Pick the flower now before the chance is past

Another option for beach-wear for our forthcoming trip to Spain - from Giulietta degli spiriti

We have a centenary to celebrate today, dear reader - that of possibly the most extravagantly camp film director of them all, Signor Federico Fellini!

As I said a decade ago on this very blog:

...Federico Fellini was indeed one of the most influential film directors in European movie history. A pioneer of the so-called "neo-realist" style, he collaborated with Ingrid Bergman's hubbie Roberto Rossellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren and her husband Carlo Ponti, Anna Magnani, Anita Ekberg and even Goldie Hawn. His film Le Notti di Cabiria was later adapted by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields as the musical Sweet Charity.

Fellini's legacy is vast and wide-ranging - everyone from Tim Burton to Terry Gilliam, David Lynch [with whom he shares a birthday] to Peter Greenaway, Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Baz Luhrmann owes him a huge debt - but there are one or two tributes that, for me, are the finest summations of a life's creativity...

French & Saunders do Fellini, part 1

French & Saunders do Fellini, part 2

...and of course, as it is Tacky Music Monday, my favourite musical tribute to the man's work:

Fergie - Be Italian [Nine]

Federico Fellini (20th January 1920 – 31st October 1993)

An interesting review of some of the great man's most stylish films