Dario Argento Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Christopher Vourlias Abel Ferrara is set to begin production on his latest feature, “American Nails,” a modern gangster story inspired by ancient tragedy that stars Asia Argento and Willem Dafoe, Variety has learned. According to the producers, “American Nails” charts “the rise and fall of this modern Phaedra, in a tale set in the gangster world of primal violence, power and revenge.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If would be hard to name an artist in any medium who illustrated Flaubert’s famous maxim of creativity (“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work”) better than Ennio Morricone. Morricone, who died in 2020 (at 91), was certainly one of the greatest composers of movie soundtracks who ever lived. But even if you consider him next to his fellow giants (Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Nino Rota, Hans Zimmer, Max Steiner), Morricone scaled his own wild peak, inventing his own kind of beauty, his own transcendent cacophony.

Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, or even Sergio Martino may pop into cinephile’s heads when thinking of Giallo’s greatest directors. But only one name is truly synonymous with the Italian sub-genre, and that’s Dario Argento.

EXCLUSIVE: Shudder has acquired rights to Dario Argento Panico, Simone Scadfi’s documentary retrospective and personal portrait of the Italian giallo master, for the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Pic debuts on the service on February 2, 2024, after making its world premiere at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

Alkaline Trio have released ‘Bad Time’, the second single from their upcoming tenth full-length album ‘Blood, Hair and Eyeballs’.Released last week (November 30), the spirited track finds frontman Matt Skiba earnestly professing his affection for an old flame under life-threatening circumstances: “Left a message saying “hi” / I answered from a firefight / Told you it’s a bad time / But I can talk”According to a press release, the events described in the song were based on Skiba’s real life experiences. “‘Bad Time’ was initially inspired by a friend and crush who happened to call me while I was on tour in El Paso, Texas as an active shooter situation was happening just across from where we were staying,” he wrote.“We could hear gunshots and sirens as the situation escalated.

EXCLUSIVE: Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary Ennio, paying tribute to the late, revered film composer Ennio Morricone.

Todd Gilchrist editor For horror fans, Claudio Simonetti is a household name. First a founding member of rock group Goblin, whose work is synonymous with filmmaker Dario Argento’s genre standard-bearers “Deep Red” and “Suspiria,” a producer and pop artist in his native Italy, and later a lead composer on Argento’s “Tenebre,” Lamberto Bava’s “Demons” and more, Simonetti and his collaborators turned iconoclastic takes on scoring — utilizing the sounds of prog rock and disco — into iconic pieces of film music.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Frederic Forrest, a character actor who had a memorable role in 1979’s “Apocalypse Now” and earned an Oscar nomination for “The Rose” in the same year, died Friday in Santa Monica. He was 86. Forrest’s death was first reported by his “Rose” co-star Bette Midler, who paid tribute to the actor on Twitter. “The great and beloved Frederic Forrest has died,” Midler wrote. “Thank you to all of his fans and friends for all their support these last few months. He was a remarkable actor, and a brilliant human being, and I was lucky to have him in my life. He was at peace.”

Anna Marie de la Fuente Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” fresh from its triumphant world premiere at the Cannes fest, opens the 38th Guadalajara Film Festival (FICG) which touts new sections this year, including a branded series showcase and midnight screenings of Italian fright maestro Dario Argento’s horror films. Eva Longoria’s feature directorial debut, “Flamin’ Hot,” which had its West Coast premiere at the LA Latino Film Festival (LALIFF) May 31, marks its Mexican debut at the fest. The Series Showcase includes Patricia Martinez’s fact-based “La Narcosatánica,” which will stream on the rebranded Max, and Maite Alberdi’s “Libre de reir,” a Gato Grande production, which centers on inmates in a Mexican prison who enroll in a stand-up comedy workshop. Alberdi’s Sundance-winning docu “The Eternal Memory” also vies for a prize in the festival’s documentary sidebar.

EXCLUSIVE: CAA has signed actress Chloë Grace Moretz for representation.

Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey has denied he has been keeping a low profile since a string of sexual misconduct accusations brought his stellar career to a halt in 2017, in a rare meeting with the press ahead of an awards ceremony in northern Italy on Monday evening.

Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey has been keeping a low profile since a string of sexual misconduct accusations brought derailed his stellar career in 2017.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s storied Titanus studio, producers of myriad golden era Cinema Italiano works, is getting a reboot and reviving its production side with several projects in development, including a contemporary sequel of Dario Argento’s supernatural chiller “Phenomena.”  Established in 1904 by Gustavo Lombardo, Titanus was a true Italian major, which during the 1960s forged a partnership with MGM. They slowed down considerably from the mid-1960s onwards after Luchino Visconti’s lavish Sicily-set costumer “The Leopard” (1963), starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, went way over budget. Since the mid-1980s the studio’s output has been on a much smaller scale, and primarily for TV.

Dario Argento is an iconic filmmaker who revolutionized the horror genre in the ‘70s. His run of films from the mid-‘70s through the ‘80s is one of the best ever, with films such as “Deep Red,” “Suspiria,” “Inferno,” and “Tenebrae,” among others.

giallo tropes he pioneered decades ago, although to less memorable effect.Argento first introduces Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli), a sex worker in Rome, as she drives around the city minutes before an eclipse occurs. Noticing that everyone points at the sky with anticipation, she stops to join them in admiring the astral dance between the sun and the moon that for a few moments provides a unique filter on how we perceive the world.

One of the hallmarks of The Criterion Channel is their curated monthly themed series, which focuses on specific directors, genres, or themes. This Halloween season, it’s ’80s horror that gets the spotlight, with the streamer adding 30 cult classics from the decade to their catalog.   And this collection boasts quite the motherlode, with horror auteurs like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and John Carpenter dotting the list.

It’s been eight years since Italy’s key film and TV market MIA kicked off in Rome and each year its popular co-production market and pitching forum seems to go from strength to strength.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Zurich Film Festival will honor Italian director and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino at its 18th edition, which runs Sept. 22-Oct. 2. He will receive its “A Tribute To…” award on Sept. 30 before the screening of his latest film “Bones and All,” which plays in the Gala Premiere section, and will hold a public masterclass on Oct. 1. The film world premieres in Venice tomorrow. Guadagnino, born in Palermo in 1971, has been one of the most internationally sought-after directors since the success of “Call Me By Your Name” in 2017, which Guadagnino presented in person at the Zurich fest.

John Steiner, a British actor who appeared in Caligula and several other films in the 1960s and 1970s, has died. He was 81 and passed Sunday at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs after a two-vehicle automobile accident in La Quinta, the Riverside County Sheriff’s department told the Desert Sun newspaper.

Jordan Peele is a humble guy.

Matt Dillon To Receive Locarno Award

When a new feature from a young filmmaker debuts, it’s sometimes difficult to know if it’s something you should keep an eye on. However, from the very beginning of the trailer for “She Will,” you can immediately tell that Charlotte Colbert’s horror film is very much worth a watch.

Director Gaspar Noé may not be at the Cannes Film Festival right now, that was last year, but that doesn’t mean he can’t steal the limelight with his typically salacious quotes. His new film is “Vortex,” a drama that boasts a cast that includes legendary Italian filmmaker Dario Argento (“Suspira”; read our review here).

Gaspar Noé is an entertaining interview — no matter what other adjectives you would use to describe his career or his approach as a filmmaker, you have to give him this. And with his latest film, “Vortex,” receiving a limited theatrical release this month, fans of, ah, candid Hollywood interviews are about to get more than they handle.

Four years, two films, and one near-fatal experience after his last feature, writer-director Gaspar Noé has a lot to share. The experimental Argentinian filmmaker – who’s built his career in France over the past 25 years – had a brain hemorrhage in between the 2019 Cannes midnight premiere of “Lux Aeterna,” his assaulting, intellectual 52-minute strobe light thriller about a witch shoot from hell, and the making of his next film “Vortex,” a patient, heartrending, nearly two-and-a-half-hour dementia drama.

