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“Marcello Mastroianni was known, all around the world, as the Latin lover, the Italian seducer, especially after he starred in La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s masterpiece,” says Fabrizio Corallo, the director of the new documentary Ciao Marcello, Mastroianni l’antidivo. “Mastroianni did not like this image. He didn’t want to be seen as an icon, as a sex symbol. He didn’t care much about his public persona; what did matter to him was his personal life. So, I tried to build an intimate portrait of this unique actor.”

Corallo is a journalist and an expert on the history of Italian cinema. For state broadcaster Rai he has made a number of documentaries about the great personalities of Italian cinema: Dino Risi, Vittorio Gassman, Virna Lisi, Ennio Flaiano and Giuliano Montaldo, among others.

Ciao Marcello, which was co-written with Silvia Scola, the daughter of Italian filmmaker Ettore Scola,...

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...

Italian film legend Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved international stardom during the 1950s and was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world” after the title of one of her movies, died in Rome on Monday, her agent said. She was 95.

The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t provide details. Lollobrigida had surgery in September to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking.

A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 cover of Time magazine, which likened her to a “goddess” in an article about Italian movie-making. More than a half-century later, Lollobrigida still turned heads with her brown, curly hair and statuesque figure, and preferred to be called an actress instead of the gender-neutral term actor.

Read More: Evel Knievel’s Son Robbie Dies At Age 60 After Pancreatic Cancer Battle

“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making...

Updated: Cecchi Gori, the movie company that once dominated Italy’s film industry and collapsed in the mid 1990s, is being revived by a group of Italian investors that are backing a partial relaunch of the storied brand behind Oscar winners “Life is Beautiful,” “Mediterraneo” and “Il Postino.”

Cecchi Gori Group was officially ruled bankrupt in 2006 by a Rome court after being awash in red ink for a decade after its owner, movie mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori, branched out from film into television and acquired the A.C. Fiorentina soccer club in a bold expansion attempt that put him in competition with Silvio Berlusconi and went horribly wrong.

But even after the company’s various Italian sides went bust, its U.S. branches – Cecchi Gori U.S.A. and Cecchi Gori Pictures – continued to operate, headed by producer Niels Juul. Operating out of Los Angeles, Juul has been instrumental to...

Whether you are religious or not, there is no denying that Jesus Christ is one of the most influential and important figures in human history. His life and teachings have inspired billions of people worldwide, and have been the subject of many movies over the years. The crucifixion is undeniably the most significant event in the short but meaningful life of Jesus.

In this blog post, we will take a look at 10 of the best movies about Jesus Christ. We’ve ranked these Biblical epics based on an aggregate of viewers’ ratings.

10/10

Risen (2016)

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Tom Felton, Peter Firth

IMDb User Rating 6.3/10 29K Rt Audience Score 70 10K Meta User Score 6.9 Votes 85

“Risen” is a 2016 historical drama about the aftermath of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. With a budget of 20 million, “Risen” is a 2016 American epic biblical drama film directed by Kevin Reynolds.

The story follows Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), a high-ranking Roman soldier,...

Richard Fleischer’s Biblical epic is a class act all the way, and one of producer Dino De Laurentiis’s greatest accomplishments. Anthony Quinn’s guilty, perplexed bandit survives and subsists but never understands the importance of the man crucified in his place; the view of early Christianity is respectful and free of pious clichés. It’s an excellent image of the ancient world, with gladiator scenes that are possibly the best ever. Fleisher does exceedingly well with the enormous sets and a well-chosen international cast: Ernest Borgnine, Valentina Cortese, Vittorio Gassman, Katy Jurado, Arthur Kennedy, Silvana Mangano, Jack Palance.

Barabbas

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 132

1961 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 137 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from [Imprint] / au 39.95

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Silvana Mangano, Arthur Kennedy, Katy Jurado, Harry Andrews, Vittorio Gassman, Norman Wooland, Valentina Cortese, Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine, Arnoldo Foa’, Michael Gwynn, Laurence Payne, Douglas Fowley, Robert Hall, Joe Robinson, Friedrich von Ledebur,...

The Rome Film Festival has unveiled its first line-up under the new management team of former Rai executive Paola Malanga as artistic director and Cineteca di Bologna director Gian Luca Farinelli as president, who were both appointed to their roles last March.

“Putting together a festival in five months was a big challenge. If we succeeded it’s thanks to the extraordinary team and the institutions,” Farinelli said at a news conference in Rome on Thursday.

The festival’s 17th edition, October 13-23, will host 130 titles on 28 screens across the Italian capital.

Highlights include a career tribute for James Ivory and the launch of an international competition strand under the banner “Progressive Cinema – Visions Of Tomorrow’s World”, showcasing 16 new films.

“We tried to bring recognition to the festival on the international scene… guided by a simple polar star. The festival is not Cannes, Venice or Berlin. So what is it?...

As they celebrate being held as a physical event, Italy’s upcoming 67th David di Donatello Awards epitomize the ongoing shift in generations and genres that is underway in Cinema Italiano.

