American movie star Sharon Stone will be guest of honour at the final of the 2010 Miss Italy beauty contest next month in the northern town of Salsomaggiore. The 52-year old actress and former model will take the stage next to presenter Milly Carlucci and Prince of Emanuele Filiberto, grandson of Italy’s last king, Umberto II.

Stone became an international sex symbol after she famously starred – sans underwear – in the 1992 thriller, Basic Instinct. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 movie Casino opposite Robert De Niro, for which she won a Golden Globe award for best actress.

Italy’s premier public TV network Rai1 will air the Miss Italy final on 11-13 September. [Source]

U.S. actress Sharon Stone is set to guest star in a four-episode arc of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” NBC said.

The “Basic Instinct,” “Sliver” and “Casino” actress will play Assistant District Attorney Jo Marlowe on the popular crime drama.

Stone’s episodes are expected to air Wednesdays — April 28, May 5, May 12 and May 19 — the network said. [Source]

“Law & Order: SVU” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., NBC) Guest star Sharon Stone shows up as Stabler’s old partner when he and Benson are called to work on a fire investigation that kills two little girls. But this being SVU, there must be a sex crime in there somewhere — maybe Stone’s character will uncross her legs when she interrogates a suspect. … Nah, even “SVU” wouldn’t dare to gross us out that much. [Source]

It’s a bad week for police detectives on DVD shelves.

Not only is Harvey Keitel’s “Bad Lieutenant” being re-released, July 28 also brings the direct-to-DVD debut of “Streets of Blood.” Both hyperviolent films feature cops as crooked as the criminals, and neither has a compelling narrative.

“Streets of Blood,” filmed predominantly in Shreveport in 2008, is set in New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina.

Second-unit footage of a devastated New Orleans is used to establish setting throughout the film, but this footage rarely matches the cuts to the film’s primary locations. In one example, a car drives down a French Quarter street; the camera angle reverses, and the car magically is on an obviously different street, presumably in Shreveport.  Read the rest of this entry »