Bad Week For Cinema

Eyewear is sad - and a little shocked - to learn of the death of cinema's great Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni - who gave us such great films as L'avventura, Blowup, Professione: Reporter (The Passenger) and Zabriskie Point.

Coming just after Art House Cinema's other major European Existentialist Auteur, Bergman, has died, this is staggeringly bad news for movie lovers. Antonioni's heroes looked out at the world, and into themselves, on journeys that brought them, often, to silent, mortal zones - in the process encountering erotic, dangerous interzones - as the image, and the imagination, hot and vast as a desert - mixed like windblown sands.

Antonioni was one of the finest image-makers, and thus givers, in film history, and Blowup's eerie London park, with its rustling leaves, and apparently abandoned body, is just one of them. More than films, his works were - are - environments - where mood, landscape, desire, and fate - meet (and sometimes absurdly) part ways. Profession: Genius, more like it.

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IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

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"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

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Heard The One About The Starlet and The Writer?

Last year, Eva Green won the Rising Star award at the Orange BAFTAs - and this year the ceremonies promise to be even more glamorous. The old joke goes that the starlet was so dumb, she slept with the writer - but the striking film writers in America silenced the Golden Globes, and look set to do the same for the Oscars, which means London may get a world-class awards night. Eyewear , like all UK citizens, has yet to see some of the films nominated (members get sent copies to watch at home in some instances before general release), but can make some predictions - want to bet? Atonement will likely win Best Film. The Bourne Ultimatum should win Best British Film, though Control may do. The Bourne trilogy was astonishingly good genre work, and has rejuvenated The Bond series in the process, so deserves the kudos. Film Not In The English Language should go to The Lives of Others . Lead Actor will be Daniel Day-Lewis . Lead Actress will be the brilliant Julie Christie , whose w...

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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