It seems that when a master filmmaker dies, suddenly his archives become of less importance. Last week it was reported that Ingmar Bergman's archives, which are even listed in the United Nations' Memory of the World register, might be doomed because of the expense to maintain them. Now Variety tells us that Michelangelo Antonioni's archives are also in trouble. These archives, which include short films, photographs, drawings, posters and books, are featured in a museum located in the filmmaker's hometown of Ferrara, Italy. The museum closed last year for refurbishing, but it may not reopen at all thanks to a shortage of funds. The city instead wants to open a film museum focused on all the directors who shot in Ferrara. The problem with that, though, is that when Antonioni's archives were donated to the city in 1995, there was a strict stipulation that they only be used for a museum solely about Antonioni.

I'm not too worried about the state of Antonioni's archives, as the film world would never let anything bad come to them. Just as Bergman's archives quickly received a $10,000 donation from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association following news of their jeopardy, Antonioni's archives will certainly be saved as well. Sure, he's not as celebrated a filmmaker as Bergman, but he is still very much loved by the film community. Aside from reports from Variety and other cinema-related media, the news of this travesty made headlines in mainstream Italian papers, such as La Republica, which ran the title "Ferrara 'evicts' Antonioni." I wouldn't be surprised if some fortunate person or organization hasn't already stepped forward. Michelangelo Antonioni, who gave the world L'Avventura and Blow Up, left us on July 30.

Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...

COLUMNS, REVIEWS, and INTERVIEWS

• James Rocchi interviews Mike Binder, writer/director of The Search for John Gissing about the long road to getting his film distributed, and why he finally took matters into his own hands.
• Killer Bs on DVDs: Matt Bradshaw reviews a pair of Euro horror flicks, Black Candles and Evil Eye.
• James Rocchi interviews David Wain and Ken Marino of Ten Commandments comedy The Ten.
• Cinematical Indie Chats it up with Billy the Kid director Jennifer Venditti.
• Cinematical Indie Seven: A John Sayles Primer.
• James Rocchi reviews The Ten.
• Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows: The Day the Movies Died
• Cinematical Indie reviews JLo and Marc Anthony's biopic of salsa king Hector Lavoe, El Cantante.
• RvB's After Images: Skammen, aka Shame (1968)
• The Rocchi Review Podcast: James Rocchi chats up Heidi MacDonald of The Beat on all things comic.

... and more right after the jump ...

It's a hot and steamy weekend here, and I'm feeling way to lazy to go outside for a power walk, so instead I thought I'd do a weekend check-in on some of my fave film sites around the web. As always, if you have a film blog (or even a film blog that you read and like, that you haven't seen me point to in a Group Hug), send me a link at kim(at)cinematical(dot)com. I'm always on the lookout for film sites to add to my already-lengthy list of daily reads ... hey, a girl just can't get too much film talk, right? Besides, the more film sites I'm forced to read, the longer I can put off that power walk ...

This one isn't particularly "indie," but it's one of the most fascinating pieces I've read all week, so I just had to include it. Over at the LA Weekly, Scott Foundas has a really interesting (and LONG -- seven pages, so read it with a fresh cup of coffee) feature piece up on Brett Ratner. What makes it such a fun read is that Foundas, whose writing I like and respect, goes way against the expected grain here, asserting of Popcorn King Ratner: "Which brings me to the other reason I've wanted to write about Ratner. It is an idea that may initially strike you as radical or preposterous, and which could jeopardize my standing in the film-criticism community. And yet, here goes: Brett Ratner is a talented filmmaker who deserves to be taken seriously."

Wow. No doubt Foundas has taken a lot of ribbing for this piece, but it's very well-written -- I can think of a few folks who write up set visits who could take a lesson from how Foundas puts you inside Ratner's set with his writing here -- and, moreover, by the end of it, I actually had kind of a newfound respect for Ratner -- at least for the work he puts into his films, if not the films themselves.

