Mckenna Grace is an American actress who has appeared in films, television series, video games, and narrative podcasts. A 2022 Yahoo! Entertainment article referred to her as "one of the most successful and prolific child actors of her generation", with over 70 credits by that point. Having wanted to act since age four, Grace secured her first part in a commercial at five years old. She made her onscreen debut in Disney XD's sitcom Crash & Bernstein (2012–2014), while she had her first film role in Goodbye World (2013). She subsequently appeared in several films and television shows, including The Young and the Restless (2013–2015), The Vampire Diaries (2015), Mr. Church (2016), Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), Designated Survivor (2016–2019), and Fuller House (2016–2020).

In 2017, Grace garnered global recognition for her role as an intellectually gifted seven-year-old in the drama film Gifted, for which she received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Movie Awards for Best Young Performer. She also appeared in the 2017 films How to Be a Latin Lover, Amityville: The Awakening, and I, Tonya. The following year, Grace portrayed a murderous girl in The Bad Seed, a psychic middle child in The Haunting of Hill House, the younger version of the titular character in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and a child prodigy in Young Sheldon. She played the lattermost role until 2023. Grace appeared in three films released in 2019. Her first was Captain Marvel, in which she portrayed a 13-year-old version of the titular character. She also led the comedy-drama Troop Zero and the supernatural horror Annabelle Comes Home. Grace subsequently had voice roles in Scoob! (2020) and Spirit Untamed (2021). (Full article...)

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) was an English director and filmmaker. Popularly known as the "Master of Suspense" for his use of innovative film techniques in thrillers, Hitchcock started his career in the British film industry as a title designer and art director for a number of silent films during the early 1920s. His directorial debut was the 1925 release The Pleasure Garden. Hitchcock followed this with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, his first commercial and critical success. It featured many of the thematic elements his films would be known for, such as an innocent man on the run. It also featured the first of his famous cameo appearances. Two years later he directed Blackmail (1929) which was his first sound film. In 1935, Hitchcock directed The 39 Steps; three years later, he directed The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.

In 1940, Hitchcock transitioned to Hollywood productions, the first of which was the psychological thriller Rebecca, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. He received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director, and the film won Best Picture. Hitchcock worked with Fontaine again the following year on the film Suspicion, which also starred Cary Grant. In 1943, Hitchcock directed another psychological thriller Shadow of a Doubt, which starred Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Three years later, he reunited with Grant on Notorious, which also starred Ingrid Bergman. The film included a three-minute intermittent kissing scene between the leads shot specifically to skirt the Motion Picture Production Code which at the time limited such scenes to three seconds. In 1948, Hitchcock directed Rope, which starred James Stewart. The film was his first in Technicolor and is remembered for its use of long takes to make the film appear to be a single continuous shot. Three years later, he directed Strangers on a Train (1951). (Full article...)

Nightcrawler is 2014 American thriller film written and directed by Dan Gilroy. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a stringer who records violent events late at night in Los Angeles, and sells the footage to a local television news station. Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, and Bill Paxton feature in supporting roles. The film premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, before receiving a theatrical release on October 31, distributed by Open Road Films. Nightcrawler earned a worldwide total of $50.3 million on a production budget of $8.5 million. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, surveyed 232 reviews and judged 95 percent to be positive.

Nightcrawler received awards and nominations in a variety of categories, with particular praise for Gilroy's screenplay and Gyllenhaal's performance. At the 87th Academy Awards, Gilroy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film received an additional four nominations at the 68th British Academy Film Awards, three nominations at the 20th Critics' Choice Awards, one nomination at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, and one nomination at 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards, but did not win any of them. Nightcrawler did fare better at award ceremonies held by critics' organizations, particularly the 19th San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, where it won seven out of its nine nominations. These included Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Film. The American Film Institute and the National Board of Review included Nightcrawler in their lists of top ten films of the year. (Full article...)

Billy Wilder (1906–2002) was an Austrian filmmaker. Wilder initially pursued a career in journalism after being inspired by an American newsreel. He worked for the Austrian magazine Die Bühne and the newspaper Die Stunde in Vienna, and later for the German newspapers Berliner Nachtausgabe, and Berliner Börsen-Courier in Berlin. His first screenplay was for the German silent thriller The Daredevil Reporter (1929). Wilder fled to Paris in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party, where he co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay of French drama Mauvaise Graine (1934). In the same year, Wilder left France on board the RMS Aquitania to work in Hollywood despite having little knowledge of English.

In 1938, he began collaborating with Charles Brackett on screenplays with Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. It was the first of 14 consecutive commercially successful films that the pair co-wrote including the comedy Ninotchka (1939), and the romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which both received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Wilder made his Hollywood directorial debut with comedy The Major and the Minor (1942), which starred Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. Two years later, he directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the film noir Double Indemnity (1944), which is considered a classic of its genre. He followed this with The Lost Weekend (1945), a drama about a writer struggling with alcoholism, for which Wilder won his first Academy Award for Best Director and shared the Best Original Screenplay award with Brackett. The film also won Best Picture. (Full article...)

Independent Croatia has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film since 1992. The award is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue. It was not created until the 1956 Academy Awards, in which a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was introduced for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since.

Since achieving independence from Yugoslavia, Croatia has submitted 30 films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film , but none have been nominated for an Oscar. Croatia also unsuccessfully tried to submit a film in 1991 while the country was in the process of achieving international recognition. Since independence, five Croatian directors have had multiple films submitted to the Academy for review. Directors Branko Schmidt, Arsen Anton Ostojić and Zrinko Ogresta had three of their films selected, and two other directors had two films submitted – Vinko Brešan and Dalibor Matanić. (Full article...)

American actress Shannen Doherty has appeared in numerous television programs and motion pictures. After her television debut in Father Murphy in 1981, she landed her first major role in the dramatic western television series Little House on the Prairie (1982–1983), and reprised her role in its three television specials. Doherty received two Young Artist Award nominations for playing the oldest Witherspoon sibling Kris in the family drama Our House (1986–1988). She appeared in four films during the 1980s, including the positively-received, animated film The Secret of NIMH (1982) and the cult classic Heathers (1988). Her breakthrough role was as Brenda Walsh in the teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990–1994), but she was later dropped from the series because of backstage issues and her negative image as a "bad girl". She starred in television films in the early and mid-1990s, and played Rene Mosier in the romantic comedy Mallrats (1995) in an attempt to rebuild her career.

Doherty enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after being cast by producer Aaron Spelling to play Prue Halliwell on the supernatural drama Charmed (1998–2001). The series was their second collaboration following Beverly Hills, 90210. The character was praised by critics and fans, earning a spot as one of the best witches in television history according to a TVLine article, and Doherty took an active role in the show's production, directing three of its episodes. Following disagreements with Spelling and co-star Alyssa Milano, Doherty left the series in its third season. Doherty starred in a string of television films and had a recurring role on the prime-time soap opera North Shore (2004–2005). The following year, she was cast as Denise Johnson in the unaired pilot of the sitcom Love, Inc., but was dropped from the show by producers from United Paramount Network (UPN). She reprised her role as Brenda Walsh in the reboot of 90210 (2008–2009), appearing as a special guest star in seven episodes in its first season. (Full article...)