News

"Well, Italy, I have this weird feeling you might completely change my life." Netflix has unveiled an official trailer for Love & Gelato, another cheesy, cute, amusing romantic comedy from Netflix as part of their "let's make as many mediocre films as we can" strategy. The film is about the adventures & misadventures of Lina, a young American in search of herself, her roots in a glittering Rome, and of course a lot of gelato. Based on the book by Jenna Evans Welch. In the book, she doesn't really want to be there. "But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina's uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother's footsteps..." Starring Susanna Skaggs, Saul Nanni, Valentina Lodovini, Anjelika Washington, and Tobia De Angelis.

Italy’s Lotus Production, producer of 2016 megahit “Perfetti Sconosciuti” (“Perfect Strangers”), has finished its Rome shoot of “Vicini di casa,” the Italian adaptation of Cesc Gay’s Spanish hit comedy “Sentimental” (“The People Upstairs”).

“Vicini di casa” teams Lotus, part of Italy’s Leone Film Group company, with Manuel Tedescos’ Baires Produzioni in association with Mediaset Group’s Medusa Film.

Directed by Paolo Costella, who was also one of the writers behind “Perfect Strangers,” “Vicini di casa” marks the first big remake sale of “The People Upstairs” by Spanish film-tv studio Filmax.

Currently in post-production, the cast of “Vicini di casa” is headed by Claudio Bisio, a well-known comedian and star of some huge Italian blockbusters such as “Benvenuti al Sud” and “Welcome, Mr. President.”

Vittoria Puccini (“18 Presents”), Vinicio Marchioni (“Into the Labyrinth”) and Valentina Lodovini (“Say it Loud!”) finish out the film’s roster of onscreen talent.

Filmax,...

As Italy’s film and TV industry forges ahead after bearing the brunt of the pandemic in 2020, the Filming Italy — Los Angeles fest, which is a bridgehead between Italy and Hollywood, is pulling out all the stops to drive and promote the country’s restart effort.

After Filming Italy miraculously managed to hold its sister shindig as a physical edition on the island of Sardinia last summer, the upcoming March 18-21 Los Angeles event will be mostly online. But going virtual has just prompted Italian marketing guru Tiziana Rocca, a longtime Italian industry promoter, to double her efforts.

This year the former Taormina Film Festival general manager is serving up twice the number of titles — a selection of more than 50 features, TV skeins, docs and shorts — and a marathon medley of 25 master classes, starting with Edoardo Ponti, director of Oscar-buzzed Sophia Loren-starrer “The Life Ahead,” in conversation with Diane Warren,...

The Italian international sales agency’s line-up at the Berlin-based market also includes 200 Meters, Zanka Contact, Why Not You and Il materiale emotivo. Released by Lucky Red on Prime Video’s VOD service back in January, Stefano Lodovichi’s The Guest Room is the first title to be offered up by True Colours at the Berlinale’s European Film Market (1-5 March). Guido Caprino, Camilla Filippi and Edoardo Pesce star in the cast of this claustrophobic psychological thriller, which was shot during lockdown and inspired by the Hikikomori phenomenon. When Mom Is Away... With the Family, meanwhile, is a family comedy produced by Colorado in collaboration with Medusa, which sees the couple composed of Fabio De Luigi and Valentina Lodovini reunite after the well-favoured work When Mom is Away. Diego Abatantuono stars alongside the duo in this sequel which was also directed by Alessandro Genovese. Three European co-productions likewise appear...

The strand will be bookended by Alice Lowe’s Prevenge and Xander Robin’s Are We Not Cats [pictured].Scroll down for line-up

The Venice International Film Festival’s (Aug 31 - Sept 10) 2016 Critics’ Week line-up has been revealed.

The independent section of the festival – dedicated to features from debut directors – includes seven titles from five continents.

Opening the strand with be UK director Alice Lowe’s Prevenge (out of competition), which stars Lowe as a pregnant woman on a killing spree and will have its world premiere at the festival.

Lowe was co-writer and co-star of Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers. The film is a Western Edge Pictures/Gennaker production and was shot in Wales last year.

Closing will be Xander Robin’s Are We Not Cats, which was one of three genre titles to screen as a work-in-progress at the Cannes Marche this year as part of an inaugural partnership between genre market Frontières and the Cannes Film Festival...

Ahead of its official lineup being released last week (and amid rumors of what said lineup will consist of), the Venice Film Festival has announced the filmmakers and actors who will be on jury duty beginning late next month. Laurie Anderson, Gemma Arterton, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Nina Hoss, Chiara Mastroianni, Joshua Oppenheimer, Lorenzo Vigas and Zhao Wei will be heading the Competition jury alongside Sam Mendes, who’s serving as president this year.

