Italy
Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss, BBC FourWednesday, 31 October 2012
With Horror Europa, Mark Gatiss provided further confirmation that he’s now one the most astute, likeable and measured figures contributing to our current cultural landscape. His approach is entirely personal, but never derailed by unfettered... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Ennio Morricone, Rites of Spring, Hotlegs, Cults Percussion EnsembleSunday, 28 October 2012
Ennio Morricone: In ColourKieron TylerThe recent release of Berberian Sound Studio raised the level of interest in Italian film soundtracks. From the moment Ennio Morricone’s compositions for the spaghetti westerns of the Sixties attracted attention... Read more... |
LFF 2012: It Was the SonFriday, 19 October 2012
Italian cinema’s resurgence can be felt in the ghetto-operatic sweep of Daniele Cipri’s cautionary Sicilian tale. Like Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah follow-up Reality (also at the LFF), it shows an initially likeable working-class family unravelled by... Read more... |
Exclusive: Friar Alessandro, The Voice of AssisiSunday, 07 October 2012
By day, Friar Alessandro Brustenghi lives and works in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi. In his spare time, he works as a carpenter. But he also has a new career as, in the words of his producer Mike Hedges, “the next Italian... Read more... |
DVD: Corpo CelesteMonday, 10 September 2012
The onset of puberty is difficult, and especially so for girls in art house films. Marta is 12 and has been away from Italy for 10 years. In the days after returning with her mother and sister, she contends with being prepared for her first... Read more... |
DVD: RoGoPaGSunday, 02 September 2012
Even though their names are bound together in the portmanteau title, the directors of the four short films that make up RoGoPaG - Rossellini, Godard, Pasolini and Gregoretti - don't go for any sort of narrative tie-ins. The only thing that links the... Read more... |
Berberian Sound StudioMonday, 27 August 2012
If in space no one can hear you scream, that’s certainly not a problem you’ll experience in a giallo sound studio. Known for their high anxiety and buckets of blood, the Italian giallos of the Sixties and Seventies gave us heinous horror, drenched... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Porretta Soul Music FestivalSaturday, 28 July 2012
Way up in the mountains of northern Italy sits a small spa town called Porretta Terme. For many visitors it is the resort’s healing waters that brings them here. Yet for others it is the healing music – once a year the Porretta Soul Music Festival... Read more... |
The Hawks and the Sparrows/ PigstyFriday, 27 July 2012
The tone of these two new Pier Paolo Pasolini's re-releases couldn't be more different. The Hawks and the Sparrows stars the Italian prince of laughter Totò and one of Pasolini's most popular Calabrian peasant-actors (and lovers) Ninetto Davoli, and... Read more... |
Palermo, Palermo, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 03 July 2012
The curtain rises onto a wall that totally blocks the view. A long silence... then, without warning, the wall collapses – to cheers of delight from the audience. For the rest of the evening, the dancers have to pick their way over rubble strewn... Read more... |
Viktor, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsThursday, 07 June 2012
It stymies any tourist to sum up for others what they saw abroad. Still more challenging, to create (or recreate) for theatre as a choreographer something more than superficial, more than clichéd about Italy, Japan, Los Angeles, Istanbul, these most... Read more... |
La Cenerentola, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 24 May 2012
Rossini's La Cenerentola is not an opera that I'd normally recommend to anyone with even half a brain. It takes the simple if mildly nauseating little tale of Cinderella, pads it out with parental abuse and drawn out cliffhangers, and ends in a pass... Read more... |
