Benito Mussolini Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Proud and vibrant, men in immaculate suits with sashes across their chests, women and children in traditional costume, they gather on the streets of Ancoats. The picture below was taken in 1955 and the occasion was an annual parade.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian state broadcaster RAI is under heavy fire amid allegations that it censored a planned anti-fascist monologue by prominent writer Antonio Scurati, author of international bestseller “M: Son of the Century,” which reconstructs fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. Scurati was meant to read his monologue – written to mark the country’s upcoming April 25 national holiday that celebrates Italy’s liberation from fascism – on the talk show “Chesarà,” which aired on the broadcaster’s RAI 3 channel Saturday night.

Stephen Colbert has made his feelings clear about the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency, describing the former US leader as a “fascist”.During an impassioned speech on The Late Show, Colbert reminded audiences of the multiple charges currently levelled against Trump, while also asking them to imagine the “horror” of what the country would be like if “this hate-filled dingus” were to be re-elected.“People talk about him a lot, and because people are talking about him, we talk about him – like, say, the 91 charges he’s facing,” Colbert said (via The Guardian). “Which is, technically speaking, a lot of charges.“But as much as all of us talk and think about this numbnut, every so often, it’s really important to, let’s say metaphorically, jam the sharpened stick of knowledge into the soft inner thigh of your mind and just grind it around a little bit to try to reawaken the horror of what our country would be like if this hate-filled dingus and his soulless goons ever got a hold of power again.”“Because, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Donald Trump is a fascist,” he continued.To support his characterization, Colbert noted that the former president had once referred to “vermin” that he wanted to “root out” on the campaign trail.“First, that’s dehumanizing his fellow Americans.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour” – which earned Gary Oldman an Oscar for his portrayal as the British prime minister – has now changed historical sides.  Wright is at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios shooting high-end TV drama “M. Son of the Century” which chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. A timely tale because, as he puts it: “Populist leaders are sprouting up all over the world.”  Aesthetically, the show will be “quite outlandish” with deeply saturated colors, punctuated by a “kind of techno score,” the director said during a recent set visit. Though “It’s not told in a vérité style,” Wright pointed out that “All the facts of what happened, they’re all there.” 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Rome’s Cinecittà Studios are generating a profit for the first time in years amid a radical upgrade, overhaul, and expansion of the filming facilities where Hollywood productions are now flocking on a scale that is starting to be comparable with its glory days. Roland Emmerich last month started shooting his gladiator series “Those About to Die” starring Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vespasian; Joe Wright is in the midst of production on TV series “M,” about Benito Mussolini’s rise to power; and in January cameras started rolling in the “City of Cinema” on Netflix’s period soap “The Decameron.” These are among the biggest international productions lured by the storied studios in recent years, also thanks to Italy’s 40% cash back tax rebate.

Sky Studios CEO Cecile Frot-Coutaz has called the plethora of shows on the market “really confusing” for viewers.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, beating out Turning Red, The Sea Beast, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

After joining Guillermo del Toro on the project over 10 years ago, producers Alex Bulkley and Corey Campodonico finally got to see the fruits of their labor when Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio premiered last year. Del Toro’s Netflix adaptation of the Carlo Collodi story takes place in 1930s Italy, during the Fascist reign of Benito Mussolini. In this story, woodcarver Geppetto (David Bradley) loses his son Carlo in an aerial bombing and carves Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) from the tree at his son’s grave. Bulkley and Campodonico’s animation studio, ShadowMachine, was responsible for the stop-motion animation of the film, and the pair were incredibly excited to go on this long journey with del Toro.

“I saw the Disney film when I was very, very young, and it made a huge impression,” Guillermo del Toro said during a panel for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio at Deadline’s Contenders: The Nominees event, where he was joined by director Mark Gustafson. “What sat wrong with me was the idea that you needed to be obedient to be a real boy, and that you needed to be transformed into something you were not to be loved.”

