Cinecittà
And so I looked it up:
Founded in 1937 by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini,
the studios were bombed by the Western Allies during
World War II. In the 1950s, Cinecittà was the filming
location for several large American film productions
like Ben-Hur, and then became the studio most closely
associated with Federico Fellini. After a period of
near-bankruptcy in the 1980s, Cinecittà was privatized
by the Italian government. It hosted the 1991 Eurovision
Song Contest, after the venue was changed from Sanremo
due to security concerns. Cinecittà also hosts TV
productions, such as Grande Fratello, the Italian
version of Big Brother, where the Big Brother house is
built on Cinecittà's premises. On August 9, 2007, a fire
destroyed about 32,000 square feet of the Cinecittà lot
and surroundings. The historic part that houses the sets
of classics such as Ben-Hur were not damaged. [Wiki]
Which gets us back to India via Bollywood, and, somehow, also closer to home, via Hollywood, Disney, Wallmart, Wallstreet.... So the loop always closes - "in the end".
Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
There are some real food price pressures out there - growing demand from "Chindia," not only in quantity but quality, combined with some serious yield problems that are at least in some part the result of climate change. Wall Street's habit of looking at core inflation - i.e., with food and energy stripped out - overlooks where the real ....
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