Latest Italian films Stories
By Phil Villarreal, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Jul. 24--For Italian splattermaster Dario Argento, there are no boundaries. "Mother of Tears," one of his few recent films to have made theatrical rounds in the United States, proves how badly he needs them. Not disgusted by a blood-gushing disembowelment? Well how about a throat-slitting murderess who turns the knife on herself after the fact? Or maybe a couple eye gouges? A grotesque, intentionally offensive girl-on-the-run...
By Susan Dunne, The Hartford Courant, Conn. Jul. 18--Asia Argento is not the most beautiful woman in the world, or the most elegant. But she is one of the sexiest. Her unquenchable fire is the soul of "The Last Mistress," and she justifies her casting in the lead role. If any woman would spoil a man for all other women, it would be Argento's human volcano, Senora Vellini. Catherine Breillat's potboiler would be even more satisfying if Argento were paired with a more intriguing...
By The Oklahoman Jul. 11--The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is presenting a matinee film series featuring movies set in ancient Rome in conjunction with the "Roman Art from the Louvre" exhibition. The six-week series is set for 2 p.m. Sundays in the museum's Noble Theater, 415 Couch Drive. The series starts this Sunday with "Quo Vadis," the 1951 epic starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr. "The power and opulence of Rome has been an irresistible subject for filmmakers for decades. Ancient...
ROME _ This is the year of the mafia _ at least at the box office. Two films on organized crime in Italy, each fact-based melodramas, took top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in May and are drawing packed audiences here. The Italian movie industry was giddy over the double win. "Gomorra," the film adaptation of a diary-like book by journalist Roberto Saviano that focuses on the Naples-based mob known as Camorra, took home Cannes' grand prize. "Il Divo," a film directed by Paolo...
By ROBERT NOTT EL PASEO Divorce, Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned, Sicilian social satires with sexual shenanigans, not rated, in Italian with subtitles, The Screen, 473-6494, 3.5 chiles A 40ish, married aristocrat runs cold for his overly cheerful spouse but hot for his cousin, who's still in high school -- one run by nuns, in fact. The man cannot legally divorce his wife due to an archaic law, so he concocts a plan to seduce the teen and murder his wife -- but only after he's come...
Noted Hollywood director Spike Lee tends to unfairly portray Italians in his films, an Italian-American group alleges. Italic Institute of America President Bill Dal Cerro said Lee, who criticized fellow director Clint Eastwood for not using black actors in his movies, has routinely used his own alleged prejudices to effect how he portrays Italian-American characters, The Hollywood Reporter said Wednesday. Spike Lee is very talented, but I sometimes wish he'd practice what he preaches, Dal...
By Kerstin Gehmlich CANNES, France (Reuters) - Italian director Nanni Moretti brought his cinematic swipe at former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to the Cannes film festival on Monday, bringing yet more politics to the competition's screens. Already released in Italy just two weeks before the recent election, "The Caiman" is one of 20 films vying for the coveted "Palme d'Or" at the world's biggest film festival. The political theme is a neat fit with other movies in competition,...
By Gregory McNamee LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Anita Ekberg, the Swedish bombshell, so admired Federico Fellini that upon arriving in Rome to work on "La Dolce Vita," one of the famed director's associates reported, "she greeted him lying naked on her bed, ready to do the deed." Fellini was no stranger to backstage romances. Still, the associate continued, he was so flustered that he faked an attack of appendicitis, which he acted out so well that an ambulance took him away and...
By Silvia Aloisi ROME (Reuters) - Italian director Nanni Moretti brings Silvio Berlusconi to the big screen in "The Cayman," a bitter-sweet critique of the tycoon-turned-politician but also of those who demonise him. "The Cayman" hits the screens in Italy on Friday, just two weeks before an April 9-10 election which opinion polls say the prime minister's centre-right bloc is likely to lose. Its release has been hotly anticipated in Italy, both because of the proximity to the ballot and...
VIENNA (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors found more than 100 syringes and 30 packs of drugs, including asthma drugs and antidepressants, in a raid on Austrian Winter Olympics bases, an Italian prosecutor told Austrian television. They also seized devices for blood testing and blood transfusions in the raid on Saturday on the country's biathlon and cross-country teams, Austrian state television ORF said on its Web site on Monday, quoting Turin prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello. ORF also...
