Ancient helmets, temple ruins found at dig in southern Italy

Despite all the high-tech tricks, political posturing and pyrotechnics, the best part of the Closing Ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics proved to be the athletes.

POMPEII, Italy -- In a few horrible hours, Pompeii was turned from a vibrant city into an ash-embalmed wasteland, smothered by a furious volcanic eruption in A.D. 79.Then in this century, the excavated Roman city appeared alarmingly close to a second death, assailed by decades of neglect, mismanagement and scant systematic maintenance of the heavily visited ruins.

Married At First Sight Australia will make a welcome return this February, with a whole new line-up of singletons hoping to find love. The new series premiered in Australia at the end of January on Channel 9 and now UK viewers can also tune in, with the ninth season set to kick off on E4 on Monday 21 February. Relationship experts John Aiken and Mel Schilling are joined once again by clinical sexologist Alessandra Rampolla, as they aim to help each contestant find long-lasting love.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentFremantle and Italy’s Cinecittà have entered a five-year pact involving the continuous rental of six sound stages at the iconic studios, which are currently undergoing a major revamp.The deal “confirms Fremantle’s strategic decision to make some of its top international productions in Italy: a decision that finds the perfect and natural partner in Cinecittà,” Fremantle said in a statement.A radical revamp of Cinecittà,  which has been underway since May 2021, has been gaining traction with a rise in occupancy of its sound stages and backlot, realistic prospects for profitability, and new state-of-the-art filming facilities.The Cinecittà revamp is being conceived and carried forth by Nicola Maccanico, a former Warner Bros. and Sky Italia senior exec who has a mandate from Italy’s culture minister Dario Franceschini to turn the Rome studios into continental Europe’s top filming facilities thanks to a €300 million ($339) million) investment from the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAdriana Chiesa Enterprises has taken world sales on high-profile doc “Caterina Caselli: One Life, 100 Voices,” about the former Italian pop singer, base player and actress who is now president of Andrea Bocelli’s record label, Sugar Music.The veteran Italian sales agent is lauching sales on the doc at the online EFM.Directed by Renato De Maria, who is known for films such as “Love Me” and “The First Line,” which went to Toronto – and more recently Netflix Italy original “The Ruthless” – the doc delves into Caselli’s career which kicked off with the 1966 Sanremo song fest where she performed proto feminist song “Nessuno mi può giudicare,” (which translates as “Nobody Can Judge Me”). It went gold, selling over one million copies.

Champions League football is back on our screens this week after two months away and there is a fantastic line-up of fixtures for fans to enjoy over the next few weeks.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian multi-hyphenate Nicolò Bassetti is an urban planner and director, whose doc “Into My Name,” screening in Berlin’s Panorama Documentary section, provides an eye-opening look at the universal challenges of gender transition.The doc features Nico, Leo, Andrea, and Raff, whose ages span from their mid-20s to mid-30s, and come from different parts of Italy. They start their gender transition at different times in their lives within a tight-knit group of friends in the central Italian city of Bologna.“Into My Name,” which is being supported by Elliot Page, stems from Bassetti’s personal experience with the gender transition of his child, Matteo.

Kanye West made a surprise appearance at the premiere of jeen-yuhs, the new Netflix documentary about him, last night (February 11).The film, the first part of which will arrive on the streaming service on Wednesday (February 16), was directed by Coodie and Chike and made over 20 years.The premiere was held at Citizen News in Hollywood yesterday and was attended by numerous celebrities including Migos’ Offset, Usher, Roddy Ricch, and Taraji P. Henson.According to Variety, West arrived 15 minutes after the screening had started and was given a chair in the front corner of the room.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentTel-Aviv-based Cinephil, the sales company behind triple-Oscar nominated “Flee,” has snapped up world rights, excluding U.S., to Italian director Nicolò Bassetti’s transgender-themed doc “Into My Name,” which is executive-produced by Elliot Page.UTA Independent Film Group will be handling North American rights. The buzzy doc, which world-premieres at the Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama Documentary section, stems from Bassetti’s personal experience with the gender transition of his child, Matteo.“Into My Name” provides an intimate look at the universal challenges of gender transition by observing a tight-knit group of trans friends in the central Italian city of Bologna. Cinephil managing director Olivier Tournaud in a statement said that he was “immediately taken” by Bassetti’s “sensitive and relatable exploration of the many facets of gender and even more so the love letter from a father to his son.”“Into My Name is timely and spotlights voices that need to be heard; this is exactly the kind of film Cinephil is proud to represent,” Tournaud noted.Bassetti underlined that for him the doc “is a deeply personal project, both as a parent of a transgender son and as a director who has always explored individual paths that show our shared humanity.” “I trust that together with a strong partner such as Cinephil, we can add to the awareness and understanding of trans issues with international audiences,” the director said.The doc’s characters, Nico, Leo, Andrea and Raff — whose ages span from their mid-20s to mid-30s — come from different parts of Italy, and started their gender transition from a female to a male identity at different times in their lives.