It’s impossible to talk about Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio without considering the music. Del Toro’s Netflix adaptation of the Carlo Collodi story takes place in 1930s Italy, during the Fascist reign of Benito Mussolini. In this story, woodcarver Geppetto (David Bradley) loses his son Carlo in an aerial bombing and carves Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) from the tree at his son’s grave. Composer Alexandre Desplat, who worked with del Toro on The Shape of Water, was tasked with capturing the “joyous melancholy” of the wooden boy in music. To enhance the connection between the character of Pinocchio and the music, Desplat made the choice to only use wooden instruments in the score. Below, Desplat breaks down three key pieces of the score – “Carlo’s Theme”, “Going to Town” and “Saving Geppetto” – with the corresponding scenes included for reference.

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s Close, Danish director Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider and Swedish director Ruben Ôstlund’s Triangle Of Sadness lead the nominations for the 35th European Film Awards, which were unveiled today.

K.J. Yossman Luca Marinelli has been cast as Benito Mussolini in Joe Wright’s upcoming biopic series for Sky. Variety revealed last month that Wright, who recently finished promoting his feature film “Cyrano,” was set to direct the series chronicling Mussolini’s rise to power against a backdrop of fascism and World War II. Wright also helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour,” which saw Gary Oldman nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of the former British prime minister. “M. Son of the Century” is based on Antonio Scurati’s book and is set to go into production at Cinecittà Studios in Italy over the next few weeks. Wright will direct all eight episodes.

Italian actor Luca Marinelli, who was seen recently in Cannes Jury Prize winner The Eight Mountains, will play Benito Mussolini in Joe Wright’s upcoming series M. Son Of The Century.

The historic Barberini Cinema in Rome reopens its doors to the public this Thursday for the first time in two-and-a-half years after an ambitious multi-million-euro refurbishment.

The Heritage Foundation is ranked as the third most influential think tank – left or right – in the U.S. A right-wing D.C.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Giorgia Meloni is poised to become the next prime minister of Italy. With her victory will come the country’s most far-right government since Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party ruled during World War II. If exit polls are correct, Meloni will become the first female prime minister of Italy. Her Brothers of Italy party is projected to win between 22% to 26% of the vote, which would allow her to outflank Enrico Letta, the centre left politician who is her nearest rival. Brothers of Italy are expected to form a coalition government with Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Final results are expected on Monday morning.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The ongoing overhaul of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios is getting traction thanks to booming demand from international productions just as the number of sound stages increase, prompting realistic prospects of turning a profit by end of 2022, which is a year earlier than planned. Cinecittà has been undergoing a radical revamp devised by managing director Nicola Maccanico since June 2021, when European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Italian premier Mario Draghi (pictured above at Cinecittà) jointly visited the iconic studio lot and held a press conference in its vast Studio 5 — known as the late, great filmmaker Federico Fellini’s second home — to announce a €300 million ($300 million) investment to meet the growing international demand for studio space,

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour” – which earned Gary Oldman an Oscar for his portrayal as the British prime minister – is set to change historical sides and direct TV drama “M,” which chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. The high-end series, which is based on Antonio Scurati’s Premio Strega-winning and international bestselling novel “M. Son of the Century,” traces the birth of Fascism in Italy and Mussolini’s ascent with an innovative approach that has sparked debate about the Fascist dictator’s legacy in Italy and abroad. “The writer understood and put on paper, with facts and documents and everything, that Mussolini is the guy – him and only him – who created what we now know as populism and Fascism,” said the show’s producer Lorenzo Mieli, speaking in Venice, where he is among producers of Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All.”

Right at the beginning of The March On Rome, a special screening in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival, Mark Cousins draws our collective gaze to a piece of graffiti saying that cinema is most powerful weapon of all. It isn’t clear — to me, anyway — whether that joyful proclamation dates back to 1922, when Benito Mussolini led a Fascist march from Naples to Rome, or to some other eruption of historical optimism. Cinema isn’t as powerful as all that — if it were, Fascism would have been clobbered to a pulp by Chaplin, Lubitsch and all the other filmmakers who lampooned its vainglorious leaders. But images do matter. They certainly mattered to Italian Fascism.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In “The March on Rome,” which world premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of Venice Film Festival Wednesday, Northern Irish-Scottish filmmaker Mark Cousins tracks the ascent of fascism in Italy in the 1920s, and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. He also draws a dotted line from those events to the storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in January 2021. The documentary, illustrated with archive footage and Cousins’ characteristic cinematic analysis, starts with Donald Trump defending his decision to retweet a quote from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Later in the film, Cousins inserts footage of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, hoping to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Fascism – its roots, legacy and contemporary manifestations – is a leitmotif running throughout the 79th Venice Film Festival as Italy marks the centenary of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s fateful power grab in 1922, in an era when totalitarian leaders are once again on the rise.

