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On 27th October 2019, Lina Wertmüller received the Honorary Award at the Governors Awards in Hollywood. In her acceptance speech, translated by Isabella Rossellini, the director half-jokingly asked the Academy to create an ‘Oscarina’ prize for female directors and to give the statuette a girl’s name, ‘Anna’. In reaction to this mocking and provocat...

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Since childhood, 91-year-old Corrine Casserly and her 95-year-old sister Ruth Sorney have been the closest of friends. As young women coming into their own in Hollywood in the late 1940s, they’d put on their little black dresses most Saturday nights and pretend to be rich by treating themselves to chicken a la king at Tom Breneman’s restaurant by S...

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Mama Mia, a landmark Italian restaurant in Downtown Hollywood, may be more than 25 years old, but everything about it, with the exception of the name, is brand-new. New owners Alexandra and Cedric Garnier relocated with their five sons from their native France to take over Mama Mia, at 1818 S. Young Circle. The couple hired a new chef and in Januar...

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“This is a very special edition — we have more films, more tv-shows—  but mostly, this edition is dedicated to women: actresses, screen-players, directors. Only 10% of all the productions have women on top levels, so there are still a lot of things to do. And one of the messages of this festival is actually this: give a budget to a woman director,...

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Long overdue, the Los Angeles Film Museum will open its doors this year and will include a tribute to the late Kirk Douglas, announced the Academy of Oscars, which carries the project. It took almost a century for the idea of a museum dedicated to the 7th art to see the light of day and the building designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, wh...

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A huge warehouse. Rival gangs. Bad blood. It all came together when a group of gangsters, dressed as outsiders, surprised their rivals and murdered them in cold blood on a cold February day. We all know the story: the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, Feb. 14, 1929. Actually, no. The gang rub-out described above refers to the Wah Mee Massacr...

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The 15th Annual Italian Festival, chaired by Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores (MEDITERRANEO) and writer and producer Nick Vallelonga (GREEN BOOK) is back in Hollywood on the eve of the Oscars with an array of Italian films - many World and U.S. premieres - as well as Italian, Italian-American and International artists including director a...

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Joe Pesci is known for volatile, explosive performances in such films as Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino,” along with more antic, comic turns in the “Lethal Weapon” and “Home Alone” movies and “My Cousin Vinny.” So, the still menace of Pesci’s performance in Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” playing Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino as a m...

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Sophia Loren will be feted by the Capri-Hollywood film festival with a lifetime achievement award presented to her by trailblazing director Lina Wertmüller, her old friend and recent recipient of an honorary Oscar. Loren, Italy’s most iconic living movie star, will receive the Capri Legend Award on Dec. 30 from Wertmüller during the event dedicated...

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For the 35th Academy Awards in 1962, La Dolce Vita was not submitted by Italy for best foreign-language film. Instead, Nanni Loy's The Four Days of Naples got the nomination. Perhaps the Italians felt that Federico Fellini's eighth film, which centered on a gossip columnist (Marcello Mastroianni) wandering into fountains with Anita Ekberg and parta...

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