R.I.P. Ingmar & Michelangelo

Ingmar Bergman died on Monday on the small island of Faro on the Baltic coast of Sweden. He was 89…

…Mr. Bergman's celluloid carvings often revealed an obsession with death. But in later life he said that the obsession had abated. "When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying," he said. "But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It's like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about."

New York Times 7/30/2007




Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, whose depiction of alienation made him a symbol of art-house cinema with movies such as ''Blow-Up'' and ''L'Avventura,'' has died, officials and news reports said Tuesday.  He was 94. 

...Antonioni depicted alienation in the modern world through sparse dialogue and long takes. Along with Federico Fellini,  he helped turn post-war Italian film away from the Neorealism movement and toward a personal cinema of imagination.

AP, 7/31/2007

....Mr. Antonioni was the movies’ first diagnostician of what back then was called alienation, anomie, angst and decadence.  Their melancholy poetry transmuted an overriding mood of self-pity into something deeper and closer to tragedy.

Mr. Antonioni’s death on Monday, so close to Ingmar Bergman’s, should give us pause. Their deaths bring down the final curtain on the high-modernist era of filmmaking, when a handful of directors were artistic gods accorded the respect and latitude of great painters or authors.

New York Times, 8/1/2007

Most adorkable. Press photo. Evar.

...And, if you guys love this one[Unknown site tag], you have to go look at all the other press shots dryope found - posted here and here.  My particular favorites, other than this above, are the ones of Mary McDonnell, Ben Browder and Amanda Tapping together!  Glee!  I would love to see John Crichton and Laura Roslin hang out. *g*