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English-born Terence Stamp, who burned brightly as a young actor in the 1960s, with praise heaped upon him for roles in “Billy Budd,” “The Collector” and “Far From the Madding Crowd,” memorably played the villain General Zod in the Superman films and was the highlight of Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey,” died Sunday, his family confirmed to Reuters. He was 87.

“He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and as a writer that will continue to touch and inspire people for years to come,” said the statement from his family.

Stamp brought a fierce, blue-eyed stare and an intense integrity to his roles.

He was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor for 1962’s “Billy Budd.”

More recently he had appeared in Tim Burton’s 2014 film “Big Eyes,” in which Stamp played an influential art critic who scorns the work of Margaret Keane, which is popular with the masses.

Venice Classics will screen restorations of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita and Pedro Almodóvar’s Matador as part of an 18-film line-up at the 82nd Venice Film Festival (August 27-Septemer 6).

Lolita is a US-uk co-production, adapted by Kubrick from Nabokov’s novel, with James Mason and Sue Lyon in the leading roles. It first played at Venice in 1962.

Matador is one of Almodóvar’s early works. The 1986 erotic thriller sees Antonio Banderas play a student matador who wrongfully confesses to murder.

Among the four Italian films are Giuseppe De Santis’ once underestimated 1952 filmRome 11:00andLuciano Salce’s 1967 filmI Married You For Fun.

The Venice Film Festival has unveiled the 18 recently restored movies that will be showcased in its Venice Classics sidebar at upcoming 82nd edition.

The line-up features Delmer Daves’ 1957 western 3:10 to Yuma, based on a 1953 short story by Elmore Leonard, which was revisited by James Mangold in 2007 in a version starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.

Other U.S. highlights include The Delicate Delinquent, starring Jerry Lewis, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, House of Strangers, starring Edward G. Robinson in the role of a rags-to-riches Italian American banker accused of criminal activity.

The sidebar will also showcase Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 Vladimir Nabokov adaptation Lolita, starring James Mason and Sue Lyon.

European classics in the selection include Manoel de Oliveira’s first film Aniki-Bóbó, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance, which heralded Decalogue; Pedro Almodóvar’s Matador, and Marcel Carné’s pioneering film noir Le Quai des brumes, starring Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan,...

Ferzan Özpetek, the director of Diamonds (Diamanti):”There are certain costume designers I was thinking of, Milena Canonero, yes. Piero Tosi who was a good friend …”

Ferzan Özpetek’s sparkling Diamonds almost entirely takes place in a Roman film and theater costume atelier in the 1970s, owned by Alberta Canova (Luisa Ranieri) and her sister Gabriella (Jasmine Trinca), who after a personal loss seems more and more out of sorts to handle all the detailed requirements requested by demanding costume designers, movie directors, and stars.

Ferzan Özpetek with Anne-Katrin Titze about his encounter with Monica Vitti: ”She turned around and came back to me and said, you are going to make a lot of beautiful films!”

The fabulous ensemble cast sheds light on the various concerns of women in the garment business and their personal relationships through humorous and sometimes almost tragic vignettes.

The...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

The Matrix Reloaded and In the Spirit both play on 35mm this Friday, with the latter repeating Saturday; a print of Barry Lyndon screens on Sunday.

Film Forum

All five of John Cazale’s films play; the 4K restoration of Shall We Dance?, debuting Masayuki Suo’s cut, and a new 35mm print of 8½ continue; Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows In Brooklyn plays on Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

A Theater Near You includes films by Welles, Raoul Walsh, Ozu, Dreyer, Renoir, and more.

Film at Lincoln Center

The Monica Vitti retrospective continues.

Paris Theater

Bleak Week begins.

Anthology Film Archives

A series on the Griots Theater Company begins.

Museum of the Moving Image

Stagecoach leads “See It Big: Stunts!“; The Birdcage shows Saturday and Sunday.

IFC Center

Ran continues in a 40th-anniversary restoration; Before Sunrise, Before Sunset,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research

In anticipation of The Jag, a new play produced by yours truly, Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo present Jean-François Stévenin’s Mountain Pass on Friday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Antonioni, Buñuel, and more play in a retrospective of Monica Vitti.

Anthology Film Archives

Films by Stan Brakhage play in Essential Cinema.

Roxy Cinema

Tongues Untied screens on Friday; Dressed In Blue, Three Bewildered People In the Night, and The Wild Boys show Saturday; Ratcatcher plays on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Raid, District 13, Stagecoach, and Jackass 3D screen in “See It Big: Stunts!“; Alien shows Saturday and Sunday.

