In yesterday’s posting, in listing the cinema giants still alive after the death of Ingmar Bergman, I added, “I’m sure I’ve left some out.” Well, yes. The ignored elephant in the room was Michaelangelo Antonioni, but regrettably that is no longer true. Today he died at the age of 94.

His passing hasn’t been as noted as that of Bergman -- on the CNN website , for example, it’s featured below such more pressing and important news stories as the end of the show “Simple Life,” the final dissolution of the Spears-Federline marriage, and Star Jones admitting, at last, that she had gastric bypass surgery. And, of course, the resurrection of Drew Carey’s career via game show hosting (“In a couple of months he could be Regis Philbin”).

But, though lower profile, Antonioni may have been the greater and more significant artist.  He is at least, I'd argue, more challenging: the formal starkness and abstract intensity of films such as “La Notte,”  "L'Avventura," “L'Eclisse” and “Red Desert” demand more concentrated —  and detached — viewer participation than the emotional, even melodramatic workouts of say, “Scenes from a Marriage.” More than Bergman, his eye framed the alienation and angst and the elusive beauty of the human condition in the world today.

Personally, I have a warm spot for both directors. While Bergman turned me on to death with “The Seventh Seal,” Antonioni warmed me up to sex, or at least adolescent voyeurism, with “Blow-Up,” the first X-rated film I sneaked into. Looking back, I see it as a masterpiece of mood, formal beauty and hip posturing undermining all faith in the validity of perception or the cetainty of knowledge. But way back then it was all about the Purple Paper Scene, for which I will be eternally grateful.

7/31/2007 12:25:46 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

In one sense, Ingmar Bergman cheated Death. You might recall that Death himself cheated while playing Max Von Sydow’s Knight for his life in Bergman’s masterpiece “The Seventh Seal.” But even though the grim reaper finally claimed the 89 year-old legend today, Bergman outlived Death, or at least the actor who personified him in his film — Bengt Ekerot, who kicked the bucket in 1971.

Such is the power of movies.

The world is certainly a better place because of the profundity of “The Seventh Seal,” the transcendent despair of “Winter Light,” the delicate tragedy of “Monika,” the sublime sado-masochism of “Sawdust and Tinsel,” the shattering performances of “Persona” and the glimpse into the infinite and the pathetically human provided by so many other films by the world’s biggest and most beautiful party pooper. On the other hand I could have done without the overwrought and overrated “Cries and Whispers,” the turgid second half of “Fanny and Alexander “ (loved her, hated him) and the imitative pretensions of the latterday Woody Allen.

 But the bottom line is, who of equal greatness remains? The venerable New Wavers Godard, Resnais and Rohmer, of course. The Iranian Abbas Kiarostami, Zhang Yimou from China, Hou Hsiao-Hsien from Taiwan, perhaps Herzog, maybe our own Martin Scorsese. I’m sure I’ve left some out.  But when they’re gone, who will take their place? And more importantly, by that time, will there be any one left who cares?

7/30/2007 4:51:10 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

One last "Sicko" note. I promise.

The movie’s hosannas to the Cuban health system has brought Moore the most grief, but no one really has taken him to task for his conclusions that given the country’s limited resources, health care in Cuba is a much better deal than ours. “Salud,” a neglected 2006 documentary by Oscar nominee (for “Freedom on My Mind” in 1994) Connie Field, supports Moore’s contentions and examines the system from a different perspective: not as an alternative to that in the US, but to that in other countries in the Third World.

The Cuban philosophy (so goes Field’s argument) is based on the notion that medical care is a right and doctors should be motivated by altruism, not greed. This philosophy they export to countries like Honduras, South Africa, Venezuala (under the auspices of George Bush’s bete noir, Hugo Chavez) and The Gambia by sending them thousands of doctors who work in the poorest region. They also traini poor people in those countries to be doctors. Unfortunately, the International Monetary Fund doesn’t appreciate any of this; it makes its loans to countries on the condition that health care there is privatized. Nor do the doctors already in those countries, who like to make money and practice where they want to, like having the Cubans put them in their place. So it comes down to a battle between the good of the community and the freedom of the individual.

Did somebody say communism? Maybe those right wingers who argue that socialized medicine is the Trojan Horse of a Marxist takeover are onto something. Or maybe it’s more important to save children from dying of preventible diseases than allowing a tiny minority the freedom to profit from human misery. Tough call. The film doesn’t have the pizzazz of Moore’s manifesto, and at times it plays like a Cuban infomercial, but it does add to the discussion.