Leading the pack this year are seasoned auteur Paolo Sorrentino’s most personal film “The Hand of God” and young helmer Gabriele Mainetti’s second feature, the elegant effects-laden historical fantasy “Freaks Out,” which is set in 1943 Rome and involves four “freaks” working in a circus when the Eternal City is bombed by Allied Forces. Both pics scored 16 nominations each.

Close behind are Mario Martone’s classic biopic “The King of Laughter,” about popular early 20th-century Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta, with 14 noms. Then come Leonardo Di Costanzo’s subtle prison drama “Ariaferma” and “Diabolik,” an adaptation of a comic book about a charming master thief, directed by Marco and Antonio Manetti, both with 11 noms a piece.

“We...

Late great Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, who is best known to U.S. audiences as the star of classics such as “Big Deal on Madonna Street” and “Il Sorpasso” (“The Easy Life”), will be celebrated by the Los Angeles-Italia Film Fashion and Art Festival, which will run March 20-26 at Hollywood’s Tcl Chinese Theater.

The annual pre-Oscars event comprising movies and music and celebrating showbiz ties between Italy and Hollywood, now at its 17th edition, will pay tribute to the centennial of Gassman’s birth with a mini-retro honoring the memory of the iconic thesp who, among other accolades, won the best actor prize at Cannes in 1975 for his performance as a blind man in Dino Risi’s ”Profumo di Donna,” later remade in English as ”Scent of a Woman” with Al Pacino.

“We are honored and extremely pleased to pay a well-deserved tribute to an Italian genius whose...

Italian producer Domenico Procacci, after shepherding more than 100 movies and several TV series, including Netflix’s upcoming Elena Ferrante adaptation “The Lying Life of Adults,” via his Fandango shingle, is debuting as a director with six-part documentary series “The Team.” Variety speaks to Procacci exclusively about what prompted him to go behind the camera for what he says is just a one-off experience as a director, and debuts the English-language subtitled version of the trailer, above.

The project is a deeply researched reconstruction of the complex – and sometimes comical – dynamics behind the Italian tennis team that won the 1976 Davis Cup and reached the finals for this trophy three other times between 1976 and 1980.

In “The Team,” which is being presented as a work-in-progress at the Torino Film Festival, the protagonists are the team’s players, Adriano Panatta, Corrado Barazzutti, Paolo Bertolucci, Tonino Zugarelli, and its captain, Italian tennis legend Nicola Pietrangeli.

Los Angeles-based Menemsha Films has acquired North American rights from Italy’s Intramovies to Venice Critics’ Week title “Thou Shalt Not Hate,” ahead of the racial hatred-themed drama’s premiere Sunday on the Lido.

The film has also been picked up for Australia and New Zealand by Moving Story Entertainment.

Directed by Italian first-timer Mauro Mancini, “Thou Shalt Not Hate” (Non Odiare) stars Alessandro Gassman as Simone Segre, a renowned surgeon of Jewish origin who finds himself assisting a victim of a hit and run accident. When he discovers a Nazi tattoo on his chest, Segre abandons him to his destiny, but subsequently, the surgeon is filled with guilt, according to the film’s promotional materials.

Menemsha Films, a U.S. distributor of specialty titles such as British comedy “Dough,” is planning theatrical distribution of “Though Shalt Not Hate” in North America this fall/winter, Intra and Menemsha said in a joint statement.

“A Whole Lot Of Shirley Going On”

By Raymond Benson

Joseph E. Levine, head of Embassy Pictures, was at one time a formidable producer and studio head who brought us some outstanding pictures in the 1960s and 70s. In 1967, he managed to persuade the great Italian director Vittorio De Sica to do a picture in English with big Hollywood stars. De Sica had just previously done an English-language flick, After the Fox (1966). So, in 1967, he made a comic anthology movie called Woman Times Seven, starring Shirley MacLaine in seven different roles opposite seven different leading men (and others).

Anthology movies are often a mixed bag. In almost every case, there are two or three stories that are good, and two or three that are less so. Here, we have seven tales of a woman’s relationship with a man (or men) with a distinctly European slant (especially in its attitudes...

This remake of Warners’ 1924 John Barrymore feature gives us Elizabeth Taylor in the Mary Astor role, Stewart Granger as the fashion dandy of the Restoration Period, and a scene-stealing Peter Ustinov as a lonely, needy Prince of Wales. The history is still weak, but it at least doesn’t turn Brummell into a typical swashbuckler. Compensating are English actors that can get any script up on its feet, and Liz Taylor’s blue-violet eyes. And the Oswald Morris cinematography improves greatly on the MGM house style.

Beau Brummell

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1954 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date March 10, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Stewart Granger, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley, James Donald, James Hayter, Rosemary Harris, Paul Rogers, Noel Willman, Peter Dyneley, Peter Bull, Finlay Currie, David Peel.

Cinematography: Oswald Morris

Film Editor: Frank Clarke

Art Direction: Alfred Junge

Original Music: Richard Addinsell

Written by Karl Tunberg from...