IFC Center

Ran continues in a 40th-anniversary restoration; Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Happiness play daily; Romeo + Juliet, To Live and Die in L.A., Audition, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang show late.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, starring Monica Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau screens in Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s Monica Vitti: La Modernista

Before the Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 24th edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema luncheon at Leopard at des Artistes, I asked Fabrizio Gifuni, star of the Opening Night film, Francesca Comencini’s The Time It Takes (Il Tempo Che Ci Vuole with Anna Mangiocavallo) and directors Andrea Segre of The Great Ambition (Berlinguer. La Grande Ambizione with Elio Germano as Enrico Berlinguer), Sara Fgaier of Weightless (Sulla Terra Leggeri with Andrea Renzi and Sara Serraiocco), Alissa Jung of Paternal Leave, and Ferzan Özpetek of Diamonds (Diamanti with Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca) to name their favourite Monica Vitti films.

Monica Vitti: La Modernista

Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpieces L’Avventura (4K Restoration); L’Eclisse opposite Alain Delon, La Notte with Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau,...

Rosamund Pike’s Top Picks from the Criterion Closet: The Criterion Collection has been the gold standard for film lovers across the globe for more than four decades, scrupulously restoring and distributing classic and contemporary masterpieces with exceptional care. Revered for its steadfast commitment to presenting movies as close as possible to their makers’ vision, Criterion has, over the years, secured a special place in the hearts and minds of cinephiles, turning every movie-watching act into an immersive, profound one. Yet, in recent years, it’s not just their immaculate restoration that has enthralled audiences—it’s an intimate, warm video series called Closet Picks that has stolen the spotlight.

Snug in Criterion’s New York City office lies a cozy, homey space—a closet brimmed with each and every film the company has released. In Closet Picks, this modest space unfolds into a stage where directors, actors, and luminaries...

Iconic Italian star Monica Vitti is a stateside tribute with the posthumous festival “Monica Vitti: La Modernista,” presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà. The actress, who died in 2022, was immortalized onscreen with her famed collaborations with auteurs Michelangelo Antonioni and Luis Buñuel. Now, the 14-film series at Flc will be the first North American retrospective dedicated to Vitti’s career. The series will feature new restorations of her classic films including “Red Desert” and “La supertestimone.”

“We are pleased to partner with Cinecittà to celebrate one of Italy’s most revered actresses,” Florence Almozini, Vice President of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center, said in a press statement. “It is a privilege to have the opportunity to present decades worth of films from Monica Vitti’s illustrious and prolific career, especially with many restored versions of her legendary work.”

Vitti most famously starred in Antonioni’s “L’avventura,” which...

Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, the opening film of the Rome Film Festival, tells the story of how the Italian Communist Party came close to governing Italy.

It focuses on Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer, who ran the Communist Party when it reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s. His great ambition was to achieve a democratic path to communism, which meant severing his Party’s ties with Moscow.

Leading the film as Berlinguer is Elio Germano, winner of the best actor prize at the 2020 Berlinale for Hidden Away and at Cannes in 2010 for Our Life. The Great Ambition...

French acting star Alain Delon, whose many iconic roles included Le Samouraï, Plein Soleil and The Leopard, has died in France at the age of 88.

The actor’s children said in a statement that their father had passed away in the early hours of Sunday, surrounded by his family and beloved Belgian Shepherd Loubo, in his long-time chateau home in the village of Douchy, in the Le Loiret region some 100 miles south of Paris.

Delon’s death marks the passing of one of the last surviving icons of the French cinema scene of the 1960s and 70s, when the country was on an economic roll as it reconstructed in the wake of World War II.

Related: French Pres. Emmanuel Macron Leads Tributes To Alain Delon: “More Than A Star, A Monument”

The star, who was at the peak of this career from the 1960s to the 1980s, fell into acting by chance.

In the history of American movies, and, arguably, of movies in general, there has never been a partnership between a husband and wife as consequential as that of director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands.

Not only did the two make several masterpieces together, among them Faces, A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night. They managed to create a whole body of deeply personal features — shot completely outside of the studio system and often inside their own family home in the Hollywood Hills — that would usher in the era of what we now call “independent film.”

Surely, there had been some memorable director-actress duos before them, mostly in Europe: Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti. But in those cases, which definitely yielded their share of masterpieces as well, the director was the auteur and the actress his muse.

Jamie Lee Curtis was a highlight of The Bear season 2 and the actress is opening up about her acclaimed turn in the hit show!

Curtis has been a notable Hollywood star since she was a child. The fact she’s the daughter of legendary actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh means she was literally born for the business. Her breakout turn in Halloween kicked off a film career that included hits like Trading Places, True Lies, Freaky Friday and culminating in Curtis winning an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once.

