• Evelyn Keyes (1916-2008) - Actress - Played Scarlett O'Hara's little sister, Suellen, in Gone With the Wind. She also co-starred in The Seven Year Itch, The Jolson Story, in which she also sings, Mrs. Mike, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Union Pacific, Before I Hang, A Thousand and One Nights, The Prowler, Johnny O'Clock, Enchantment and A Return to Salem's Lot and made a cameo appearance in the 1956 version of Around the World in Eighty Days, produced by her then-boyfriend Michael Todd. Her husbands included Artie Shaw, John Huston and Charles Vidor, who directed her in The Desperadoes, The Lady in Question and Ladies in Retirement. She died of uterine cancer July 4, in Montecito, California. (Variety)

• Henry Beckman (1921-2008) - Actor - Appears in The Brood, Niagara, The Wrong Man, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Marnie, Sweet Charity, Silver Streak, I Love You to Death, Death Hunt and Kiss Me, Stupid. He died June 17 in Barcelona. (Variety)
• James "Jimbo" Breen (1955-2008) - Greensman, Carpenter, Actor - Worked on M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable and The Village, appears in Lady in the Water and can be heard in The Happening. He also worked on Beloved, In Her Shoes, Two Bits and Annapolis. He died of cancer July 3, in Pennsylvania. (Philly.com)

Okay. It's time to get down to brass tacks. I'm going to get up on my soapbox and hope that the right Academy members read the column this week, because it's time to re-do the rules of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category. Do you know how long it has been since a great film, a truly great film, won in this category? I'm talking about a film made by a genuinely great artist of the cinema, a film for the ages, and not just a perfectly good film, or a film about one of the great world wars. Here's your answer: twenty-five years ago. Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1983) was the last great one. That leaves 25 years of pretty good, just OK, forgettable, or flat-out awful winners (mostly forgettable). This year's winner, The Counterfeiters (41 screens) had to be one of the worst movies I saw all year; at it's center is a perfectly good (true) WWII concentration camp story, but it's warped by an entirely inept director, responsible for one of the worst movies I've ever seen, All the Queen's Men (2001). How did it win? How did it get past all the truly great films of 2007?

• 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.

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?

If you don't know Woody Allen loves the films of Ingmar Bergman, you don't know much about Woody Allen. When I read that Bergman passed away on Monday, I actually thought about Allen and how upset he must be. But there's no reason to single Allen out. Many filmmakers were inspired and influenced by Bergman and so many were saddened by the loss of one of cinema's great masters. Online, there are two compilations of statements regarding Bergman's death. One by Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily and one (technically two, actually) by Roger Ebert. Of course, Woody Allen, who paid Bergman direct homage with his 1978 film Interiors, is present in both compilations. He offers us an honorable joke about Bergman's desire not to die on a very, very sunny day. He wrote, "I can only hope it was overcast and he got the weather he wanted."

Another person able to keep spirits high was Bibi Andersson, who acted in many of Bergman's films, including The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. She admits to being sad, but points out that Bergman was old and we were prepared for this. Other collaborators paying tribute included actor Max von Sydow (also in both The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries) and Fanny and Alexander producer Jörn Donner. Ebert also give us older quotes from the late cinematographer Sven Nykvist (Oscar winner for Fanny and Alexander and Cries and Whispers) and actress Liv Ullman (Cries and Whispers; Autumn Sonata). Other more Bergman-related persons include Astrid Soderbergh Widding, who heads the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, and Cissi Elwing, who heads the Swedish Film Institute.

The rest include a variety of Bergman fans. Finke's compilation has filmmakers Bille August, who says he's in shock, Sir Richard Attenborough, Michael Apted and Andrzej Wajda, plus Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob. Ebert, who actually wrote his own tribute, which included statements and quotes from others, as well as a list of statements he received personally via email, gives us David Mamet, David Lean (another old quote, obviously), Haskell Wexler, Studs Terkel, Paul Cox, Paul Schrader, Richard Linklater, Gregory Nava, Guy Maddin, David Gordon Green, Paul Theroux, Sally Potter and film historian David Bordwell.