Just over a year ago, Jim Emerson started this very cool Opening Shots Project, wherein he kicked things off by writing about some of his favorite opening shots in a film, and then invited others to write about theirs. Emerson asserts that the opening shot is the most important moment in a film, that it sets the tone of the film and tells you what it's going to be about; after I started reading the Opening Shots pieces, I became even more aware of the importance of opening shots and started paying closer attention to them with every film I watch. So I was pleased to see [via a link on Daily Green Cine, who always have lots of good stuff] that there's a new Opening Shots entry up: Andy Horbal analyzes the opening shot of Army of Shadows. Check it out.

In the aftermath of the same-day deaths of directing greats Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, Movie City Indie's Ray Pride ponders, "Who are the oldest living film directors?" with a comprehensive listing of directors that starts with the current oldest, Manoel de Oliveira (born in 1908), and works its way down to Stuart Gordon (born in 1947). Great minds thinking alike, David Poland, on The Hot Blog, points over to a post on Joe Leydon's MovingPictureBlog that asks: Who are the heirs to Bergman and Antonioni? Pop on over to both sites, read what they have to say, and chime in with your own thoughts.

If you're a geek for technical details, you'll dig this post Josh Oakhurst has up answering questions from readers about just how he shot a couple of stop-mo spots, in which he explains in detail, among other things, why he didn't shoot in RAW. If you're interested in shooting stop-mo yourself -- or even if, like me, your just a sucker for all things film-geeky, you'll want to delve into this post.

Remember that game "telephone" we used to play at Girl Scouts (yeah, I was a Girl Scout -- hah!) and summer camp? You'd sit in a big circle, the first person would whisper a message to the second person, and they would pass it on, and so on, and at the end everyone would get a big laugh over how the message had changed, and you were supposed to learn an Important Lesson about the power of communication or world peace or something. Whatever. Over at Burbanked, Alan has a much more fun idea: Blogophone! It's pretty simple: he starts with a movie-related post, then tosses it to the next person in the game, who creatively changes it and tosses it to the next person, etc. The first one got pretty amusing, so he's started a second round. He tossed it to Ray over at The Rec Show, but don't let that stop you from nosing in on the fun ...

I can't think of anything more appropriate to write about today than the near-simultaneous passing of two cinema giants: Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, who oddly died on the very same day. If the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper was dubbed "the day the music died," then July 30, 2007 has to be the day that movies died. I'm sure that the web and newspapers around the world will be filled with obituaries and tributes, but I can't help feeling a little angry; where were all you people when these guys were alive?

I consider myself lucky that, as a reviewer, I was able to write about new movies from both of these masters -- all released on 400 screens or less -- notably Antonioni's Beyond the Clouds (released in 1999), his segment in Eros (2005) and Bergman's Saraband (2005), but I couldn't help noticing that my enthusiasm for these projects was a bit lonely. I wrote just a few weeks ago about how the movie industry as a general rule tends to focus on the young at the expense of the old. Over the years I've seen eight Antonioni films and fifteen Bergman films. That's not many in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder just how many have seen any at all?

Time once again to check in on to see what's going on with some of our favorite film blogs ... and by the bye, folks -- if you have a film blog that I don't know about, please drop me a line and point me to it. I love, love, love my fave film blog reads, but, like any good addict, I just can't get enough, so bring on your film blogs! Drop me a line at kim(at)cinematical(dot)com ...

It's technically not a blog, I suppose, but MCN Voices has an excellent piece up by screenwriter Larry Gross on Ingmar Bergman, in which he analyzes the director's genius and influence. If you want to learn more about Bergman, you can check out the always excellent Senses of Cinema's Great Directors piece on the auteur. While you're over there, you can read up on the other directors Gross mentions in his Bergman piece -- filmmaking greats from Fellini to Cuaron to Welles to Altman -- and another recently deceased filmmaking legend, Michelangelo Antonioni, who passed away July 30 at the age of 94. For even more on both Bergman and Antonioni, check out Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips very excellent piece on both directors on his Talking Pictures blog, and Roger Ebert, who we're ever so glad to see back in action, with his own tribute to Bergman.