Vortex — which opened this weekend to a full house at NYC’s IFC Center — has an unusual star, Dario Argento. Here’s how the film’s helmer Gaspar Noe convinced the iconic Italian horror movie director into his first lead acting role.

“Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino makes his anticipated return to the big screen this year with “Bones & All.” Why does the movie have so much buzz? For one, it’s Guadagnino’s first film in almost four years, his last being 2018’s polarizing remake of Dario Argento‘s “Suspiria.” “Bones & All” also marks a reunion between the director and “Call Me By Your Name” star Timothée Chalamet, as well as screenwriter David Kajganich, who wrote scripts for “Suspiria” and 2015’s “A Bigger Splash.” READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2022 And there’s another reason “Bones & All” is one of 2022’s most anticipated releases: it’s a story about a young American couple (Chalamet and Taylor Russell) in love who also love to eat human flesh.

Gaspar Noé is often a filmmaker who loves to provoke. Most of the time, this has to do with the content he shows in his films, often delving into incredibly graphic sexual and violent content.

Premiering in the Special Gala section of this year’s Berlinale, the latest film from Italian director Dario Argento is surprising in more ways than one. Rather than copy the style of the giallo films from the 1970s and 1980s that made him famous (“The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,” “Deep Red,” and “Suspiria,” to cite just a few), his “Dark Glasses” finds ingenious ways to retain the core of the giallo while adapting to our current times.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s robust 2022 Berlinale representation of a half-dozen titles runs the gamut from the latest works by venerable veterans Paolo Taviani and Dario Argento to pics by fresh new Cinema Italiano voices including Chiara Bellosi, whose first film, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin in 2020.Taviani, who is 91, is returning to Berlin but alone this time — his filmmaker brother, Vittorio, with whom he won a Golden Bear in 2012 for “Caesar Must Die,” passed away in 2018 — in competition with surreal drama “Leonora Addio,” inspired by a short story by Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello. Argento, who set his 1977 chiller “Suspiria” in Germany, will be at the Berlinale for the first time as a director with Rome-set suspenser “Dark Glasses,” though he was on the fest’s main jury panel in 2001.

Michael Nordine authorIt’s been a full decade since Dario Argento’s last directorial effort, not that “Dracula 3D” inspired much eagerness to see what he’d do next. Capping off a string of misfires, his ill-fated adaptation of Bram Stoker’s magnum opus suggested it might finally be time for the giallo master to hang it up.

Dario Argento’s Berlin Film Festival Special Gala entry Dark Glasses plays out almost like a parody of his earlier work. Co-written with Franco Ferrini, it’s a lurid giallo about a killer slaughtering women in contemporary Rome. It lacks the suspense and style of Argento’s work in the 70s and 80s, while repeating various themes. 

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAt 81, Italian horror maestro Dario Argento is busier than ever.The director of a string of cult chiller classics starting in the 1970s, including “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage,” “Suspiria” and “Deep Red,” was at Cannes last July with his acting debut in Gaspar Noe’s “Vortex,” about a pair of old lovers. Argento was also celebrated last year with a new book by Italian critic Steve Della Casa and a retro at New York’s Lincoln Center.

When you think of the Mount Rushmore directors of horror, names like Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and George A. Romero all come to mind immediately.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaIFC Midnight and Shudder have closed a multi-territory deal for “She Will,” a psychological horror directed by artist and filmmaker Charlotte Colbert.The film is a gothic fairy tale about Veronica Ghent who after a double mastectomy, goes to a healing retreat in rural Scotland with her young nurse Desi. There, she discovers that the process of such surgery opens up questions about her very existence, leading her to start to question and confront past traumas.

It feels like yesterday that I was on the phone to Berlinale directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian following their pre-recorded video announcement of the 2021 festival program, the three of us casting an eye forward to the following year with the hope that this pandemic would finally be behind us.