Placebo Singer Brian Molko Under Investigation in Italy After Calling Country’s Prime Minister ‘Fascist’ and ‘Racist’

Placebo frontman Brian Molko is being sued for defamation by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for remarks he made on-stage at a show in Turin last month.Videos posted from the show captured Molko describing Meloni in Italian as “a piece of shit fascist, racist” and then saying “fuck you” during the band’s set in front of 10,000 fans at Sonic Park Festival.Soon after, prosecutors in Turin opened an investigation into Molko.

Andrew Garfield got in a swim this week while hanging out on a yacht in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Positano, Italy.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Rome’s Cinecittà Studios are in the midst of a radical overhaul that started in June 2021, when the government-owned facilities, headed by Nicola Maccanico — who is a former Warner Bros. and Sky Italia senior exec — secured a multi-million dollar loan provided by the European Union’s post-pandemic recovery fund to upgrade and expand the studios. Productions that recently set up camp on its iconic backlot, lured in part by Italy’s generous 40% cash-back tax credit, include Roland Emmerich’s gladiator series “Those About to Die,” which is currently shooting, and Luca Guadagnino’s recently wrapped William Burroughs adaptation “Queer” starring Daniel Craig.

The Prime Minister of Canada and his wife are separating.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, have brought their 18-year-long marriage to a close.

Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, has announced that he and his wife Sophie are splitting after 18 years of marriage. In a statement posted to his official Instagram, he wrote: "Hi everyone, Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Nicole Morganti, Amazon Studios head of Italian originals, is being promoted by the streamer to the newly expanded role of head of local originals for Southern Europe encompassing Italy, France and Spain. Morganti, who has over 20 years of experience in the Italian entertainment industry, joined Amazon Studios as head of unscripted originals for Italy in February 2019 from her previously held position of Discovery Italy’s VP of talent and productions.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Franco-Tunisian film and TV entrepreneur Tarak Ben Ammar is expanding the scope of his Italian operations by buying local unscripted production outfit Blu Yazmine, while also entering talks to build a large studio complex in Rome. Though Ben Ammar’s ambition to build sprawling new filming facilities in the Italian capital are in advanced talks but not fully concrete, the purchase of a majority stake in Blu Yazmine via his Rome-based Eagle Pictures has been closed.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent An underhanded move by members of Italy’s right-wing government to try and take over the management of Rome’s Centro Sperimentale Film School is prompting an uproar by its students and a strong show of support from the country’s top directors. Earlier this week, students of the Centro Sperimentale — which is the oldest film school in the world, and among the finest — staged a demonstration in front of the country’s parliament just as a piece of legislation that would change the school’s management was swiftly being approved by a parliamentary committee.

Mike Cavanagh, the president of Comcast who was recently named the de-facto head of NBC Universal, said the company remains “committed to reaching a fair deal [with actors and writers[ as soon as possible, so we can get back to doing what we do best, which making great content together.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent French director Élise Girard’s “Sidonie in Japan” starring Isabelle Huppert as a French writer mourning her husband’s death while on a book tour of Japan, is among titles set to launch from the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori. The section, also known as Venice Days, has unveiled its lineup comprising ten titles world premiering in competition – six of which first works – and films in other sections all displaying a wide range of genres and visual styles, but tied together by “A common discourse,” said the section’s artistic director Gaia Furrer.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Apple TV+ documentary series “Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn” reconstructs the rise and fall of former Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, whose incarceration in Japan on financial misconduct charges was followed by an extraordinary escape. Inspired by the book “Boundless” by The Wall Street Journal reporters Nick Kostov and Sean McLain, the series is directed by Emmy-winning British filmmaker James Jones (“Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes”).