In terms of television, Curtis has had surprising appearances, such as starring in the ABC sitcom Anything But Love. She’s had recurring roles on NCIS and New Girl yet given her movie fame, seeing Curtis on TV is rare.

That made her turn on The Bear so notable. A highlight of season 2 of the hit FX/Hulu drama was “Fishes,...

Jamie Lee Curtis just knew she would be in The Bear, long before she got the part of Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic, unstable mother of the restauranteur siblings at the show’s center. While watching Season 1, Curtis had an eerie feeling. “I went, ‘I’m going to play her.’ I swear,” she says. And then she got the call. “My agent said, ‘You’ve been offered a part on The Bear.’” Curtis called the show’s creator, Christopher Storer. “I said, ‘What do you want her hair to look like?’ He sent me a picture of Monica Vitti. I said, ‘What do you want her nails to look like?’ He sent me a picture of the Desperate Housewives of New York.” Now, in the midst of shooting the much-anticipated sequel to fan favorite Freaky Friday, Curtis details how Peter Falk made her famous, her best advice, and why Lip Sync Battle...

Pierfrancesco Favino as submarine Commander Salvatore Todaro in Edoardo De Angelis’s intense and humanistic Comandante

Edoardo De Angelis’s Comandante, starring Pierfrancesco Favino, was the Opening Night selection of the 23rd edition of Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s exceptional program, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema in New York. Other highlights included Ginevra Elkann’s I Told You So; Giorgio Diritti’s Lubo (Franz Rogowski); Roberta Torre’s In the Mirror (Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with Alba Rohrwacher mirroring Monica Vitti); Piero Messina’s Another End; Stefano Sollima’s Adagio; Laura Luchetti’s The Beautiful Summer; Nanni Moretti’s A Brighter Tomorrow (Il Sol Dell’Avvenire with Nanni, Margherita Buy,...

Pierfrancesco Favino as submarine Commander Salvatore Todaro in Edoardo De Angelis’s intense and humanistic Comandante

Edoardo De Angelis’s Comandante, starring Pierfrancesco Favino, was the Opening Night selection of the 23rd edition of Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s exceptional program, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema in New York. Other highlights included Ginevra Elkann’s I Told You So; Giorgio Diritti’s Lubo (Franz Rogowski); Roberta Torre’s In the Mirror (Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with Alba Rohrwacher mirroring Monica Vitti); Piero Messina’s Another End; Stefano Sollima’s Adagio; Laura Luchetti’s The Beautiful Summer; Nanni Moretti’s A Brighter Tomorrow (Il Sol Dell’Avvenire with Nanni, Margherita Buy,...

Italy’s Taormina Film Festival will honor Sharon Stone with a Golden Cariddi for Lifetime Achievement at is upcoming 70th edition this month.

The actress will follow in the footsteps of previous honorees Jessica Lange, Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Richard Gere, Colin Firth, Isabelle Huppert, Gina Lollobrigida, Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti.

Stone, who will receive the award on the closing night of the festival, will also participate in an on-stage conversation on her career as part of honor.

Since her big screen debut in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories in 1980, Stone has ratcheted up more than 150 film and TV credits, with highlights including Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Sliver and Casino, for which she received a Golden Globe for Best Actress and an Oscar nomination.

It will mark Stone’s first appearance in Taormina which hosted the Italian premiere for Basic Instinct...

Edoardo De Angelis’s The War Machine (Comandante), starring the commanding Pierfrancesco Favino, opened the 23rd edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema in New York and the Venice Film Festival. Photo: courtesy of Cinecittà

Edoardo De Angelis’s The War Machine; Roberta Torre’s In the Mirror (Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with Alba Rohrwacher mirroring Monica Vitti); Piero Messina’s Another End; Stefano Sollima’s Adagio; Laura Luchetti’s The Beautiful Summer; Nanni Moretti’s A Brighter Tomorrow; Paola Cortellesi’s There’s Still Tomorrow; Alain Parroni’s An Endless Sunday; Ginevra Elkann’s I Told You So; Giorgio Diritti’s Lubo...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s whirlwind career of 40-plus movies made within just over a dozen years kicked off with Love Is Colder Than Death. It ended, all too soon, with a sendoff that may as well have been called Death Is Hotter Than Love. Even if it hadn’t wound up being Fassbinder’s final cinematic will and testament, Querelle, an uber-horny but otherwise unorthodox adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 novel Querelle of Brest, would still feel like a film precariously perched between rowdy, profane life and that liminal, insatiable zone that always follows la petite mort.

But because the timeline spanning the film’s completion to its release was bisected by Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose, it’s nearly impossible to avoid overlaying the gorgeously wrecked glamour of his entire career onto the film, draping the virtue of his carnal vices over a package that’s already prodigiously overstuffed.

