RIP Michelangelo Antonioni

I don't have anything to say about the news that I read at the hot blog that another famous iconoclastic European director, Michelangelo Antonioni, has died at the age of 94.

I haven't seen any of Antonioni's film, through no fault of my own - they're only now actually being released on DVD down here (I was amazed to see L'Avventura in the 'Coming Soon' section of my DVD service recently). But I have Bergman films to see first!

The Europeans are dropping like flies. What famous Euro director will die next to join Bergman and Antonioni in a game of 'death comes in threes' on the rocky beach from The Seventh Seal? What respected Euro actor will join Ulrich Muhe and Michel Serrault in the same position? Because death always comes in threes.

RIP Ingmar Bergman

This one is a loss! This is just like Robert Altman last year, no doubt. Reports are coming in that Bergman has died in his home country of Sweden. This news is so fresh that the story at NineMSN is incredibly brief and IMDb doesn't have anything up yet.

It's sad that we've lost another legend of cinema in the form of Bergman. I haven't seen more than half of his work, but the films I have seen are mostly great (I'm not a fan of his early Sawdust and Tinsel) - films like Persona, Fanny and Alexander, Dreams... the list goes on. You just know Woody Allen is going to be mourning, too. Shame that, unlike Altman, Bergman never even got an honourary Academy Award despite being nominated for nine, his most recent of which were duel nominations for writing and directing the epic Fanny and Alexander.

His most recent film was Saraband, which was a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, a film I liked but not like some of the others - and I haven't even seen The Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers or Wild Strawberries - they're all on my DVD queue, but are hanging around the #40 mark so I may have to push them up a bit higher do you think?

This is a sad loss for cinema, but he won't be forgotten at all.