The Italian Film Festival will be in full swing at the Palace Centro today after launching last night with the comedy Manual of Love. This often hilarious (but uneven and, it must be said, too long) comedy about relationships was a huge box-office hit in Italy and was warmly received on a wet Brisbane night. Details on the rest of the festival are here. Meanwhile, in Rome, all is not well in the arts. Italian Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione has threatened to resign if the government carries out plans to cut the arts budget. Buttiglione says: “This is not only a battle for the opera and the struggling Italian film industry, but also for the theatre, for libraries and archives. We have to defend ourselves on a broad front.”