I know. I am loosing track here. I was supposed to write everyday but I didn’t make it. I am lazy: man, you should have seen this in advance… I am Italian! I feel like if I could write this in Italian I would write it everyday. I [more]

Vincere! (To Win!) it’s one the best films made by Italian famous director Marco Bellocchio. Bellocchio in the 90’s went trough a “dark phase” – cinematically speaking – of his carreer in which he used to write films together with his therapist: this unusual partnership created very intellectual, [more]

Ok I know I have to finish my list of short reviews of recommended Italian films but now I have to recommend another film… Mine! My documentary SLOW FOOD STORY is out in cinemas in Germany right now. So leave your computer, turn facebook off, get out of [more]

You don’t need me to talk about Gomorra, do you? Matteo Garrone’s movie out of Roberto Saviano’s bestseller debut novel won the Jury Prize in Cannes 2008 and becon the icon of Italian neo-neo-neorealism worldwide. It’s a great, powerful portrait of South Italian criminal disaster.  Other directors have [more]

Scialla is the first film as a director of famous Italian screenwriter Francesco Bruni. It’s a nice, well built comedy about a fifty something school professor who is forced to live with a lazy student dropped in his house by a fugitive mom while he’s writing the biography [more]

I was really positively surprised by Valeria Golino’s directorial debut – who was chosen for Cannes’ La Semain this year. Style-wise, it doesn’t look like a debut film… It doesn’t look Italian, too. And when I say it doesn’t look Italian I am speaking of that macro-genre which [more]

This is a lovely film. A 60 year old never grown up bachelor who still lives with his mother accept to host a few old ladies in his apartment in Rome during the holidays in August to extinguish his debts. This forced cohabitation with these ladies will lead [more]

Well, you should see this film. I recommend it because I wrote it! I wrote it with my friend Ludovica and with my other friend Alessandro. We write often together, we ironically call ourselves the Lemures, as if we were a band. The Double Hour is the first [more]

Ali has blue eyes is the second feature of young Roman director Claudio Giovannesi, who’s a musician too (he’s the composer for his own film). Claudio had the idea for this film while shooting a previous documentary, Fratelli d’Italia, in which he showed everyday life of three teenager [more]

Today I feel bad. Horrible nausea. I think I have been poisoned. So maybe I have to talk about something else: not me, for once. I think I should mention some interesting Italian films you might want to discover, from the last 5 years. I guess you don’t [more]

Toni Servillo (again) stars in UNA VITA TRANQUILLA (A quiet life) directed by my friend Claudio Cupellini and written by my other friends Filippo Gravino and Guido Iuculano. It’s a tight noir built on a great character: a former killer associate with Neapols’ Gomorra who escaped to Germany [more]

My grilfriend Valentina plays ukulele. From a few years now. There’s even a video in youtube in which she ironically teaches how to do it. For her birthday my present was a session in a professional studio to record her first two original songs. Since the studio I [more]

I want to write a little bit about each film from my Italian recommended cinema list, so let’s start. Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino, is a film who raised a lot of rumor, in Italy. Because it’s the portrait of one the most controversial politician in the history [more]

Wednesday and I am still in Piemonte. I am not feeling great today. Me and my girlfriend we move for a few days of relax in her family country house in Roddi, on the top of one of the Langhe hills (one of the best wine areas in [more]

It’s monday night in Bra, the last day of the CHEESE exhibition. Cheesemakers are happy and tired and a bit drunk too… And so is the Slow Food crew who made the event. The whole town looks like a party house as soon as the guests are gone. [more]

In these latest few months I can’t manage to stay in Rome for more than one consecutive week, for different reasons: festivals, holidays, work, family, whatever. It’s sunday and me and Valentina have to wake up early (hangover include) to take a train to our hometown, Bra, in [more]

My friends Ludovica and Nicola had a wedding party in Roma a week later the wedding, in a new place called THE APARTMENT, in San Lorenzo. They did it in order to have the chance to invite all their friends that couldn’t partipate at the wedding on the [more]

The marriage on the island was last weekend, but Ludovica & Nicola celebrations are not over, yet: tonight there’s the party in Rome, open to all those who weren’t able to reach the Ponza. This means Open bar, I guess. Which is even a little scary, nowadays, for [more]

Until last year I barely knew my doctor. Since I turned forty I have an equipe of people working for me: I see a therapist, a homeopath, an osteopath, a gastroenterologist… I feel like I am Madonna.

You don’t need a big budget to do a good movie. You just need a great script. Want a proof? STILL LIFE the second film directed by former producer Uberto Pasolini (he produced Palookaville and Full Monty and directed Machan) is a jewel, highly recommended. Pasolini (not related [more]

As you might now from the presentation Christopher Roth wrote about me, I did this documentary called Slow Food Story which was premiered at the Berlinale 2013 and then presented in Telluride (where I met Bobby). Basically I spent a lot of time of this year presenting this [more]

On Monday I am back in Rome. I need to work a little bit but most of all I need some more rest from the wedding. So I pick my favourite cure: a series. The series, actually: Breaking Bad. I am going trough Season 5 and I am [more]

Today it’s cloudy. The wedding party went on until four o’clock, we all drank as we should and now what’s left of us roam through the narrow streets of Ponza as zombies. Happy zombies, though. It was nice and tender. Lots of love, on the island. I liked [more]

This is the day of the wedding. It’s a civil wedding, which means more fun (Church wedding are so boring, aren’t they?). I don’t know about Deutschland, but we in Italy we have a new law, which allows basically anybody to be the officer of the wedding. You [more]

if you want to reach the Island of Ponza – which is what all the people invited to Ludovica’s wedding is supposed to do – you should reach the port of Anzio or Formia, and there you can take a hyrdoplane or a fast ship to the island. [more]

Day 2. Same anxiety. Well, more anxiety. Not only I have to write THIS: most of all, I have to write a speech. It’s for Ludovica’s wedding. Ludovica, well, she’s my writing partner. We write together. Scripts, mostly, now even a book (but it’s a novelization, so it [more]

So. Here I am. The first of 60 pages. This makes me anxious. What should I write about? I am Italian, so: Berlusconi? Food? Berlusconi and Food? Or film and food? Maybe just film. Or maybe something personal. I turned 41 this year and I feel like shit. [more]