Within a career that lasted over 50 years, French singer-songwriter, actress, author, fashion icon, and astrologist Françoise Hardy — who passed away Tuesday, June 11 after a long battle with cancer — produced 32 studio albums, performed in over 10 films and television specials, wrote six books, and influenced countless artists ranging from Carla Bruni to Charli Xcx. Her screen career includes roles in films like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Féminin” and John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix.”

She was a renegade. A heartbreaker. Born at the height of World War II in Paris, her upbringing coincided with a great sociopolitical re-evaluation in France that fed her own anxieties and obsessions. Seeking artistic refuge outside of her home country, she found inspiration in American music that, by her teen years, was starting to reach her shores.

“This passion for singing became real madness when I discovered an English station called Radio Luxembourg,” Hardy said in a 2012 interview with Télérama.

Roberta Torre with Anne-Katrin Titze on Gitt Magrini, Michelangelo Antonioni’s costume designer for Red Desert and with Bice Brichetto for L'Eclisse: “With Massimo Cantini Parrini we have thought a lot about this before making the film. So he went to all the beautiful costumes for Monica Vitti to see what remains today.”

A little over an hour and a half into Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Monica Vitti’s Giuliana visits Richard Harris’s Corrado Zeller at his hotel. “Mi fanno male i capelli” she says, her hair hurts, as do her eyes, her throat and her mouth. Roberta Torre’s Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with a score by Wong Kar Wai’s longtime composer Shigeru Umebayashi takes the sentence as a starting point to investigate time and the mind, memory and the fluidity of identity.

Edoardo (Filippo Timi) with Monica (Alba Rohrwacher) in dress inspired by Monica...

A little over an hour and a half into Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Monica Vitti’s Giuliana visits Richard Harris’s Corrado Zeller at his hotel. “Mi fanno male i capelli” she says, her hair hurts, as do her eyes, her throat and her mouth. Roberta Torre’s Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with a score by Wong Kar Wai’s longtime composer Shigeru Umebayashi takes the sentence as a starting point to investigate time and the mind, memory and the fluidity of identity.

In a bravura performance Alba Rohrwacher interacts not only with her newly found guiding light of identification Monica Vitti, but also with the melancholy screen Marcello Mastroianni of 1961, the Alain Delon of L’Eclisse, Claudia Cardinale, and later Alberto...

While Luca Guadagnino is reigning supreme this summer with “Challengers” and Cannes-premiered “Queer” both opening, Film at Lincoln Center is celebrating all Italian auteurs for the 23rd edition of annual festival “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.”

This year’s festival takes place from May 30 through June 6 and includes North American, U.S., and New York premieres, with appearances and discussions by several of the filmmakers. Co-presented by Cinecittà, “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema” serves as a showcase of the best in new Italian cinema.

“I think we have an especially strong lineup at this year’s ‘Open Roads,’ which is nothing if not an encouraging sign of things to come as we continue to move forward from the production pauses and shutdowns wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dan Sullivan, Flc Programmer, said. “A satisfying mix of the familiar and the new, of low- and higher-budget movies, of fresh takes on...

The red carpet will soon roll out for the 77th Festival de Cannes. The international film festival, playing out May 14-25, has a distinct American voice this year. “Barbie” filmmaker Greta Gerwig is the first U.S. female director name jury president. Many veteran American helmers are heading to the French Rivera resort town. George Lucas, who turns 80 on May 14, will receive an honorary Palme d’Or. Francis Ford Coppola’s much-anticipated “Megalopolis” is screening in competition, as is Paul Schrader’s “Oh Canada.” Kevin Costner’s new Western “Horizon, An American Saga” will premiere out of competition and Oliver Stone’s “Lula” is part of the special screening showcase.

Fifty years ago, Coppola was the toast of the 27th Cannes Film Festival. His brilliant psychological thriller “The Conversation” starring Gene Hackman won the Palme D’Or and well as a Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury. The film would earn three Oscar nominations: picture,...

Italian state broadcaster Rai’s Rai Cinema film arm is launching a new standalone film sales unit at the European Film Market.

The nascent sales company — which is called Rai Cinema International Distribution — aims to fill a gap within Rai’s content sales force given that Rai’s existing Rai Com sales unit is “mostly dedicated to TV product,” said Rai Cinema CEO Paolo Del Brocco.

It will also provide a new international distribution outlet to Italian cinema often sold by French outfits such as Newen Connect, which is the international distributor for Berlinale competition title “Another End” by Italy’s Piero Messina and starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

Rai Cinema, which invests up to €80 million ($85 million) a year in production, is the main driver of Italian indie cinema, with a hand in roughly 60 feature films a year. But Del Brocco underlined that they have no intention of imposing themselves as...

