Antonioni will be buried in his home town on Thursday

Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, renowned for his 1966 release Blow-Up, has died aged 94.

He gained two Oscar nominations for the iconic release, and was awarded an honorary Academy Award for his life's work in 1995.

He was also nominated for the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, five times between 1960 and 1982.

The director died peacefully at home on Monday night, his wife, actress Enrica Fico, told La Repubblica newspaper.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano paid tribute, saying the country had "lost one of cinema's greatest protagonists and one of the greatest explorers of expression in the 20th Century".

He was a rogue and a tyrant and a brilliant man Sarah Miles Blow-Up actress

Another great Italian director, Mario Monicelli, said Antonioni was "one of the masters of Italian and international cinema".

"He found out how to tell things, emotions, that before him nobody think could ever be told through this mean of expression which is cinema," he said.

Actress Sarah Miles, who appeared in Blow Up, told the BBC World Service's Europe Today that Antonioni was "a rogue and a tyrant and a brilliant man".

"He was all things, as everybody is who has got any great talent. He had his dark side and his light side," she said.

It's the last link with the great days of European art cinema Geoffrey Nowell-Smith Antonioni author

Richard Mowe, a film writer and co-director of the Italian Film Festival UK, said Antonioni made productions "that were out of the conventional modes of expression".

"He invented his own language of cinema - that's what made him very, very inventive," he said. "He didn't owe anything to anybody else. He was a total original."

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, the author of a book on Antonioni's film L'Avventura (The Adventure), described his works as being productions that "invite you to concentrate on them, like great music".

Antonioni was married to Enrica Fico

"It's extraordinary that he should die within a day of Ingmar Bergman - that's two greats in two days," said Mr Nowell-Smith, who also curated a season of his work at London's BFI Southbank.

"It's the last link with the great days of European art cinema."

Fans will be able to pay their respects when Antonioni's body lies in state in the Sala della Protomoteca at Rome's city hall, the Campidoglio, on Wednesday morning.

The funeral will then take place in the director's home town of Ferrara, north-eastern Italy, on Thursday.

Antonioni was born in Ferrara in 1912 and released his debut feature, Story of A Love Affair, at the age of 38.

But he did not achieve international recognition until the mystery L'Avventura 10 years later in 1960.

In 1966, he signed a deal to make a trilogy of films for the English market with legendary Italian film producer Carlo Ponti.

The first was Blow-Up, in which a photographer appears to have uncovered a murder in his photos.

Blow-Up starred Vanessa Redgrave and David Hemmings

Shot in London, and starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, it was his biggest international hit.

Antonioni captured the "flower power" era in 1970, filming Zabriskie Point in California, while Hollywood actor Jack Nicholson starred as a journalist in 1974 in Professione: Reporter (The Passenger).

In 1985, the director suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed, but he continued to work behind the camera. "Filming for me is living," he said.

His last cinematic release was 2004's The Dangerous Thread of Things, one part of a trilogy of short films released under the title Eros.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” -Tenzin Gyatso, (b. 1935) The 14th Dalai Lama

“You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.” -Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) motivational author

Adults Have Misclassified Me As A Handful

By Timmy Johnson
July 25, 2007 | Issue 43•30

Clearly, a mistake has been made. For whatever reason, I have been singled out and wrongly characterized by the adult world as a "real handful." In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

I concede that I am something of a live wire. Given to the occasional outburst of what might in all fairness be called hyperactivity, especially in cases involving high sugar intake—of course. But the "handful" classification is problematic at best, a gross exaggeration at worst. 

Am I a child who is sometimes difficult? Yes. Am I a difficult child? No. The distinction is more than semantic.

Once you get a reputation for being a handful, everything you do is automatically cast in a negative light. Suspicious glances meet you every time you even think about touching the frame of your younger sister's playpen, and God forbid you come within five feet of a houseplant. You have, in effect, already been accused, tried, and sentenced for actions you have not even taken. From then on, anything you do is retroactively construed as "problem behavior."

Knowingly or unknowingly, adults create a set of expectations that a 4-year-old like me can't help but internalize on some level. After enough humiliating time-outs, those who are treated as handfuls start thinking of themselves as such.

Admittedly, my attention span is short, and at times I am easily distracted by colorful and/or animal-shaped stimuli in my immediate environment. But I cannot stress enough the importance of early-childhood self-image formation. (I believe Thomas the Tank Engine has explored this subject in some detail—I'd cite the specific episode but unfortunately I don't have it in front of me at the moment.)

A label like "handful"—nothing more than a social construct—can take years to shake off. It could very well haunt me until I'm 6, even 7 years old. And by that time, it probably will have led to something even worse. Today it may be "handful," but how long before you are being called a wisenheimer, or even worse, a Buster Brown?

Now, allow me to preempt a predictable yet fallacious argument from my detractors: that by complaining, I am being a big crybaby-face. I understand the impulse to render my argument moot by resorting to ad hominem attacks, but again, it is an unfair assessment of my character. I have never been one to engage in manipulative grandstanding, and I have no patience for those who use whining, balled-up fists, or stomping on the floor as measures by which to flout adult authority. On the contrary, I stand by my previous assertion that I have a legitimate grievance to air, and, while my tummy does indeed ache, this is a much more serious ill. 

It is the "terrible twos" all over again. A whole year boiled down to being "terrible," despite many notable achievements during those 12 months. I made huge strides in shape recognition and speech acquisition. Plus, need I remind you, I learned to walk while carrying a stuffed animal in my hands.

Further evidence of selective memory on the subject of my conduct can be seen in the failure to recognize and praise my more recent achievements. I've managed to start putting away my blocks more than 50 percent of the time. I can almost tie my shoes; true, I cannot loop yet, but have perfected the first phase. Plus, I can now button my shirt. And yet, in that specific instance, more attention was paid to the fact that I might not have gotten my shirttails exactly even than to the fact that I had made a breakthrough in the much more challenging arena of button-fastening.

Not unlike the proverbial infant strapped into a bouncy-bouncy chair, I am at the mercy of the adult world's judgment, a world in which any protest on my part is met with the suggestion that maybe somebody needs a nap. As if a few minutes of lie-down sleepy-time could even begin to solve a problem this systemic and pervasive!

How so-called "grown-ups" could resort to such base stereotyping in their supposedly advanced thinking is beyond my comprehension.  So I beg you, as mature big people, to reconsider this damaging opinion which has caused far too much pain already. Thank you, bye-bye, and have a good day. Editorial all gone!

What I've Learned: Homer Simpson

Nuclear-power-plant safety inspector, 39, Springfield

Interviewed by John Frink and Don Payne

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.” -Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) philosopher, writer, publisher