Rome’s historic Cinecittà Studios on Monday afternoon (Aug. 1) and was extinguished by three teams of firefighters. The fire broke out in the area where a set depicting renaissance Florence was housed and which was being decommissioned, destroying parts of it.

Wilson Chapman editorPinocchio is coming to life. A new trailer for director Guillermo del Toro’s animated film version of the classic tale has been released by Netflix.“From my many wanderings on this earth, I had so much to say about imperfect fathers and imperfect sons,” Ewan McGregor’s Sebastian J.

“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough had a warning for his old “buddy,” former congressman and Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows: “You’re in deep s—.” On Tuesday, Meadows’ former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson took the stand to testify at the Jan. 6 hearings, and perhaps the only figure it was as damning to as Donald Trump was her boss. Providing testimony that Trump was not only aware of the threat of violence, but that he encouraged it and even at one point tried to join the crowd at the Capitol, Hutchinson’s fly-on-the-wall recollection also got Meadows in its crosshairs, as she testified that he knew of such developments the whole time.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“The Bourne Identity” helmer Doug Liman is attached to direct the adaptation of a chapter from acclaimed nonfiction book “Rise And Kill First.” It details how Israel’s Mossad reached out in desperation to former Nazi Waffen SS lieutenant colonel Otto Skorzeny, a favourite of Hitler’s -branded by British intelligence services as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” to thwart an existential threat to Israel’s existence.The stranger-than-fiction true story is set up at New York’s Story Syndicate (“I’ll Be Gone In the Dark,” “Britney vs Spears,” “Becoming Cousteau”), headed by Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus, and at Israel’s Abot Hameiri, producer of “Shtisel,” “The Attaché” and “Power Couple.” A Fremantle company, its co-founder, Guy Hameiri, assembled the world-class direction-production team. A Cannes Festival alum with 2010’s Palme d’Or contender “Fair Game,” Liman will also oversee development of the limited series.

Sky has unveiled a drama series chronicling Benito Mussolini’s rise to power based on Antonio Scurati’s book.

Manori Ravindran International EditorItalian dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to power will be chronicled in a new Sky drama, Variety can reveal.Based on Antonio Scurati’s Premio Strega-winning and international bestselling novel “M. Son of the Century,” which traces the birth of fascism in Italy and Mussolini’s ascent, the eight-part series will be produced by Sky Studios and Fremantle-backed The Apartment in collaboration with Pathé.The show will cover the period spanning from the founding of Fasci Italiani in 1919 through to Mussolini’s infamous speech in parliament following the murder of socialist MP Giacomo Matteotti in 1925.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAward winning film director and historian Mark Cousins (“The Story of Film: A New Generation”) is at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios making a doc titled “March on Rome” that will explore the roots of fascism by analyzing films, photographs, and other documents found in Italian archives.The high-profile documentary — pegged to the centennial of the infamous late October 1922 insurrection by which Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy — will take its cue from the Fascist propaganda film “A Noi” by director Umberto Paradisi, produced in 1923 as an official Fascist party document celebrating the March on Rome.Italian writer and director Tony Saccucci (“The Duce’s Boxer”), who originated the project and did meticulous research for it, serves as a co-writer with Cousins. Saccuci cross-checked Paradisi’s film with other sources of the time to reveal details of the pic that provide a completely new take on the history of those dramatic days, according to the synopsis.

Zack Sharf Guillermo del Toro fans had to wait four years in between his best picture winner “The Shape of Water” and his newest release “Nightmare Alley.” The wait for his next project won’t be as long. Netflix has announced the director’s stop-motion, musical adaptation of “Pinocchio” is set for release in December 2022.

By Dave McNary