Above: Italian poster for The Lovemakers. Illustration by Mauro Innocenti.Over the past ten years I’ve surveyed the illustrated likenesses of stars like Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bruno Ganz and Monica Vitti as in memoriams after their passing, so I am happy to say that the occasion of this look at Claudia Cardinale in movie posters is simply that, starting today, the 84-years-young Ms. Cardinale is being fêted with a three-week, 23-film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.Claudia Cardinale is one of my favorite actors, but while exploring her career for this piece I realized that my affection for her really comes down to one film, albeit one of my all-time favorites: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). The fact that she is the focus of perhaps my favorite single shot in all cinema—Sergio Leone's magnificent crane shot as Cardinale’s Jill...

Supermodel Tatjana Patitz died Wednesday at 56 from metastatic breast cancer.

Beginning in the 80s, the supermodel appeared on covers for Vogue and countless other fashion magazines.

Atypical of many models of her time, Patitz lived a quiet life in nature away from the public eye.

In Memoriam 2022: 100 Great Celebrities Who Died In 2022

Anna Wintour, Vogue‘s Global Editorial Director, said, “Tatjana was always the European symbol of chic, like Romy Schneider-meets-Monica Vitti. She was far less visible than her peers — more mysterious, more grown-up, more unattainable — and that had its own appeal.”

Patitz was born in Hamburg, Germany but raised in Sweden. Her career started when she was selected in 1983 as a finalist of the “Elite Model Look” competition. The award was a trip to Paris and a limited-time contract.

However, she didn’t rise to fame until the late 80s when she began modeling for photographer Peter Lindbergh.

It was another difficult year in 2022, and the sadness extended to many beloved and groundbreaking people in the show business and media worlds who died during the past 12 months.

Scroll through a photo gallery above, which also includes the obituaries.

The acting world lost giants including Sidney Poitier and Angela Lansbury, along with such big names as James Caan, Anne Heche, Bob Saget, Kirstie Alley, Ray Liotta, Nichelle Nichols, William Hurt, Louise Fletcher, Robert Clary, Emilio Delgado, Sally Kellerman, Robbie Coltrane, Monica Vitti, Leslie Jordan, John Aniston, Tony Sirico, Charlbi Dean, Tony Dow, Irene Papas, Howard Hesseman and Seinfeld moms Estelle Harris and Liz Sheridan.

We also pay tribute to directors including Ivan Reitman, Peter Bogdanovich and Marvin J. Chomsky.

Musicians who left us this past year include Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn, Olivia Newton-John, Meat Loaf, Ronnie Spector, Naomi Judd, Ramsey Lewis, Stephen “tWitch” Boss and Coolio. Many key...

The funniest The White Lotus season 2 line was actually improvised, reveals actor Sabrina Impacciatore. The Italian actress stars as resort manager Valentina in The White Lotus season 2, which takes place at the fictional hotel's Sicilian location. Created by Mike White, the Emmy Award-winning series follows the exploits of the privileged guests at the titular top-tier resort and its employees. Jennifer Coolidge, one of the two actors returning from The White Lotus season 1, stars alongside Impacciatore as Tanya, and John Gries, as her newly married husband, Greg. While satirical, season 2 has a darker and more dangerous feel than season 1, with multiple dead bodies found on the hotels' premises by the end of their vacation. Still, certain characters and moments have offered plenty of comic relief, with one Peppa Pig line going viral.

As it turns out, the funniest The White Lotus season 2 line was actually improvised by actor Sabrina Impacciatore, she told Access Hollywood.

The 35th European Film Awards took place amid the uncanny beauty of Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik. While it was possible to take a boat from the marina to gaze up at the aurora borealis dancing across the sky, the northern light on Saturday, December 10 came from Sweden and was named Ruben Östlund. The EFAs have a habit of decorating the same film across all major categories, so when his broad eat-the-rich satire “Triangle of Sadness” picked up an early award for Best European Director, it was clear which way the weather was going.

Östlund barely flinched when his name was announced as the winner in this early category — perhaps two Palme d’Ors in five years does that to a man. He first thanked the actress Sunnyi Melles (who was present) for her “great vomiting performance” and then had the grace to pay respects to Charlbi Dean, the South...

Backstage at the Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2020 collection with Hannelore Knuts and creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli Photo: Archivio Fotografico Paolo Di Paolo

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Anna Magnani, Michelangelo Antonioni, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Charlotte Rampling, Grace Kelly, Marcello Mastroianni, Rudolf Nureyev, Sophia Loren, Ezra Pound, Faye Dunaway, Monica Vitti, Giorgio de Chirico, Gina Lollobrigida, Tennessee Williams, Marlene Dietrich, Giulietta Masina, Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Anita Ekberg, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Moravia, and many others were photographed by Bruce Weber’s muse and subject of his latest documentary The Treasure Of His Youth: The Photographs Of Paolo Di Paolo, which starts with an overture of images and film clips. After putting his camera away for decades we see di Paolo return to shoot Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2020 collection.

