Want to know how lazy I was this year? I didn’t even pack my camera, just took pictures with my iphone. I don’t think I’ll do that again, some of the shots are useless and I didn’t get a thing from the Anime Nere premier. 

In America she’d probably get cast in all the “girl next door” roles and win everyone’s hearts in the end, and in Italy she gets those parts and more. Cristiana Capotondi’s beautiful, she’s talented, and I forgive her for blowing me off when I called out to her on the red carpet in Venice.

Cristiana Capotondi on the red carpet.

She’s been working non-stop in films like Pif’s La Mafia Uccide Solo D’Estate, Notte Prima Degli Esami, and Pupi Avati’s upcoming Ragazzo D’Oro, also starring Sharon Stone and Riccardo Scamarcio. I really loved her in  Ivan Cotroneo’s Kryptonite Nella Borsa and Giorgia Farina’s Amiche Da Morire.

Never have there been so many strong candidates but the final choice is clear.

Italy announced a shortlist of seven films for Oscar consideration: Francesco Munzi’s Anime Nere (Black Souls) Allacciate le Cinture (Fasten Your Seatbelts) from Ferzan Özpetek , Paolo VirzÌ’s Il Capitale Umano (Human Capital), Edoardo Winspeare’s In Grazia di Dio  (Quiet Bliss) , Song’e Napule from the Manetti Bros, Carlo Verdone’s Sotto Una Buona Stella (Under a Good Star), and Le Meraviglie (The Wonders), the Cannes winner from Alice Rohrwacher.

The final pick will be:  Il Capitale Umano, without a doubt.

Human Capital

Anime Nere and Le Meraviglie are both strong contenders, and it’s a pleasure to see several competitive choices. Le Meraviglie, having won the Grand Prix at Cannes, would seem to be a shoo-in and it would be in any other year.

As for the rest, Ferzan Ozpetek’a  Alleciate le Cinture and Carlo Verdone’s Sotto Una Buona Stella don’t belong on the list. Ozpeteks was good but not great, and Verdone’s, even with the adorable Paola Cortellesi, wasn’t even good. I’m sorry to say it, but Verdone has hit Adam Sandler status; someone should stop him from making movies.

Sotto Una Buona Stella. No, just no.

A better shortist would have included: Daniele Luchetti’s ‘Anni Felici’ (Those Happy Year’s) and Pif’s ‘La Mafia Uccide Solo D’Estate’(The Mafia Only Kills In The Summer). Both are emotionally engaging and thought provoking and more important, have more universal appeal.

And where is Ivano De Matteo’s ‘I Nostri Ragazzi’? Leaving this one off the list is what I would call a classic Hollywood-style “snub”!

Luchetti was robbed.

I Nostri Ragazzi

In the end, Capitale Umano will be the final submission. Will it win a nomination? Yes, I think it will. Can it win? We can hope; can’t we? The final Oscar submission will be announced on September 24th.

As one director recently said, “Sophia is perhaps the only movie star who has never forgotten where she came from.”

 
“It was the classic behavior of an American actress in a stage of light decline.”

“The idea of having her in the role of a retired actress from the ’90s that’s become an editor was mine, ” explained director Pupi Avati of his decision to cast American actress Sharon Stone in his latest film Un Ragazzo D’Oro.

“I knew there were other, better American actresses, but I wanted a movie icon. My brother told me I was crazy and RAI told me that I’d never get her”, said Avati. “Then came the flurry of correspondences that would make a great novel. back and forth between her agents and lawyers and our production company, a contract that bordered on the ridiculous regarding embarrassing details that made Italy seem like a third world country. (please tell me she wasn’t making toilet paper requests.) And by the way, we have electricity.”

“Then she arrived in Italy, we’d gone to get her in Florence with a luxury train that we’d rented for her. She’d gone there first to see the Boticellis. The first time I saw her she was sitting on her suitcase at the wrong track and nobody was recognizing her. Then,little by little she starting feeling more like Sharon Stone.”

“We brought to the most luxurious suite at the Hassler (in Rome) and the day after on the set there were more than 200 paparazzi. She was definitely getting a big head. It was the classic behavior of an American actress in a stage of light decline.”

Ouch.

They say that Sofia Loren is the only truly international Italian actress, and maybe that’s true, but Monica Bellucci has followed in her footsteps.

Beautiful and intelligent, she was studying law before modeling, her “job to pay for college”, took over. We’ll never forget her as Malèna, but she’s more recently appeared in the Cannes Grand Prix winner, Le Meraviglie, from director Alice Rohrwacher.

