EROS IS SICK

I need to write more about Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, but I need to wait until the time is right, until my brain is in its proper place within my skull. I'd like to maybe watch a film of theirs I've never seen and use that as a starting point. But first, as if by some cruel design, I have to finish a Woody Woodpecker box set that is absolutely painful and no help at all in dislodging Comic Con from my consciousness. I had no idea Woody was so bad, because I loved him as a child. I'd have rather this area of my childhood be kicked around in some manner like they are doing with Underdog in that ridiculous movie that really has nothing to do with Underdog. I suppose this is more honest, as it's the material itself that doesn't live up and not some retread, but at least I still have Underdog, right? I don't have Woody anymore. (To further digress, someone should kick Jason Lee in the nuts. Between Underdog and Alvin & the Chipmunks, the man is embarrassing himself on the path to being the new Cuba Gooding. Way to spoil success, dude.)

Anywayyyyy...

Criterion has posted a beautiful tribute to Antonioni on their blog.

Christopher McQuain writes a personal eulogy.

And Time has Woody Allen discussing his hero, Ingmar Bergman, and Antonioni both. Until reading that, I never connected Woody's one-act play "Death Knocks" to The Seventh Seal. Duh. It's so obvious. Before every seeing a Bergman movie, I played Death in "Death Knocks" as my final project my senior year in drama in high school. I loved playing Death.

Please take the time to read them. I should have also noted yesterday that not only did Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage have a massive impact on 12 Reasons, but so did Antonioni's La notte. It's an aching movie, but gorgeous. I get a little misty just thinking about it. Marcelo Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau walking through Italy one night, talking over their dissolving marriage, searching for meaning, for love, for whatever it was that once connected them that they can't see anymore. It was the second Antonioni movie I ever saw, after Blow-Up, which I watched for the Britpop connection. La notte was the first I watched thinking, "I'm going to watch an Antonioni movie." I bought the DVD for $5 in a used bin at Music Millennium (the 23rd Avenue location, which is in the process of closing; oddly poetic). It was a random choice bought on the cheap, but I've never stretched a five-spot that far. It reverberates in who I am, as a writer and as a person, to this day.

Current Mood: sad