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Italian cinema had a real shot to the arm recently with the triumphant Oscar win of Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza, a beautiful and bittersweet portrait of the lives of the Roman upper crust.   This film, however, is not the first time that Director Sorrentino and Actor Servillo have worked together. In honor of their magical partnership, t...

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By Tad Friend "If you don't mind smoke, you can sit here," Paolo Sorrentino said, indicating the seat beside him. "If you do"—he pointed to a distant couch. Sorrentino, the Italian writer-director of the new HBO series "The Young Pope," was ashing his Toscanello cigar out a window in the living room of his pied-à-terre, sixty-eight floors above Ma...

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Italy's Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino plans to make a debut television series entitled "The Young Pope" about Lenny Belardo -- a fictional first-ever Italian American pontiff, an Italian daily reported on Tuesday.   The name of the actor who will play the Catholic leader in the eight-part 50-minute series has not been revealed but...

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By Neal Dhand "La Dolce Vita is a masterpiece. La Grande Bellezza is only a movie," insists Paolo Sorrentino. He's talking, of course, about the current comparisons between Federico Fellini's indisputable classic from 1960 and his recent film, "The Great Beauty," which premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.   Sorrentino is, of course,...

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American Hustle director David O. Russell will headline the lineup at the upcoming Los Angeles-Italia Film Festival, organizers said Monday. Also on tap for the event that highlights the work of Italian and Italian-American filmmakers and entertainers will be film director Roberto Faenza, actress and director Valeria Golino, and famed Italian sing...

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By Mauro Battocchi   In the eyes of San Franciscan cinema fans who took part in the closing night of the New Italian Cinema Festival of San Francisco ("NICE"), the protagonist of "The Great Beauty" Jep Gambardella (alias Tony Servillo), has probably become a new Italian icon.   He symbolizes Italy's current transition from its "Dolce...

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by Matthew Benbenek   Since the early years of cinema, Italian filmmakers have been at the forefront of the international film scene, working to promote and innovate the medium. From the experimental silent films, Italian cinema evolved and invented a new genre of neo-realism through which they created some of the most emotionally powerful a...

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Chapter 3: "Wait, I have a couple of things to tell you" Two years later, I was called in to work on another of Paolo Sorrentino's films. Pre-production had already begun on a film that was much 'bigger', more expensive, ambitious and complicated that his previous projects: Il Divo (The Celebrity), the story of one of the most controversial and fa...

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No art more than cinema has helped to shape the relationship between Italy and the United States. Cinema has been for the relationship between the two countries a fundamental vehicle of cultural exchange, an imaginative means of historical and social description, and a very strong device of communication and mutual influence. Cinema is also one of...

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by Nancy Tartaglione Last weekend, I profiled 15 films that had a lot of heat ahead of the Foreign Language Oscar shortlist unveiling today. Of those 15 (plus a handful of wildcards), seven have ended up among the Academy's nine selections that will move on to the second round of voting. As with many of the Oscar categories this year, this was a f...

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