Shorts, 4/25.

In anticipation of the Edward Hopper exhibition opening in late May at the Tate Modern, Gaby Wood examines what his wife, Josephine Nivison, an artist in her own right, may have sacrificed for his career, and Philip French writes:

Hopper loved the movies. 'When I don't feel in the mood for painting,' he said, 'I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge.' The cinema returned the compliment by turning to him for stylistic inspiration, and film noir became his great love and the area of his chief influence. He created a world of loneliness, isolation and quiet anguish that we call Hopperesque.... Voyeurism has been an unavoidable condition of urban living and moviegoing, and Hopper's pictures spy on people in uncurtained rooms. They are epiphanic moments in someone else's life, stills from a movie we can't quite remember.

Edward Hopper, New York Movie, detail

Todd Haynes is curating an film program to run alongside the exhibition and French's piece suggests which films might be featured. Also in the Guardian and Observer:

• "I was prepared to do for Mike [Hodges] what I wouldn't think of doing for [Bob] Guccione... Actually they conned me into it... Well, the truth is, I hadn't read the script." Malcolm McDowell fesses up to Suzie Mackenzie.
• David Smith profiles Kevin Spacey.
• Rachel Cooke dines with Brit pop star Billie Piper, who tells her about her new film, The Calcium Kid, with Orlando Bloom.
• The Jack Nicholson quiz. (Only 8 out of 10. I'm crushed.)

When the aliens arrive and ask us how we go about living our lives, let's all flatter ourselves and point them to this picturesque family tucked away in the Scottish Highlands: John Byrne, artist and writer, Tilda Swinton, actress, and their six-year-old twins, Honor and Xavier. See Edward Guthmann's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle and see if you don't agree. Also: Aidin Vaziri goes book shopping with John Waters and Delfin Vigil explains where 150 wigs for Hairspray will be coming from.

Tilda Swinton in Caravaggio

More Tilda? Absolutely. Michael Martin interviews her for Nerve.

"He was a photographer really deep in his heart, although he was a good director. He was an incredibly intelligent man. I think the photography led by an edge, not by a lot but by an edge, and it shows. Every picture is like a painting." That's Joe Dunton, who supplied cameras and lenses to Stanley Kubrick in a recent interview conduced by Martin Behrman and observed by "wopizza." Via Coudal Partners.

Sean Smith and Devin Gordon preview the summer movies for Newsweek. Three (Web) pages, lots o' trailers.

J Hoberman traces the fascinating story of the critical and popular reception of High Noon since its premiere in 1952. "[T]he most celebrated western Hollywood ever produced" was written by blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman and hated by überpatriot John Wayne yet eagerly embraced by Democratic and Republican presidents alike. Also in the New York Times:

• Andrew C Revkin reports that NASA's rather rattled by the prospect that journalists might approach the agency for comment on Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow. Both Revkin's piece and Juliette Jowit and Robin McKie's in the Observer point out that environmentalists are split on just how to react to a film that's basically on their side of the global warming argument but whose science is evidently going to be about a plausible as the defeat of an alien civilization with a PowerBook. But whereas the Observer piece quotes most of them scoffing and scouring, Revkin notes that at least the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sees the movie "mainly as an opportunity, not a problem."

• David C Thomas and Laurel Legler, the filmmakers behind MC5: A True Testimonial, could probably have a nice long heart-to-heart with Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields, the pair who've made End of the Century, a doc about the Ramones. As Bill Werde explains, the latter pair "say the movie has not been released after nearly seven years of work because of the very same tenuous relationships [within the band] they hoped to document."

• Philip Gefter introduces a sumptious slide show of stills from Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World.

• "The TriBeCa Film Festival has become one of the fastest-growing cultural institutions in New York." Rebecca Traister outlines more than a few reasons why.

• Jennifer Senior talks to Tina Fey about Mean Girls. And other things. And there's more, too, from Hugh Hart in the San Francisco Chronicle and William Booth in the Washington Post.

• We've heard this argument before but it doesn't hurt to hear it again, especially when it's spelled out as clearly and convincingly as it is in Elvis Mitchell's piece: The "old-fashioned, line-drawn animated feature" is dying a slow death thanks in large part to Pixar; but Pixar's films are successful not because they're computer-animated but because they tell great stories, "making awe and curiosity part of the plot without condescension."

• Jehane Noujaim, director of Control Room, answers Deborah Solomon's questions with a keen sense of diplomacy: "I do think [Al Jazeera] have been misrepresented in certain ways, just as the American military has been misrepresented in the Middle East."

• Leslie Camhi talks briefly with Julie Bertuccelli about Since Otar Left.

Granted, a book review you find at a bookstore is probably going to be a positive review. But over at Powell's, Chris Bolton convincingly justifies his enthusiasm for Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script.

Via Movie City News, Johanna Schneller in the Globe and Mail: "The Alamo and its kin are a new hybrid, one that lures you in with rue and then knocks your socks off with triumph. They are war films that mutate into personal vengeance flicks just in time, so all that sad death can be avenged."

He may or may not be kidding about this whole idea of a novel called Starmageddon, but Toby Young's journal of a week in LA in Slate is a fairly fun read.

Heads up, courtesy of Cynthia Rockwell: The Boston Underground Film Festival, May 6 through 10: "Among other things, there's a short animated film called 'Son of Satan' based on the Bukowski short story that is pretty phenomenal. Demented and phenomenal, like all the films in the BUFF lineup."

Scott Macaulay's "Producing Bromides #s 1 - 4."

Online non-printable reading tip. The Film/Fashion issue of Soma, featuring Paul Bettany, Bai Ling, Usama Rasheed and reviews of The Return, Touching the Void and The Fog of War.

Posted by dwhudson at April 25, 2004 3:19 PM