You are 50 today, but Monica, if there’s anyone that could get away with lying about her age, it’s you.

Vogue Italia celebrated its 50th birthday with a party during Milan’s Fashion Week and I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of the celebrities there have seen or are about to see 50 themselves.

Two at the party, Isabella Ferrari and Valeria Golino,continue look great, to get good roles, and don’t seem to be penalized by their age.

Isabella Ferrari

Isabella turned 50 last spring and I saw her wrinkle free and seemingly Botox free face in person in August at the Venice Film Festival. She starred as the hippie mom in Renato De Maria’s La Vita Oscena, a role in which she very successfully went from young mom to dying cancer patient with no special effects.

You can also find her in Paolo Sorrentino’s Academy Award winning La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty).

I also got a good look and a couple of good pictures of Valeria Golino,  who’ll turn 50 next year. Golino, who has clearly made some kind of deal with the devil, continues to be in demand by the best directors, playing much younger women in movies like this year’s Academy Award submitted film, Il Capitale Umano, Human Capital.

Valeria Golino

Take a look at these other over 50 Italian actresses. Monica may have hit the Botox a little, but the rest seem pretty naturally stunning.

Who’s hot right now? These guys are.

Alba Rohrwacher is everywhere these days and becoming one of Italy’s hottest properties. She starred in her sister Alice’s Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Le Meraviglie, won best actress at the Venice Film Festival for the English language film, Hungry Hearts, and stars in the soon to be released Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s new English language film.

Having won literally every award available to an Italian movie star, Alba Rohrwacher is someone who Americans should get to know. Watch her today in Silvio Soldini’s Cosavogliodipiù (Come Undone) with Pierfrancesco Favino.

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Paolo Virzì

Paolo Virzì’s a director that has been making great movies for a long time and this year for the second time one of his films is Italy’s submission to the Academy Awards.

If you want to be in on the next big thing, watch for Il Capitale Umano (Human Capital) in your city; it’s still making the rounds in the US.

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Luigi Lo Cascio

Luigi Lo Cascio is not just my favorite actor, he’s in big demand these days and everything he does, he does well, from directing (La Città Ideale) to stage (this year, Othello), to starring in three of the best movies of 2014 (Il Capitale Umano, Marina, and I Nostri Ragazzi).

An Academy Award would be the icing on the cake of a brilliant career, starting with I Cento Passi and La Meglio Gioventù.  Watch for him in Francesca Archibugi’s newest Il Nome del Figlio with Valeria Golino and Alessandro Gassman. 

Watch him today in Salvo, the award-winning film from Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia.

WATCH SALVO with Amazon Instant Video

Asia Argento, Misunderstood.

Asia Argento is horror director Dario Argento’s daughter but making a name for herself these days and clearly a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes I think my father gave me life because he needed a lead actress for his films.

She directed the 2014 film Incompresa (Misunderstood), selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and she says she wants to stay behind the camera.

Toni Servillo, La Grande Bellezza

Toni Servillo, Paolo Sorrentino’s muse, is one of the finest actors working today. Star of last year’s Academy Award winning La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), Toni’s other work is equally impressive and much of it easy to find in the US. If you haven’t yet seen it, try Sorrentino’s Il Divo.

WATCH LA GRANDE BELLEZZA

WATCH IL DIVO

All those classic old b&w images of the old stars…the new ones look just as glamorous.

All those classic old b&w images of the old stars…the new ones look just as glamorous.

Turning 50 today, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi may very well be one of the hottest commodities in European cinema.

Viva La Libertà

We Americans can get to know the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Silver Ribbon, and Tribeca Film Festival award winner really well these days as the star of Paolo Virzì’s ‘Il Capital Umano’ (Human Capital), the Italian submission to the Oscars, and of Roberto Andò’s ‘Viva La Libertà’, with Toni Servillo, both making the rounds in the US in early 2015.

Il Capitale Umano

She wrote, directed and starred in the bittersweet semi-autobiographical 2013 A Castle in Italy (Un Castello In Italia). Nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2013 it was filmed in her family’s castle in northern Italy and also stars her real mother and former boyfriend. Filippo Timi plays her brother who in 2006 died of AIDS, exploring their close brother/sister bond and the tragedy of his death (curiously leaving out their sister, singer, songwriter, actress, model Carla Bruni Sarkozy, former first lady of France.)

Human Capital

She’s amazing. I think that she’s my favorite actress. That’s the first time I’ve said that out loud, and I’m pretty sure it’s true, so buon compleanno Valeria! Auuuuugggggguuurrrri!

Filippo Timi with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Un Castello In Italia

In “Actress Superlatives”, she’s Most Versatile.