This remake of Warners’ 1924 John Barrymore feature gives us Elizabeth Taylor in the Mary Astor role, Stewart Granger as the fashion dandy of the Restoration Period, and a scene-stealing Peter Ustinov as a lonely, needy Prince of Wales. The history is still weak, but it at least doesn’t turn Brummell into a typical swashbuckler. Compensating are English actors that can get any script up on its feet, and Liz Taylor’s blue-violet eyes. And the Oswald Morris cinematography improves greatly on the MGM house style.

Beau Brummell

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1954 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date March 10, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Stewart Granger, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley, James Donald, James Hayter, Rosemary Harris, Paul Rogers, Noel Willman, Peter Dyneley, Peter Bull, Finlay Currie, David Peel.

Cinematography: Oswald Morris

Film Editor: Frank Clarke

Art Direction: Alfred Junge

Original Music: Richard Addinsell

Written by Karl Tunberg from...

In a moment of cinematic doldrums, some of the most popular new Italian films look back nostalgically at the golden age of neorealism and comedy Italian-style, like two applauded docs that bowed at the Rome Film Festival that tip their hats to Vittorio Gassman (I’m Gassman! King of Comedy) and Rino Barillari (The King of Paparazzi).

Closing the festival, instead, was Paolo Virzi’s delightful but decidedly uncelebratory Magic Nights (Notti magiche) which chooses to stare at the after-image of the glory days when, in the early '90s, the Roman film industry had pretty much already gone ...

In a moment of cinematic doldrums, some of the most popular new Italian films look back nostalgically at the golden age of neorealism and comedy Italian-style, like two applauded docs that bowed at the Rome Film Festival that tip their hats to Vittorio Gassman (I’m Gassman! King of Comedy) and Rino Barillari (The King of Paparazzi).

Closing the festival, instead, was Paolo Virzi’s delightful but decidedly uncelebratory Magic Nights (Notti magiche) which chooses to stare at the after-image of the glory days when, in the early '90s, the Roman film industry had pretty much already gone ...

Out April 13, 2017 in Italian theatres, Francesco Amato’s comedy sees the Neapolitan actor playing the role of a rigid psychoanalyst who winds up in trouble

by Camillo De Marco from Cineuropa.org

Toni Servillo in “Let Yourself Go!”

Toni Servillo in a comic role? Yes it is possible, and happens in “Let Yourself Go”/ “Lasciati andare” by Francesco Amato (“Cosimo and Nicole”), in theatres as of today with 01 Distribution. With a beard and glasses à la Sigmund Freud, Servillo plays a psychoanalyst who lives and works in the Roman ghetto, a beautiful neighbourhood in the historic city centre which is rarely used in films. Separated from his wife Giovanna (played by a Carla Signoris on top form) — but with a very thin wall separating their respective bedrooms — Dr. Elia Venezia lives a methodical and rather self-centered existence, livened up only by the weirdness of some of his clients, until one...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Jessica Chastain, Juliette Binoche, Freida Pinto, Catherine Hardwicke, Amma Asante, Marielle Heller, Ziyi Zhang, Haifaa Al Mansour, and more women have launched the company We Do It Together to produce films and TV that boost the empowerment of women, Variety reports.

Dustin Hoffman discusses his screen test for The Graduate, plus read Frank Rich‘s Criterion essay:

Though The Graduate upholds some of the classic tropes of Hollywood romantic comedy dating back to the 1930s—especially in its climactic deployment of a runaway bride—Benjamin’s paralyzing emotional disconnect from the world around him is what makes his story both fresh and particular to its own time.

The...

Film director who found international success with We All Loved Each Other So Much and A Special Day, starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni

Ettore Scola, who has died aged 84, was the last in the direct line of great Italian film directors who descended from the neo-realists of the 1940s. “The inequalities and corruption of Italian society have always been a rich source of inspiration for my cinema, which I inherited from the neo-realists,” remarked Scola, who generally used satire and farce to pour scorn on the Italian social-democratic regimes from the 1960s onwards. Many of his “Italian style” films, the majority of which had ambivalent main characters played by Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi, take place against a background of historic events.

Typical was Scola’s first international success, We All Loved Each Other So Much (C’eravamo Tanto Amati, 1975), in which three men from different backgrounds...

Revered Italian director and screenwriter behind A Special Day has died in Rome.

Ettore Scola, the Italian director and screenwriter, has died in Rome aged 84.

During a career that lasted more than three decades and garnered a slew of festival accolades Scola will be remembered for titles including Ugly, Dirty And Bad, which won him best director at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, as well as 1987’s The Family, 1977’s Viva Italia!, and 1983’s Le Bal, all of which were nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars.

A Special Day, the 1977 Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni drama, was nominated for two Academy Awards and won three Golden Globes.

After entering the film industry as a screenwriter in 1953, Scola made his debut as a director in 1964 on Let’s Talk About Women, in which Vittorio Gassman plays different characters who seduce women.