7/13/2007 4:47:43 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

I don’t want to get an ass whippin’ ala Wolf Blitzer  nor be sued for libel by “Mad” Michael Moore, so let me correct some of the information in the previous posting. Moore’s website denies that he’s going to Tehran. In fact, only his movie “Sicko” is going to the documentary film festival held later this year in the Iranian capital.  The report that Moore himself would be attending, spokesperson Meghan O’Hara says, is an “inaccurate rumour” and an “urban myth right up there with alligators in the sewers of New York.”  “These right wingers,” she concludes, “should be spending their time defending why it is that George W. Bush is commuting the sentence of a convicted felon, rather than propagating this right wing trash.” Point well taken. So in defense of President Bush’s pardon of Libby, I’d argue that it was probably the only way he could buy the weasel’s silence and save Bush and Cheney from a one-way trip to Impeachmentville.

In addition, I suggested that “Sicko” might not be setting records at the box office, and was in fact a disappointment, moneywise. Apparently, though, it’s doing okay, passing the $10 million mark more quickly than “An Inconvenient Truth” did and boasting a per screen average second only to that far more trenchant investigation into the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of corporatized, consumer culture America, “Transformers.” The numbers just aren’t at “Fahrenheit 9/11” levels. So fears of Moore making a romantic comedy are greatly exaggerated.

7/10/2007 5:06:09 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

 

A couple of days ago we celebrated our nation’s birthday, and what could be more American than conspiracy theories? Or more Iranian, for that matter. Oliver Stone, no stranger to paranoia himself, met his match recently when his request to film Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandijad for a new documentary was denied. “While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the U.S., the opposition is still part of the Great Satan,” said the President’s media advisor.

Perhaps Mahmoud had seen Stone’s last film, “World Trade Center,” a crude, tearjerking exploitation of the 9/11 nightmare that more or less encourages the audience to buy into the Bush Administration’s delusional warmaking, which could soon include Iran. That didn’t stop Stone from  snipping at the president he once helped enable in his response to the Iranian prez’s rebuke. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a Great Satan,” he said.  “I wish the Iranian people well and I only hope their experience with an inept, rigid idealogue president goes better than ours.”

Meanwhile, Michael Moore’s experience with this surviving member of the Axis of Evil has gone better than Stone’s. His request to have his new film “Sicko” included in the Tehran Documentary Film Festival was accepted, which, barring US air strikes or invasion, is scheduled for October 15-19.

This acceptance will no doubt add more fodder to the conspiracy musings of some right wing bloggers regarding a link between “Sicko” and the recent attempted terrorist attacks in Britain. The British universal health care system lauded in the film, so the logic goes, has spawned a cabal of disgruntled, jihadist physicians doing the bidding of Al Qaeda. So Michael Moore is responsible for terrorism in Britain.

No wonder the Iranians invited him! But that kind of publicity doesn’t help sell tickets in America, as “Sicko” has been ailing at the box office. Moore seems to be  pondering a switch from the stressful genre of confrontational documentaries to romantic comedies and the like. So if you don’t want another dose of “Canadian Bacon,”  I’d advise you all to line up for “Sicko” and take your medicine.

7/6/2007 1:45:58 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

I’ve already written about the bizarre convergence of Edward Yang, Bob Lobel and myself on a radio talk show in 2000 when I discussed the year’s movies with the popular WBZ sports reporter. Asked by the moderator what my favorite movie of the year was, I bolded pronounced, “Yi Yi.” “'Yi Yi?’” scoffed Lobel, incredulously. “’YI YI?’”

I assumed from his tone of voice that he didn’t agree with me. In fact, I’d venture to say he hadn’t even seen it, or even heard of the movie. Which is a shame, because he might have liked it. At first glance, Taiwanese  director Edward Yang’s masterpiece would seem a pinhead film elitist’s dream come true: “funny” title, subtitles, three hours long, winner at the Cannes Festival, choice of the National Film Critics Society for Best Picture of the year. In fact, though, “Yi Yi” is about as mainstream as you can get, illuminating, celebrating, and rendering with utter authenticity the lives of a typical middle class family, Bob Lobel’s demographic completely. They just happen to live in Taipei.

Well maybe with the increased numbers of Asian players in baseball (the Yankees’ ace Chien-Ming Wang hails from Taiwan) Bob might be less dismissive of  “Yi Yi” and check out the recent DVD from Criterion. As for Yang, sad to say, “Yi Yi” was his last movie; he died of colon cancer on June 29 at the age of 59.

7/3/2007 2:51:30 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |