Reverse Shot. Jarmusch.

Another issue of Reverse Shot, another symposium. But while editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert seem just enthusiastic enough about their choice this time around, they don't seem what you might call wildly enthusiastic: "What we discovered in compiling, assigning, and writing about Jim Jarmusch, upon the occasion of the release of his Cannes Grand Prix-winner Broken Flowers, is that unlike Linklater, who perhaps we had taken for granted all those formative years as we grew into film-lovers and thinkers, Jarmusch perhaps had to unfairly hold the mantle for American Independent Cinema for so long - and his inconsistent yet fascinating output shows that it's obviously been too much for one man to reasonably handle."

James Crawford meets the director and introduces a mini-symposium within the symposioum on Broken Flowers; three takes: Kristi Mitsuda, Chris Wisniewski and Jeff Reichert.

Then, the previous films:

• Nick Pinkerton on Permanent Vacation, "encapsulating what it could've felt like to skulk through a certain time and scene in New York City."

• Michael Joshua Rowin on Stranger Than Paradise and how Jarmusch "straddles a strange line of hipdom, with one foot in the old-school club of hepcats that saw its decline during his formative early years as a filmmaker, and the other in the irony-saturated, history-burdened, hip-exhausted present."

• Nicolas Rapold on the "beguiling" Down By Law.

• Suzanne Scott on Mystery Train, "focused on those scraping and struggling not for greatness or fame but merely the ability to function, to relate, to survive."

• Joanne Nucho on Night on Earth, "a shoddy attempt to bring a kind of poetry to the universal experience between individuals." (Hm, I remember enjoying it at the time, though it's been years.)

• Two takes on the film it's generally agreed here is "the apex of his career" (Koresky and Reichert), Dead Man: Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega and Omar Odeh, followed by another from Travis Mackenzie Hoover on how Dead Man and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai form "a both-sides-now critique of the process of appropriation."

• Eric Hynes on Year of the Horse: "The boldness came... in deciding to make the film about the band, not the man."

• Jeannette Catsoulis on Ghost Dog: "[T]he aura of death hangs over this film from the very first frame."

• Two takes on Coffee and Cigarettes: Elbert Ventura and Tom Carlisle.

That would have been just about enough for RS in its salad days (not that long ago), but there's also a "Spotlight" on Junebug (Catsoulis interviews director Phil Morrison and Mitsuda reviews the film), a "Shot/Reverse Shot" feature in which Pinkerton and Brad Westcott face off over The Devil's Rejects and the current state of horror in general as well as 14 reviews of 13 recent theatrical releases.

But wait... the "new, expanded DVD section" which Pinkerton introduced last issue is still expanding.

Posted by dwhudson at August 16, 2005 9:25 AM