BEST OF 2003
Wherein the 2LCs list their Top 10 yadas of the year...

Brenda Cowan's Lists

OK, here is the traditional year-end, start-of-the-New-Year best of list. For those of you who care and those of you who don't, I've made lists of my top ten favorite albums and films for 2003. Now, I've put them in no particular order, as which one I prefer has a tendency to depend on my mood, the weather and the latest annoyance from Washington (D.C. that is). So, here goes:

MUSIC

1.) Lucinda Williams, World Without Tears
2.) Elvis Costello, North
3.) Johnny Cash, America IV: The Man Comes Around
4.) The White Stripes, Elephant
5.) Patty Loveless, On Your Way Home
6.) Gillian Welch, Soul Journey
7.) The Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music
8.) June Carter Cash, Wildwood Flower
9.) Radiohead, Hail To the Thief
10.) Paul Westerberg, Come Feel Me Tremble

FILM

1.) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2.) Bend It Like Beckham
3.) American Splendor
4.) Lost In Translation
5.) Mystic River
6.) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl
7.) A Mighty Wind
8.) The Magdalene Sisters
9.) Whale Rider
10.) Thirteen

By tomorrow I will want to throw some titles out and add new ones, but as of this evening, these are my choices. They represent my year for me for various reasons. Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon vocalized my pain, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Return of the King helped me escape from it all, and Lucinda Williams just gave it all some needed rock 'n' roll. So, off and running into the New Year and let's see what the creative minds and the mindless ones that think they create can come up with for us this year.

Désirée I. Guzzetta's Lists

FILM

My lists with explanations for my choices. Listed in order because we likeses order:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - Epic, fantastic, triumphant--and I'll stop now before I get redundant. Seen it two times and counting.
2. Finding Nemo - Utterly delightful film that's good for both kids and adults. Seen it three times and counting.
3. Mystic River - Old-fashioned drama with serious themes and heavy emotional impact.
4. Lost in Translation - Offbeat, charming, and intellectual.
5. Kill Bill--Vol. 1 - The sheer joy of filmmaking, even if it's excessively gory. But it's joyful gore!
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl - Johnny Depp's eccentric performance was a hoot, and the rest of the film was fun, too.
7. Bad Santa - Best comedy I saw all year. Who knew watching a group of reprobates would be so much fun?
8. School of Rock - Another good comedy, only with a nicer class of people than in Bad Santa.
9. Bubba Ho-Tep - Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK battle a soul-sucking mummy. Campbell and Davis give two of the best performances of the year. Seek ye out this film!
10. 28 Days Later - Angst and isolation and turbo-zombies, oh, my!

Honorable Mentions: Monster, X2: X-Men United, Bend It Like Beckham, Identity, A Mighty Wind, The Italian Job

MUSIC

1. Tie: Molotov, Dance and Dense Denso and Café Tacuba, Cuatro Caminos - I couldn't make up my mind which of these two amazing albums should be #1 on my list, so they share the top spot. Molotov's disc is a bludgeoning force of nature, while Tacuba's rocks a bit more gently. Both are ingeniously creative, though Tacuba branches out further in terms of genres tackled. What can't be denied about both bands is their fervent love of music, which is transferred to the listener via sonic blasts of inventiveness. I am still listening to both albums nearly every day.

2. Kinky, Atlas - Inventive cross-genre music from Monterrey, Mexico. Kinky mixes elements of Latin rhythms (such as cumbia), electronica, funk, and rock with DJ humor, producing beats that will have your booty shaking whether you want it to or not. My suggestion: Give in and enjoy it--there's no shame in loving fun dance music.

3. OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below - How do I love OutKast? Let me count the ways. Actually, that would take too long, so let me say that all the hype you've heard about this album? Totally justified. Andre 3000 and Big Boi take hip hop and turn it upside down, sideways, and all other ways in a sonically spectacular fashion. True greatness all around.

4. White Stripes, Elephant - More-than-worthy follow-up to White Blood Cells. I have a weird affinity for "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself," probably because I hear it on the radio at least twice every work day. Meg White even gets to sing this time out (and she's not half-bad, either).

5. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Take Them On, On Your Own - Successors to the throne left vacant by the disbanded The Jesus and Mary Chain, B.R.M.C. tones down the feedback in favor of a leaner sound. The band's latest collection got my motor running in overdrive and I loved it.

6. Jet, Get Born - Sometimes being derivative isn't such a bad thing, as Jet proves with its giddy collection, including the Iggy Pop riffing of "Are You Gonna Be My Girl." One song even melds Tom Petty, AC/DC, and The Zombies. Jet takes the familiar and stomps its own personality into it. The result is an album that gets the ol' loins stirring and frankly, how good could a crotch rock album be if it didn't get the naughty bits tingly?

7. The Darkness, Permission To Land - The Darkness is what results when you smash Queen and AC/DC together, sprinkle on a little David Lee Roth, and puree it all in a blender. Catsuit-clad lead singer/guitarist Justin Hawkins has a great rock yelp/operatic falsetto, and the band's stadium rock music is crunchy as hell. The Darkness is either a po-mo ironic statement or wholeheartedly sincere--debate on this continues--but they are undeniably an audacious [brown word]-load of fun in a genre that has been nothing but boringly craptacular for years. I even caught myself playing air guitar while listening to the CD. Dammmn, baby!

8. Akwid, Proyecto Akwid - Brothers Sergio and Francisco Gómez make excellent Urban Regional rap on their debut CD. Not experimental in the way OutKast is, but then again, there's nothing wrong with producing solid music that stays within its genre lines. Especially when it's solid and good.

9. Supagroup, Supagroup - I just realized how much crotch rock is on this list and, like Supagroup, all I can say is, "What's Your Problem?" The band's kickass rock licks and brattitude make for a head-bangy tonic. Listen to it. Embrace it. God knows I did!

10. Garageland, Last Exit To Garageland - This album from New Zealand's indie rockers would have placed higher except it's a reissue of a 1997 album. It still deserves your attention, though. Hook-happy alternative rock to satisfy the discriminating music fan. Plus the reissue contains eight bonus tracks.

Honorable Mentions: The Strokes, Room On Fire; Bruce Springsteen, The Essential Bruce Springsteen; Warren Zevon, The Wind; Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Greendale; Lucinda Williams, World Without Tears; Paul Westerberg, Come Feel Me Tremble; The Lisa Marr Experiment, American Jitters; The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow

© 2002-08 Brenda Cowan & Désirée Guzzetta/Two Lazy Critics^TM. All Rights Reserved. May Not Be Reprinted Without Permission.
Two Lazy Critics^TM. Logo Designed by Tammy Ferranti. Website Designed by Amanda Paulette and maintained by the Two Lazy Critics^TM.
To report broken links or for general site information, translate the following into the proper form (look at how the site name is spelled out) and put it in your favorite e-mail client: info AT 2 La-zee Critics DOT com.
The Two Lazy Critics^TM brought to you by four not-so-lazy parental units.

All images (specifically, "official movie site" images, album covers, etc.) included on our site are used as allowed via copyright laws in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Office's "fair use" ruling for use of images in critiquing and reviewing and are copyright of their respective studios and/or companies and all that good legal stuff. Any images used that don't fall into the above categories are copyright of the respective people who took them and gave us permission to put the images on our site.