Long overdue, the Los Angeles Film Museum will open its doors this year and will include a tribute to the late Kirk Douglas, announced the Academy of Oscars, which carries the project. It took almost a century for the idea of a museum dedicated to the 7th art to see the light of day and the building designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, wh...

A huge warehouse. Rival gangs. Bad blood. It all came together when a group of gangsters, dressed as outsiders, surprised their rivals and murdered them in cold blood on a cold February day. We all know the story: the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, Feb. 14, 1929. Actually, no. The gang rub-out described above refers to the Wah Mee Massacr...

The 15th Annual Italian Festival, chaired by Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores (MEDITERRANEO) and writer and producer Nick Vallelonga (GREEN BOOK) is back in Hollywood on the eve of the Oscars with an array of Italian films - many World and U.S. premieres - as well as Italian, Italian-American and International artists including director a...

Joe Pesci is known for volatile, explosive performances in such films as Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino,” along with more antic, comic turns in the “Lethal Weapon” and “Home Alone” movies and “My Cousin Vinny.” So, the still menace of Pesci’s performance in Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” playing Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino as a m...

Sophia Loren will be feted by the Capri-Hollywood film festival with a lifetime achievement award presented to her by trailblazing director Lina Wertmüller, her old friend and recent recipient of an honorary Oscar. Loren, Italy’s most iconic living movie star, will receive the Capri Legend Award on Dec. 30 from Wertmüller during the event dedicated...

For the 35th Academy Awards in 1962, La Dolce Vita was not submitted by Italy for best foreign-language film. Instead, Nanni Loy's The Four Days of Naples got the nomination. Perhaps the Italians felt that Federico Fellini's eighth film, which centered on a gossip columnist (Marcello Mastroianni) wandering into fountains with Anita Ekberg and parta...

Hollywood star Gary Sinise is well known for the many ways in which he honors the U.S. military. The Forrest Gump star established his own organization – dubbed ‘The Gary Sinise Foundation’ – and through that has been able to donate millions of dollars to soldiers, veterans, first responders, and their families. Gary Sinise has been fighting to hel...

Miceli’s opened in 1949 when Carmen and Sylvia Miceli, with the help of their brothers Tony and Sammie, and sisters Angie and Millie, put their funds together to start a restaurant. Carmen, a Chicago native, came to Los Angeles shortly after serving in World War II. He earned four Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, and went from being a singing shoes...

When Annette Funicello’s daughter, Gina Gilardi Bleifer, and a friend came home from a high school dance one night in the ’80s, she was surprised to hear loud music blasting from her bedroom. “We opened the door to find my mom sitting at my desk, fake microphone in hand, singing ‘The Best of Times’ by Styx at the top of her lungs,” Gina tells Close...

Marco Bellocchio’s latest film The Traitor is set to receive the first major prize at the 2019 Capri, Hollywood International Film Festival. The mafia story will be honored with the best international feature film award at the fest, which takes place annually off the coast of Naples.  The Traitor, which debuted in Cannes this year, tells the true-l...