Emiliano De Pablos Media giant Mediaset has acquired Italian distribution rights to Spanish writer-director Benito Zambrano’s drama “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake,” produced and sold by Barcelona-based studio Filmax.News of the deal comes just before Filmax screens “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” to buyers at this year’s online European Film Market.Described as high-quality cinema for adults and predominantly female audiences, “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” adapts the novel of the same title by screenwriter and casting specialist Cristina Campos. It has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide.A member of  Spain’s generation of directors that broke out in the 1990s,  helping Spanish movies find far larger favor with audiences at home, Zambrano’s breakout debut, 1999’s “Alone,” won the Panorama Audience Award at Berlin.

Princess Beatrice looked elegant in a navy coat as she joined celebrities and society beauties at a star-studded book launch on Tuesday night.  The royal, 33, stunned in a navy coat and dress paired with over-the-knee black boots at the event, which was held in honour of new book The Fendi Set, which was photographed by Kate Moss' boyfriend Nikolai von Bismarck. Supermodel Kate, 48, cut a typically chic figure in all black while her partner of seven years, 35-year-old Nikolai, looked dapper in a patterned shirt teamed with a black jumper and trousers.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Leading Italian sales company The Open Reel has snagged the international sales rights to Pablo Garcia Perez de Lara’s latest doc, “Born to be Born,” ahead of its world premiere at the European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin.Doc revolves around a progressive public school, the Escola Congrés-Indians, in Garcia’s native Barcelona, where preparations for an end-of-year trip of the school’s first graduating class are underway. Children learn at their own pace in the primary school which instills, above all, the values of respect and empathy for other people.“I was struck by the director’s ability to discreetly document the important educational role that the school and its educators play with these young students,” said The Open Reel founder Cosimo Santoro, adding: “They guide them through understanding and dialogue in every phase of their discussions and through any possible conflicts that may arise.” Garcia has trained his camera on children in many of his previous features and shorts.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorGlobal Screen has closed a raft of sales for “The Conference,” a historically accurate drama about the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, a meeting that had only one item on the agenda: the organization of the systematic mass murder of 11 million European Jews. The film has been acquired by Menemsha Films (North America), Pivot Pictures (Australia), The Klockworx (Japan), Swallow Wings (Taiwan), RAI (Italy), Flins & Piniculas (Spain), Films 4 You (Portugal), Arti Film (Benelux), Edge Entertainment (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Baltics), ITI Neovision (Poland), RTV (Slovenia), Italian-speaking Switzerland (RSI) and Red Cape (Israel).

Mika has been officially announced as one of the co-hosts for Eurovision 2022 in Turin, Italy.

Mika has been officially announced as one of the co-hosts for Eurovision 2022 in Turin, Italy.

ROME -- The Vatican and an Italian Catholic bishop on Wednesday protested a performance at Italy’s Sanremo music festival that featured a “profane” faux baptism on stage, lamenting in particular that it was broadcast on public television.On the opening night of the annual song contest, a tattooed, bare-chested and barefoot singer named Achille Lauro gyrated and grabbed his crotch as he sang “Domenica” (“Sunday”), backed up by singers from the Harlem Gospel Choir. He finished by kneeling on stage, hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer, and poured water from a bowl over his forehead.Sanremo Bishop Antonio Suetta said the performance contained “words, attitudes and gestures that are not just offensive to religion, but to human dignity.”In a statement, Suetta said he considered not saying anything, knowing that his protest would only draw attention to the performance.

Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.MOVIES— If you missed Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” in theaters, you can bask in all the gaudy decadence from the comfort of your own home starting Tuesday, when it becomes available on VOD. Lady Gaga gives a committed performance as Patrizia Reggiani, a local beauty who married into the Gucci family and helped her husband, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), wield power and influence in the family business.

Production company MUBI has acquired Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s documentary “Free Chol Soo Lee” that premiered last week at Sundance, the company said in a release.The film has been acquired for North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, German, Austria, Italy and Turkey and will release theatrically in 2022 in the U.S., with plans for other regions coming later.The documentary is about a movement in the 1970s in San Francisco, where a 20-year-old Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee gets racially profiled and convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. Lee is sentenced to life and fights to survive until a journalist takes up his case and ignites a social justice movement in the Asian American community.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips editor“Free Chol Soo Lee” has been acquired by global distributor, streamer and production company MUBI.The documentary, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival, will come to U.S. theaters in 2022, with release plans in other territories (Latin America, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, the U.K.