Shorts, 4/2.

Artforum loves a good excuse to slip something about the cinema into nearly each issue, and for April, the Centre Pompidou has provided the perfect excuse, a retrospective of films, videos and installations by Chantal Akerman. Here she is, saying lots to Miriam Rosen and to us, even while protesting that she can't:

You have to be very, very calm. When I edit, when I sense that I'm at the quarter mark or halfway through the film, I begin to screen it for myself, with my editor, Claire Atherton, with whom I've worked for years—almost by osmosis. We close the curtains, take the phones off the hook, and try to have a floating gaze, as an analyst might call it. And we say, "That's it!" Why? It's inexplicable. And that's why it's difficult for me to talk about it.

Also at the Centre Pompidou: "Did You Say 'Bollywood'?"

Today the "Green" in "GreenCine" is for envy. Though, of course, Greg Allen has actually earned the right to schmooze, whereas we... are still working on it: More from An Evening With Sofia Coppola.

The Atlantic is running Peter Ustinov's 1966 Albanian travelogue.

"I can't believe he's in there doing to my bathroom what he's done to the economy!" Ba-da-boom. That's Whoopi Goldberg's sitcom character expressing her displeasure at President W's use of her facilities in Jim Rutenberg's piece in the New York Times on how Hollywood writers and producers are daring just a little bit more to criticize the current administration.

"Some of the brightest and bravest work staged by modern French film-makers has its roots in British soil," argues Ryan Gilbey in the Independent. "Now, more than at any time since the late 1950s and 1960s and the dynamic beginnings of Free Cinema and the French New Wave, the two countries that Truffaut considered so incompatible have experienced a creative convergence." Also:

• Roman Polanski's recollections of his own career in a recent public discussion are rounded into essayish form.
• Ciar Byrne reports on the stock market flotation of the Pinewood Shepperton studios.
• Leslie Felperin interviews Viggo Mortensen.

Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright and the other voices behind The Simpsons are striking for higher pay, reports Matt Born in the Telegraph.

The Guardian's Monster package ought to be pretty complete now. Having interviewed Patty Jenkins and Christina Ricci, they've now got Charlize Theron on the cover of the Friday Review. Also:

• "The movie that changed my life": Claire Danes, Sofia Coppola, Neil LaBute, Spike Lee, Alan Cumming, Tim Robbins, Benicio Del Toro, Rosie Perez, Parker Posey, John Turturro, Chloë Sevigny and Stanley Tucci.
• Molly Haskell asks, "How good a subject is the stymied writer?" Short answer: "It's one that resonates like hell for writers, but not for anyone else."
• Walter Salles: "I believe that there is not just one Latin American cinema, just as there is no single Brazilian cinema."
• Steve Rose, briefly, on the Screen China program at the Odeon Covent Garden and, just as briefly, on Bela Tarr.
• And via Movie City News, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni's top ten books on Hollywood.

To wrap on an upbeat note on this Friday, Cindy Pearlman in the Chicago Sun-Times: "'He'd do a cartwheel over it and be very happy. I think the energy of souls reach out and touch us mentally,' Dan Aykroyd told GLARE. He was talking about his friend John Belushi, who was posthumously given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April Fools' Day."

Posted by dwhudson at April 2, 2004 6:25 AM