Showbiz History: A Child Star, A Funny Girl, a Winged Serpent, and Noni Ryder

5 random things that happened on this day (October 29th) in showbiz history...

Fanny Brice

1891 Fanny Brice born in New York City. The comic actress, radio star, and Ziegfeld Girl who was immortalized by the Oscar-winning biopic Funny Girl. Brice is name-checked a few times in the new wonderful film Can You Ever Forgive Me?

1918 Happy 100th birthday today to Baby Peggy (aka Diana Serra Carey), the silent film child star who is still alive today! (See our list: 200 Oldest Living Screen Stars of Note). According to a THR report from January she's doing well and recently published her first fiction novel (!!!) having previously written a memoir and a biography 

1943 Flesh and Fantasy, an anthology movie of occult-related stories opens in movie theaters starring Barbara Stanwyck among other stars. Y

ou have to click on this poster after the jump which asks "WHICH IS YOU?" So, dear reader, tell us... which is you?

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Halloween stays on top. Suspiria packs houses (albeit only two of them)

by Nathaniel R

Staying power or lack of competition? Halloween, A Star is Born, and Venom held on to the top three spots in wide release (with Venom booting Crazy Rich Asians out of the top ten films of 2018...sigh) while the platforming Oscar hopefuls continued their slow crawl towards public awareness beyond people like us if you know what I mean...

Weekend Box Office Estimates (October 26-28)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1.  Halloween $32 (cum. $126.6) Review	1. 🔺 Johnny English Strikes Again $1.6 on 544 screens *NEW*

2. A Star is Born $14.1 (cum. $148.7) Review, Soundtracking, Podcast	2. 🔺 Free Solo $1 on 394 screens (cum. $5.1)

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Doc Corner (Surprise Weekend Edition!): 'The Price of Everything'

By Glenn Dunks

We took a week off recently due to office job duties so as a means of not getting behind in the schedule, we're posting a (for now) one-off weekend documentary review for your Sunday reading.

The world is a distressing place right now where seemingly everything is terrible. It’s only natural that documentary filmmaking would reflect this global tussle for law and democracy. If these films aren’t telling us something frightening and new then they at least usually these films at least attempt to show us something familiarly awful from a new angle or with an unfamiliar point of view. I’m here to tell you, however, that one of 2018’s most miserable moviegoing experiences isn’t about war or famine, disease or political unrest. Rather, it’s about the art world. A ghastly portrait of some of society’s worst impulses of greed and capitalist grotesquery.

The world of Nathaniel Kahn’s slickly polished and glossy yet hollow documentary The Price of Everything is one ripe for interrogation. And yet this film doesn’t take advantage of the uniquely wide-net of talent and personalities that it has access to. Among others, there’s the delightful yet sad parallels in name and career of Jeff Koons and Larry Poons, there’s Gerhard Richter albeit briefly, and there’s the back rooms of Sotheby’s of New York with Executive Vice President Amy Cappallazzo as she prepares for an auction worth obscene amounts of money including one painting by Henri Matisse that she ballparks at around a couple of hundred million dollars. Far out.

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Tweetweek

I was going to answer this brilliant question but David Call's answer cannot be beat. After the jump more curated tweets for you involving: Steven Yeun, Helen Mirren, A Star is Born, and remake culture... 

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Happy Teresa Wright Centennial

The Oscar-winning actress of Mrs Miniver fame, was born 100 years ago on this very day in Harlem, where I'm typing this from. (Well, not literally where I'm typing this from - this apartment probably didn't exist in 1918 but who knows.) 

a lesser known distinction: she was Marlon Brando's very first romantic interest in a film (his debut The Men, 1950)She didn't consider herself a glamour girl, which could account for the sparcity of glamorous photoshoots compared to other 'it girls'. Wright's screen heyday was short-lived as many careers are when the success is so instantaneous and large. Still, it's hard to knock the girl next door beauty  for not being able to live up to her first two years in Hollywood. Her first three movies (Little Foxes, Pride of the Yankees, Mrs Miniver) all brought her Oscar nominations. An Oscar winner by the age of 24 with batting a thousand record there was essentially nowhere to go but down. Still, before the inevitable fade of her career she managed two more all time classics, doing her best acting for Alfred Hitchcock in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and appearing the perfect ensemble of one of the very best Best Picture winners The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Her big screen career died quickly due to diminishing popularity and fights with her studio but she worked frequently on TV beginning in the 1950s.

Do you have a favorite Teresa Wright film?