Paolo di Paolo with Silvia di Paolo and Anne-Katrin Titze on Tennessee Williams: “I...

This post contains spoilers for season 2, episode 6 of The White Lotus.

Contrary to all the glitz and glamour on display when a new set of guests arrive at the titular resort, "The White Lotus" is not about the perks of wealth or the joy of vacationing at a gorgeous, sunkissed locale. It's also not about murder or money or even doing cocaine at epic palazzo parties (though Jennifer Coolidge in episode 6 might just convince you otherwise). Beneath the surface, Mike White's sardonic drama is far bleaker than all of that.

The destinations may be beautiful and the characters swimming in wealth, but "The White Lotus" is far from the fantasy that it displays. This is a series about dashed dreams and in the penultimate episode of its second season, the anthology starts to show the true danger of wishful thinking. Disappointment and threatening artichokes wait around every corner and...

By “The White Lotus” Season 2 Episode 5, Tanya is so distraught with her relationship with Greg that she tells Portia she reached out to a divorce lawyer to get the marriage annulled — but even the HBO series’ biggest fans might not know how this subtle name drop connects to creator Mike White.

“You know, I talked to Billy Offer last night about getting the marriage annulled,” Tanya said at breakfast with Portia before the pair sail off to Palermo with Quentin and his nephew, Jack, lamenting “how did I not see the signs, Portia?”

As it turns out, in real life Billy Offer works in the Indie Film Group at United Talent Agency (UTA) — and his father, Robert Offer, is Mike White’s entertainment lawyer.

“Robert Offer has been my lawyer for over 25 years and I have known Billy since he was a toddler,” White told TheWrap over email. “A perk...

When she found out that Season 2 of “The White Lotus” would be set in Sicily, costume designer Alex Bovaird knew she’d have to up the ante.

“When people, especially Americans, go to Italy, they dress up a bit more. They bring their A-game,” she says, nodding towards the more beachy and casual wardrobe seen in Season 1, when the series’ rich and morally bankrupt characters cared little about impressing the Hawaiian people surrounding them.

Season 2 also traverses further outside of the White Lotus hotel than Season 1 did — again, because wealthy Americans are more likely to take a holistic interest in a Western European country than in the Pacific Islands, where the resort was treated like it was the entire world. And the more locations there were, the more the costumes varied.

“But it’s the same general flavor that [series creator] Mike White likes, which is, you know, ‘Go big. Go bold,...

On the third episode of “The White Lotus” Season 2, a group of American tourists visits a location from “The Godfather,” which leads to a multi-generational debate about the patriarchy. But Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning classic isn’t the only film referenced in Sunday’s installment.

In fact, a striking moment featuring Aubrey Plaza under the steps of the Noto Cathedral is a shot-by-shot homage to a scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film “L’avventura,” starring Monica Vitti (who was name-dropped by Jennifer Coolidge in last week’s episode). In “L’avventura,” a woman goes missing, and, amidst their search for her, the woman’s lover and best friend strike up a romance. According to “The White Lotus” creator Mike White, “L’avventura” is a “very elliptical, mysterious movie about an existential psychodrama.”

In “L’avventura” and “White Lotus,” respectively, Vitti and Plaza walk around the same courtyard and begin...

In an upcoming episode of the new season of the HBO resort comedy The White Lotus, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) theorizes that there is nothing interesting left to do in the world. You can go to a beautiful place and take a picture, she says, but so many others have already taken that picture, and you’re only doing it for Instagram content, anyway. “Is everything boring?” she asks.

The White Lotus Season Two is definitely not boring. Once again, it boasts a great cast — Emmy-winning returnee Jennifer Coolidge is...

The first shot of writer-director Andrea Pallaoro’s “Monica” shows the eponymous heroine (Trace Lysette) in what looks like a tanning bed as the New Order song “Bizarre Love Triangle” plays on the soundtrack. The aspect ratio this movie is shot in is unusually narrow, and this aids the sense that Lysette’s Monica feels both isolated and trapped.

Pallaoro is Italian, and so as we watch Lysette’s Monica in long scenes where she is stuck in compositions behind doors and windows as she makes calls to people who seem to have abandoned her, it feels like Pallaoro is riffing on the movies that Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni made in the 1960s with Monica Vitti, especially “L’Eclisse.”