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi paid tribute to Scola on Twitter, saying he was...

Bitter Rice

Written by Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Gianni Puccini

Directed by Giuseppe De Santis

Italy, 1949

The opening credits of Bitter Rice parade an array of Italian film industry luminaries, figures who would help redefine the country’s national cinema, picking up where neorealism left off and setting the stage for the remarkable work that would emerge in the decades to come. Screenwriters Carlo Lizzani and Giuseppe De Santis (who also directed) were two of eight individuals contributing in one way or another to the script, though they were the two who would share an Academy Award nomination for its story. Cinematographer Otello Martelli had nearly 50 films under his belt by the time of Bitter Rice, but in the years that followed he would most memorably man the camera for Federico Fellini’s finest films. And producing the movie was the venerable Dino De Laurentiis, really just at the start of his legendary career.

Forget the proletarian messages, this Italian Neorealist classic is really an exploitation film about ogling brazen, buxom babes in short-shorts, up to their knees in a rice paddy. Hollywood actress Doris Dowling is the nominal star but new discovery Silvana Mangano became the knockout dream of every Italian male suffering from postwar shortages (cough). Giuseppe De Santis delivered the perfect combo -- an art film that pulled in every lonely guy nella cittá. Bitter Rice Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 792 1949 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 109 min. / Riso amaro / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 12, 2016 / 29.95 Starring Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone. Cinematography Otello Martelli Film Editor Gabriele Varriale Original Music Goffredo Petrassi Written by Corrado Alvaro, Giuseppe De Santis, Carlo Lizzani, Franco Monicelli, Carlo Musso, Ivo Perilli, Gianni Puccini Produced by Dino De Laurentiis Directed by Giuseppe De Santis

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Way back in...

Criterion digs Bitter Rice out of obscurity this month, a pulpy mix of social drama and dime store pathos from director and screenwriter Giuseppe De Santis. Premiering at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, the title was also nominated for an Oscar in 1950 for Best Story. Lumped in with the neo-realism movement, it’s been a well-regarded minor title, but its problematic noir elements seem to have denied it prominent classification, at least compared to De Santis’ contemporary, Roberto Rossellini, whose Rome, Open City (1945) birthed the movement (and had just finished his notable war trilogy the year prior to release of this title). But De Santis creates something a bit stranger with this hybrid, a darker examination of sex and violence from the perspective of two central female characters. In its native language, the title is a pun since the Italian word for rice can also be substituted for the word laughter,...

Cohen Media Group presents a double feature of two mid-period films from French auteur Alain Resnais, both significant titles overlooked on a resume of important and notable works. The first is 1983’s Love is a Bed of Roses, featuring revolving cast members who would frequent other titles from the director throughout the remainder of that decade, and also represents his first collaboration with actress/wife Sabine Azema, who would appear in nearly every one of his remaining film productions. The second is the superb 1984 film Love Unto Death, an existential portrait of love and death as fluid states of mind.

The playful Life is a Bed of Roses premiered at the Venice Film Festival and nabbed Cesar nominations for Azema as Best Supporting Actress and for production designer Jacques Saulnier. Penned by Jean Gruault (who wrote Resnais’ previous feature, 1980’s superior Mon Oncle D’Amerique), it’s a non-linear film divided into three distinct parts,...

'Father of the Bride': Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Top Five Father's Day Movies? From giant Gregory Peck to tyrant John Gielgud What would be the Top Five Father's Day movies ever made? Well, there have been countless films about fathers and/or featuring fathers of various sizes, shapes, and inclinations. In terms of quality, these range from the amusing – e.g., the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen; the Oscar-nominated The Grandfather – to the nauseating – e.g., the 1950 version of Father of the Bride; its atrocious sequel, Father's Little Dividend. Although I'm unable to come up with the absolute Top Five Father's Day Movies – or rather, just plain Father Movies – ever made, below are the first five (actually six, including a remake) "quality" patriarch-centered films that come to mind. Now, the fathers portrayed in these films aren't all heroic, loving, and/or saintly paternal figures. Several are...

Title: Latin Lover Director: Cristina Comencini Starring: Virna Lisi, Maria Paredes, Angela Finocchiaro, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Candela Peña, Pihla Viitala, Nadeah Miranda, Francesco Scianna, Neri Marcorè, Claudio Gioè, Lluís Homar, Toni Bertorelli, Jordi Mollà. Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Toganzzi, Vittorio Gassman, Gian Maria Volonté – the Italian screen-womanisers of the golden age of Italian cinema – are all united in the character of Saverio Crispo, interpreted by the actor who has become known to the wide audience for playing in Giuseppe Tornatore’s ‘Baaria’: Francesco Scianna. The story begins with Saverio Crispo who has been dead for ten years and all his women are gathered to celebrate the anniversary of his death [ Read More ]

The post Latin Lover Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Polly Bergen dead at 84: ‘First woman president of the U.S.A.,’ former mistress of Tony Soprano’s father Emmy Award-winning actress Polly Bergen — whose roles ranged from the first U.S.A. woman president in Kisses for My President to the former mistress of both Tony Soprano’s father and John F. Kennedy in the television hit series The Sopranos — died from "natural causes" on September 20, 2014, at her home in Southbury, Connecticut. The 84-year-old Bergen, a heavy smoker for five decades, had been suffering from emphysema and other ailments since the 1990s. "Most people think I was born in a rich Long Island family," she told The Washington Post in 1988, but Polly Bergen was actually born Nellie Paulina Burgin on July 14, 1930, to an impoverished family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her father was an illiterate construction worker while her mother got only as far as the third grade. The family...

