Buon compleanno, Maestro! I'll be seeing one of my favorite films, Amarcord, on the big screen next weekend, and when I do I'll lift a glass (or a cup of Diet Coke, as it may be) to your memory and your films, whose shadows and light and sounds continue to thrill and confound us and give us joy, even in your absence.
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Some consolation to those of you who are out of work is that LACMA is showing the not-yet-on-DVD Ernst Lubitsch version of The Merry Widow on the Tuesday matinee. On March 2 Cinefamily is having a program of widescreen format cartoons (as wide as you can get at the Silent Movie Theater, I guess), most notably including the Gene Deitch/R.O. Blechman/Boris Karloff masterpiece The Juggler of Our Lady. Then on Friday March 12 Cinefamily will have a double feature of The Bed Sitting Room and A Boy and His Dog.
ReplyDeleteMerry Widow at the Tuesday matinee next week, I meant.
ReplyDeleteSuch a sad sad day in film the day we lost Fellini. What's even more depressing, as I noted in my weigh on on last week's Golden Globes is how in 2009 instead of searching for new visionary directors like Fellini or Bergman we are celebrating hack musical remakes of Fellini's masterpieces. The thought makes me terribly terribly sad.
ReplyDeleteRobert: Did you read this morning's account of Scorsese's summit meeting at LACMA with Michael Govan? Perhaps some reason for tentative optimism there.
ReplyDeleteMike: Numerology is, I suspect, nonsense, but Nine in theaters on Fellini's 90th is, as you said, sad. What's even sadder is the Weinstein's specious attempt at Oscar grabbing in some of the big ads for the film in recent weeks, which feature a long quote from (I believe it was) Fellini's daughter, the gist of which was that her father would have loved Rob Marshall's movie. Never underestimate the desperation of Harvey and Bob Weinstein for Oscar gold.
I don't think anything from Hollywood impressed Il Maestro after Ginger and Fred.
ReplyDeleteI really liked Intervista - both the reality games (fake interview format, flashbacks to Cinecitta) and human reality on display. I loved seeing Marcello Mastroianni dancing with Anita Ekberg. The tears in their eyes seemed real.
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