Arts and shorts.

Paintings and photographs by Dennis Hopper are on view in the exhibitions Dennis Hopper: A Survey, at the ACE Gallery in Los Angeles through July 1, and Los Angeles - Paris, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris through July 17. For the Los Angeles Times, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp meets up with the actor and artist to browse the work and memories that have accumulated over the decades. Related: Nina Rehfeld took a similar, albeit longer tour with Hopper in 2002.

Robert Rodriguez has taken up painting as well. Even as he works on Grind House in Austin, he's "'relaxing' by working like a madman until the wee hours on a series of giant paintings of Salma Hayek (as an Aztec goddess from Carlos Fuentes's 1975 novel Terra Nostra) with acclaimed muralist George Yepes for a joint exhibit that unveils at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center on Wednesday, April 5, at a private red carpet party," reports Hector Saldaña in the San Antonio Express-News before launching into a conversation with Rodriguez. You can see a sample from the series in this accompanying story or a few more samples at George Yepes.com; Saldaña also talks with Yepes and with Fuentes about the works. Via Blake at Cinema Strikes Back.

"[A]s we become the media culture he envisioned in his artwork and writings, we can see how the range of [Nam June] Paik's creative accomplishments and both the prescience and breadth of his thinking—in a practice unlike anything that preceded him—are all the more astonishing," writes John G Hanhardt in Artforum. Further down the page, Jon Kessler adds, "It may not be an overstatement to call Paik a visionary—he coined the term electronic superhighway, and Global Groove's rapid edits anticipated the look of mediated imagery in today's age of the attenuated attention span, as well as the bodily experience of electronica and rave culture."

For Bookforum, Stephanie Zacharek reviews Cari Beauchamp's Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s. The secretary is Valeria Belletti, who, "perhaps most astonishingly, not only dated the young Gary Cooper but also helped launch his career."

Vanity Fair posts a piece from last month's Hollywood issue, Jim Windolf's profile of Zach Helm: "He spent years in typical screenwriter mode, working as one of many hands on various big-budget projects while his labors of love died in development.... Now he won't sell a script unless he's satisfied not only that it will have an excellent chance of actually making it to the screen, but also that it will be filmed as he wrote it. The funny thing is, his method actually works, for him."

Back to the LAT: "The International Beverly Hills Film Festival launches its sixth edition Wednesday night at 7 at the Writers Guild Theater with Eugenio Cappuccio's Verso la Luna con Fellini (Towards the Moon With Fellini), an affectionate semi-mockumentary on the making of Federico Fellini's final film, La Voce della Luna (The Voice of the Moon) (1990)." Kevin Thomas sketches a bit of background on both films.

"For some filmmakers, you go the extra mile," emailed James Quandt to Doug Cummings recently. The filmmakers are the Dardennes and the extra mile involves an ingenious sort of live accompaniment to screenings of the brothers' early films.

Alec Wilkinson listens in as the team behind Things That Hang From Trees discusses last minute tweaks to a print before delivering Ido Mizrahy's film to MOMA. Also in the New Yorker: Anthony Lane on The Double Life of Véronique and Lucky Number Slevin.

New at Slant:

• Jeremiah Kipp finds Take the Lead "delivers on its promise and never feels pandering."

• Nick Schager on 4: "Exhilarating, infuriating, mesmerizing, baffling, and out-and-out crazy."

• Ed Gonzalez on Amos Gitai's Free Zone.

• Sara Schieron on Friends With Money; more from David Edelstein in New York.

• Dan Callahan on two DVD "Glamour Collections" featuring Carole Lombard and Mae West.

• Brian D Schiller sends in a dispatch from the Cleveland International Film Festival.

David Thomson spells out the real reasons we remember Ava Gardner. Also in the Independent: Neil Norman meets Timothy Spall.

"Lean was so much better when he was lean," argues Edward Copeland.

Frako Loden for the Evening Class on Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumière: "Yoko and Hajime are a species of Tokyoite depicted in movies who are not alienated by their urban environment. They are like the Angelenos that Phyllis Dietrichson envies so much in Double Indemnity: 'It sounds wonderful. Just strangers beside you. You don't know them and you don't hate them.'"

"What is good made of, and how does it reveal itself?" is the opening question in Noy Thrupkaew's review of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days and V for Vendetta in the American Prospect.

Cannes isn't quite sure how to handle Anders Morgenthaler's provocative Princess, reports Cineuropa.

When it comes to Lars von Trier, novelist Dennis Cooper minces no words, calling him "a condescending, ham-fisted, moralistic, cheesy, sadistic, self-satisfied filmmaker who's infuriating not because he's challenging or confrontational but because he's a stupid, obvious, predictable, simpleminded bore." Comments ensue. Via Ray Pride at Movie City Indie, where he's also got news of Spike Lee's beer ad and a pointer to Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's interview with Arturo Ripstein for Delhi Newsline.

Jeffrey Wells is thinking that this summer "is looking a little bit craftier and less dumbed-down than usual."

Stop-motion animator Henry Selick is set to head up an adaptation of Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters!, reports Quint at Ain't It Cool News, where Harry Knowles has seen pix of a surprise version of himself in Fanboys.

"How to advertise a film without being dishonest?" asks Caveh Zahedi.

"Except for the truly inflexible, a person's list of most watched films won't correspond with their personal list of best films," notes low iq canadian. "So what's on your most often seen list? And why?" is the followup question for the Cinemarati.

As of today, Paramount, Universal, Sony, MGM, Warner Bros and Fox will make their films available to download on the same day they come out on DVD. But get this: the downloads will cost up to twice as much and you can't watch them on your TV. Truly, there is no business like show business. Dawn C Chmielewski reports in the Los Angeles Times; more from Saul Hansell in the New York Times.

Meanwhile, the studios are seeing potential growth in markets outside the US and they're starting to make their moves. Laura M Holson looks into it. Also: Virginia Heffernan takes on the NYT's YouTube piece.

Online viewing tip. Hans Richter's Filmstudie (1926) via Gpod.

Posted by dwhudson at April 3, 2006 7:16 AM