Read More: Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Arrival’ and Tom Ford’s ‘Nocturnal Animals’ Are ‘Virtually Assured’ to Premiere at the Venice Film Festival

Heading the Orizzonti section, meanwhile, is French director Robert Guédiguian. He’ll be joined by J. Hoberman, Nelly Karim, Valentina Lodovini, Moon So-ri, José Maria (Chema) Prado and Chaitanya Tamhane. Kim Rossi Stuart is leading the “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film — Lion of the Future jury with Rosa Bosch, Brady Corbet,...

Title: The Games Maker Director: Juan Pablo Buscarini Starring: David Mazouz, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Asner, Megan Charpentier, Tom Cavanagh, Valentina Lodovini There is a kind of world that can exist in a film marketed specifically to young audiences that possesses equal parts misery and wonder. Such a universe can actually be quite grim in nature, yet the naïve, optimistic outlook of one plucky protagonist can negate the innate negativity and create instead a spirit of adventure. That is certainly the case in The Games Maker, a Sundance Kids selection that tells the tale of a young boy obsessed with making and developing games, which ultimately becomes his saving grace when  [ Read More ]

The post The Games Maker Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Edward Noeltner has come on board to handle international sales excluding Latin America to the children’s fantasy, set to receive its Us premiere in Sundance next week.

The Games Maker has already generated more than $5m at the box office in Latin America, where Disney controls rights.

Joseph Fiennes, David Mazouz and Ed Asner star in the 3D story of a young boy whose love of board games catapaults him into a quest to find his missing parents, save the city of Zyl and overthrow the evil inventor in charge of the mysterious “games maker” competition.

Juan Pablo Buscarini directed The Games Maker from the children’s novel by Pablo De Santis. The film shot in Argentina and completed post-production in Canada. Tom Cavanagh, Valentina Lodovini and Megan Charpentier also star.

The film screens in the Sundance Kids programme on January 25 and 31.

Buscarini produced via his company Pampa Films Argentina alongside Kim C Roberts and [link...

Edward Noeltner has come on board to handle international sales excluding Latin America to the children’s fantasy, set to receive its Us premiere in Sundance next week.

The Games Maker has already generated more than $5m at the box office in Latin America, where Disney controls rights.

Joseph Fiennes, David Mazouz and Ed Asner star in the 3D story of a young boy whose love of board games catapaults him into a quest to find his missing parents, save the city of Zyl and overthrow the evil inventor in charge of the mysterious “games maker” competition.

Juan Pablo Buscarini directed The Games Maker from the children’s novel by Pablo De Santis. The film shot in Argentina and completed post-production in Canada. Tom Cavanagh, Valentina Lodovini and Megan Charpentier also star.

The film screens in the Sundance Kids programme on January 25 and 31.

Buscarini produced via his company Pampa Films Argentina alongside Kim C Roberts and [link...

It’s a film starring Sundance Film Fest creator Robert Redford and another film starring Sundance mainstay James Franco that are the latest and last items to officially pad the 2015 edition. Ken Kwapis’ A Walk in the Woods (surely to be discussed as a companion piece to Gus Van Sant’s heavy Cannes contender The Sea of Trees) and Rupert Goold’s directorial debut, True Story – a story that is stranger than fiction close out the Premieres selections. Also announced we find items for New Frontier, Sundance Kids and the From the Collection items. And while the line-up is complete, the actual final piece to the puzzle might actually be a secret screening or two. This year I wager on Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups playing as a non official showing. Here’s the press release.

A Walk in the Woods / U.S.A. (Director: Ken Kwapis, Screenwriters: Rick Kerb,...

Sundance: Robert Redford stars opposite Nick Nolte in Salt Lake City gala

Festival top brass announced on December 15 a volley of 10 additional films and New Frontier installations.

The late arrivals mean the festival will screen 123 features overall from 29 countries culled from 12,166 submissions. A total of 106 of the features will be world premieres and 45 of the total line-up hail from first-time film-makers,

Sundance is set to run from January 22-February 1.

All synopses provided by the festival.

Premieres

A Walk In The Woods (USA)

Ken Kwapis

An aging travel writer sets out to hike the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail with a long-estranged high school buddy. Along the way, the duo face off with each other, nature, and an eccentric assortment of characters. Together, they learn that some roads are better left untraveled.

Cast: Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Nick Offerman, Kristen Schaal.

World premiere

Salt Lake City Gala Film

True Story (USA)

Rupert Goold

When disgraced New York...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

RomaCinemaFest

ROME -- Carlo Mazzacurati's The Right Distance may not be the director's best film, but is stronger and tighter than what he's produced in the last decade. An inconsistent director, Mazzacurati does warm to making movies about marginalized characters without dipping too far into the syrupy posturing that passes as small-town nostalgia in much of today's Italian cinema. Despite overreaching ambitions, word-of-mouth and positive local reviews could help boost figures as it carves out an arthouse niche for itself. Released in Italy by 01 Distribution on October 20, the day after its RomeCinemaFest screening, it modestly grossed under half a million euros in its first week.