The outlaw Ned Kelly, along with his gang, is an important historical figure in Australia and an important cinematic figure in Australian cinema. Including a widely distributed 2003 release starring Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts and Orlando Bloom, the gang has been portrayed in at least 10 films. Kelly's story was first the focus of a 1906 film by Charles Tait titled The Story of the Kelly Gang, which is considered to be the first feature-length dramatic motion picture, with an original running time of 70 minutes (however, there had previously been feature-length films of boxing matches and also other very long religious films). The whole film no longer exists, though; after 100 years, there is only 17 minutes of footage available. It had been thought to have been gone altogether until 1975, when the first small segment was found. Since then, other substantial bits have been recovered, with last year's discovery of a whole reel -- 11 minutes -- being the most significant. What is left of the film was recently digitally restored, screened publicly and finally released on DVD.

That fragmented footage has now also been added to a United Nations heritage register. UNESCO's Memory of the World register recognizes and preserves artifacts and records of world significance, and currently the list only features fewer than 200 items. Another piece of Australian history added to the register this year is records of 165,000 convicts transported from England to Australia throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries. Non-Australian items include records from Nelson Mandela's trial and, also of cinematic interest, the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz and the personal archives of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, which includes hand- and type-written original manuscripts, drafts, notebooks, production papers, photographs and behind-the-scenes footage from his films, and correspondences, all of which, laid out, apparently reaches about 45 meters in length.

• Sergio Bardotti (1939-2007) - Composer of the scores to Summertime Killer, The Grand Duel and Os Saltimbancos Trapalhões, which was based on his play. He died April 11, in Rome. (IMDb)
• Ellen Bergman (1919-2007) - Choreographer on husband Ingmar Bergman's Three Strange Loves. She died March 6. (Guardian)
• Roscoe Lee Brown (1925-2007) - Actor who appears in Topaz, The Cowboys, The Comedians, Uptown Saturday Night, Super Fly T.N.T. and Jumpin' Jack Flash. He also provided his voice for Babe, Babe: Pig in the City, Logan's Run (pictured), Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, Treasure Planet and Oliver & Company. He died of cancer April 11, in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• AJ Carothers (1931-2007) - Screenwriter of The Secret of My Success, Hero at Large and The Happiest Millionaire. He died of cancer April 9, in Los Angeles. (IMDb)
• Stan Daniels (c.1934-2007) - Emmy-winning writer who co-scripted The Lonely Guy. He died of heart failure April 6, in Encino, California. (Variety)
• Howard Goorney (1921-2007) - British actor who appears in Fiddler on the Roof, The Hill and Bedazzled. He died March 29, in England. (The Times)
• Don Ho (1930-2007) - Hawaiian entertainer who plays an evil slumlord in Joe's Apartment. He died of heart failure April 14, in Honolulu. (NY Times)
• George Jenkins (1908-2007) - Oscar-winning production designer for All the President's Men. He was also nominated for The China Syndrome. He also worked as an art director or production designer on The Best Years of Our Lives, Wait Until Dark, The Miracle Worker, Klute, Funny Lady, Sophie's Choice and Presumed Innocent. He died April 6, in Santa Monica, California. (NY Times)
• Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007) - Writer of the novel-turned-film The Well. She died February 13. (NY Times)

• Art Buchwald (1925-2007) - Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist who wrote some English dialogue for Jacques Tati's Play Time and co-wrote Stanley Donen's Surprise Package. He also sold a treatment to Paramount that was the uncredited basis for Coming to America, and he successfully sued the studio for a share of the film's profits. He appears in the documentaries Around the World of Mike Todd and Year of the Woman and in Robert Altman's mini-series Tanner '88. He passed away January 18.
• Ron Carey (1935-2007) - Actor who appears in Mel Brooks' The History of the World: Part I, High Anxiety and Silent Movie. He also appears in Fatso, The Out of Towners and Johnny Dangerously. He died of a stroke January 16, in Los Angeles. (NY Times)
• Jack Coffey (c.1931-2006) - Former boom operator who became an important union leader in Hollywood during the '70s and '80s. He died of prostate cancer December 13, in Sherman Oaks, California. (Variety)
• Harvey Cohen (1951-2007) - Composer who scored the theatrically distributed short Santa vs. the Snowman 3D, the direct-to-video Beauty and the Beast sequel Belle's Magical World and the feature Ghost Town. He also arranged music for Bicentennial Man and orchestrated the music for Mission: Impossible III, King Kong (2005), The Patriot and Hudson Hawk. He also has an Emmy for his work scoring for television. He died of a heart attack January 14. (AP)
• Darlene Conley (1934-2006) - Actress who appears in The Birds, Lady Sings the Blues, Tough Guys and Valley of the Dolls. She died of stomach cancer January 14, in Los Angeles. (NY Times)