Hilarious in La Banda Dei Babbi Natale and Benvenuti Al Sud, poignant in La Bestia Nel Cuore, and fiercely dynamic in Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico, Angela Finocchiaro can do it all.

She’s won Davids, Nastri D’argentos and a prize at the Venice Film Festival and made 4 dozen movies.

No Italian Shooting Star this year? Mannaggia! Italy is exploding with young talent.

Maria Roveran – 27-year-old Roveran was born in Venice, and starred in one of the most fascinating films of Venice Film Festival 2013, Alessandro Rossetto’s ‘Piccola Patria’. Called the “Discovery of the Year” by the Rivista del Cinematografo, an Italian cinema periodical. “Maria Roveran, more than just acting, seems to live in the scene,” they said. They’re right – she’s amazing.

Greta Scarano

Greta Scarano –  28-year-old Scarano studied acting as a high school student in the US and worked in theater in both the US and Italy, but emerged a star in Senza Nessuna Pietà with Pierfrancesco Favino. As “Tanya”, a prostitute hired for a party by sleazy Manuel, Mimmo (Favino) sees that she’s in trouble and comes to her rescue.

Jacopo Olmo Antinori

Jacopo Olmo Antinori – 17-year-old Antinori wowed everyone in Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘Io e Te’, as Lorenzo, the boy who hid out in his basement instead of going on the school ski trip. As the juvenile delinquent Michele in Ivano De Matteo’s ‘I Nostri Ragazzi’, he has secured his future in acting.

Matilde Gioli

Matilde Gioli  – 24-year-old Gioli came out of nowhere to star in this year’s Oscar submission from Italy, Il Capitale Umano, and is perfect as the teenager that enables everyone’s bad behavior and then runs behind them trying to clean up their messes.

Sara Serraiocco

Sara Serraiocco – 24-year-old Serraiocco was a complete newcomer to the screen in her amazing role in Salvo as the blind girl, Rita. She was discovered by a scouting trip by a casting director. Beautiful and naturally talented, I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Virnia Lisa Pieralisi, or Virna Lisa, as we knew her, was born in Ancona, Italy in 1936 and died yesterday in Rome. Known to many as a “blonde bombshell”, she worked as an actress from the time she was a teenager right up until the end and will be seen, posthumously in Cristina Comencini’s upcoming Latin Lover.

How To Murder Your Wife

Director Maurizio Sciarra remembers Virna Lisi:

“The news took me by surprise and brought up a lot of memories. It was 1988 and the film, Buon Natale, Buon Anno (Merry Christmas, Happy, Happy New Year), my last film as assistant to director Luigi Comencini. Virna Lisi was the wife (separated by necessity”, of Michel Serrault. What a magnificent couple! Actors of great talent and wonderful people. And above all “normal”.

‘I had never met her before, it was easy to get to know her. She was on the set with the strange normality of a person who has done this many times before, but continued to have the curiosity of someone who was doing something new…she made them (her scenes) believable and a with a heart.

A great dancer, she loved the scenes in which she had to dance at an old dance hall at the end of the film.’

Il Giorno Più Bella Della Mia Vita

“I remember the “sincere look of admiration” (I’m just translating here) in the eyes of the company,especially the cameramen, when, during a break, she showed in a bikini and went sunbathing. She was so beautiful! I saw her again after many years at the film festival in Bari, a few years later, and it reminded me of the effect it left on me and the warm that remained in my heart.  It is a such a shame when someone like that leaves us.”

Queen Margot

Nessun uomo è un’Isola,
intero in se stesso.
Ogni uomo è un pezzo del Continente,
una parte della Terra.
Se una Zolla viene portata via dall’onda del Mare,
la Terra ne è diminuita,
come se un Promontorio fosse stato al suo posto,
o una Magione amica o la tua stessa Casa.
Ogni morte d’uomo mi diminusce,
perchè io partecipo all’Umanità.
E così non mandare mai a chiedere per chi suona la Campana:
Essa suona per te.
— John Donne

An Italian I met yesterday (Ciao Angelo, se tu stai leggendo questo), told me he didn’t like the movies in his country, and I asked him what he thought of Checco Zalone. “Checco Zalone!” he laughed. ‘I’ve never heard an American talk about Checco Zalone!”

That’s because most Americans don’t know about Checco, and I really don’t know why Italians are keeping him to themselves.

Italian Cinema’s Top Ten Best Kept Secrets are:

Alessandro Rossetto

Piccola Patria

1) Alessandro Rossetto is not even well enough known in his own country, but this director is smart, innovative, and brave. His 2013 Piccola Patria is a movie I can’t stop thinking about. Two young girls in Northern Italy dream and scheme to get enough money to move away, and they aren’t above extortion to make their dreams come true.

