News

The number of films about Giacomo Casanova is legion, which makes the question “why another one?” especially relevant. What insight can be found to kindle enough interest to pour reportedly more than $7.5 million into a retelling of the great diarist’s life? Given Benoît Jacquot’s success with his earlier costume drama “Farewell, My Queen,” based on Chantal Thomas’ novel, perhaps he thought a new angle could be found together with Thomas, this time credited as main scriptwriter. How odd then that their vision imagines a world of predatory hormonally-charged females all throwing themselves at a lackluster, aging roué who shows more gusto wolfing down food than rutting around skirts.

Is this the Casanova for the early 21st century? A man famed among peers for his charisma and broad intelligence, companion of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin, reduced to a lovesick sad-sack pining after a capricious young prostitute whose physical attributes...

"Ettore Scola, a leading figure in Italian cinema for more than three decades, died Tuesday at the age of 84," reports the Afp. "Scola's work included A Special Day, a 1977 Oscar-nominated movie featuring Marcello Mastroianni as a persecuted radio journalist and Sophia Loren as a sentimental housewife, meeting against a backdrop of rising fascism in 1930s Italy." Lillian Schiff: "While Scola's fascination with political attitude and social change dictated by purely personal psychology never varies, he skips the light fantastic through such specialties as historical epic (La Nuit de Varennes), the musical (Le Bal), screwball comedy (A Drama of Jealousy), domestic drama (The Family), and grand romance (Passione d'Amore)." We're collecting remembrances. » - David Hudson...

"Ettore Scola, a leading figure in Italian cinema for more than three decades, died Tuesday at the age of 84," reports the Afp. "Scola's work included A Special Day, a 1977 Oscar-nominated movie featuring Marcello Mastroianni as a persecuted radio journalist and Sophia Loren as a sentimental housewife, meeting against a backdrop of rising fascism in 1930s Italy." Lillian Schiff: "While Scola's fascination with political attitude and social change dictated by purely personal psychology never varies, he skips the light fantastic through such specialties as historical epic (La Nuit de Varennes), the musical (Le Bal), screwball comedy (A Drama of Jealousy), domestic drama (The Family), and grand romance (Passione d'Amore)." We're collecting remembrances. » - David Hudson...