The Museum of Modern Art’s Bernardo Bertolucci restrospective kicked off 12.15, and runs until 1.12.11. (I’ll be revisiting La Luna, 1900 and The Spider’s Stratagem, and catching Serge July and Bruno Nuytten‘s Once Upon a Time: Last Tango in Paris, a doc about the landmark Marlon Brando-Maria Schneider film showing on 12.27). Bertolucci’s The Conformist has four days left at the Film Forum. And a new Bluray of Last Tango in Paris streets on 2.15.

For me, getting lost in Bertolucci will be a way of combating Christmas-holiday gloom. It’s the holiday per se, but the fact that almost everything shuts down and nothing’s doing for about a ten-day period (12.23 to 1.3). I always get through it okay, but God, what a relief when things finally start up again.

Here’s a Hollywood Reporter interview with Bertolucci about the MOMA thing. And here’s a personal story about Bertolucci in Bilge Ebiri‘s blog as well as a “Vulture” slideshow in which Bertolucci discusses certain key scenes from his films.