Maria Roveran

2) Budding actress Maria Roveran played one of the girls, and Rossetto told me that though the rumors were that she was a non-professional, this was far from true. PIccola Patria might have been her first professional role but she’s studied extensively and is ready for fame and fortune. Her subtle performance in the dark Piccola Patria was outstanding and we will see more of Maria.

Checco Zalone

3) Checco Zalone is not unknown in any stretch of the imagination. His films have made more money than any others in Italian box office history including Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. Checco’s comedies are decidedly low-brow but only the biggest curmudgeon would not admit that he is hilarious.

Riccardo Scamarcio

4) Riccardo Scamarcio is too good-looking to be a secret, but he’s still not very well-known in America. He just starred in Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini, so we know that he’s knocking on our door; answer the door, America! Scamarcio is hot!

Pierfrancesco Diliberto

The Mafia Kills Only D’Estate

5) Pierfrancesco Diliberto is Italy’s answer to Jon Stewart, very popular on Italian TV, and his first film, La Mafia Uccide Solo D’Estate, won the European Film Award for best comedy. It’s a bittersweet story about a normal boy who grows up in Palermo watching the Mafia tear his country apart, and yes, it is funny. Very funny. “Pif”, as he is known in Italy, is meant for greatness.

Daniele Luchetti with Kim Rossi Stuart and Micaela Ramozzotti

6) Daniele Luchetti has been around for too long for Americans not to have learned his name. Many of you who love Italian movies as I do have seen a couple of his films, because they are available on Netflix. Check out Ginger and Cinnamon and My Brother is an Only Child. My favorite of Luchetti’s is his most recent, Anni Felici (Those Happy Years). I told Luchetti that no one gets an emotional performance out of an actor like he does.

Roberto went

7) Roberto Andò is so darned cool it kills me that he doesn’t make movies in America. His film, Viva La Libertà starred Toni Servillo (from La Grande Bellezza) and made it to a lot of film festivals in the US. It’s based on Andò’s own novel, Il Trono Vuoto, and about a political party leader that goes AWOL. Roberto is one of the smartest guys I have ever met and way too talented to not be known world-wide.

Greta Scarano

8) Greta Scarano will be known, I promise you. This beautiful young woman proved herself in Senza Nessuna Pietà with Pierfrancesco Favino.

Carlo Virzì

9) Carlo Virzì is director Paolo Virzì’s brother but his talent is not quite as well-known. A musician and composer, he’s done the soundtrack for Paolo’s movies, including the award-winning Il Capitale Humano (Human Capital), in American theaters this month. Carlo directed his own movie, the very funny The Greatest of All.

Ivan Cotroneo

10) I will never stop talking about Ivan Cotroneo and his absolute gem of a movie Kryptonite Nella Borsa. This is the kind of Italian comedy that should be available through Netflix – it is adorable.A young boy going through some emotional family problems needs a super hero, and he gets one, “the Italian Superman”.

Top Ten Reasons To Love Margherita Buy

1) She’s 53 today and still beautiful, relevant, and in demand in films,

Giorni e Nuvole

2) in fact, she’s done over 4 dozen films since the ’80s and

3) she’s worked with all the great directors from Paolo Virzì to Nanni Moretti to Ferzan Ozpetek.

Saturno Contro from director Ferzan Ozpetek

4) She’s not a diva. She lives a simple life in Rome with her husband and daughter despite

5) having won awards like nobody’s business: 6 David di Donatello Awards, 6 Nastri d’Argento , 5 Italian Golden Globes, 11 Ciak D’Oro Awards (two Super Ciak D’Oros), and the Pasinetti Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Best Actress for Viaggio Sola

6) She can do it all, playing the serious roles like in Sivio Soldini’s Giorni e Nuvoli, and funny ones like in Carlo Verdone’s Maledetto Il Giorno Che T’ho Incontrato and by the way

7) Maledetto Il Giorno Che T’ho Incontrato is hilarious.

Maledetto Il Giorno

8) She was wonderful when she was young:

9) and wonderful after all these years:

10) and she’s sure to be wonderful in Nanni Moretti’s upcoming Mia Madre!

With Nanni Moretti

Happy birthday to the actress that really does have it all.

OK I admit it; I was jealous. I looked at Micaela Ramazzotti and thought, “Pretty girl who is getting more credit than she deserves for her acting”.

But she’s proved me wrong.

