Everything you always wanted to know about...

Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, in a New York Times piece by Allen that answers the questions, Did they know each other, and what kind of relationship did they have? Bergman was of course a major, some might say unfortunate, influence on Allen, and this reminiscence/eulogy fills in some of the blanks. What I wanted to know was what Bergman felt about members of his stock company, like Liv Ullmann, Max Von Sydow, and Ingrid Thulin, leaving the nest to appear in the Hollywood likes of the Lost Horizon musical, Flash Gordon, and The Cassandra Crossing, but given an affection for James Bond he probably just laughed as they unspooled on his projector on Faro Island.

Also, Martin Scorsese on Michelangelo Antonioni, a muse. It might have been more interesting to have had, say, Transformers director Michael Bay write about how Bergman transformed his life and art, but I doubt Bay could pen such a piece, and no one would believe it anyway.

RIP Michelangelo Antonioni

To lose one filmmaking legend is sad; to lose two on the same day, unthinkable, as if the cosmos had shifted. (And I bid a fond farewell to French actor Michel Serrault, most noted for La Cage Aux Folles, too.) That great period in international cinema that began in the late 1950s and early 1960s is rushing headlong toward its earthly end, but the films remain, and generations to come will ponder the elusive mysteries of Blow-Up, L'Avventura, and other great movies.

On a personal note, how nice it was to discover that 1970's notorious Zabriskie Point, a fascinating boxoffice failure I screened for my film group in 2000, had genuine merit besides curiosity value, and that The Passenger, like many of his films, is now available on DVD for pondering at home. His latter-day efforts are not a fitting tribute, but that he was able to direct them well into his 80s and 90s speaks to his fortitude.