There are times in this early section of “Monica” where the framing can be a little much, particularly when we see Monica behind a door frame with a window that looks like a cross.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHead."A man for all seasons" is how Bruce Dern once described Bob Rafelson, who passed away this week at age 89. Josh Karp's 2019 Esquire profile captures the New Hollywood iconoclast at his intense best. This week, we're also remembering William Richert, writer/director of Winter Kills and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, and the legendary actor Paul Sorvino, an unforgettable presence across five decades of film roles.Steven Spielberg's next film, The Fabelmans, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. A semi-autobiography based on Spielberg's own childhood growing up in postwar Arizona, the film will star Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, plus Gabriel Labelle as Spielberg's stand-in. Nicolas Winding Refn has made a new six-part TV series. Copenhagen Cowboy will be the first production the...

From his dazzling first feature “Fists in the Pocket” in 1965, Marco Bellocchio has used the emotions springing from conflict within his own large family as a creative spur, and in some of the films he made subsequently, he movingly returned to dramatizing his own familial issues.

And now in his documentary “Marx Can Wait,” which gathers together the remaining members of the Bellocchio family for what might be a last reunion, Bellocchio reveals – with an intensifying, near-frenzied focus that is a hallmark of his work – the trauma that has haunted him for most of his life: the suicide of his twin brother Camillo at age 29 in 1968.

Bellocchio has dealt with the death of Camillo before in his films: In “The Eyes, the Mouth,” the Camillo character is called Pippo, and Bellocchio imagined a redemption for the character of Pippo’s brother that involved him taking up with a woman that Pippo had left behind.

Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-nominated autobiographical drama “The Hand of God” took top honors at Italy’s 67th David di Donatello Awards, winning best picture, director, supporting actress and tying for the best cinematography statuette.

Sorrentino’s Naples-set film about the personal tragedy and other vicissitudes that drove him to become a top notch film director had been the frontrunner along with young helmer Gabriele Mainetti’s second feature, the elegant effects-laden historical fantasy “Freaks Out.”

“Freaks Out” won six prizes, including for its producer, Andrea Occhipinti, as well as cinematographer, set design, and effects.

The cinematography prize, which was a tie, was split between “Hand of God” Dp Daria D’Antonio, marking the first time this David goes to a woman, and Michele Attanasio for “Freaks Out.”

The Davids were held as a fully in-person ceremony at Rome’s Cinecittà studios just as the famed facilities undergo a radical renewal being...

Who will be included for the special “In Memoriam” segment for Sunday night’s Oscars 2022 ceremony? For almost all other Academy Awards productions since the 1990s, producers typically select 40-50 people from the various branches. The 2021 segment had close to 100 people in a particularly fast-paced three minutes that was not very well-received since many of them were only on screen for a second or two.

SEECelebrity Deaths 2022: In Memoriam Gallery

Previous Oscar winners from acting categories passing away since last year’s late April ceremony are Olympia Dukakis, William Hurt and Sidney Poitier. Past acting nominees include Ned Beatty, Sally Kellerman and Dean Stockwell.

Almost all of the dozens on the list below were Academy members, previous nominees/winners or both.

Louie Anderson (actor)

Ed Asner (actor)

Ned Beatty (actor)

Marilyn Bergman (composer)

Val Bisoglio (actor)

Robert Blalack (visual effects)

Peter Bogdanovich (director)

David Brenner (editor)

Leslie Bricusse (composer...

Sunday’s SAG Awards ceremony will return to its normal two-hour live format on TNT and TBS. One of the highlights each year is the special In Memoriam segment. It’s been a particularly rough year with over 100 deaths of prominent actors and actresses who were likely members of SAG/AFTRA. Show producers typically are able to include approximately 40-50 people in a tribute. The 2021 segment saluted 55 people because they had responsibility for 14 months instead of 12.

Among that group will certainly be previous SAG president Ed Asner, who was also a life achievement award recipient. That honorary award was also presented to Sidney Poitier and Betty White, who both died this past year.

SEECelebrity Deaths 2022: In Memoriam Gallery

Who else might be featured in the 2022 tribute? Look for Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis, Oscar nominees Ned Beatty, Peter Bogdanovich and Dean Stockwell, plus Emmy champs Louie Anderson, Michael Constantine, Charles Grodin,...

It’s no spoiler to say that Luigi Pirandello dies nine minutes into “Leonora addio.” This alternately playful and lugubrious work of reflection isn’t really about the controversial Italian writer’s life at all, but rather his legacy, and in a less literal yet ineluctable sense, that of film directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.

Over the course of half a century, the two cinematic siblings made movies together — including 1985’s “Kaos,” an omnibus-style collection of five Pirandello stories — bookending their career together by winning top prizes at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals. And then, in 2018, Vittorio died.