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The 80th Venice Film Festival is announcing its lineup on Tuesday from the Italian city, where artistic director Alberto Barbera and La Biennale president Roberto Cicutto are holding a press conference. The Lido’s only previously announced titles in the main selection are the opener, Italian director Edoardo De Angelis’ “Comandante” — a lavish anti-war epic featuring local star Pierfrancesco Favino as a heroic Sicilian World War II naval officer — and the closer, Netflix’s survival thriller “Society of the Snow” by Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona. “Comandante” replaced Luca Guadagnino’s sexy sports comedy “Challengers,” starring Zendaya, which had previously been set as the fest’s buzzy opener but was pulled due to promotional complications prompted by the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Spanish director J.A. Bayona’s “Society of the Snow,” a reconstruction of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes that forced survivors to take extreme measures, including cannibalism, has been set as the Venice Film Festival’s closing film. The deeply immersive Spanish-language saga is a Netflix original film shot in Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada, mainland Spain’s highest mountain range, using a 300-person crew. “Society of the Snow” will world premiere on the Lido out-of-competition on Sept. 9th. Its official screening will be held in the Palazzo del Cinema after the awards ceremony. In 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which had been chartered to bring Montevideo’s Old Christians Rugby Club team to Chile, crashed at an altitude of 11,712 feet in the Andes.  Of its 45 passengers – which consisted mostly of the rugby team, friends and family – 29 survived. Without food, the survivors, who belonged to Uruguay’s elite, were forced to eat the flesh of the deceased to stay alive. 19 survived an avalanche. 72 days after the crash, 16 finally made it out alive. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Tony Vinciquerra, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, took a guarded tone in talking about the SAG-AFTRA strike during an industry panel in Italy on Friday. But it was clear that he hopes it will be over soon. “We are very dismayed about having these strikes” said Vinciquerra, referring to the combined WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that mark the second time in Hollywood history that actors have joined writers on the picket lines. “We want to make a deal,” the Sony chief went on, adding: “Even though there have been a lot of headlines saying the opposite.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent In March, several months before SAG-AFTRA actors went on the warpath in Hollywood, Italy’s dubbing industry workers staged a protracted strike demanding higher wages, less frenzied work conditions and protection against artificial intelligence. The Italian dubbing industry workers – many of whom are voice actors – returned to work after three weeks as local unions entered a phase of negotiations that seemed promising enough, even though their issues are not yet resolved. Cut to the present day. Italian unions representing the country’s film and TV industry workers are at “a very critical, almost historic juncture” in a broader labor dispute with the country’s motion picture association ANICA and other industry trade orgs, according to Sabina Di Marco, leader of SLC CGIL, the biggest union at the bargaining table.

Placebo‘s frontman Brian Molko has been placed at the centre of an investigation after calling Italy’s prime minister “racist” and “fascist”.The band’s frontman made the comments during the band’s set the Sonic Park festival in Stupinigi.

Follow OK! on Threads here: https://www.threads.net/@ok_mag Davide Sanclimenti has been making the most of the stunning Italian weather after jetting off to the country following his split from Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu. The Love Island winners split earlier this month, and have both headed off on separate holidays since, appearing to briefly reunite while attending the Barbie premiere in London last week.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Venice Film Festival will pay tribute to late Italian icon Gina Lollobrigida, who died in January, with a pre-opening event featuring a double bill of freshly restored works in which she stars. The Lido’s annual pre-opening event on Aug. 29 will feature a 27-minute short by Orson Welles titled “Portrait of Gina.” In 1968, Welles interviewed Lollobrigida in her villa on the Appian Way as the pilot for an ABC TV series — a U.S. version of “Around the World With Orson Welles”– that ABC rejected. Welles’ portrait of the diva remained in the vaults until 1986, when it was screened at the Venice Film Festival one year after Orson Welles’ death. This piece has been defined by Welles as a “personal essay” on Lollobrigida. Interestingly, when Lollobrigida saw “Portrait of Gina” in Venice in 1986, she reportedly tried to have it banned. The short’s restoration was done by the Munich Film Museum and Italy’s Cinecittà.

Vanderpump Rules starsTom Sandoval and Ariana Madix announced the end of their relationship after being together since 2013 when she first joined the show. It wasn't long before news broke that Sandoval cheating on Madix with their co-star, Raquel Leviss, is what truly derailed the relationship.