sandv blog

Yes, at long last, The Simpsons Movie opens tomorrow. And as one of its writer/producers, Al Jean, says in the July 27 issue of Entertainment Weekly: "As an event, I think it'll be somewhere between Sgt. Pepper's the album and Sgt. Pepper's the movie."

Liv Ullmann, Julia Dufvenius, and Ingmar Bergman during the shooting of Saraband

"No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul."
— Ingmar Bergman
14 July 1918 — 30 July 2007

That's right, if you've been waiting to play that multichannel Tapestry in the car, now you can finally do it. A full six years after the dawn of surround SACDs, Sony has introduced the first car SACD player, the MEX-DV2000 (above, $280). I initially heard rumblings about this way back in January, but now, apparently, it's a reality.

It was with shock that within hours of learning, belatedly, of the death of one of my two closest cinematic heroes — Ingmar Bergman — I now hear of the passing of the other. What a week this has been, and it’s still only Tuesday.

A generation of masters, perhaps the greatest masters have gone. Post-war art-house cinema has ended in a day.