News

French film and TV company Gaumont has announced it is developing a six-part drama devoted to French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte Macron.

The Paris-based company said the film would consist of six 45-minute episodes and be entitled Brigitte, une femme libre, which translates as “Brigitte, a free woman” but is not confirmed as the international title.

“Written by Bénédicte Charles and Olivier Pouponneau, this series retraces the romantic trajectory of the first lady, Brigitte Macron,” Gaumont said in a succinct press release on Tuesday.

Charles and Pouponneau previously collaborated on the Abu Dhabi-set spy thriller Mirage and serial killer mini-series Spiral of Lies.

Gaumont did not reveal any further information on the storyline, cast or other producing partners.

Brigitte Macron’s unconventional life and early romance with her husband Macron has long been a source of fascination in France and beyond.

She met her future husband when he...

The Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, the songwriter and perennial Oscar bridesmaid Diane Warren and Matteo Garrone, the director of this year’s best international feature Oscar-nominated Italian film Io Capitano, will all be honored on Sunday night during the opening ceremony of the 19th Los Angeles, Italia Film, Fashion and Art Festival at Hollywood’s Tcl Chinese Theatres, exactly one week before the 96th Academy Awards take place just down the street.

The festival, which is backed by Italy’s Ministry of Culture, will run through Saturday, March 9, and feature 112 film screenings (47 in movie theaters and 65 on the online platform eventive.org). This year’s edition will be hosted by one Italian screen legend, Franco Nero (as well as Italian actress/model Antonella Salvucci), and is dedicated to another, the late Marcello Mastroianni, whose centenary it coincides with, as well as the late Italian playwright Eduardo de Filippo.

Notable guests...

‘Comandante’ (The Commander) is a war drama film co-written and directed by Edoardo De Angelis, starring Pierfrancesco Favino. The film is set to open the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival on September 30th.

Synopsis

During the onset of World War II, Salvatore Todaro assumes command of the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini. While navigating in the Atlantic on a dark October night in 1940, he encounters an unidentified merchant vessel sailing without lights. Employing his cannons, Todaro successfully sinks the ship. In a moment that would later be recorded in history, the Commander makes a crucial decision: he rescues the 26 shipwrecked Belgians who otherwise faced certain death in the vast ocean. Accommodating the survivors aboard his submarine necessitates three days of surface navigation, thereby exposing himself and his crew to enemy forces and placing their lives at risk.

Comandante (2023) The Director Edoardo De Angelis

Edoardo De Angelis is a director,...

‘Comandante’ (The Commander) is a war drama film co-written and directed by Edoardo De Angelis, starring Pierfrancesco Favino. The film is set to open the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival on September 30th.

Synopsis

During the onset of World War II, Salvatore Todaro assumes command of the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini. While navigating in the Atlantic on a dark October night in 1940, he encounters an unidentified merchant vessel sailing without lights. Employing his cannons, Todaro successfully sinks the ship. In a moment that would later be recorded in history, the Commander makes a crucial decision: he rescues the 26 shipwrecked Belgians who otherwise faced certain death in the vast ocean. Accommodating the survivors aboard his submarine necessitates three days of surface navigation, thereby exposing himself and his crew to enemy forces and placing their lives at risk.

Comandante (2023) The Director Edoardo De Angelis

Edoardo De Angelis is a director,...

If you've ever watched the red carpet at the Academy Awards there's a phrase you've probably heard over and over again, and for quite a few decades: "It's an honor just to be nominated."

And to be fair, it most certainly is. Although the Oscars were invented to bust unions, not reward artistic quality, at their best it's a gesture of support for a filmmaker from their peers. To be singled out by the other hard-working artisans in your branch as worthy of awards consideration as an actor, director, writer, cinematographer, sound designer et al is a great big feather in one's cap.

But it's a feather that can, and has been, plucked out. It's uncommon but the Academy Awards have vetoed quite a few nominations in the past — three times in the 2010s alone — in situations that stirred up controversy or, in some of the more technical or niche categories,...

French sales company to showcase comedy and drama slate at Rendez-Vous.

