“Bergman still lives!” What a horrible two days for cinema.
Category / Film
RIP Ingmar Bergman
My first Bergman experience involved seeing a 16mm print of Persona as a teenager and becoming thoroughly lost in its dreamlike world, my heart fully pulverized by the great pain and sorrow, my mind recoiling at the fragmentary images that I didn’t quite understand, and the other Sacramento kids around me simply not understanding that they were in the presence of a master.
I wondered then if Bergman was cinema’s great manic depressive and sought out his other films. The rolling tank in The Silence, the daring colors and blood of Cries and Whispers, the constant concern with death. I was surprised by the great humanism of Wild Strawberries and Max von Sydow’s knight in The Seventh Seal defiantly standing against the grim reaper. I began playing chess with friends on the beach, trying to look as cool as von Sydow.
Bergman was as literary a filmmaker as you could get — the likes of which we won’t see again for some time. It is as if Ibsen or Strindberg has died. And his absence leaves a staggering void that not even twenty filmmakers could fill.
New George Romero Zombie Movie in the Can
The IMDB reports that Diary of the Dead, written and directed by George A. Romero, has been completed and has European distributors lined up. The film was shot last year and has a budget of around $10 million — a tad less than the $15 million Romero had for Land of the Dead. Here’s an audio interview with Romero about the new zombie film, which reveals the following: Diary goes back to the first night when the zombies rose. Some college kids are filming a horror movie, only to run into rising zombies.
Apparently, the film is told from the perspective of multiple cameras that are found by others, which might just serve as an intriguing creative limitation for the horror master. We’ll see.
Interestingly, Romero is not using any music for this film. So will this be the zombie movie’s answer to The China Syndrome? Or does Romero have something vaguely postmodernist up his sleeve?
But Will Barnabas End Up Being a Gay Keith Richards?
Variety: “Johnny Depp is getting in touch with his inner vampire. Warner Bros. is teaming with Depp’s Infinitum-Nihil and Graham King’s GK Films to develop a feature based on the ’60s daytime supernatural sudser ‘Dark Shadows.’ Depp has said in interviews that he has always been obsessed with ‘Dark Shadows’ and had, as a child, wanted to be Barnabas Collins, the vampire patriarch of the series. The role was originated by Jonathan Frid.”
Next Up for Disney: Covering Up Goofy’s Drinking Problem
Hollywood Reporter: “Mickey Mouse went cold turkey Wednesday when the Walt Disney Co. told influential Congressman Ed Markey that it will ban smoking from the films it releases.”
I’m sure that Uncle Walt, a man quite fond of cigarettes, would approve of Disney’s move towards presenting humans in a foolishly flawless and unrealistic light.