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In the next episode of “Shining Vale,” titled “Chapter 13: The Miracle,” the fractured family finds themselves unexpectedly brought back together by some surprising news. Terry, the matriarch, starts her journey towards a healthier lifestyle, which promises to bring about some interesting changes. As the family dynamics shift, Jake, one of the family members, faces the challenge of reconnecting with an old friend within the confines of their haunted house. The house itself is no stranger to paranormal activity, and it’s bound to play a significant role in the unfolding events.

Additionally, another character named Gaynor seems to be on the verge of making a new and potentially intriguing connection with a sexy new friend. With all these developments in store, “Shining Vale” is set to offer its viewers a mix of drama, comedy, and supernatural twists that keep the story engaging and unpredictable. Tune in on Friday, November...

Four years ago, when Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” won Italy’s 14th foreign-language Oscar — the most of any country — the Italian TV industry was mostly geared toward the local market.

Cut to 2018, and shows such as Sorrentino’s “The Young Pope,” which aired on HBO in the U.S., and “Gomorrah,” on Sundance TV, as well as upcoming literary adaptation skeins “The Name of the Rose,” and “My Brilliant Friend,” are putting Italy on the international TV map.

“Italian producers have risen to the occasion and, finally, have been able to make the leap,” says Giancarlo Leone, head of Italy’s TV producers’ association Apt. And the way Italian series are “conceived, and perceived, in terms of visual language, is no different from our films,” he notes. “Except that series provide greater opportunities for narratives to be developed beyond a two-hour time span.”

In Italy, the correlation between...

or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015

This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.

What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...

Betty Hutton movies (photo: Betty Hutton in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, with Eddie Bracken) [See previous post: "Betty Hutton Bio: The Blonde Bombshell."] Buddy DeSylva did as promised. Betty Hutton was given a key supporting role in Victor Schertzinger’s 1942 musical comedy The Fleet’s In, starring Dorothy Lamour, William Holden, and Eddie Bracken. “Her facial grimaces, body twists and man-pummeling gymnastics take wonderfully to the screen,” enthused Pm magazine. (Hutton would have a cameo, as Hetty Button, in the 1952 remake Sailor Beware, starring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Corinne Calvet.) The following year, Betty Hutton landed the second female lead in Happy Go Lucky (1943), singing Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser’s "Murder, He Says," and stealing the show from fellow Broadway import Mary Martin and former Warner Bros. crooner Dick Powell. She also got co-star billing opposite Bob Hope in Sidney Lanfield’s musical comedy Let’s Face It. Additionally, Paramount’s hugely successful all-star war-effort...

Betty Hutton bio: The Blonde Bombshell Energetic, electric, exuberant, effusive, brassy, spunky, hyper, manic — these are all qualities that could (and most likely have been) used to describe Betty Hutton, a top 1940s Paramount star also known as "The Blonde Bombshell," "The Blonde Blitz," and/or "The Incendiary Blonde." (Photo: Betty Hutton ca. 1945-1950.) Throughout the years, Betty Hutton’s fiery blondeness entertained some, while turning off others and leaving others yet exhausted. She seemed to be perennially in hyperkinetic mode, whether playing 1910s film serial heroine Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline or fretting about (possibly) being pregnant — without knowing which of several happy sailors is the baby’s father — in Preston Sturges’ The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. But she "wasn’t all just a zany comedian," as Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne recently remarked. "The thing about Betty Hutton was she could also sing a song and break your heart,...

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Shane Connaughton has come a long way since stumbling across filmmaking deals in a London pub by chance. His script for Jim Sheridan's 'My Left Foot' earned him an Academy Award and BAFTA nomination, while 'The Dollar Bottom', which he co-wrote with James Kennaway, scooped the Academy Award for Best Short Film. An actor as well as a writer, his acting skills earned him roles in long-running Utv soap 'Coronation Street'; Neil Jordan's 'The Miracle', as well as a number of successful theatre productions.

There is one Academy Awards category in which Britain always seems to be well represented: costume design

In a relatively quiet year for British cinema at the Oscars, the nation can still turn to that reliable standby, the best costume design award, for a little welling-up of patriotic pride. Four out of the last five winners have been British, and two of them – Sandy Powell and Michael O'Connor – are in the running this time. O'Connor is up for Jane Eyre, but the smart money is on Powell, for her work on Martin Scorsese's early-cinema fantasy Hugo.

Not only does Hugo have serious momentum as the leading nominated film with 11 mentions in total, but Powell, 51, has some claim to be the doyenne of international costume design: Hugo is her 10th Oscar nomination in a record that stretches back to Orlando in 1992. She has won three times: with Shakespeare in Love...