Paris-based Indie Sales has boarded Jean-Pierre Améris’ Take A Chance On Me and Pierre Jolivet’s Green Tide, expanding the company’s star-powered French slate.

Indie Sales’ French language line-up also includes Noémie Lvovsky’s The Great Magic, Mathias Gokalp’s The Assembly Line, Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi’s A Tale of Shemroon and Marc Fitoussi’s Two Tickets to Greece.

Take A Chance On Me stars popular French singer turned actress Louane Emera, whose credits include The Belier Family, who plays a young woman juggling between odd jobs to support her agoraphobic father.

Invited to speak about his profession of acting during a masterclass at the 40th Torino Film Festival, Toni Servillo – whose credits include Oscar winner “The Great Beauty,” Cannes Jury Prize winner “Il Divo” and “The King of Laughter,” which won him the best actor prize at Venice – brushed aside the cliché that actors kept in them, as stigmas, the characters they had played.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I kept none of them. We are just empty vases that fill and empty. I’m always afraid of the question: ‘How did you get into Pirandello?’ [he plays the writer Luigi Pirandello in Roberto Andò’s new film, ‘La Stranezza’] How did I get in? Well, through the door!,” he says.

Servillo believes that there are many myths around these roles that would later prevent the actor from being himself again. “To identify with the character, the actor tries to master a tumult that,...

While his latest film, Nostalgia, is Italy’s Oscar entry this year, director Mario Martone’s previous feature will finally arrive stateside. The King of Laughter, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year and picked up the Best Actor Award for Toni Servillo at Venice and Best Costume Design at Italy’s 2022 David di Donatello Awards, is being released on VOD and on digital platforms by Film Movement on November 25 and we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in Belle Époque Naples, theatres and the cinema were thriving and the great comic actor Eduardo Scarpetta (Servillo) is the box office king. Known in the Neapolitan theater for his cheeky alter egos, Scarpetta’s larger-than-life stage productions were matched only by his eccentric personal life. Composed of wives, partners, lovers, legitimate and illegitimate children, Scarpetta’s home situation resembled one...

The Great Beauty and The Hand Of God star Toni Servillo plays Neopolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta in The King Of Laughter (Qui Rido Io), Mario Martone’s latest Venice Film Festival competition premiere. An affectionate, theatrical portrait set in the early 20th century, it culminates in an historic court case, but the build-up is leisurely to a fault.

We first meet Scarpetta when he’s preparing to go on stage. It’s a place where he seems the happiest, if you discount the beds of various female family members. That pretty much sums up the characterization that takes over two hours to repeat. We see that Scarpetta craves the adulation and laughter of the audience, and is having affairs with both his wife’s sister and his wife’s niece. Everyone knows that the resulting children are his, but it’s barely spoken of: he’s known as “Uncle” to the kids.

Italian auteur Mario Martone is a Venice aficionado. He was recently in competition on the Lido in 2018 with “Capri Revolution,” and then again in 2019 with “The Mayor of Rione Sanità,” a contemporary adaptation of the play about organized crime by late Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo. The Naples native is vying for the Golden Lion this time with “The King of Laughter,” a historical drama about Neapolitan theater luminary Eduardo Scarpetta — played by Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) — who was De Filippo’s father.

In 1904, at the height of his popularity, Scarpetta took a great risk: He staged a parody of “La figlia di Iorio,” a tragedy written by the greatest Italian poet of the day, Gabriele D’Annunzio. After all hell broke loose, Scarpetta ended up being sued for plagiarism by D’Annunzio himself. It was the beginning of the first copyright lawsuit in Italy, and a draining experience for Scarpetta and his family.

“I’ve never liked artists who have more fun offstage than onstage,” says Italian comic star Eduardo Scarpetta (played by Toni Servillo) in “The King of Laughter.” If that was indeed Scarpetta’s belief, he would have thoroughly approved of Mario Martone’s big, brash, garishly frosted celebration cake of a biopic, in which everyone involved seems to be having the very best of times, tumbling onto screen with the breathless energy of a community theater crew given a very generous spotlight. How much fun viewers will be having with them is open to question. Those au fait with the particular chapter of Italian theater history outlined in Martone’s film might join in the eager applause from the local press contingent at Venice. Others may be more bemused by its unrelenting, dialed-to-11 spirit of cinematic carousing.

