It’s with not inconsiderable excitement that this Monkey looks forward to the latest film from Oscar winning Italian director Gabriele Salvatores. His adaptation of Grazia Verasani’s crime novel Quo Vadis Baby?, set and filmed in Bologna will get its Italian release this Friday.

Coinciding, there’s a nice interview in last week’s Il Venerdi di Repubblica. In it he talks about a number of topics, including why he chose a noir like Quo Vadis Baby?, his choices for the cast etc.

In the absence of a Three Monkeys Online Salvatore interview (we’re working on it), let’s whet your appetite with a quote from the aforementioned interview:

Cinema must never become simply a mirror in which the audience sees itself, recognises itself and is thus satisfied. It should be rather a deforming mirror, that allows you to look behind reality. The problem is that Cinema, more and more, uses a flat narration, typically televisual or of television […] Pasolini almost forty years ago said that there wouldn’t be, in the future, more than pornography or tv. That the tv would eventually form our way of living, constructing stories on demand to convince the audience that existence is serial. The dictatorship of TV was, according to him, the new fascism, the new demagogy.

We’ll save any views Mr Salvatores may have on Italian TV under Mr Berlusconi, hopefully, for a Three Monkeys Online interview.