Weekend shorts.

Here we are, well into January, but you know, I'll stop pointing to year-end lists when interesting ones stop appearing. And the team at Hollywood Bitchslap have drawn up a very interesting one indeed: "The Best Unbought, Unseen and Annoyingly Undistributed Films of 2004," presented in alphabetical order. I'll just mention one to note that it made the top of a few best and worst lists from German critics this year, Muxmäuschenstill.

More at HB: Scott Weinberg has compiled a list of "The Scientifically-Proven Worst Movies of 2004" and David Cornelius has found "Ten Hidden STV Gems for 2004." That's straight-to-video, don't you know. More traditional bests-n-worsts lists: Erik Childress, Collin Sauter, Jason Whyte and Peter Sobczynski.

Weinberg, by the way, has also already begun interviewing filmmakers headed to Slamdance and Sundance.

George Fasel has chosen a fine time to compile his "Best, Ever" list.

Darren Hughes and his readers discuss "The Precise Moment John Cassavetes's Faces Becomes One of My All-Time Favorite Films."

Mack at Twitch has found a delicious bit of news at the Korea Times. As Kim Tae-jong reports, Shinya Tsukamoto, Song Il-gon and Apichatpong Weerasethakul are contributing to the as yet uncreatively titled omnibus film project, "Short Digital Films by Three Filmmakers."

"For [Kinji] Fukasaku, the Yakuza series was always a fundamentally political work," writes in Sam Sweet Stop Smiling. "He viewed both the Yakuza organizations, as well as the violence they performed, as products of an emotionally and financially torn post-war Japan."

"The most obvious point to make is that year after year fewer Americans leave their house to see movies." Studio by studio, Leonard Klady breaks down the majors' performances during 2004 for Movie City News; previously: "Comparatively speaking gross revenues crept up by 2% from 2003 and admissions declined by almost 6%. I've probably written a comparable scenario 15 times in the last 20 years."

The distribution system may be undergoing radical changes, but getting your film made, at least the old-fashioned way, is still tough. And once it's made, getting it seen is even tougher, Adam Leipzig, prez of National Geographic Feature Films, reminds us in the New York Times. He lays out the stats of getting through each obstacle on a long, long course.

Also in the NYT:

• Emily Eakin reviews Stanley Crouch's The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity: "And in a long, meandering essay on Quentin Tarantino, the director of Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill epic, he praises the filmmaker as a moralist intent on debunking popular culture's romanticization of violent crime."

• Anna Kisselgoff on Belated Premiere, Victor Bocharov's doc on Aleksandr Shiryaev's ballet films shot between 1906 and 1909.

• Melena Z Ryzik on Michael Moore's makeover, pulled off by Laurent D of Privé Salons, who deemed coming up with the new look, "a great challenge."

Heading to Sundance? See Cronicas, advises Jeffrey Wells.

Why is swag more plentiful than ever? Because advertising can only reach so far; ink's better, writes David Weddle in a piece for the Los Angeles Times Magazine that isn't exclusively about the movie biz, of course.

Dan Glaister fills British readers of the Guardian in on the latest goofy battle in America's endless culture wars: right-wingers are calling for a boycott of advertisers supporting Desperate Housewives.

Also:

• Pop movies: The BBC broadcasts The Fall: The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E Smith on Friday, and Austin Collings meets the man himself; and Johnny Sharp thinks Control, Anton Corbijn's biopic of Ian Curtis just might work out.

• Joe Queenan looks ahead to January's slate of premieres in the UK.

• Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week: Jules Dassin's Night and the City.

Having a hard time keeping track of all the headlines Angelina Jolie's sparked in the past few years? The Independent's Andrew Buncombe is here to help.

What are you doing on Darwin Day? No plans yet? You don't have all the time in the world, you know. Comes up on February 12. At Movie Habit, Marty Mapes explains and offers a list of "ten scientific, skeptic, atheist, or humanist movies appropriate for a quiet little Darwin Day celebration." And on a neighboring page, a top ten. Via AKrizman.

Posted by dwhudson at January 15, 2005 9:41 AM