TORONTO – Celebrated filmmaker Ridley Scott, now 87, has returned to filming in Italy for his latest project The Dog Stars. It was well reported that Scott had intended to shoot Gladiator II at Rome’s legendary Cinecittà, but lost out to another Gladiator-based TV show Those About to Die. Both productions were shooting concurrently which meant Scott had to use Malta as a stand-in for Ancient Rome. Fortunately, the filmmaker is back shooting in Italy as of yesterday.
VATICAN CITY – In English, it’s “to put yourself in someone’s shoes” …it means that to feel what someone else feels, you just have to wear their shoes. Pope Francis did it, wearing, even in death as well as in life, poor man’s shoes. No red papal slippers like Wojtyla, nor black moccasins like Ratzinger. On his feet, in a coffin already as a pauper, the black (orthopedic) shoes that he used in life, old, worn out. The same shoes that walked around the world with him, so committed to bringing a new evangelization made of welcoming the “least.” And like those “least,” he wanted to wear, even in death as well as in life, his very normal shoes. →
VATICAN CITY – First the powerful’s farewell, then people’s, finally the least’s, the most important to him and for this very reason appointed to pay him the last “goodbye” before burial, in the spirit of the Gospel: “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…”. It’s the funeral of Pope Francis, who made humility his modus vivendi: from the renunciation – in life – of residing in the papal apartment, to the resting – in death – in a simple coffin, on the floor, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore instead of in the Vatican. →
TORONTO – As of April 20th, North Americans are being treated to all four seasons of Italy’s most popular tv series, The Sea Beyond, thanks to a “unique deal” reached with powerhouse streamer Netflix. The series follows a group of delinquents including Filippo (Nicolas Maupas) and Carmine (Massimiliano Caiazzo), who are serving time in a juvenile detention center on the Gulf of Naples. Aptly labelled a “teen prison drama”, the series is an ensemble coming of age story whose themes have not only stuck a chord with younger audiences, but resonated with a wide demographic.
VATICAN CITY – The Pope’s tomb, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, will be made with material of Ligurian origin, it will have only the inscription “Franciscus” and the reproduction of his pectoral cross: it will be in the niche of the side nave between the Pauline Chapel (Chapel of the Salus Populi Romani) and the Sforza Chapel of the Liberian basilica, located near the Altar of Saint Francis. And it will be on the ground, as the humble Francis wanted and asked it to be.
