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Italian director Gabriele Salvatores, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for “Mediterraneo” in 1991 and more recently helmed teen superhero franchise “The Invisible Boy” is in Berlin where sales company Rai Com is showing buyers footage of his upcoming road movie “Volare.” Pic stars Claudio Santamaria and Valeria Golino and is penned by Umberto Contarello (“The Great Beauty”).

Based on a widely translated bestseller by Italy’s Fulvio Ervas — which was inspired by a true story — “Volare” is about a boozing lounge singer (Santamaria) who accidentally intersects with his teen autistic son, whom he has never met before. He has an epiphany and decides to hit the road with him in an attempt to fight his son’s autism. They are chased by the boy’s mother (Golino) and her husband, played by Diego Abatantuono, who also starred in “Mediterraneo.”

Salvatores in Berlin spoke to Variety about making his return to the road movie genre.

Here’s your daily dose of an indie film, web series, TV pilot, what-have-you in progress — at the end of the week, you’ll have the chance to vote for your favorite.

In the meantime: Is this a project you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments.

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Logline: An intimate film about the impacts of cancer on a mother and her imaginative son.

Elevator Pitch:

Alessandro Farrattini’s short film about a tragic discovery is a terribly touching yet tongue-in-cheek tale of a mother and son’s separate but (hopefully) universal acceptances of a terribly stinky, terribly poopy, and terribly evil disease whose super villain name is, cancer.

Production Team:

Alessandro Farrattini: Director

Alessandro is an award-winning Director whose previous short “Corpse Remover” was 150% funded on Kickstarter. He also works as an Assistant Director and Videographer for companies such as The East London Music Group and Warner Bros....

2015 European Film Awards winners and nominations Best European Film A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. En Duva Satt På En Gren Och Funderade På Tillvaron. Sweden, France, Germany, Norway, 96 min. Written and directed by: Roy Andersson. Produced by: Pernilla Sandström. Mustang. France, Germany, Turkey, 100 min. Directed by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Written by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven and Alice Winocour. Produced by: Charles Gillibert. Rams. Hrútar. Iceland, Denmark, 93 min. Written and directed by: Grímur Hákonarson. Produced by: Grímar Jónsson. The Lobster. U.K., Ireland, Greece, France, Netherlands, 118 min. Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by: Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. Produced by: Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday, Ceci Dempsey and Yorgos Lanthimos. Victoria. Germany, 138 min. Written and directed by: Sebastian Schipper. Produced by: Jan Dressler. * Youth. Youth – La Giovinezza. Italy, France, U.K., Switzerland, 118 min. Written and directed by: Paolo Sorrentino. Produced by: Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima and Carlotta Calori. Best...

Exclusive: Talks underway for a new European Audience Prize.

The European Commission (EC) has dropped its Media Prize, presented during the Cannes Film Festival since 2012.

The Prize had been awarded by a jury of independent experts, the EC and the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (Eacea) to the best project with box office potential from applications submitted for Media development support.

The prize has previously gone to Asghar Farhadi’s The Past, which played in Competition in Cannes a year later in 2013; Thomas Vinterberg for his project The Commune; and Bosnian director Danis Tanović for What Are You Looking At?.

But despite discontinuing the award, there are talks underway with the European Parliament and European Film Academy to replace the prize with a new audience award.

Speaking exclusively to Screen Daily, an EC official said: “The European Commission considers that a unique European film prize, able to build on a more active participation of the European...

Another Friday has rolled around and you’re all getting ready for the weekend. A nice two day respite in which you can clean the gutters, or mow the lawn, or bury the evidence. Before you get down to all that fun and excitment, wouldn’t you like to look at some movie posters? Sure you would! Hey…where do you think you’re going? I said…sure you would…

I absolutely love the fact that Robby the Robot went on to be his own character. He originally appeared in Forbidden Planet but went on to appear in many more movies and even on TV. Classic 50′s Sci-Fi posters are always amazing and this one for The Invisible Boy is one of my favourites. When I tracked down this much larger version of the poster I was able to notice all sorts of neat little details I hadn’t seen before,...

