Bernardo Bertolucci will receive an honorary Palme d’or at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, This important award is given to a talented film director, whose work is authoritative but for some reason or other was snubbed by the jury (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man and Stealing Beauty, two of his most important films were screened at Cannes but got no awards). Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood received it before him, but from now onwards the award will become tradition and be attributed every year during the opening ceremony of the festival.

Festival president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Fremaux told reporters that they have decided to honour Mr Bertolucci with the palm d’or for the high quality of his work, which appears today in all its uniqueness .The news reached Bernardo Bertolucci while he was in America for a retrospective exhibition of his films. ” Jury president Robert De Niro, who starred in Bertolucci’s Novecento, will attend the ceremony.

0 comments

Pilgrims to the Vatican and Rome for the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1st are being asked by Italian police to be careful of any ticketing schemes. They are emphasising that the beatification event is free, after an American is under investigation for a ticketing scam related to the religious celebration.

The American tour guide is suspected of selling fake tickets costing 166 euros to the beatification, and of using the website “vaticancitytours.com” to sell them. Police have searched the suspect’s home where some beatification ‘vouchers’ were found’. With the event free, and two million pilgrims expect in Rome for Pope John Paul’s beatification, visitors are being asked to be vigilant of such schemes.

Source | Italymag

0 comments

Maybe you have never heard of the town of Nemi, near Rome, but here in Europe it’s famous for being the strawberry capital of Italy! In June this lovely town, which lays among the beautiful Albani Hills, hosts the Strawberry festival which every year draws thousands of tourists; on this occasion, the local jewellers create the Golden Strawberry, a precious jewel made of silver and gold which is given to the winner of the strawberry competition. But if you don’t like the sweet fleshy red fruit, don’t worry, the area has plenty to offer. For instance, not far from Nemi (you just have to drive down the beautiful strada dei laghi or Road of the lakes for a couple of miles), there’s Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’ s summer residence; a palace designed by Carlo Maderno for Pope Urban VIII in the 17th and known for its enchanted beauty.

Foto Deblu68 | Kleuske | sunshinecity .

0 comments

Venice film festival artistic director Marco Muller has lots of new ideas for what should be his last festival! In fact, according to Il Manifesto, he’s planning to offer the presidency of the jury to Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci and give the much coveted Golden Lion career award to Marco Bellocchio, another famous Italian movie director! A choice that might not sit well with some politicians; anyway these are just rumours, so it’s premature to draw conclusions, all we can do at the moment is wait and see what the Venice film festival has in store for us!

Source | Dagospia

0 comments

To celebrate 150 years of Italian unification, Italy went back to what it knew best about its traditions and could most celebrate. National broadcaster RAI treated Italians to a live performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco on Italian television last night. It’s a difficult move to make opera accessible to the population via an entire opera length national broadcast, but for those of us who don’t mind an Italian aria, it wasn’t a bad thing (given the general quality on Italian television, you could do much worse).

Nabucco was broadcast from Rome and before the performance started, the orchestra played the Italian national anthem “Fratelli d’Italia”. In attendance was Italy’s president Giorgio Napolitano and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, among other Italian dignitaries. To hear some of what you missed, see the video after the jump of a performance of Verdi’s Va’ Pensiero.

Continue reading: Verdi's Nabucco on Italian television to celebrate 150 years of unification

0 comments

Italian cooking tradition is about as varied as they come: from north to south, the famous peninsula offers just about everything. Even the most famous Italian cuisine overseas has a local tradition from somewhere in the Bel Paese. In fact, you could hardly describe traditional Italian products or cooking as national - much like the Italian people, in fact.

But to celebrate further today’s 150 years of Italian unification, we bring you a gallery of all the best “Italian flag dishes”. Today is a public holiday in Italy but many people are still working, so you can save these for the weekend, too. You would be surprised at just how many red, white and green ingredients there are to make these dishes.

A favourite Italian flag dish, as you can see in the gallery, is to use rocket lettuce, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese - staples of the Italian diet, too. And the original Margherita pizza is also an example of the first homage to the Italian tricolore that is probably documented. Check them all out below.

Italian flag dishes: red, white, green in Italian cooking

Continue reading: Celebrating 150 years of Italian cuisine: dishes with the Italian flag

0 comments

Before appearing on the Sanremo Festival stage last night, Elisabetta Canalis and Belen Rodriguez were present at the press conference to show off their fashion sense before Italian television’s biggest event. As you can imagine, the two show girls - cynosure of all eyes wherever they go - were dressed to the nines. The former in black and the latter sporting one of Moschino’s latest creations. But who do you think has better style?

Canalis vs Rodriguez Sanremo press conference

Photo | Corriere.it

0 comments

The fever for the Sanremo festival has reached its peak; rumours about the rivalry between Elisabetta Canalis and Belen Rodriguez are running rampart on the Internet. According to Novella 2000 magazine Gianni Morandi, host of the show, has a soft spot for Belen; she’s professional and punctual at all rehearsals ( her dance numbers will make the audience ooh and aah) whereas Elisabetta Canalis, who will try to upstage her colleague at the festival with her interview to Robert de Niro, is behaving like a diva. According to many tv commentators and we graciously agree with them, her engagement to George Clooney (and hobnobbing with Hollywood royalty) has gone to her head!

Elisabetta Canalis

0 comments

The Umbria Jazz winter festival started yesterday and marks a few days of magic winter time in the region. Orvieto is hosting this year’s winter jazz festival, held until January 2nd, with two major events taking place. The first is a New Year’s Eve midnight concert and the second is a New Year’s Day gospel choir concert. The other days mark various concerts and events in different locations around the town.

We’ll take it as a kind of warm up to the 2011 Umbria Jazz Festival to take place in summer. It will go from July 8 to 17 and will feature the usual international and local acts. Performers at the winter event include Stefano Bollani and Chick Corea, Ray Anderson, Danilo Rea and more. And obviously, in addition to the music, you can enjoy the great Umbrian wine and food on offer. See the Umbria Jazz website for more.

Source | ItalyMag

0 comments

For Christmas in Italy, the Italians have gone all partiotic, with Italian sparkling wine, or spumante, beating French champagne in sales over this festive season. Figures from the Assoenologi association indicate that production numbers of Italian spumante, which already overtook champagne last year, will remain higher than champagne. The latter should still recover somewhat this year after a drop in sales of 27 percent when the recession hit hard last year.

In Italy we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to Italian wine for the festive season. 380 million bottles of spumante have been produced this year, compared to the 370 million from Champagne. Italy can also expect some good exports from this figure, as the country itself consumes less sparkling wine than Spain, France and Germany. For our tips, the cradle of Italian sparkling wine is in the Franciacorta valley of Lombardy, while some fine examples from Trentino-Alto Adige can also be found. Cracking one open with some panettone is guaranteed for a good Christmas celebration.

Source | ANSA

Photo | Flickr

0 comments