“The King of Laughter” is Martone’s third film in four years to premiere in competition at Venice,...

Film Movement has acquired U.S. rights to Italian director Mario Martone’s “The King of Laughter” (“Qui Rido Io”) ahead of its world premiere Tuesday in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

The film, being sold internationally by Italy’s True Colours, toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as popular and prolific early 20th century Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta.

In 1904, at the height of his popularity, Scarpetta took a great risk: he staged a parody of “La figlia di Iorio,” a tragedy written by the greatest Italian poet of the day, Gabriele D’Annunzio. After all hell broke loose, Scarpetta ended up being sued for plagiarism by D’Annunzio himself. It was the beginning of the first copyright lawsuit in Italy, and a draining experience for Scarpetta and his family. It was also a challenging time that he overcame with an act worthy of a great thespian.

Film...

Italy’s Pepito Prods., at Berlin with competition drama “Bad Tales” by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, is emerging as a new home for the country’s auteurs.

The company, headed by former Rai head of drama Agostino Saccà in January, scored more than $6 million in Italian cinemas with veteran Gianni Amelio’s “Hammamet,” a biopic of disgraced late Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi that marks Amelio’s best box office result in a decade.

“Bad Tales,” which world premieres Feb. 25, is the D’Innocenzo brothers’ followup to their debut, “Boy’s Cry.” That bowed in Berlin’s Panorama in 2018.

Giuseppe Saccà, who is a partner in the family-run indie along with his father and sister Maria Grazia, said they were approached by the self-taught directorial duo, now aged 30, with the screenplay for “Boy’s Cry” and were awed by the writing. They decided to take the plunge “even though they had never directed anything before,...

Co-produced with Spain, the Neapolitan director’s new film focuses on the great actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta, father to Eduardo De Filippo. Filming kicked off last week on Qui rido io, Mario Martone’s new work on the king of Neapolitan comedy, the great actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta, who will be played by Toni Servillo. Scarpetta, who fathered Titina, Eduardo and Peppino De Filippo (who were born out of an incestuous relationship with his wife Rosa’s niece), dedicated his entire life to the theatre world, producing works which would go on to become timeless classics, such as Miseria e nobiltà, which was transposed to the big screen in the famous film starring Totò in 1954. He achieved extraordinary success during his long career, which spanned the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, and was a protagonist in the renowned dispute with Gabriele D'Annunzio over Il.

Versatile Italian director Mario Martone was in the Venice competition last year with costumer “Capri-Revolution.” This year he made the Lido competition cut again with a very different type of film, a screen adaptation of a controversial piece by Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo about a local mob boss who has moral fibre. He spoke to Variety about the crime-ridden neighborhood theatre from where the project sprung forth.

How did this movie germinate?

While I was preparing “Capri-Revolution,” a new chapter sort of opened up for me. I had done the Edoardo De Filippo piece, which the film draws upon, in the [national] theatre. And then I started working on my next movie which will be about Edoardo De Filippo’s father, Edoardo Scarpetta…who will be played by Toni Servillo. What happened is that a group of local actors who work on the outskirts of Naples, an area that brings to mind “Gomorrah,...

Though hardly a household name outside his native land, Italian dramatist Eduardo De Filippo is one of the country’s most important creative voices of the 20th century, best remembered offshore for two classic cinema adaptations, “Marriage Italian Style” and “Ghosts – Italian Style.” Renowned at home for capturing the essence of Neapolitan life through a unique mix of comedy and drama drawing from realism and surrealism with clear ties to the style of the commedia dell’arte, De Filippo’s plays, rich in dialect, are difficult to translate not just into other languages but other cultures. Mario Martone’s decision to maintain the theatricality of his 2017 stage adaptation for Nest (Napoli Est Teatro) of “The Mayor of Rione Sanità” certainly won’t coax newcomers into the playwright’s world, nor is it likely to entice many Italians apart from De Filippo cognoscenti.

A “rione” is a neighborhood with traditionally recognized...

