress tops Patrick Macias's 10, introduced by a terrific piece on our whole Japan thing this year: "Of the bunch, Kill Bill did the best job of conjuring up the feeling of actually being there."

"If you didn't bother with any of the films riding the new wave of Asian-imported horror (such as The Eye), or at least pick up a copy of the new two-disc version of The Hills Have Eyes, your year in horror was pretty bleak," writes Cheryl Eddy. Her list: "random thoughts on 2003," headed up by "Most surprising, in a bad way: Hulk (Ang Lee) and The Matrix Reloaded (Wachowski brothers)."

Kimberly Chun asks, "When did girl power go so bad? How did female bonding get so toxic? Who put the testosterone in the cosmos? Who let the bitches out?" Her top ten's in alphabetical order.

But wait, there's more! A long string of thought-provoking comments from "San Francisco filmmakers and -breakers," including Craig Baldwin, Sam Green, Joel Shepard and fistfuls of others on an eventful year.

The Austin Chronicle's lists pale by comparison, but comparison would hardly be fair. For one thing the current lists issue is spread out over all departments, and for another, there are, after all, only three full-time reviewers on hand to poll. The intro's brief and Marjorie Baumgarten does the honors: "Though not in agreement regarding their order of ranking, Lost in Translation, American Splendor, and Capturing the Friedmans were the only films that all three Chronicle reviewers placed somewhere on their individual Top 10 lists." Each gets to add to those, too, by noting "near misses" and most overrated and underrated films of the year. Austin's undoubtedly had a great year, but to read Marc Savlov's celebration of it, you can't help but cringe a little if you love Austin as I do and wonder if a few hits and fun times aren't going to the city's collective head. In another corner, Courtney Fitzgerald dedicates the issue's "DVD Watch" column to Bill Murray.

Not to be outdone by anyone, David Edelstein's got 34 movies on his list, but fortunately, that's not really the point. He does toodle along entertainly for several paragraphs, hitting the highlights of his choices, but it's actually all for the sake of laying the groundwork for Slate's "Movie Club" which will we'll be able to listen in on starting Monday. This year's members, besides Club Prez Edelstein, will be Manohla Dargis, Sarah Kerr, AO Scott and J. Hoberman. The highlight of this agenda-setter, though, is Edelstein's Field of Dead Poets Award, his explanation its origins and his choice of this year's winner, The Last Samurai, all the way up to the punchline, "Folks, movies can whip you up to root for anything." Now that's good stuff.

Speaking of which, two noteworthy moments of writers' praise for other writers. I've only just now run across this month-old entry from Rick McGinnis at his on-again, off-again movieblog. It's a fan letter, McGinnis says so himself, and it's rather remarkable if for nothing other than the confession tucked away in the mini-autobiography that's part and parcel of the appreciation - the bit about what he envies in all movie writers he loves reading. And the one he's actually writing about is Movie Poop Shoot's DK Holm who writes not one but two columns, "DVD Diatribe" and "Nocturnal Admissions," which happens to be a "Best and Worst of 2003" list at the moment. And Holm does soar as he snatches the scalp of Daniel Mendelsohn not only for just plain not getting Kill Bill but also for making such a show of it in the New York Review of Books.

The second noteworthy moment: Doug Cummings unabashedly and quite justifiably plugging Robin Wood and his magazine, CineAction.

And yet more lists: Shroomy unveils his at Milk Plus and Matt Langdon's garnished his with tempting book and music choices as well.

For relief from all the numbering, though, there's this marvelously meta exercise in Flak: "The Highs (and Lows) of the New York Times Highs (and Lows) of 2003 list."

More unnumbered reminiscences of 2003: Howard Feinstein in indieWIRE on the foreign and homegrown indies of the year - "Let's face it: The imports are generally more mature than their American counterparts" - and Wendy Mitchell recalls New York's best film parties - "Our judging criteria included crowd, drinks, food, music, space, and overall vibe. Oh yes, and we had to be invited. Or at least be brave enough to crash." Nice work if you can get it.

The year ended with a sudden merciless swing of the Grim Reaper's scythe: Anita Mui, Hope Lange and John Gregory Dunne.

Moving on to the non-retrospective shorts... Ouch: Gary Indiana on Errol Morris in Artforum: "[H]e has a definite flair for turning humans into talking sea cucumbers obsessed with philosophical or historical matters clearly beyond their intelligence. That they also seem beyond the director's intelligence accounts for the quirky hilarity that rescues much of Morris's work from being taken seriously."

Apple's pushing Final Cut Pro and more with Joe Cellini's interviews with legendary editor Walter Murch and John Lowry, CEO of Lowry Digital Images. We wouldn't normally link to ads, but the Murch interview is wonderful and just look at that entire wall of G5s behind Lowry.

And wrapping for now, in the LA Weekly, Jay Babcock talks with the absolutely remarkable Alexandro Jodorowsky.

Posted by dwhudson at January 2, 2004 5:54 AM