Bests and shorts.

Jeff Reichert opens the new "Year in Review" issue of Reverse Shot with a bang, claiming that Kill Bill, Volume 1 "should be the standard-bearer for the first decade of the 21st century." It's an interesting argument, one that gets especially meaty in the last paragraph on Tarantino and The RZA, but I'm not sure it's a winning argument. Regardless, even if the top ten RS editors eventually end up with isn't exactly full of surprises, the issue itself is thick with fresh takes on films you'll want to think about again one last time before this Sunday evening well and truly puts 2003, the year in movies, to rest.

To the scourge of the present. "I don't know about you, but I was sick of Mel Gibson's Jesus movie about six months ago." Nonetheless, John Powers opens the LA Weekly's Passion package with an excellent piece rooted in perceptive observation: "With The Passion of the Christ, our modern secular culture has bumped against a homegrown explosion of fundamentalist belief. Where the Singaporeans and French confront such an issue by banning Muslim head scarves in public schools, Americans do it by talking about a motion picture."

Scott Foundas sees the film as pure blockbuster, but not particularly bad on those terms, while what bugs Ella Taylor is that "Gibson shows himself medievally, ardently, not to say sexually addicted to violence, to a degree that far outstrips what we know of the period's excesses." Also in the LA Weekly:

• Brendan Bernhard's caught Ripley's Game and finds that "[John] Malkovich is perfect as Tom Ripley, American expat, connoisseur and gentleman sociopath."
• Nikke Finke is still tracking the Disney mess, blow by blow.
• John Payne gets Neil Young to explain why he supported Reagan but is now "a very anti-Bush guy"; but mostly, of course, the interview and cover story is about Greendale.

Marjorie Baumgarten talks to Young as well for the Austin Chronicle. Also in this week's issue, Courtney Fitzgerald: "During my hunt for the Austin gaffer, I kept hearing Smiley's name. He'd either gaffed or 'juiced' (as an electrician) on Dazed and Confused, Waiting for Guffman, four Robert Rodriguez films, and '35 or 40' other projects from his 20 years here in what Smiley calls 'the velvet rut.'"

The SXSW Film Conference and Festival 2004 is beginning to look mighty inviting. Among the highlights:

• The world premiere of Bush's Brain, a doc directed by Michael Paradies Shoob and Joseph Mealey and based on the book by Wayne Slater and James Moore. Potentially as fun as 2002's showing of Journeys With George.
• A tentatively scheduled "Conversation with Jonathan Demme."
• And the big "One-on-One with Jim Jarmusch and Richard Linklater."

Elvis Mitchell, who usually attends as well, has a piece in the New York Times today on the state of black cinema. The occasion is "the widest opening of an African-American-theme movie ever" for Barbershop 2: Back in Business.

Via Movie City News, a story Susan Wloszczyna and Anthony DeBarros on a USA Today study suggesting that critics have more influence than many (well, than I) would have thought:

On a four-star scale, for every half-star the critics awarded, the box office rose as much as $26.5 million... Critical opinion was a more important indicator of box office performance than a host of other factors, including how much the film cost to make, its genre and whether it starred an A-list actor. The only other variable as important as critics: the number of theaters in which the movie played.

Ron Mwangaguhunga really wants Bill Murray to win that Oscar.

Posted by dwhudson at February 26, 2004 7:30 AM