More group-hugging action after the jump ...

After hearing about the death of Ingmar Bergman yesterday, I began thinking about Michelangelo Antonioni. I knew the legendary Italian filmmaker was older and I feared he'd be the next to pass on. As it turns out, he was. Antoninoni died the same day as Bergman, in fact, on July 30. The director of classics like L'Avventura and Blow-Up, Antonioni was the more accessible of the two filmmakers for me, at least when I was first introduced to both as an ignorant teenage film student with a distaste for slow-paced cinema. To this day, I still prefer the films of Antonioni, although not for the same reasons. Back then it was the music and the women that attracted me; today it is the curiosity of his camera and the nonchalant simplicity of his plotting. Of course, I also still think of Antonioni's films as being some of the sexiest art-house pictures ever made. Thanks to Blow-Up, I still have a thing for the now 70-year-old Vanessa Redgrave.

Born in 1912, Antonioni earned a degree in economics and was a film journalist before deciding to attend film school. His first credit was as screenwriter for Rossellini's A Pilot Returns and he continued writing scripts, including Fellini's The White Sheik, while carving out a filmmaking career for himself, initially making documentary shorts. Antonioni's debut feature came in 1950 as Story of a Love Affair. A decade later he achieved his first widespread critical acclaim for L'Avventura, the first in a trilogy -- in themes only -- that also includes La Notte and L'Eclisse. In the mid-60s, Antonioni signed a three-picture deal with producer Carlo Ponti to make English-language films. These films were Blow-Up, for which he was nominated for two Oscars, Zabriskie Point and The Passenger, which stars Jack Nicholson. He had a stroke in 1985, leaving him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Yet he still managed to make Beyond the Clouds, aided by Wim Wenders, in 1995, and his final work, a disappointing segment of the 2004 film Eros.

If his death occured in one of his own films, Antonioni would likely become forgotten, replaced, or thought of as inconsequential. But a film depicting Antonioni's life and death as so meaningless would be too implausible. There are so many memorable scenes and images in his films -- the ending of Blow Up is one of my favorites in all of cinema -- and he has been a great inspiration to and influence on directors following him. Perhaps he would want us to accept his passing as just another event in time, but there's no way he would expect us to think of what he did in life as unimportant.

Nibbles for you:

• In January, Erik reported that Obi Wan's brown cloak from the Star Wars movies was going on the auction block. While bidding didn't explode past the approximately $100,000 starting price, it did make its mark, selling for $104,000 to an anonymous telephone bidder. Did Mr. Lucas slide his own bet in, using the Dark Side to keep others from bidding the price up? Good lord, you could buy an island for that! Personally, I would've grabbed Terry Jones' metal helmet from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That went for what seems like a paltry $19,300 in comparison.
• Sicily has a new funding program for films, budgeted at $9.2 million, that is going to help two premiere foreign filmmakers, and Oscar nominees, make their next features. Michelangelo Antonioni will use his funding to make Aquiloni sull'Etna, translated as North Winds on Mt. Etna, while Wim Wenders will use his share to make Palermo Story. First, props to Antonioni for making a feature at 95, and second, I hope this Wenders film doesn't get swallowed for years like Land of Plenty did.
• When you can't find adaptation inspiration in literature or television, where do you turn? Well, Lionsgate and the Firm think you turn to art. Thomas Kinkade's painting, The Christmas Cottage, will be the source for the feature, and the aim is to release it as Santa rolls around next Winter. The movie, which was written by Prairie Home Companion collaborator Ken LaZebnick, will use the painting to discuss the artists life -- he began painting when his mother was about to lose the family home. I can't blame the studios for wanting a piece of this -- Kinkade's company claims they sold $1.7 billion of his artwork at retail, and $2.4 billion in licensed products. I guess he's not starving.