Venice: Kathryn Bigelow returns with the terrifying "A House of Dynamite"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite is not, at its core, about nuclear war. It is about the frightening ease with which the world could stumble into one. Eight years after Detroit, Bigelow returns with a film that feels less like a departure than the logical consequence of her career: taut, unsentimental, and anchored in a realism so sharp that it leaves the audience unnerved long after the credits roll.

The premise is brutally simple. One morning, somewhere in the Pacific, a missile is launched and slips undetected past U.S. defense systems. Nothing is confirmed—its origin, its payload, its intent—but the clock begins ticking: sixteen minutes until impact...

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Links: Sharon Stone, Britney Spears, Tower of Terror, The Little Mermaid

Let's start with the obvious...

Sharon Stone photographed by Michael Muller
• Zoomer Sharon Stone talks up her memoir and (eventually) sets the internet on fire by bringing up the idolization of Meryl Streep. Weird how it took this a whole month to go viral since actors usually only risk general platitudes about other people/careers in their interviews. Everything she says is true and if you actually read the interview, it's not a diss on Meryl; it's a diss on the system where there can only be one.

Paparazzi set photos from The Little Mermaid, Britney Spears,  Near Dark, Jean Smart's big year, Pride month and more after the jump in the link roundup...

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Showbiz History: Emmys repeating Oscars, Divine's passing, Bigelow's win.

6 random things that happened on this day, March 7th, in showbiz history

Loretta Young, the first actress to chase an Oscar with an Emmy.

1946 The 18th Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1945 with The Lost Weekend taking Best Picture. We'll discuss this Oscar night later today given that it's the 75th anniversary. 

1955 The 7th annual Primetime Emmys are held. Loretta Young becomes the first Best Actress Oscar winner to then win a Best Actress Emmy prize for a continuing series. Only one other actress ever did this with Shirley Booth following her the next decade (Sally Field would make this a three person list except she actually won an Emmy before her Oscars and subsequent Best Actress Drama series Emmy). In those days TV and Movies were very separate showbiz forms and once you started doing television on the regular, the movie offers dried up. It's different nowadays though not completely; almost everyone who wins the Oscar first and then an Emmy wins the latter for a miniseries or one-off appearance of some kind...

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Showbiz History: Maureen O'Hara, Bruce Lee, The Wizard of Oz...

7 things that happened today in showbiz history...

1920 CENTENNIAL Maureen O'Hara, inarguably Ireland's biggest 20th century female movie star, was born in Dublin. She went on to a career filled with numerous classics -- many of which we've written about here at TFE. We *finally* have another Irish female star of her magnitude (probably) in Saoirse Ronan provided she doesn't burn out early (which we don't think she will)...

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10 years ago on this very day...

...remember when Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) lost the Globe to her ex husband James Cameron (Avatar) at the Golden Globes. Before he even began thanking his team, he name-checked her to her apparent delight in the crowd as the camera held on her.

I'm actually not well prepared because frankly I thought Kathryn was going to win this --  I'm kind of winging it here. She richly deserves it...

Of course by the time the Oscars rolled around the situation reversed and The Hurt Locker was the favourite film and Bigelow became the first female director ever to win the Oscar. The Globes gave a Best Director trophy to Barbra Streisand for Yentl (1983) two decades earlier so perhaps they didn't feel any need to make history since they already had? Anyway we figured this anniversary was worth noting because the awards trouble for female directors has also haunted this Oscar season. 

Jumping to the now... What is going on with Kathryn Bigelow? She has no new projects listed on IMDb apart from producing Pablo Larrain's next project The True American. We hope that Detroit (2017) doesn't prove to be her last feature!!!