Sketch mocking Chinese launches racism debate in Italy

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentOscar winner Helen Mirren is helping Italy’s COVID-19 vaccination effort by appearing in a side-splitting video titled “La Vacinada,” shot with top comic Checco Zalone, that has gone viral, scoring more than 2.7 million views.In the video, Mirren is doing some gardening on a roadside in Southern Italy, when Zalone, playing a Spaniard, stops to ask for directions and notices a mark on her arm where she’s had her jab.He then breaks into song as a

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s David di Donatello Awards historically have been dominated by men in the key best picture, film, and producer categories.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s 66th David di Donatello Awards are set to celebrate on May 11 a year of resilience for Cinema Italiano that also looks likely to germinate some creative renewal, just as Italian movie theaters start to reopen and production is booming.Giorgio Diritti’s biopic “Hidden Away,” about crazed primitivist painter Antonio Ligabue, Gianni Amelio’s wistful “Hammamet,” which reconstructs the Tunisian self-exile of scandal-plagued Italian leader Bettino

Clooney Foundation for Justice, launched by the charity platform Omaze, which promises to send two people to meet George and Amal at their home on Italy’s breathtaking Lake Como.The prize package includes two flights and hotel booking, and “a little get together” with the global power couple. No big deal!“You never know when a lifelong friendship is gonna blossom,” George, 60, teases in the video.

Kim Kardashian’s latest legal drama has given a whole new meaning to the term cultural appropriation!

George Clooney is putting his comedy skills to good use. On Tuesday, May 4th Omaze posted a hilarious sketch about what it’s like to live with Clooney who is dubbed the “World‘s Worst Pandemic Roommate.” At the start of the sketch, George explains they are offering one sweepstakes winner an all-expense-paid trip to Italy to hang out with him and his wife Amal Clooney.

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Rebecca Davis editorMove over, “Nomadland” — Italy’s “Pinocchio” is now set to become the first film nominated at this year’s Oscars to hit China.Although Chloé Zhao’s film nabbed best picture and two other major prizes at the Academy Awards on Sunday, it was pulled quietly from its planned China release on April 23 in the wake of nationalist backlash against her there.

Screen Daily), “The Palace” is set at a hotel in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve 1999. Rai Cinema is producing along with Italy’s Eliseo Entertainment, which also co-produced “An Officer and a Spy.” Polish filmmaker and Golden Bear winner Jerzy Skolimowski wrote the script, and the film is aiming to begin shooting in the fall.

Italy's Far East Film Festival is making a slight change to the dates for its 2021 edition in order to align with cinemas reopening in the country. The 23rd edition of the specialist festival, highly regarded in Asia, is now set to open on June 24 and close on July 2 and will now include in-person screenings as well as digital elements.

Italy begins its second, and many hope last, reopening of the COVID-19 pandemic.After six months of rotating on-again, off-again closures, restaurants and bars, museums and cinemas, opened to the public in most of the country under a gradual reopening plan that is seen as too cautious for some, too hasty for others.The nation’s weary virologist and health care workers fear that even the tentative reopening laid out by Premier Mario Draghi’s government will invite a free-or-all, signs of which

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentMovie theaters started to gradually reopen in Italy on Monday, serving up Oscar-winning titles such as “Minari” and “Mank” in a fraction of the country’s venues, just as COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease.For the moment, it’s a few mostly arthouse venues in Italy’s biggest cities that are becoming active again, while Italian multiplexes remain closed until mid-May when UCI Cinemas, which is the country’s top exhibitor, has announced they will be back

coronavirus pandemic.Workers doing restoration discovered the frescoes dating from the 17th and 18th centuries beneath plaster in the museum's west wing, which is where the visitor entrance will be when the Uffizi opens to the public.Uffizi director Eike Schmidt said the new entrance facing the Arno River would provide “a glorious introduction” for visitors.The reopening date is not yet certain.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian author Antonio Dikele Distefano, who grew up in the northern Italian city of Ravenna, is the originator of new Netflix Original series “Zero,” which marks the first series centered around the present-day lives of Black Italian youth.

EXCLUSIVE: Italy’s Royal House of Savoy is getting the film and TV treatment from Chinese director, writer and producer Yi Zhou who is developing both a TV series and feature based on Queen Marie-José.