“Leonora addio” marks Paolo’s first solo feature. There’s almost no way not to read the film as a farewell by one sibling to another, or an even larger-aperture reflection on what becomes of an artist and his art after his passing — more relevant now than ever, with monuments being...

by Timothy Lyons

This year’s Best Actress discussion / post-bafta nomination shake-up has reached a new height of confused scrambling. Things have, for now, refocused on the single consistent presence throughout precursor season: Lady Gaga as the murderous Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci. When watching the film, it became clear to me how much Gaga’s distinctive visage bears striking resemblance to that of the great Italian star Monica Vitti. This came into sad focus today on my learning of the legend’s passing on Wednesday at the age of ninety from complications related to Alzheimer’s.

I will get quickly back to the subject at hand but to help in drawing out Vitti’s unique gifts, a little more on Gaga in Gucci as a comparison…...

Monica Vitti, one of Italy's most honored film stars, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 90. Known for her collaborations and love affair with director Michelangelo Antonioni, Vitti became one of the "it" actresses of the 1960s and her image graced the covers of countless magazines. In the 1960s, Vitti was perfectly poised to be part of the mod generation and was widely photographed in the latest fashions. She was also enlisted in the spy movie craze of the period, starring in the title role in "Modesty Blaise" and in Mario Bava's "Danger: Diabolik".  The above video, created in 2021, provides interesting insights about her life and career. For more, click here.

To cite Monica Vitti as an icon, following her death in Rome this week at 90, is somehow unsatisfying. She could never be summed up as something so inert — she was far too vividly alive. If her sensuality has been called “chilly,” it nonetheless animated every frame she stood in or fast-tapped through in high heels. If the landscapes her greatest creative partner Michelangelo Antonioni directed her across were at times sprawling or forbidding, she always held the eye, whether with a look or a highly kinetic outburst.

To a young film buff crammed into a swaybacked seat at a Manhattan arthouse, beholding her for the first time was to risk a schoolboy crush. She’s been called “Impossibly lovely” on this site, and that’s true enough — impossible, and yet there she is onscreen. The sturdy lips forming a blossom of a mouth, the eyes that seem focused just a...

Star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films in the 1960s who later turned to light comedies

Although she was often described, perhaps with a touch of irony, as the “muse of incommunicability” for her dramatic roles in several of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, Monica Vitti, who has died aged 90, always aspired to be a comic actor. In 1962, she had an offer to do a film for Agnès Varda, but turned it down; as she explained in an interview, “I want to remain loyal to Michelangelo, who has promised to make me the Carole Lombard of the second half of the century.” Though Vitti certainly had comparable looks and verve, and did eventually succeed in becoming a popular comedic star, she will probably remain in most film buffs’ minds as Giuliana, the complicated young blond woman in Antonioni’s Il Deserto Rosso, his first colour feature.

Giuliana was perhaps Vitti’s most credible and identifiable characterisation.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Monica Vitti in Red Desert (1964). (Courtesy of Janus Films)One of the most captivating presences in Italian cinema, actress Monica Vitti has died at age 90. She started as a stage and television actor before becoming known for her roles in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), La notte (1960), L'eclisse (1962) and Red Desert (1964). After the end of her professional and romantic relationship with Antonioni (the two would return for The Mystery of Oberwald in 1980), Vitti turned to lighter fare by international directors, including a small part in Luis Buñuel's surrealist comedy The Phantom of Liberty (1974). In the official announcement of Vitti's death, Italy’s culture minister Dario Franceschini wrote, “Goodbye to the queen of Italian cinema.”The groundbreaking artist James Bidgood, whose artistic output spanned from photography and music to films like Pink Narcissus (1971), has also died.

Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon who starred in numerous 1960s classics, has died. Vitti passed after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease; the actress was 90 years old and had been retired since 2002. Dubbed the "Queen of Italian Cinema," Vitti is known internationally for starring in Michelangelo Antonioni's breakthrough cinematic trilogy, which includes "L'Avventura," "La Notte" and "L'Eclisse." News of her death came from Italian news agency Ansa, citing a tweet from film critic and former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni:

"Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so with great grief, affection,...

The post Monica Vitti, Icon of '60s Italian Cinema, Has Died appeared first on /Film.

Vitti shot to international fame in Michelangelo Antonioni’s drama L’Avventura in 1960

• Monica Vitti – a life in pictures

Italian actor Monica Vitti, an icon best known for her starring roles in films by Michelangelo Antonioni, has died aged 90, the country’s culture ministry said on Wednesday.

“Goodbye Monica Vitti, goodbye queen of Italian cinema. Today is a truly sad day, we have lost a great artist and a great Italian,” the culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said in a statement.