Chicago – With the recent popularity of road trip movies in both mainstream films and the art house, it is a fitting pleasure that the Criterion Collection has released Dino Risi’s “Il Sorpasso,” a jazzy road trip movie that takes the story structure to its basics. Two opposing types meet unexpectedly, travel to random exotic locations, and interact with people who are rest stops in themselves.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

The film has two great performances from leads Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant, and various bits of Italian culture from a different time. For those who find road movies to be repetitious (especially considering the movies that use the formula like a crutch), “Il Sorpasso” is enlightening to an intriguing type of wild fun that can be had when watching characters throw their fate and sense of direction into the wind. While the movie might seem like the foundation for many that follow,...

In the spirit of spring, Dino Rici’s tragicomedy Il Sorpasso from 1962 has been given a vibrant rebirth courtesy of Criterion. Rarely seen and largely forgotten in recent years, Il Sorpasso retains many structures of the classic road movie, seasoned with glimpses of the era’s growing sense of rebellious dissatisfaction. Over the years, it has proven to be an influential work; its descendant branches laced throughout any analysis of the classic film genre of wandering heroes. Artistically, Il Sorpasso may not rank among the best of the category, but its seductive amalgam of bildungsroman, social commentary and cautionary tale make for a compelling and infectious watch.

Il Sorpasso’s unlikely odyssey orbits around the burgeoning friendship between Bruno (Vittorio Gassman), a zesty 40 year old raconteur and Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a quiet, bookish law student half his age. Bruno dashes about the ancient streets of Rome in a battered Lancia...

Longtime talent agent Neil Bagg died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He had been diagnosed with Als commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease in 2012, according to a statement from Don Buchwald & Associates where Bagg worked as an agent for 16 years representing actors in film, television and theatre. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1959, Bagg grew up with a love for the arts. At the age of 17, he hosted a popular talk show in South Africa, called Pulse. He moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA where he received his BA and later his Mfa. Setting his sights on acting, he was cast in the play, Viva Vittorio, at the Mark Taper Forum opposite Vittorio Gassman, following the production to Broadway. He then banded together with a small group of fellow actors who would pose as managers and submit each other on projects. He was so successful at...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 29, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Vittorio Gassman hit the road in Il Sorpasso.

The ultimate Italian road comedy, the 1962 film Il sorpasso stars the unlikely pair of Vittorio Gassman (Big Deal on Madonna Street) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Le Combat dans l’ile, Amour) as, respectively, a waggish, free-wheeling bachelor and the bookish law student he takes on a madcap trip from Rome to rural Southern Italy.

An unpredictable journey that careens from slapstick to tragedy, Il sorpasso, directed by Dino Risi (the original Scent of a Woman), is a wildly entertaining commentary on the pleasures and consequences of the good life.

Considered by many to be a holy grail of commedia all’italiana, Il sorpasso remains a fresh and lively entertainment, and one that has long been adored in its native Italy.

Presented in Italian with English subtitles Criterion’s Blu-ray...

Criterion has announced the new titles coming in April 2014 and among them are two titles teased on their New Years 2014 illustration, those being Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (4/15) and Don Siegel's prison drama Riot in Cell Block 11 (4/22). Breaking the Waves has long been one of von Trier's more acclaimed films starring Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgaard, a wonderful faith-based drama you might not expect if you're only familiar with von Trier from films such as Antichrist, Melancholia and the upcoming Nymphomaniac. Personally I would love to see Dancer in the Dark get the Criterion treatment, but this should be a good one with a selection of features that includes a selected-scene audio commentary featuring von Trier, editor Anders Refn and location scout Anthony Dod Mantle, as well as new and old interviews, Watson's audition tape and more. As for Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11, I've...

Clint Eastwood Western persona co-creator dead at 87: Luciano Vincenzoni (photo: Clint Eastwood in ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’) Screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, whose nearly five-decade career included collaborations with Mario Monicelli, Pietro Germi, and Sergio Leone, died of cancer on Sunday, September 22, 2013, in Rome. Vincenzoni (born on March 7, 1926, in Treviso, near Venice) was 87. In the late ’50s, Luciano Vincenzoni co-wrote Mario Monicelli’s The Great War / La Grande guerra (1959), a humorous (if overlong) World War I comedy-drama starring Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi as reluctant conscripts that earned a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award nomination and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (tied with Roberto Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere). Vincenzoni was also partly responsible for the screenplay of two well-regarded Pietro Germi movies: the omnibus comedy of manners The Birds, the Bees and the Italians / Signore & signori (1966), featuring Virna Lisi and Franco Fabrizi,...