Anni Felici

She’s beautiful and talented and not even getting enough credit for her stunning performances. My favorite – as Serena, the clingy, desperately love-sick wife in Daniele Luchetti’s ‘Anni Felici‘(Those Happy Years). Her breakdown at the beach is one of the best for any actress in recent years.

Il Nome Del Figlio

Micaela will be in the highly anticipated new movie from Francesca Archibugi, Il Nome Del Figlio, with Valeria Golino, Luigi Lo Cascio, Rocco Papaleo, and Alessandro Gassman.

Auguri Micaela! I can’t wait!

RENT LA PRIMA COSA BELLA

La Prima Cosa Bella

Claudia Gerini will star in a new film from director Francesco Fei based on an English language YA (young adult) book, Wonder When You Miss Me.

The book is about Faith Duckle, who at 15 was lured under the bleachers by a bunch of boys and brutally attacked. Now, almost a year later, a newly thin Faith is haunted by her past and by the flippant, cruel ghost of her formerly fat self who is bent on revenge.

Faith eventually turns to violence for retribution, forcing her to flee home in search of the only friend she has — a troubled but caring busboy who is the lover of a sideshow performer — and to tumble into the colorful, transient world of the circus. But as she dives headfirst into a world of adult passions and dreams, mercurial allegiances, and exhilarating self-discovery, Faith must also face some disturbing truths about herself and the world around her. (from Goodreads.com)

Happy birthday, auguri, to an actress that has kept her vibrant career going for nearly 50 years and manages to stay youthfully gorgeous – Anna Bonaiuto! 65 today and no sign of retiring.

Anna Bonaiuto in Il Divo

One of her best performances is in a movie that is easy to find in the US, ,Il Divo a must see for Italian film lovers. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino and also starring Toni Servillo, Anna plays the wife of seven time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti. This is the true story of Italy’s Watergate – with a lot more blood – and it makes for a shocking and compelling movie.

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You can see her as Evelina Pileggi in Roberto Andò’s political comedy, Viva La Libertà, and in Mario Martone’s sweeping historical film about Italy’s Unification, Noi Credevamo (We Believed).

She’s worked with practically every important director from Sorrentino to Carlo Verdone to Nanni Moretti, and she’s in Gianni DiGregorio’s newest comedy, Buoni a Nulla.

Noi Credevamo

With Valerio Mastandrea in Viva La Libertà

She seems to have come out of nowhere, and before the Berlinale, you’d be hard pressed to find much about Laura Bispuri with a Google search. Within a few days all that has changed and the buzz about Laura and her first feature film, Vergine Giurata (Virgin) is all good.

Laura Bispuri

Virgin, the story of girls and women in Albania’s patriarchal society who renounce their femininity and become sworn virgins, taking a vow of chastity and wearing male clothing in order to live as men. As men, they can take jobs (women can not), smoke, wear men’s clothes, drink alcohol, carry a gun, and be the head of the household. For some, it’s strictly a financial situation, but it’s also a way to avoid unwanted marriages, and probably a means of freedom for lesbians in a society with few rights for women.

Alba Rohrwacher, Virgin

Vergine Giurata is the story of Hana, played by Alba Rohrwacher, a farmer’s daughter who is tired of counting for nothing as a woman and makes the decision to become a sworn virgin and live as a man. When she visits a sister who has run away to Italy, she gets a taste of normal life and what it is like living in a society in which she is free to enjoy rights as a woman.

Sara Serraiocco

Those of you who loved the film Salvo, starring Saleh Bakri, Luigi Lo Cascio and Sara Serraiocco will want to pay attention to Sara, also at Berlin this year with Cloro (Chlorine), a tragic story about 17 year old Jenny (Serraiocco) who dreams of becoming a synchronized swimmer. When her mother dies Jenny is forced to move from her seacoast town to a mountain town in Abruzzi, the teenager is thrust into adulthood and must find a way to keep her own hopes and dreams alive.

Sara is one of those rising stars in Italian cinema – FOLLOW HER ON FACEBOOK

 
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Former ‘Bond’ girl Olga Kurylenko will star with Jeremy Irons in Giuseppe Tornatore’s newest English language film, The Correspondance,

Not much is known about the romantic drama, but filming will begin soon in Italy and in Scotland, and Tornatore had been scouting out locations for it while he was filming his last English language film, The Best Offer.

Jeremy Irons

Irons will play a college professor having a passionate love affair with a researcher played by the much younger Kurylenko.

Let’s hope this May/December relationship turns out a little happier than the one with Geoffrey Rush and Sylvia Hoeks in The Best Offer. Haven’t seen that one yet?