In May of 1970, Neil Young quickly wrote a song called "Ohio," hotly responding to the Kent State shootings, during which the National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others. He recorded it with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, who had just come off a hit record from the previous year, and the song peaked at #14 on the pop charts. Over the years, Young has recorded several such protest and/or political songs, including 1967's "For What It's Worth," 1970's "Southern Man" and 1989's "Rockin' in the Free World," which slyly took a stab at then President George H. W. Bush by mentioning his campaign speech staple "a thousand points of light." Young is now in his 60s and once again something pissed him off to the point that he has gone back to the recording studio. This time though, there's no beating around the bush (so to speak). No more messages hidden inside innocuous song titles. This time we get "Let's Impeach the President."

Every Friday morning, when I'm surfing the new movie reviews and I flip over to Ebert's site, I'm always a little surprised to see a new review for some movie that came out back when he was sidelined by cancer. Atop each of these retro reviews -- which I think I own the copyright on -- he affixes the following simple tag: "Doubling back to pick up some titles I missed while ill." This past Friday, he panned Spider-Man 3, giving it a weak two-star review. He cites his displeasure with the film's lack of a compelling villain and goes into detail about his problems with the symbiote, which he didn't enjoy at all. He also doesn't like Mary Jane anymore.

Children of Men and the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut up and Sing have both been retro-awarded high marks -- I agree with the latter verdict. The Fountain, a movie that was on my top ten list of that year, is mildly panned although what's most interesting about the review is that Ebert spends much of it musing on the concept of a retro review in itself. "Although as a doctoral candidate in English I was advised to be familiar with the existing criticism on a work before venturing to write my own, as a film critic I am usually writing before other reviews have even been published," he writes.

The Lives of Others and Zodiac get four stars -- Ebert's been a little too generous with the four star rating since his return, by the way -- while Grindhouse is panned for being "an attempt to recreate a double feature that never existed for an audience that no longer exists." I haven't pinned down the exact dates that Ebert was absent, so I have no idea how long his retro-reviewing will go on, but it's fun to read.

The Boston Society of Film Critics is with the majority on who the best actor and actress of 2006 are. It named Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren in those respective categories for its annual awards on Sunday night. But, the rest of the group's choices are another matter. The Departed, which had so far been unrecognized by the AFI, the NYFCO and the LAFCA (it is expected to do better with the NYFCC), won four awards, including best picture, director, supporting actor (not the one you'd think, though) and screenplay. Other surprising picks were Half Nelson's Shareeka Epps for best supporting actress and its director, Ryan Fleck, for best new filmmaker.

In giving so much love to The Departed, the Boston critics come off as simply favoring the film's setting and shooting locations. But, they can't really be that obvious. Besides, they didn't give so much to Mystic River (only best picture and best ensemble) back in 2003, and that film was just as good and just as representative of Beantown.

Check out the whole list of winners after the jump.

Last week, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the announcement that Harvey and Bob Weinstein are producing a gala event to honor Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. After all, the Weinsteins are known for their support of the Democratic party and for their distributing liberal-sided docs like Fahrenheit 9/11 and the new Barbara Kopple film Shut Up & Sing. So, what are they doing hobnobbing with the enemy of their friends? The official reason is that the Weinsteins support Scott's new efforts to sustain environmental friendliness, but a number of people are pointing out other reasons the brothers might desire a good relationship with the retail company.

Radar has a report on some of these reasons, which include the Weinsteins' hopes for priority placement in Wal-Mart's stores and their need for Wal-Mart to go easier on movies depicting sex and drugs. Variety more specifically addressed the Weinsteins' recent control of Genius Products, which will be making straight-to-video, family-friendly films that cater well to Wal-Mart's demographic. Wake-Up Wal-Mart has gone so far as to write a letter of disapproval to the Weinsteins.

So, now what happens when Michael Moore, who is already a critic of Wal-Mart, decides his next activist doc is against the stores? Will the Weinsteins still support their golden boy?

In related news, SpielbergFilms.net is pointing out that Wal-Mart is now selling Poltergeist on DVD for less than $5. It's things like this that make it hard for moviefans to keep up a hatred for the stores, but I think we can all hold out for next year's 25th Anniversary edition, right?