Broadway actress Marta Heflin dead at 68: Featured in several Robert Altman movies (photo: Marta Heflin in ‘A Perfect Couple’) Stage actress Marta Heflin, who was featured in a handful of movies in the ’70s and early ’80s, including three Robert Altman efforts, died on September 18, 2013, after "a long illness." Heflin (born on March 29, 1945, in Washington, D.C.) was 68. On Broadway, Marta Heflin was featured in the musicals Fiddler on the Roof, Hair, Soon, and Jesus Christ Superstar (replacing Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene). Additionally, she was seen in Ed Graczyk’s Robert Altman-directed 1982 play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, about a group of James Dean fans — among them Karen Black, Cher, Sandy Dennis, Kathy Bates, Sudie Bond, and Mark Patton — who get together on the twentieth anniversary of Dean’s death. Marta Heflin movies Along with her fellow Come Back to the Five and Dime,...

A startling return to form for cult director Quentin Tarantino, action-packed spaghetti western Django Unchained (2012) was nominated for five Academy Awards earlier this year, taking home the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay (Tarantino) and Best Supporting Actor (Christoph Waltz). To celebrate the Blu-ray and DVD release of Tarantino's blood-soaked revenge story, we're delighted to be able to offer Three Blu-ray copies of Django out to our devoted readers, courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

Jamie Foxx stars as the titular Django, a freed slave who, under the tutelage of German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Waltz), becomes a bad-ass bounty hunter himself. After taking down some villainous sorts for a tidy profit, the gun-slinging due eventually track down Django...

Anna Magnani in (what looks like) Luchino Visconti's Bellissima At the end of Giuseppe Tornatore's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner Cinema Paradiso, small-town projectionist Philippe Noiret has died and the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso has become a pile of rubble. The bratty Italian boy Salvatore Cascio has grown into the classy Frenchman Jacques Perrin (like Noiret, dubbed in Italian), a filmmaker who sits to watch a mysterious reel of film the deceased projectionist had left him. It turns out the reel contains clips from films censored by the prudish local parish priest, whose family values found kisses, embraces, and bare breasts and legs a danger to society. Now, who's doing all that kissing, embracing, and breast/leg-displaying in that film reel? (Please scroll down for the Cinema Paradiso clip.) Here are the ones I recognize: Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman in Giuseppe De Santis' Bitter Rice (1949); Mangano...

Five-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close will receive the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award at the 59th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival. Why is the award called Donostia? Because that's the Basque name of the coastal town of San Sebastian, located in northern Spain's Basque Country. The first recipient of the Donostia Award was Hollywood veteran Gregory Peck (right) at the 1986 festival. Of the more than 40 actors and actresses (sometimes actor-filmmakers) who have received the award, a mere 8 have been non-Hollywood celebrities: Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Max von Sydow, Isabelle Huppert, Vittorio Gassman, Liv Ullmann, and Spaniards Francisco Rabal and (Peruvian-born) Fernando Fernán Gómez. Spaniard and Donostia winner Antonio Banderas has had a lengthy Hollywood career — even if nothing to match the prestige of his films for Pedro Almodóvar — and so have British winners like Ian McKellen, Jeremy Irons, and Michael Caine. Below is the full list of Donostia Lifetime...

Rank the week of August 2nd’s Blu-ray and DVD new releases against the best films of all-time: New Releases Rio

(DVD & Blu-ray | PG | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #3463

Times Ranked: 1625

Win Percentage: 52%

Top-20 Rankings: 16

Directed By: Carlos Saldanha

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg • Anne Hathaway • Leslie Mann • Jemaine Clement • Jamie Foxx

Genres: Adventure • Adventure Comedy • Animal Picture • Animation • Comedy • Family

Rank This Movie

Soul Surfer

(DVD & Blu-ray | PG | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #6816

Times Ranked: 243

Win Percentage: 55%

Top-20 Rankings: 5

Directed By: Sean McNamara

Starring: Helen Hunt • Craig T. Nelson • Dennis Quaid • AnnaSophia Robb • Kevin Sorbo

Genres: Drama • Family Drama • Sports Drama

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The Final Destination

(DVD & Blu-ray | R | 2009)

Flickchart Ranking: #5287

Times Ranked: 5225

Win Percentage: 31%

Top-20 Rankings: 2

Directed By: David R. Ellis

Starring:

Genres: Horror

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The Perfect Game

(DVD & Blu-ray | PG | 2009)

Flickchart Ranking: #13940

Times Ranked: 28

Win Percentage: 61%

Top-20 Rankings: 0

Directed By: William Dear

Starring: Clifton Collins, Jr. • Cheech Marin • Moisés Arias • Jake T. Austin...