This film opens with a spectacularly sunny and sweeping shot of the lush countryside along the banks of the River Po, the best camerawork by an otherwise underused Luca Bigazzi. It then homes in on a bus carrying -- we are told through a young man's voiceover -- Mara (Valentina Lodovini), the pretty elementary school substitute teacher who will change his life forever, to his sleepy town of Concadalbero.

A loner who recently lost his mother, 18 year-old Giovanni (Giovanni Capovilla, making an impressive feature debut) tells us about his first "adult" crush on 30 year-old Mara, along the way providing background information on Concadalbero and its inhabitants.

Giovanni is a budding journalist obsessed with a recent rash of serial dog killings. He lands a job writing anonymously for a local paper, whose stereotypically cantankerous editor (Mazzacurati regular Fabrizio Bentivoglio) tells him to always keep the "right distance" between himself and a story -- not too far so as to lose empathy, not too close so as to become emotionally involved.

The story then shifts to Mara, who in emails to a friend back in Florence exalts the peace of rural living but complains that pickings are slim among the local men. The Only Ones interested are philandering tobacconist Amos (Giuseppe Battiston, who picked up a best acting award at the Fest for his performance) and Hassan (Ahmed Hafiene), a Tunisian mechanic who spies on Mara from the woods by her house, and is in turn spied on by Giovanni.

After catching Hassan in the act, Mara first scorns him but is won over by his gentle shyness and they begin dating. He falls hard, yet she is just passing through, en route to more gratifying work in Brazil.

Just when you think that apart from their personal drama, and the disturbing canine slayings, nothing much happens in Concadalbero -- even the racism endured by many immigrants in Italy seems relatively benign here -- an unexpected brutal murder turns the film into a whodunit in the third, and weakest, act.

Throughout the music by San Francisco acoustic chamber trio Tin Hat is appropriately haunting but Distance ultimately stretches itself thin. Two of its plot threads -- the poignant tale about growing up in Anytown, Italy and the unfulfilled love story -- are almost overshadowed by a facile courtroom drama and investigation that belie the emotional realism of the first two thirds of the film. Which is a shame, because what lies beneath is a compelling story on how human triumphs and tragedies stem, in equal measure, from our inability to maintain the right distance in life.

THE RIGHT DISTANCE

Fandango, RAI Cinema

Credits:

Director: Carlo Mazzacurati

Writers: Carlo Mazzacurati, Doriana Leondeff, Marco Pettenello, Claudio Piersanti

Producer: Domenico Procacci

Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi

Production designer: Giancarlo Basili

Music: Tin Hat

Costume designer: Francesca Sartori

Editor: Paolo Cottignola

Cast:

Giovanni: Giovanni Capovilla

Mara: Valentina Lodovini

Hassan: Ahmed Hafiene

Amos: Giuseppe Battiston

Bencivegna: Fabrizio Bentivoglio

Bolla: Roberto Abbiati

Franco: Natalino Balasso

Guido: Stefano Scandaletti

Running time -- 107 minutes

No MPAA rating...

MUNICH -- Imagine Steve Martin's Bowfinger making a film based on the unshaved illustrations in the original edition of The Joy of Sex, and you have a pretty good idea of what Pornorama is all about. It's not as broadly comic as Bowfinger, not as brilliantly caricatured, and not as tightly edited, but at least there are some cute sex scenes and a young love story.

The most interesting aspect of Pornorama to American audiences, and the main reason that it will likely be an attraction at festivals if not the arthouse circuit, is its European attitude toward the human body in general and sex in particular. The film is set in late '60s Germany, when a long tradition of nudism was mixing with both a ban on smut and an explosion of perversely clinical sex education films (which were, thanks to the ban, consumed salaciously).

Pornorama features a crucially funny scene in which the baby-faced director Bennie (ably portrayed by Tom Schilling) watches a medley of such "explanatory" films to get ideas for his own movie. Unfortunately, the possibilities inherent in that scene are never really explored, and the movie becomes a less caustic and captivating twist on Bowfinger, including the endearingly oddball crew and the star who doesn't realize what the film is about.

In a direct comparison, the contrast becomes crystal clear: When Bennie needs tears from his Italian bombshell heroine (played exceptionally well by Valentina Lodovini), he sets up the makeup girl offscreen with a big onion and a grater. When Bowfinger needs fear from his hero, he dresses his dog in pumps.

Pornorama remains genial as opposed to biting, leaving the audience somewhat more cheerful than when they came in as opposed to gasping for air between laughs.

The production values are high with hippie-era Munich lovingly recreated, if a bit tongue-in-cheek, by production designer Bernd Lepel and costume designer Natascha Curtius-Noss. A soundtrack by top German producer Mousse T., while inauthentic to the period, gets the viewer's attention.