Even when the great Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo De Filippo wrote and performed The Mayor of Rione Sanita (Il sindaco di Rione Sanita) onstage in 1960, there was a ring of controversy to the story of a local Camorra boss who was looked up to like a king by the population and who dispensed his own version of justice. A positive Godfather? But that was almost 60 years ago, and since then organized crime in the Naples area has grown much closer to the ferocious young beasts of Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah and Dogman than to De Filippo’s wise ...

Even when the great Neapolitan actor and playwright Eduardo De Filippo wrote and performed The Mayor of Rione Sanita (Il sindaco di Rione Sanita) onstage in 1960, there was a ring of controversy to the story of a local Camorra boss who was looked up to like a king by the population and who dispensed his own version of justice. A positive Godfather? But that was almost 60 years ago, and since then organized crime in the Naples area has grown much closer to the ferocious young beasts of Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah and Dogman than to De Filippo’s wise ...

It’s a pretty safe bet that the Italian entries at Venice that will make the biggest splashes this year are both TV series premiering in the official selection: Paolo Sorrentino’s limited series “The New Pope” and Stefano Sollima’s cocaine-trafficking drama “ZeroZeroZero.”

While these are both shows by directors who also work in film, Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera has no qualms in pointing out that in the film sphere the domestic pickings were slim this year.

Venice selectors received 186 Italian films, which amounts to roughly 10% of the total submissions. “And more than half were unwatchable microbudget first works,” Barbera says. “You wonder: why produce this stuff?”

However, the TV series, both commissioned by Sky Italia and screening out of competition, are on a different level. “They were both a big gamble,” Barbera says. And they cost a lot, “but you really see the results.”

Barbera says everyone...

Italian filmmaker Mario Martone is set for a Venice return later this month with some familiar material: a new feature film based on the classic play “The Mayor of Rione Sanità” by Eduardo De Filippo, the kind of story that combines Martone’s love of complex Neapolitan crime stories with the age-old battle between good and evil. Martone is a frequent player at Venice, and has previously screened films like “Noi credevamo,” “Leopardi,” and “Capri-Revolution” at the annual festival.

The competition entry is inspired by the De Filippo play of the same name, though the playwright’s work is best known to movie lovers for another adaptation it inspired: Vittorio De Sica’s 1964 Sophia Loren-starring “Marriage Italian Style,” which was based on the play “Filumena Marturano.” The material is a natural fit for Martone, who has often crafted films about the people of his native Naples forced to deal with issues regarding crime,...

A robust roster of awards contenders, including Brad Pitt space odyssey “Ad Astra” and Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded financial thriller “The Laundromat,” will launch from the Venice Film Festival, which features a bit less high-wattage Hollywood fare this year but no shortage of hotly anticipated world premieres and stars.

The four U.S. pics in the Lido’s 21-title competition are all high-profile entries, starting with Fox’s “Ad Astra,” directed by James Grey, which features Pitt as an astronaut on a mission to save the solar system from imminent destruction. Netflix continues its strong track record on the Lido (where “Roma” debuted last year) with Noah Baumbach’s intimate divorce drama, “Marriage Story,” with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a couple in conflict, and “The Laundromat,” which stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas in a tale based on the Panama Papers exposé. Warner Bros. is launching “Joker,...

Brad Pitt space odyssey “Ad Astra,” Noah Baumbach’s untitled new project, “Joker” with Joaquin Phoenix, Tom Harper’s “The Aeronauts,” Fernando Meirelles’ “The Pope,” the new “Rambo” installment, and heist thriller “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” starring Mick Jagger as a reclusive art dealer, all look bound for the Venice Film Festival, sources tell Variety.

The fest is scheduled to unveil its initial lineup July 25. With just six weeks before the festival kicks off, director Alberto Barbera is scrambling to firm up his official selection, a process more down to the wire than usual.

At the moment, this year’s U.S. studio presence on the Lido does not look as if it will be as dominant as in recent editions, possibly because the Disney-Fox merger has slowed down the Hollywood pipeline a bit. But where the majors might be pulling back, the streamers are stepping in.

Netflix looks set...

Films tipped from around the world are mostly directed by men.

Word of mouth is building around the titles close to securing a competition slot at the Venice Film Festival next month. The buzz is dominated by films by male directors, with films by female directors looking to be heading for the sidebars. But the announcement is not due until July 25 and there is still time for this to change.