The king of Italian comedy leapt to his death last month. At least he avoided seeing Berlusconi survive the no-confidence vote

I don't know what awed us more: the way he chose to end his life or the corpus of films he left behind. I was in Turin, attending the Torino film festival, when the news struck us like lightning. The wires read: November 29, at 10pm, Mario Monicelli, 95, threw himself out of the window of his hospital room in Rome. Monicelli, the king of Italian comedy, the last of the greats, director of more than 60 films, many of them classics of the silver screen. Comedy in the noblest meaning of the term: Monicelli used laughter to denounce moral hypocrisy, social injustice, and historical untruths.

It's hard not to think of Primo Levi or Gilles Deleuze, who chose to end their lives in the same dramatic, violent and flamboyant manner. Monicelli...

Italian film director and screenwriter who established a new school of social-realist comedy

The Italian film director Mario Monicelli has died aged 95, after jumping out of a hospital window in Rome. Monicelli directed more than 60 films, most of which he co-wrote. He was best known for I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal On Madonna Street, 1958), which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. It was remade by Louis Malle as Crackers (1984) and turned into a Broadway musical, Big Deal, by Bob Fosse in 1986. Monicelli's original is one of the most internationally admired Italian comedies of the past 60 years.

Born in Viareggio, Tuscany, Monicelli was the son of a journalist, Tomaso Monicelli, who founded one of the earliest Italian film magazines. Tomaso killed himself in 1946. Mario studied at the universities of Milan and Pisa and took an early interest in films. With the future publisher Alberto Mondadori, he collaborated...

Ninety-five-year-old film-maker, who was suffering from terminal prostate cancer, leapt from hospital window, reports say

The four-time Oscar-nominated film-maker Mario Monicelli has died at the age of 95 after leaping to his death from a hospital window, according to reports.

Known as one of the masters of the Commedia all'Italiana ("Italian-style comedy") for movies such as 1975's My Friends (Amici Miei) and 1958's Big Deal on Madonna Street (also known as Persons Unknown, or I Soliti Ignoti), Monicelli had been suffering with terminal prostate cancer. He was admitted to the San Giovanni hospital in Rome just a few days ago, according to Italy's Ansa news agency.

Born in 1915 in Viareggio in Tuscany, Monicelli directed 70 films, making his debut in 1935. His other movies include The Great War (La Grande Guerra) from 1959, which won him the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, as well as an Oscar nomination. Big Deal on Madonna Street...

Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Vittorio Gassman, Big Deal on Madonna Street (top); Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, The Great War (middle); Anna Magnani, Totò, The Passionate Thief (bottom) Mario Monicelli, the (co)writer-director of Italian cinema classics such as I soliti ignoti / Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), La grande guerra / The Great War (1959), and I compagni / The Organizer (1963), leapt to his death from a fifth-story hospital window in Rome. Monicelli, who had been suffering from prostate cancer, was 95. Though not nearly as internationally known as, say, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Franco Zeffirelli, Monicelli was perhaps the best portraitist of Italian sociopolitical mores during the second half of the 20th century. For instance, one of Monicelli's earliest efforts (co-directed with Steno aka Stefano Vanzina), Vita da cani / A Dog's Life (1950), chronicled the travails of a provincial theater troupe in post-World War II Italy. Aldo [...]...

Italian movie tycoon whose list of credits featured as many disasters as hits

The Italian-born film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who has died aged 91, will perhaps go down in movie history as the last "transatlantic" tycoon. Over a career spanning more than 60 years, producing films on both sides of the ocean, he had as many flops as hits. But De Laurentiis almost always succeeded in staying afloat.

In Rome, he produced Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning La Strada (1954) and the grandiose spectacular War and Peace (1956), but also made The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) and Waterloo (1970), which never recovered their costs. Relocating to the Us, he enjoyed success with Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and Conan the Barbarian (1982), but had financial disasters including Year of the Dragon (1985) and a failed food emporium, which he opened in New York. De Laurentiis was also a starmaker, both in Italy, where...

The Venice Film Festival opens Wednesday with its share of big-screen bound blockbuster potential, from Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan," to Sofia Coppola's highly anticipated "Somewhere" and Ben Affleck's sophomore directorial effort, "The Town."But director Marco Mueller says that the economic downturn has forced even big name directors to come up with cheaper means of production, giving rise to innovation and an "in-between" budget category . bridging low-budget under a million dollars and mid-range of around (Euro)6 million-(Euro)7 million ($7.5 million to $9 million)."In between there was very little. And now several people rush to occupy that special space," Mueller told The Associated Press in an interview. "Because it's also the space where with some local, regional subsidy, some private money, and maybe with a few distributors interested in the project you can get your film off the ground.

By Ali Naderzad - July 31, 2010

Here in Paris--the Montparnasse and Odeon neighborhoods especially--there are legion movie theatres of all sizes and denominations. Careful where you walk, you might bump into one.

I like them all: the modern multiplexes and the arthouse cinemas near La Sorbonne, such as le Champo. I prefer the big loud and bright theatres because the sound is better and the screens are large. But where else can you see films by Michael Powell ("The Red Shoes" which I saw at Film Forum a year ago is now showing here) or Ettore Scola but at these neighborhood theatres? And besides, they deserve major credit for their extraordinary resiliency. The Champo has been opened since the late 1930s.