Us director James Gray to preside over main competition jury, as previously announced.

Marco Müller, artistic director of the 8th Rome Film Festival (Nov 8-17), has announced the jury members who will complete the Competition Jury.

Jury president James Gray will be joined by:

Verónica Chen (Argentina);Luca Guadagnino (Italy);Aleksei Guskov (Russia);Noémie Lvovsky (France);Amir Naderi (Iran);Zhang Yuan (China).

(See below for more details on the jury)

The Jury will confer the feature films in Competition the:

Golden Marc’Aurelio Award for Best FilmBest Director AwardSpecial Jury PrizeBest Actor AwardBest Actress AwardAward for Emerging Actor or ActressAward for Best Technical ContributionAward for Best Screenplay.

It was also announced today that Italian actress Anna Foglietta will host the awards ceremony on Nov 16.

The actress, whose credits include Anton Corbijn’s 2010 thriller The American, starring Geroge Clooney, will continue to do the honours through the second part of the evening, when the Maverick...

A little bit of coin news from Europe’s Eurimages Fund (support of 13 projects) in the same token drops a couple of hints on where we might be at with some of our favorite European auteurs – topping the list and making our mouths water for Cannes 2014 is a listing for Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s next feature film entitled Winter Sleep – a Turkish-German-France co-production. Further digging tells us that Ceylan actually began filming in late January in the unique backdrop of Cappadocia, Turkey with actors Haluk Bilginer (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Demet Akbag, Melisa Sözen on board. Swedish auteur Ruben Ostlund (whose Play is mysteriously still without a U.S Distributor) is inches away from filming Tourist – which will be ready for a Croisette 2014 showing as well. Jasmila Zbanic who won big in Berlin back in 2006 with Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, is funding her latest Love Island and feel...

It’s time for yet another of my articles about artificial life in movie and television history. This article will be the 6th article in my ongoing series featuring robots, cyborgs, and sentient computers. In the first three articles, 14 Awesome Movie Robots You’ve Forgotten, 15 More Movie Robots You’ve Probably Forgotten, and 12 Awesome Robots From TV History, we dealt only with robots. With my cyborg articles, 10 Awesome Cyborgs in Movie History and 10 Awesome Cyborgs in TV History, we moved on to cyborgs. Now, we’re looking at evil supercomputers from movie history.

For each of the articles above, I set up a few laws to restrict the size of the articles. Known as Tim’s Laws, these rules are adjusted for each article.

Tim’s First Law states that only malevolent, sentient computers can be used in this article, meaning robots and other ambulatory computers are excluded. I will,...

#Gift There's nothing like leaving it to the last minute to finish your Christmas shopping and in that spirit CinemaSpy has waited until Christmas Eve to give you its recommendations of the eight Bd releases you should buy this side of 2011. If you are still looking for that gift to fill someone's stocking, maybe we can help relieve the sense of panic that accompanies the realization that there is only one—yes, that's one—shopping day until December 25th.

What follows is a selection of some of the best Blu-ray releases of the year (although not necessarily the best films). Feel free to add your own recommendations (for those Boxing Week shopping trips) or just tell us what you got in the comments section below. Here goes, Santa baby…

The Alien Anthology

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

Without doubt this is my choice for Number One Blu-ray release of the year.

Forbidden Planet is Shakespeare in space, director Fred Wilcox threw The Tempest into the sci-fi genre at a time when the grand masters of science fiction were honing their craft and delivering some of the most influential stories and ideas, shaping the imaginations of filmmakers such as George Lucas, and it is as powerful and vibrant today as it was in 1956.

Its status in the sci-fi pantheon is both assured and well deserved and the iconic design is luminous on this new Blu-ray which is among the finest I’ve ever seen. The picture is sharp and colours rich, it is a feast for the eyes. The electronic score and special effects (in particular the Id Monster) may seem conventional now, but they retain, as does the whole film, a charm and a power to impress fifty four years later.