The festival was criticised for only selecting one film by a female director in competition for 2018, Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale. Lucretia Martel has been appointed jury president this year,...

Produced by Indigo Film, the Neapolitan director’s new title based on Eduardo De Filippo’s three-act comedy is set in a modern-day, Gomorrah-style Naples. The Mayor of Rione Sanità, Mario Martone’s new film and his own personal interpretation of the three-act comedy by the legend that is Eduardo De Filippo, has entered into post-production. A likely candidate for the 2019 Venice Film Festival, the film comes off the back of a theatre production helmed by the Neapolitan director last year. Martone’s theatrical adaption of Eduardo’s 1960s masterpiece was bold and highly contemporary, set in a modern-day version of Naples inspired by the system described by Roberto Saviano in his book Gomorrah. This particular version of Naples is home to lead character Antonio Barracano, the young, vigorous and tattooed Mayor of Rione Sanità who plays by his own rules; a paternal figure who oversees the licit and illicit activities unfolding within the.

Leading Italian sales company True Colors has closed a slew of sales at the Cannes Market and landed North American deals on horror pic “In The Trap” and gay-themed comedy “An Almost Ordinary Summer,” acquired respectively by Mpi Media Group and Wolfe Releasing.

The English-language “In The Trap” (pictured) directed by Italy’s Alessio Liguori as his feature-film debut, and produced by Italian shingles Dreamworld Movies and Mad Rocket Entertainment generated a flurry of deals, confirming the growing global appetite for horror titles and the resurgence of Italy’s capability to churn out chillers that can travel.

“In The Trap,” which features an international cast comprising South Africa’s David Bailie (“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”), and Sonya Cullingford (“The Mummy”), is about a solitary proof reader trapped by fear in his apartment where he is tortured by an unknown evil force. Besides the U.S. and Canada,...

Italian sales company True Colours is launching sales in Berlin on new pics by Italian auteurs Mario Martone (“Capri Revolution”) and Guido Lombardi (“La-bas: A Criminal Education”). Both pics have ties to the city of Naples and are produced by Indigo film, the shingle behind Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty.”

Martone (pictured) is a veteran of both stage and screen whose “Capri, Revolution” competed in Venice last year. He has now finished shooting “The Mayor of Rione Sanità” a contemporary adaptation of the eponymous play by late Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo that delves into the complexities of the Camorra, as Neapolitan organized crime is known. Shot in crime-riddled areas of the city, the film is performed by a mix of professional and non-professional actors. Martone’s regular editor Jacopo Quadri, who is also known for his work with Gianfranco Rosi and Bernardo Bertolucci, is currently in final stages on the project.

Carlo Giuffre, who is best known for his role as Geppetto in Roberto Benigni’s live-action 2002 adaptation of Pinocchio, died in Rome November 1. He was 89.

Born in Naples, Italy on December 3, 1928, Giuffre was a star of stage and screen. After attending the National Academy of Dramatic Arts Silvio D’Amico he made his stage debut with the company of Eduardo De Filippo. He would continue his work with De Filippo through the ’80s.

Giuffre may have been known for Pinocchio, but his resume includes over 90 films, numerous roles in Italian cult comedies from the ’70s, as well as his celebrated work in the Neopolitan theater scene. On the big screen, he appeared in Mario Monicelli’s 1968 film The Girl With the Pistol alongside Monica Vitti. The film would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film.

He starred in comedies such as La signora e stata violentata!

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Vittorio de Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) is playing January 8 - February 6, 2017 in the United States.Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), winner of the 1965 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, is a trio of stories directed by Vittorio De Sica in the omnibus fashion so popular at the time (just the year prior, he had contributed to the similarly structured Boccaccio ‘70, alongside Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli, and Luchino Visconti). Spearheaded by international super-producer Carlo Ponti—helping to ensure global distribution and award-worthy prestige—the film is, first and foremost, a collaborative compendium of what partially defined the popular perception of its versatile director and its two leads, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.The first short, “Adelina,” was written by Eduardo De Filippo and Isabella Quarantotti, the second, “Anna,” by Bella Billa, Lorenza Zanuso, and one of Italian neorealism’s founding fathers,...

