Word: italian
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Amanda Knox is a riddle. The expatriate American student has been the mysterious, ambivalent Mona Lisa face plastered across television, websites and newspapers since a few days after Halloween 2007. According to Italian authorities and their partisans in the blogosphere, where her case has been strenuously debated, behind her beatific smile lies a psycho hedonist capable of depraved murder. But family and friends insist she's just a granola-crunching athlete and honor student from Seattle who has, through bad luck, become the poster child for the perils that await American girls caught up in the dark side of Italy...
...comes Tetro, Coppola's first original script since The Conversation 35 years ago, and what seems a very personal work: a story about an Italian family with rancor and secrets galore - think The Godfather, but with artists instead of gangsters. The great news is that at 70, this unquestioned giant of American cinema is still making independent-minded movies. (He finances them largely through the profits of his very productive vineyard.) The bad news is that he made this one. (See a gallery of iconic images from Coppola's films...
...among the most stable of investments. Graddy's data indicate that between 1850 and April of this year, the value of professional-quality instruments rose in real terms (i.e., after inflation) about 3% annually. High-end violins have appreciated at much higher rates - particularly rare instruments made by Italian masters like Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri...
...market's high end, new funds have launched to capitalize on the opportunity to diversify into fine instruments. Florian Leonhard, a London-based violin expert and dealer, is gathering more than $50 million for the Fine Violins Fund, aiming to buy as many as 50 old Italian instruments. Leonhard isn't alone in his confidence in the market. Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance lends large sums of money using violins and cellos as collateral. And former concert violinist Staffan Borseman has established Stradivari Invest to advise big investors on the purchase of top instruments...
...Italian politics seems much more about the show on TV than the showing at the ballot box. Indeed, after so much huffing and puffing on the campaign trail, the results from weekend voting left the political landscape in Italy mostly unchanged. Berlusconi's People's Freedom Party notched 35% of the electorate, safely ahead of the center-left challengers but short of the runaway victory the 72-year-old billionaire Berlusconi had hoped...