Beauty Break: Dog-Loving Natalie Wood

by Nathaniel R

You can find a few photos of the legendary Natalie Wood as a pint-sized actress with cats, but once the child star came into her own in Hollywood as a regular-aged movie star she was inarguably a dog person.

Her most common photo accessories for a time were her white poodle Fifi and her silver poodle Morningstar. Curiously I've never seen them in a photo together (by all accounts she had multiple pets but perhaps these two only overlapped in the late 1950s with Morningstar hogging the camera by the early 60s?).But they were hardly her only four legged Best Friends in her 43 years on earth. 

After the jump more furry beauty shots...

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"Nicky got too close to the flame...

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...Nicky liked it."

Great Moments in Screen Come-Ons #96
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992) 

New Oscar Chart ~ Foreign Hopefuls Part 1

We won't start hearing about "official submissions" for Oscar's Foreign Language Film race until September but until then, it's speculation time! The first chart is up looking at countries from Afghanistan through Ethiopia.

The most high profile film from this batch, other than possibly another Austrian submission from Michael Haneke (Happy End), is Chile's A Fantastic Woman. It's a trans drama that took three prizes at Berlinale. If it's as good as director Sebastian Lelio's previous Oscar submission (Gloria) we'll have to riot if he's passed over again. 

Other intriguing prospects include the well reviewed black and white fairy tale November from Estonia and possibly another submission from Oscar winner Jan Sverak of the Czech Republic. Sverak won the foreign film Oscar for his art house sleeper hit Kolya  (1996) about a stepfather and his little boy and his latest called Barefoot is another childhood tale set in the countryside during World War II.

Check out the chart and report back

First & Last: News Flash

Resurrecting an old game we used to play. Here are the first and last images from a motion picture...

Can you guess the movie?

Will "Bright" be a Netflix Blockbuster? And how do you even define that?

By Ben Miller

If you haven’t heard already, Netflix will continue their quest for world domination with a tentpole feature film, Bright, in December.  Directed by David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury), the film stars Will Smith as a Los Angeles police officer who is teamed up with an orc cop (Joel Edgerton) to fight crime and try to make sense of whatever the hell is happening in the trailer.  There are fairies, magic wands, elves, swords, Noomi Rapace, and all sorts of other fantastical elements involved.

Let’s talk money.  Bright cost $90 million for Netflix to pick up.  Half of that cost went in to the film to shoot, while the other half goes to the talent (mostly Smith, Ayer and screenwriter Max Landis).  These days, $90 million seems pretty reasonable for a fantasy film starring an A-List “Movie Star”.  Suicide Squad, the most recent Smith-Ayer fantasy foray, cost $175 million. [More...]

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