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...

Versatile Italian actor known for her roles in Lina Wertmüller's films

Mariangela Melato, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 71, was one of Italy's most versatile and vivacious actresses, working in theatre and cinema with some of the leading directors of her time. She won international cult status for three films directed by Lina Wertmüller in which she co-starred with Giancarlo Giannini: The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973) and Swept Away (1974), in all of which the controversial Wertmüller mixed sex and politics. Melato had no qualms about submitting with great good humour to the sometimes humiliating situations and explicit dialogue inflicted on the two stars.

Those Wertmüller films made Melato well-known, but she liked to be recognised as an actor rather than a star. Born in Milan, she trained at the city's Brera Academy. One of the first companies to sign her up was that of the...

A sprawling three-hour-and-twenty-minute American epic crime film, what can you say about Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” that hasn’t already been said? Nominated for eleven Academy Awards and winning six, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Robert De Niro, “The Godfather Part II” was met with tremendous critical acclaim with many proclaiming it had outdone its predecessor. Award-wise, it had. The original had also bagged eleven nominations, but won only three.

This weekend, as we just mentioned in our piece about Coppola’s “The Conversation,” marked the 73rd birthday of the famed director, and yesterday on April 8th, the anniversary of “The Godfather Part II” winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Curiously enough, while many consider 'Part II' superior, box-office-wise the 3 hour 20 minute running time was audience prohibitive, and the film only grossed $47 million domestically, as opposed to...

Our critics' picks of this week's openings, plus your last chance to see and what to book now

• Which cultural events are in your diary this week? Tell us in the comments below

Opening this weekTheatre

The Master and Margarita

Bulgakov's poetic maelstrom is transferred from page to stage by Simon McBurney and Complicite. The devil is abroad in a godless Ussr. Barbican, London EC2 (0845 120 7550), to 7 April.

Anne Boleyn

The Globe goes out on tour with Howard Brenton's delightful and intelligent look at English Protestantism and the woman who furthered its cause. New Alexandra, Birmingham (0844 871 3011), 20-24 March, then touring.

Filumena

Samantha Spiro stars as the canny Neapolitan woman who has been a mistress for 25 years but is determined to be a wife. Michael Attenborough directs this new version of Eduardo de Filippo's lively comedy. Almeida, London N1 (012 7359 4404), to 12 May.

Film

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan...

Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

In recent years, “Dardenne-like” has become a favorite descriptor of international film critics. If a film features an economical, but emotionally complex narrative, a naturalistic approach to filmmaking and a penchant for lower class protagonists brought to life mostly by non-professional actors, you can bet somebody somewhere is going to compare it to the work of the Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. As their latest, the Cannes Grand Prix-winning and Spirit Award-nominated The Kid with a Bike, makes its way to theaters nationwide, we had the chance to speak with the much lauded filmmaking brothers about their early years, their working methods and how it feels to become an adjective.

Doug Jones: Film Independent does—among other things, like the Los Angeles Film Festival—a lot of classes and labs for young and emerging filmmakers. So with them in mind, I wanted...

Italian film director celebrated for his insightful short films

The film director Vittorio De Seta, who has died aged 88, was best known for his short films. A selection of these, made in Sicily and Sardinia in the 1950s, was presented by Martin Scorsese at the 2005 Tribeca film festival in New York. Scorsese described De Seta's style as that of "an anthropologist who speaks with the voice of a poet". The film historian Goffredo Fofi has hailed De Seta as an Italian director "to be remembered alongside the Rossellinis and De Sicas, the Antonionis and the Fellinis"; he also deserves to be remembered alongside the great poetic documentary makers, such as Robert Flaherty, Humphrey Jennings and Basil Wright.

De Seta was born in Palermo, Sicily, to an aristocratic landowning family from Calabria. He enrolled in the navy during the second world war and, after the armistice in 1943, refused to sign allegiance...

