Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile: Winton C. Hoch
Born July 31, 1905, in Storm Lake, Iowa, Winton C. Hoch is the only cinematographer of note working in the black-and-white era of film that never lensed a black-and-white feature film. Moving to California in 1924 and graduating in 1931 as a chemist from the California Institute of Technology, Hoch was a research physicist who joined…
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Home Viewing with Peter #914
It’s time to look back on what we reviewed in 2024 when home video releases became fewer and farther between and streaming failed to fill the gap for most of the year. Here is a reminder of a few of the home video releases that we reviewed: In January, we reviewed Shout! Factory’s mammoth multi-disc…
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Oscar Profile: Russell Harlan
Born September 16, 1903 in Los Angeles, California, Russell Harlan was the son of a couple from the Midwest who raised him and his younger brother, Richard, in Los Angeles. Harlan started in the film industry as an actor and stuntman, and by the early 1930s was working behind the camera as an assistant. Among…
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Home Viewing with Peter #913
Saving the best for last, Warner Archive has closed out the year with the release of John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers on 4K UHD. Released in May 1956, The Searchers became the no. 1 film at the box-office in its second and third weeks of release, ending up as the tenth highest grossing film…
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Oscar Profile: Joseph Walker Revisited
Born August 22, 1892 in Denver, Colorado, Joseph Bailey Walker worked as a wireless telephone engineer, inventor and photographer of documentaries for the Red Cross during World War I before beginning his feature film career in 1919 with Back to God’s Country, a Canadian film that was filmed near the Artic Circle. He then freelanced as…
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Home Viewing with Peter #912
A handful of 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray releases have helped make the season bright and cheerful. Sony has unexpectedly released 1942’s The Talk of the Town, which has never had a Blu-ray release, direct to 4K UHD. Nominated for 7 Oscars, The Talk of the Town was one of two classic comedies made by…
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Oscar Profile: Oscar Loves Christmas
While no film with Christmas as its main theme has ever won a Best Picture Oscar, one film in which the holiday is prominently featured did win the big prize. That was 1960’s bittersweet comedy, The Apartment, which takes place primarily from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Kruschen…
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Home Viewing with Peter #911
Looking for Mr. Goodbar has not been seen on home video in its original 1977 release version due to music rights issues until now. Fully restored from its original camera negative, the film is now available in limited release from Vinegar Syndrome in 4K UHD and Blu-ray. It will be given a standard release in…
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Oscar Profile #724: Joan Crawford Revisited
Born in San Antonio, Texas on March 23, 1904, Lucille LeSueur’s father abandoned her mother and older brother before she was born. By age 16 she had had three different stepfathers, one of them, although her mother’s marriage to Henry Cassin was a minor impresario in Oklahoma whose vaudeville shows gave LeSueur, then billed as…
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Home Viewing with Peter #910
It’s two weeks and a day before Christmas and the year-end precursor awards to the Oscars are in full swing. Traditionally, we would be planning spending part of the Christmas holiday season going to the movies to catch some of the big year-end releases. This year, we may have already seen everything we wanted to…
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Oscar Profile: George Cukor Revisited
Born July 7, 1899 on New York’s Lower East Side, George Cukor’s father was a lawyer who expected him to follow in his footsteps. Instead, young Cukor fell in love with the theatre, and shortly after brief military service toward the end of World War I, had his first job in the theatre as a…
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Home Viewing with Peter #909
In celebration of Columbia’s 100th anniversary, Sony has released a 20-film collection of Frank Capra’s films made for the studio between 1928 and 1939 plus a fall length documentary, Frank Capra: Mr. America. All the films are presented in standard Blu-ray, but nine of them are also presented in 4K UHD Blu-ray as well. Eleven…
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Oscar Profile: Thanksgiving 2024
This year, Thanksgiving at the Movies means catching up with either Wicked or Gladiator II. If you’re looking for something that celebrates the holiday itself, don’t look to current theatrical listings or what’s streaming on your TV, look to your home video collection which should contain a smattering of holiday movies. Holidays have been celebrated in…
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Home Viewing with Peter #908
New to home video on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray are four of the best suspense films ever made and a once popular musical released over the course of the last sixty-five years. The films in chronological order are Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller, North by Northwest; William Wyler’s 1968 musical, Funny Girl; Sam Raimi’s 1998 morality…
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Oscar Profile: Leonardo DiCaprio Revisited
Born November 11, 1974 in Los Angeles, California, Leonardo (Wilhelm) DiCaprio is the son of a German born mother of German and Russian descent and a father of Italian and German descent. His mother worked as a legal secretary and his father as an underground performance artist. They separated when he was just a year…
