TORONTO – A “heavy” endorsement for Mark Carney and the Canadian Liberals: U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he wouldn’t mind if the Liberal Party won the next Canadian election, saying that “I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me at all…”. →
TORONTO – Filmmaker Silvio Soldini, best known for his warm-hearted romantic comedy Bread and Tulips (2000), will soon be back in theatres with something much darker – The Tasters. This will be the director’s German language debut, an adaptation of Rosella Postorino’s International best-selling novel “At the Wolf’s Table”. The Calabrian author, Postorino, won the prestigious Campiello Prize, the Luigi Russo Prize and the Rapallo Prize for the 2018 work, titled Le Assaggiatrici. →
TORONTO – The experts had predicted it, and unfortunately they were right: the annual rate of inflation increased last month (February), rising to 2.6%, from 1.9% in January. Statistics Canada announced it today, noting that the end of the GST/HST suspension (the tax on commercial goods, suspended by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before Christmas, until February 15), contributed “notable upward pressure to prices for eligible products”. →
FERIDHOO (Maldives) – Ars gratia artis? Not always. Sometimes, art has a purpose, a practical utility. And we are not talking about a political-social or moral message, but a concrete, practical objective. That’s the case of “Coral Sonic Resilience”, the new work-project by Marco Barotti, an Italian multimedia artist based in Berlin, Germany, actually operating wherever it is possible to make art outside of any scheme and canon and wherever it is useful to stage any metaphor of the anthropogenic impact on the Earth, to make people aware of environmental and social issues. →
TORONTO – Renzo Piano’s scarab-shaped music halls in Rome recently hosted the photocall for Director Alessandro Tonda’s new film Il Nibbio. The film stars Claudio Santamaria as the heroic secret service agent who died while saving journalist Giuliana Sgrena – kidnapped in 2005 by Iraqi terrorists in Baghdad. Rounding out the principal cast are Sonia Bergamesco (as Giuliana Sgrena) and Anna Ferzetti (as Rosa Calipari), who were also on site for the event at the Parco della Musica.