After 50 years playing everything from Gandalf to gangsters, the beloved 'national institution' explains why acting keeps him sane

Next week, it will be 50 years since Sir Ian McKellen first walked out on stage, at the Belgrade theatre in Coventry. "I couldn't believe my luck," he says when I ask him what it felt like. "I had done a lot of theatre-going when I was a kid, which is how I got interested but I had never thought, really, that I would be an actor, it was the sort of thing I would say to adults to stop them asking what I wanted to be when I grew up." Getting a scholarship to Cambridge was what did it, he says. "There were all these people – Derek Jacobi, David Frost, Trevor Nunn – and they were going to go into the theatre. I thought, frankly if they are good enough, I am."

We...

We’ve received all the covers for DC Comics August solicitations, and Flashpoint promises that worlds will live, worlds will die, and the DC Universe will never be the sa– oh, sorry, that was the tagline for Crisis On Infinite Earths, back when I worked at Flashpoint. I’m so confused…

My favorite item for the month is pictured above, the Sergio Aragones version of Batman from Batman: Black & White. But there are some absolute art gems here, including Darwyn Cooke’s Jsa cover, and Frank Quitely’s redoing of Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson’s cover for Green Lantern #52.

As for the rest of the books, take a look… as usual, spoilers ahead:

War Of The Green Lanterns Aftermath #2

Written by Tony Bedard

Art by Miguel Sepulveda

Cover by Tom Fleming

1:10 Variant cover by Miguel Sepulveda

The blockbuster “War of the Green Lanterns” event has rocked the...

Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Elijah Wood are not the only ones returning to Middle Earth. A recent blog posted by McKellen revealed that Hugo Weaving would be reprising his role as the elf lord Elrond in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit.

This is not another April Fool, just a May Fact. Before signing as Bilbo, Martin had agreed to make three 90-minute TV films in London, again playing Dr Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes. No worries: he’ll be back in Middle Earth after our first hiatus, during which Peter Jackson will have spare time to edit the scenes already completed. The rest of the cast remains on duty for another few weeks, working on hobbit-less sections of the film. These involve dwarves of course but also elves, with Hugo Weaving back for a stretch as Lord Elrond.

Hugo was recently onstage as Astrov...

We knew there would be a good chance Hugo Weaving would return to reprise his role as Elrond in The Hobbit, but we didn't have any kind of confirmation of his return until today. Ian McKellan gave a little update on his personally blog announcing Weaving's return. With the way big actors schedules are these days, there's always been the possibility he might not have been able to do it, so it's good to see he'll be returning to Middle Earth. Here's what McKellan had to say,

Martin Freeman has left The Hobbit.

This is not another April Fool, just a May Fact. Before signing as Bilbo, Martin had agreed to make three 90-minute TV films in London, again playing Dr Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes. No worries: he'll be back in Middle Earth after our first hiatus, during which Peter Jackson will have spare time to edit the scenes already completed.

Production continues on Peter Jackson's two-part epic The Hobbit in New Zealand, which is being eyed for a December 2012 release. Today, actor Ian McKellen updated his personal website with news that Hugo Weaving has been confirmed to return as Elrond.

Here's the entire post Ian McKellen left on his website below.

"Martin Freeman has left The Hobbit.

This is not another April Fool, just a May Fact. Before signing as Bilbo, Martin had agreed to make three 90-minute TV films in London, again playing Dr Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes. No worries: he'll be back in Middle Earth after our first hiatus, during which Peter Jackson will have spare time to edit the scenes already completed. The rest of the cast remains on duty for another few weeks, working on hobbit-less sections of the film. These involve dwarves of course but also elves, with Hugo Weaving...

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...

My family is Sicilian and Naples has long held a fascination for me – for its beauty, its danger and above all its music. Passione is my attempt to put those feelings into film

My family is originally from Sicily and my father was from Puglia. My cousin Aida is half Neapolitan. Most of the Italians in New York are from Naples, Sicily and Calabria – the south. Naples itself reminds me a little bit of New York in the 70s, except everyone is crushed together more. It's so beautiful and so dangerous. It has a brutality, but also a sense of poetry – plenty of writers have lived there and written about it. Neopolitans have their own language and, most importantly, the people are unbelievably musical. The relationship between classical and popular music goes back a long, long time. Many classical musicians (and some great opera singers) have sung popular Neapolitan songs throughout the years.