Monica Vitti dead – Iconic Italian actress dies aged 90 after Alzheimer's battle

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian exhibitors are sounding an alarm over the country’s pandemic-prompted box office plunge and the removal of theatrical windows which they say are causing closure of 500 movie screens.Their cry for help comes amid what they say is a lack of signals in Italy pointing to the cinemagoing recovery that is instead currently underway in other European countries.Two years after Italy’s roughly 3,600 cinema screens were first shuttered, 500 of those screens have still not reopened across the country, according to Mario Lorini, head of local exhibitors org. ANEC.Calling for action to counter this crisis, Lorini at a Rome confab urged the government to reinstate the country’s 90-day window between a film’s release in movie theaters and via streaming platforms and broadcasters that was lifted during the pandemic by Italy’s motion picture association.

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.

Jamie Lang Featuring in this year’s eight iteration of the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series, Italian drama “Belcanto” will hope to follow a trail blazed by former participating European standouts such as “Babylon Berlin,” “Freud,” “Furia,” and last year’s Series Mania winner “Blackport.”Co-created by the trio of Mariano Di Nardo, Antonio Manca and Federico Fava and produced by leading Italian distribution-production house Lucky Red, the series project is set in 1798, as 14-year-old Carolina, her 17-year-old sister Antonia and their mother Maria seek refuge in the city of Milan after stabbing their violent father to death.The elder sister dreams of becoming a renowned singer, much as her mother once hoped for when she was the girl’s age. However, an unhappy and often violent marriage waylaid young Maria, who is now willing to go the extreme lengths to ensure that her daughter is afforded every opportunity withheld from herself.

Refresh for latest…: Hitting 15 offshore markets ahead of its domestic debut and further overseas expansion next weekend, Sony’s Uncharted mapped out an international box office launch of $21.5M. The Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg-starrer was No. 1 in each of its openings, taking advantage of school holidays in some markets and, of course, the Spider-Man Holland halo.

Travis Barker is sporting a totally new look in Machine Gun Kelly‘s latest music video. The Blink-182 rocker stars in MGK and Willow’s video for their new song, “Emo Girl,” as a guide to a group of young students on a field trip.

Angelique Jackson Bleecker Street has secured North American rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s new action-comedy, “Mafia Mamma,” starring Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci and Rob Huebel.Collette stars in the film as a suburban American woman, who inherits her grandfather’s mafia empire and must learn navigate her new role as the head of the family business, defying everyone’s expectations.Based on an original idea by acclaimed French novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker Amanda Sthers, Hardwicke directs from a screenplay written by Debbie Jhoon and Michael J. Feldman (Peacock’s “AP Bio,” Hulu’s”Deadbeat”).

Bleecker Street has acquired North American rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s action-comedy Mafia Mamma, starring Toni Collette (The Staircase, Nightmare Alley), Monica Bellucci (The Matrix franchise, The Man Who Sold His Skin) and Rob Huebel (The Descendants, The Goldbergs), which is heading into production in Italy in May.

Italy’s annual Sanremo music festival.Lorena Monroe Cesarini, 34, read some of the messages to the audience during Wednesday night's broadcast of the festival on RAI state television.“They invited you because you are Black,” read one message that said she did not deserve to be there. She quoted another one that read: “Maybe they called you to wash the staircase or water the plants.”Cesarini said it was the first time she had been the target of racism growing up in Italy, and that the messages started as soon as it was reported that she would be a guest of the festival.“Evidently for someone, the color of my skin is a problem,’’ said the actress best known for her role in the Italian serial drama “Suburra."Cesarini, who was born in Dakar, Senegal, to a Senegalese mother and Italian father, received shouts of support from the live audience, including one who yelled, “You’re Italian,” to which she responded, “Yes, and proud.”She told the audience that she remained perplexed by the messages: “Why do people feel the necessity to write such things on social media? Why do people have a problem with the color of my skin?”Incidents of racism in Italy have drawn more attention in recent years.

Monica Vitti was the “Queen of Italian Cinema,” best known in the English-speaking world for her starring role in the spy spoof “Modesty Blaise.”Vitti began acting professionally in the 1950s and soon became well known in Italy. She became a muse of the great Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, starring in several of his films including “L’Avventura” and “La Notte.” After gaining fame in Italy and as a rising star in international film circles, Vitti was cast in the 1966 British spy comedy “Modesty Blaise.” She starred in her first English-language film as the title character, a criminal mastermind hired by the British Secret Service.

1960’s “L’Avventura” and 1966’s “Modesty Blaise” — was confirmed Wednesday by Walter Veltroni, a filmmaker and the former mayor of Rome.“Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so with great grief, affection, and nostalgia,” Veltroni posted to Twitter.The blond bombshell was the new wave leading lady of movies helmed by the most legendary international filmmakers in the industry: She worked with directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Ettore Scola and Luis Buñuel, often starring alongside the superstar likes of Sir Michael Caine, Terence Stamp and Richard Harris.Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli to strict, poverty-stricken parents on Nov.

Monica Vitti has died at the age of 90. The award-winning actress has passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Walter Veltroni, the former Mayor of Rome and a film critic, confirmed the news via a Twitter post.

Twitter by a former culture minister, Walter Veltroni, who said he had been asked to communicate her death by her husband, the photographer Roberto Russo.Vitti had been out of the public spotlight for years, living quietly in Rome with her husband. She reportedly suffered from dementia.In her glamour days in the 1960s, when she was best known for her starring roles in “L’Avventura,” “La Notte,” “Eclisse" ("Eclipse") and “Red Desert,” all films directed by Antonioni, her lover at that time.