Tonight, a group of us is going to Le Champo to see Scola's "The Terrasse." Of note, is the extraordinary cast: Marcelo Mastroianni, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Serge Reggiani, Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassman.

And the film I'm most looking forward to seeing (like I'm going to be there) is Vincent Gallo's Promises Written in Water. Someone send me a screener, asap! What else?

Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky.

Somewhere by Sofia Coppola.

13 Assassins by Takashi Miike.

Full list after the break.

In Competition

"Black Swan," Darren Aronofsky, U.S. (Opening Film)

"La Pecora Nera," Ascanio Celestini, Italy

"Somewhere," Sofia Coppola, U.S.

"Happy Few," Antony Cordier, France

"The Solitude of Prime Numbers," Saverio Costanzo, Italy, Germany, France

"Silent Souls," Aleksei Fedorchenko, Russia

"Promises Written in Water," Vincent Gallo, U.S.

"Road To Nowhere," Monte Hellman, U.S.

"Balada Triste de Trompeta," Alex de la Iglesia, Spain, France

"Venus Noir," Abdellatif Kechiche, France

"Post Mortem," Pablo Larrain, Chile, Mexico, Germany

"Barney's Version," Richard J. Lewis, Canada, Italy

"We Believed," Mario Martone, Italy, France

"La Passione," Carlo Mazzacurati, Italy

"13 Assassins," Takashi Miike, Japan, U.

The Afflecks will celebrate on the Lido together - both actor-turned-directors are featured in the Out of Competition line-up (see below) and will surely jet back to Tiff together with The Town and the Phoenix doc - though those chances are indeed slim. Speaking of Toronto, the Ooc also features Anurag Kashyap's That Girl in Yellow Boots and Andrucha Waddington's Lope (Tiff claims they have the World Premiere, but I think we might see a correction on that later on). Takashi Miike gets celebrated, so does Asian 3D films, and John Turturro feels at home with his first Italian language docu feature. Finally, the Golden Lion for his career will go to John Woo - who is presenting Reign of Assassin. Opening Night Tribute to Bruce Lee "The Return of Chen Zhen," Andrew Lau (China, Hong Kong) Opening Night Midnight Movie "Machete," Robert Rodriguez (U.S.)Closing Night: "The Tempest,...

This morning the Venice Film Festival announced the line-up for their 2010 Festival which will run from September 1-11, and a lot of hot titles and directors are set to be on hand including the already announced festival opener Black Swan from Darren Aronofsky and closer, The Tempest from Julie Taymor. In competition, Aronofsky's feature is joined by titles from Sofia Coppola, Vincent Gallo, Julian Schnabel, Francois Ozon, Abdellatif Kechiche, Takashi Miike and Tom Tykwer. Also, making a midnight Lido appearance will be Robert Rodriguez with his grindhouse thriller Machete. One other notable title is the inclusion of the Casey Affleck-directed Joaquin Phoenix mockumentary I'm Still Here, which will be screening out of competition.

Unfortunately I won't be able to cover this one, but one of these years I would like to find a way to pull a triple play and cover Cannes, Venice and Toronto in the same year...

Rome -- Sofia Coppola's comedic drama "Somewhere" and "Road to Nowhere," a romantic thriller from veteran director Monte Hellman, were among the highlights of the main competition lineup for the 67th Venice Film Festival, which was released Thursday.

Other in-competition films include Vincent Gallo's "Promises Written in Water"; "Meek's Cutoff," a western from Kelly Reichardt; and Athina Racehel Tsangari's drama "Attenberg."

Artistic director Marco Mueller said that -- notwithstanding the presence of the 78-year-old Hellman -- the competition lineup was the youngest ever in the storied history of the festival, with the average age among the directors of the 22 in-competition films just 47.

"I think this is evidence of a new and dynamic kind of cinema that is being produced," Mueller told a standing-room-only crowd of reporters and industry players at Rome's Excelsior Hotel Thursday.

All told, the festival will include 79 world premieres, including the entire in-competition lineup for...

One of Italy's leading screenwriters, he worked on 140 films

One of Italy's most respected and prolific screenwriters, Furio Scarpelli, who has died aged 90, worked on the scripts of about 140 films, sometimes without a credit, and received three shared Oscar nominations, for I Compagni (The Organiser, 1963), Casanova '70 (1965) and Il Postino (1994). Scarpelli enjoyed a lengthy writing partnership, from 1949 until 1985, with Agenore Incrocci, also known as Age. The pair collaborated on the 1958 film I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street), about a team of makeshift thieves, which owed much of its success to the brilliant comic characterisations. The film, starring Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni, helped to launch the genre of commedia all'italiana ("comedy Italian-style").

Scarpelli was born in Rome. His Neapolitan father, Filiberto, was a satirical writer who founded a humorous magazine, Il Travaso delle Idee. Furio began his own career as a cartoonist. It was after the second world war,...