Ingmar Bergman Auction

Clapperboard used in Ingmar Bergman’s 1962 drama The Silence

Nearly 340 items that belonged to Ingmar Bergman are to be auctioned by Bukowskis in Stockholm on Sept. 28. Among the items are film cameras, Golden Globe awards, and the chess set that was "probably" used by Max von Sydow’s Antonius Block and Bengt Ekerot’s Death in the 1957 classic The Seventh Seal.
Also in the auction are a wooden puppet autographed by the actors featured in From the Life of the Marionettes; a portrait of Bergman taken in 1964 by American photographer Irving Penn; a puppet theater similar to the one used in Fanny and Alexander; photographs showing Bergman next to Igor Stravinsky and Bruce the Shark (from Jaws); [...]

David Carradine

David Carradine in Bound for Glory

David Carradine, the star of the 1970s TV series Kung Fu (right), was found hanged in his Bangkok hotel room early this morning. According to reports, there was no evidence of foul play at the scene. Carradine, who was in the Thai capital working on a film, was 72.
Born in Los Angeles on Dec. 8, 1936, Carradine was the son of actor John Carradine, best known for playing assorted evildoers and mad doctors in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1980s. David Carradine’s brothers are also actors: Keith Carradine, among whose credits is Robert Altman’s classic Nashville, and Robert Carradine, best known for his role in the Revenge of the Nerds movies.
Throughout [...]

Cannes 2009: Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON

 
Dave Calhoun in Time Out London, via David Hudson’s The Daily:
"For quite some time at the beginning of Michael Haneke’s latest film, which is a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914, you wonder what you’re watching, how its disparate parts hang together and what it all might mean. More than ever, the playful, challenging, sometimes shocking director of Hidden, Funny Games and Time of the Wolf solidly resists answering the ‘what’s it all about?’ question and makes you work hard to make sense of what you’re seeing. As in Code Unknown, he resists focusing on one story or [...]

Oscar 2009: 281 Features Eligible

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 281 features are eligible for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Picture — and most other categories, I assume.
As per Academy rules, to be eligible "feature films must open in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County by midnight, December 31, and begin a minimum run of seven consecutive days."
Also, "a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format."
And finally, "feature films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical [...]

Critics’ Choices

In Time, Richard Corliss on the New York Film Critics‘ picks:
"I sprinted down the corridors of TIME this afternoon, eager to spread the news of the New York Film Critics Circle voting for the year’s best films. The winner, in the film, director, screenplay and supporting actor categories? The Coen brothers‘ No Country for Old Men, which three different people told me they’d been meaning to see. The runner-up, with wins for best actor and cinematographer? There Will Be Blood, an audience-punishing epic that doesn’t open for another two weeks. Best actress? Julie Christie, in Away From Her [above, with Gordon Pinsent], which earned less than $5 million in its North American release.
"I didn’t even tell them that [...]

FANNY AND ALEXANDER Review II

Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve in Fanny and Alexander

FANNY & ALEXANDER Review: Part I
It is only in the TV version that the depths and joys of the Ekdahls’ is plumbed fully. There are longer sequences at the opening Christmas Eve party; a deeper exploration of Carl Ekdahl and his put-upon German wife Lydia (Christina Schollin) — their marriage, his rages, and his own business failings and debts, which mirror the flaws of the Bishop; a deeper look at Emilie’s rationales, and her later hatred of the Bishop; more of life at the theater, especially a great sequence onstage with Bergman’s first film star, Gunnar Björnstrand, as actor Filip Landahl; and more of Alexander’s imagination, especially in two key scenes deleted [...]

FANNY AND ALEXANDER d: Ingmar Bergman

Fanny och Alexander / Fanny & Alexander (1982)
Direction and Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Ewa Fröling, Börje Ahlstedt, Jan Malmsjö, Allan Edwall, Gunn Wållgren, Jarl Kulle , Erland Josephson, Pernilla August, Harriet Andersson, Stina Ekblad, Mats Bergman, Gunnar Björnstrand, Lena Olin
 

Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin in Fanny and Alexander
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Why Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 final ‘filmic film,’ Fanny och Alexander / Fanny & Alexander bears the appellation it does is a mystery — one of many in the film — since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character. In fact, in the three-hour theatrical version she is not even mentioned by name for nearly an hour [...]

Maj-Britt Nilsson

Maj-Britt Nilsson, best known for her roles in three Ingmar Bergman films of the early 1950s, died last Dec. 19 in Cannes. She was 82. No cause of death was announced.
Nilsson’s three Bergman films are Till glädje / To Joy (1950), in which she has the role of an orchestra player whose husband (Stig Olin) strays; Sommarlek / Summer Interlude (right), as a ballerina reminiscing about a passionate but ultimately tragic summer; and Kvinnors väntan/ Secrets of Women / Waiting Women (1952, above), as one of four sisters-in-law (Anita Björk, Eva Dahlbeck, and Aino Taube are the others) discussing their marriages while waiting for their respective husbands to arrive at a summer cottage.
Writing in the New York Times about Summer [...]