Following a rescue mission to the remote planet of Altair...

Last week, Warner Home Video released six of their science fiction films on Blu-ray for the first time. While all were greatly appreciated by genre fans to one degree or another, it can be safely said that the most eagerly awaited one is also the best one of the set. MGM’s Forbidden Planet is clearly a class act and the loving restoration is evident in just how fabulous the movie looks in high definition.

The 1956 was one of the studio’s last major releases before its decline in quality, and it was also their first real attempt at science fiction. All the resources that made their musicals shine brightly were brought to the feature production and as a result, this is the single best science fiction movie made that decade. Its influences go far beyond imagination considering the enduring popularity of Robby the Robot and how much the film...

Yes it ports over all the fabulous extras from its recent excellent DVD release. More importantly it looks absolutely vibrant. Forbidden Planet is one of the most important science fiction films ever made and almost certainly the greatest science fiction film of the 1950s. Its arrival on Bluray is a wonder to behold. Some reviewers have stated this may look better than the original theatrical release. 

One of the things that makes this release apart from the image and sound upgrade is inclusion of other Robby the Robot vehicles like The Invisible Boy feature film and the Thin Man TV series episode Robot Client. Robby was made for a reported one million dollars making him one of the most expensive film props ever for his time. He was so convincing that people thought he really was a fully functional robot. 

The only thing lacking here is a commentary track but...

Have you ever wanted to see a young Leslie Nielsen playing a space-age hero? What if the movie also had the debut of one of science fictions most iconic robots? If neither of these are appealing, perhaps Forbidden Planet can tempt you with a virginal beauty, a mad scientist, and a story that borrows heavily from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. For the casual film watcher, Forbidden Planet is a fun little science fiction film, and for film and science fiction enthusiast, Forbidden Planet influenced Star Wars, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the Star Trek franchise. With extensive special features and beautiful picture and sound transfer, the blu-ray release of Forbidden Planet should not be missed.

In Forbidden Planet, Commander J.J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen) has been sent to Planet Altair-4 to relieve the space crew of their duties and send them home. When they arrive, they discover that the...

I think there is still a lot more to be seen from Bryce Dallas Howard, the daughter of director Ron Howard, and the completely ignored co-star of Terminator Salvation. Howard has already started showing a different side of herself as The Hollywood Reporter reveals she co-wrote a new script titled The Originals with Dane Charbeneau and Universal and Imagine Entertainment have already stepped in to pick it up as a potential feature for Ron Howard to direct. The script is described as an ensemble feature about a group of twentysomethings who reconvene for a weekend in New York after learning the teacher who shaped their childhoods has fallen into a mysterious coma. Apparently Dallas Howard came up with the idea over the past couple of years looking at it as a way of tackling the quarter-life crisis issues her contemporaries were dealing with. Howard and Charbeneau have been working on...

Warner Home Video's Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition boxed set won top honors Monday as best of show at the third annual DVD Critics Awards: The Perfect Ten in Century City.

The awards were bestowed at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza as part of the sixth annual Home Entertainment Summit: DVD & Beyond, produced by Home Media Magazine and DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group in cooperation with The Hollywood Reporter and the Entertainment Merchants Assn.

The awards, chosen by a panel of critics from newspapers, entertainment magazines and DVD Web sites, honor the top DVDs released in 2006, based on DVD presentation criteria.

The 14-disc Superman set includes special editions of all five theatrical Superman features, plus director's cuts of the first two films, behind-the-scenes featurettes and retrospective documentaries.

Warner also won for Ultimate Collector's Editions that celebrated the 50th anniversaries of two classic films: The Searchers won for best classic/catalog DVD, while Forbidden Planet earned the award for best special features/bonus materials.

The two-disc Forbidden Planet set came packaged in a collectible tin with a toy replica of the movie's famed Robby the Robot, plus historical documentaries and the film The Invisible Boy, which also featured Robby.