Vatican, Italy bishop slam "profane" Sanremo performance

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.

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.

ROME -- A pair of terracotta lovers caught in a tender embrace for 2,500 years are getting some Valentine’s Day TLC from Italian cultural officials.One of the most famous lovers’ statues in the art world, the reclining spouses fashioned out of terracotta are being offered high-tech protection from the threat of earthquakes and lesser tremors from passing traffic outside, officials said Monday as they unveiled the 18-month project.The Sarcophagus of the Spouses, made by an unknown artisan, is actually an urn constructed to hold the remains of the deceased. It is a top attraction at the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia.“The Sarcophagus is threatened on a daily basis by the vibrations produced by the tramway and the railroad Rome-Viterbo” said Valentino Nizzo, the museum’s director.The 18-month project includes the construction of an anti-seismic platform for the sarcophagus that will help reduce vibration that threaten it.The Sarcophagus, dating to the 6th century B.C., was discovered in 1881 in a necropolis in Cerveteri, a former Etruscan settlement near Rome.

Naman Ramachandran U.K. broadcaster BBC has acquired CNN‘s Primetime Emmy winning series “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.” The six-part series follows Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci as he travels across Italy to discover the secrets and delights of the country’s regional cuisines.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentChiara Bellosi, whose first work, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020, is back with “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) about an overweight 15-year-old named Benedetta pining for attention in an Italian province where she falls in love with the skinny non-binary Amanda.A key difference between the two films is that while “Ordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case, originated from a deeply researched screenplay that Bellosi wrote, “Swing Ride” — premiering in Panorama on Feb. 13 — stems from a prizewinning script proposed to her by Carlo Cresto Dina, her producer, who also discovered Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) and is known for nurturing the cream of Italy’s new cinematic crop.   “It’s a very different process; it was the first time that I had to start from a world that didn’t germinate from me,” said Bellosi about working from the script penned by Maria Teresa Venditti and Luca De Bei that won Italy’s prestigious Solinas prize in 2018.It was like moving into a new house that she had to make her own, she said.“I worked with the writers; I wanted to make a few tweaks and we did that together,” she added, noting that initially “it was a leap into the void.” But directing from their screenplay actually ended up giving her “more freedom” than her previous pic because “the container is already there; but you can go pretty wild with the rest.”This freedom also made it more fun.

Premio Lo Nuestro.ET can exclusively announce that the Italian singer will be performing her latest single, «Caja,» during the 2022 awards ceremony taking place on Feb. 24.

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.

Italy an ancient statue of the goddess Athena, to be displayed in a Sicilian museum for four years in return for Italy's long-term loan to Athens of a fragment of the celebrated Parthenon Sculptures.The late 5th century B.C. headless marble work was discovered during excavations near the Parthenon Temple, dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom, on the Acropolis and belongs to the Acropolis Museum.Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, who travelled to Palermo’s A.

What was to be one of the highlights for Team U.S.A. in this Olympics ended in heartbreak as skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin missed a gate on her Slalom run tonight and was out of her best event after six seconds.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBest-known for her action roles in “Skyscraper,” with Dwayne Johnson, and Simon West’s “Skyfire,” Asian star Hannah Quinlivan has joined director Jesse Atlas’s sci-fi feature “Soul Assassin.”The film’s ensemble cast also includes Bruce Willis (“Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense”), Andy Allo (“Upload,” “Pitch Perfect 3”), Nomzamo Mbatha (“Coming2America,” “All About Love”), Dominic Purcell (“Killer Elite,” “Assault on Wall Street”) and Mustafa Shakir (“Cowboy Bebop,” “Emancipation”).Atlas’ feature debut, “Soul Assassin”is described as a female-led, mind-bending sci-fi thriller. In it, a female former black ops soldier joins an experimental drone warfare program to hunt down her husband’s killer.

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.

Love Island's Priya Gopaldas has shared a peek inside her trip to Italy.The brunette beauty is currently holidaying in Bergamo and she hinted she may well have a male friend with her on the trip. "A few of my favourite things," the reality star penned as a caption, adding an Italian flag emoji, coffee emoji and heart. In the array of snaps, Priya, 23, shares a look at some simply delicious food she's been enjoying while away.

Italy have discovered ancient warrior helmets and the ruins of a painted brick wall at a site that might have been a forerunner of a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, officials said Tuesday.Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the remains dug up at the popular tourist site of Velia were found on what had been an acropolis of one of Magna Graecia’s most important cities. Velia is 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Paestum, a much-visited site of ancient Greek temples.The recently completed excavation at Velia unearthed a pair of helmets in good condition, the remains of a building, vases with the Greek inscription for “sacred” and metal fragments of what possibly were weapons, the culture ministry said.State Museums Director Massimo Osanna, who formerly had long directed excavations at Pompeii, Italy's most celebrated excavated site, said the area explored at Velia probably contained relics of offerings made to Athena, the mythological Greek goddess of war and wisdom, after a key naval battle in the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea.In the 6th-century battle of Alalia off the coast of Corsica, Greek forces were victorious over Etruscan forces and their Carthaginian allies.Velia is famed for being the home of an ancient Greek school of philosophy, including philosophers Parmenides and Zeno.

Christopher Vourlias Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, the Italian directing duo best known internationally for their Locarno premiere “Seven Acts of Mercy,” are developing a colonial-era drama that they’re presenting during the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart co-production market.“Prince Aden” begins in 1935, when a 16-year-old Somali boy passes the test to become a dubat, a soldier in the Italian army that has invaded Ethiopia on the orders of Mussolini. Aden Sicré is sent to the frontlines, but after being injured on his first day of service he’s forced to return home – where he is unexpectedly hailed as a war hero by the Fascist regime.Five years later, Aden is recruited to take part in a recreation of the daily life of an African village at the newly built Mostra d’Oltremare exhibition center in Naples.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentNaples-set young adult series “The Sea Beyond,” which depicts the world of a juvenile jail in the crime-ridden Italian city, is scoring a slew of international sales prompted by its phenomenal ratings on pubcaster RAI.Germany’s Beta Film, which is selling the show about kids behind bars produced by Rome-based Picomedia and RAI Fiction, has inked deals with WarnerMedia Latin America for HBO Max, Sweden’s free-to-air channel TV4, cabler HOT for Israel, and streamer Blu TV in Turkey.The deals mark a rare case of an Italian young adult series traveling abroad.Set in a youth detention center overlooking the bay of Naples, “The Sea Beyond” depicts a world populated by kids apparently without hope, “given that they mostly belong to [the Camorra] organized crime syndicate that Naples is known for,” said Picomedia chief Roberto Sessa, who added that the show also has “all the color and vitality of that city.” Instead, “It’s like the flip side of ‘Gomorrah’ in that it gives a sense of hope,” Sessa noted, because “there is light at the end of the tunnel for these kids.”Sessa also pointed out that they took some poetic license by making the youth penitentiary a place for both men and women who get to interact “with all the relationships and passions that stem from this.”The jail warden is a woman named Paola Vinci, played by Carolina Crescentini (“Bastards of Pizzofalcone”).Directed by Carmine Elia, Milena Cocozza, and Ivan Silvestrini, “The Sea Beyond” is now at its second season which debuted on RAI in mid-November 2021 both on the pubcaster’s linear RAI 2 channel and on its RAI Play streaming platform.It has become a minor phenomenon in Italy because it’s the first show that proved a