Author: Peter J Patrick
-
Home Viewing with Peter #884
Kino Lorber has released three films on Blu-ray originally released theatrically between 1947 and 1974 that seemingly have nothing in common other than that they all deal with death. Raoul Walsh’s 1947 film, Pursued was the first noir western. Based on a novel by Niven Busch (Duel in the Sun, The Furies), the film is…
-
Oscar Profile: Stephen Daldry
Born May 2, 1960 in Dorset, England, Stephen Daldry is the son of a singer mother and bank manager father. The family moved to Taunton, Somerset where his father died of cancer when Daldry was 14. Daldry joined a youth theatre group in Taunton where he performed for the local amateur society. At 18, he…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #883
Kino Lorber has released a three-film Blu-ray of Paramount’s historically significant Philo Vance Collection, the first of the three being the first murder mystery of the talkie era. There were twelve Philo Vance detective novels written by author William Huntington Wright under the pseudonym of S.S. Van Dine published between 1926 and 1939 when the…
-
Oscar Profile: Mark Ruffalo
Born November 22, 1967 in Kinosha, Wisconsin to a construction painter father and hairstylist mother, Mark Ruffalo was raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his family which included two sisters and a brother, moving to San Diego and then Los Angeles after he finished high school. Ruffalo studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory and…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #882
Sony has released a Blu-ray of Frank Borzage’s newly restored 1933 film, Man’s Castle. Sony, which owns the Columbia Pictures catalogue, recently found the missing footage needed to restore the film to its original 75-minute length after it was cut to 66 minutes for its 1938 post-Code release. The restored film was shown for the…
-
Oscar Profile: Candice Bergen
Born May 9, 1946 in Los Angeles, California to former Powers model Frances and ventriloquist-comedian-actor Edgar Beregn, Candice Bergen began performing on her father’s radio program at an early age and at 11 appeared with her father as a guest on Groucho Marx’s TV show, You Bet Your Life. Not a serious student, Bergen was…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #881
The year’s biggest box-office success thus far has been Dune: Part Two which has been released on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra UHD by Warner Home Video. The film, a sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film, Dune, is basically the second half of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel. This is at least the third iteration of the…
-
Oscar Profile: Burt Reynolds
Born February 11, 1936 in Lansing, Michigan, Burt Reynolds claimed that he was really born in Waycross, Georgia, that Lansing was where his parents lived when his father was drafted into the U.S. Army. The family moved around quite a bit after that. After the end of World War II, they moved to Rivera, Florida…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #880
The 1952 classic High Noon has been released on home video so many times in so many formats that it’s astonishing that it has taken this long to be upgraded to 4K UHD but that has finally happened thanks to Kino Lorer’s release of the film now owned by Paramount. The Stanley Kramer production was…
-
Oscar Profile: Dudley Nichols
Born April 6, 1895 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Dudley Nichols was educated at the University of Michigan. A star reporter and feature writer for the New York World in 1928, the year he married wife Esther Varez, he moved to Hollywood in 1929. He was under contract to Fox from 1929-1935 and RKO from 1935-1938 and…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #879
This week’s top Blu-ray upgrades are a diverse group of films stretching from the early 1990s all the way back to the mid-1940s, but they have one thing in common: change. 1991’s Dogfight gives us the premier sensitive boy actor of his generation, River Phoenix, as a cruel, foulmouthed marine whose sensitive side is a…
-
Oscar Profile: Unrewarded Last Hurrahs
Some longtime great actors and actresses go out in a blaze of glory with an Oscar nomination or even a win for their last great performance. Two-time Oscar winner Spencer Tracy gave four unforgettable last hurrah performances beginning with one in a film called The Last Hurrah in 1958, followed by Inherit the Wind in…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #878
Studios and other rights holders continue to be stingy with new video releases. You must either see new films in theatres or streaming on your TV. Blu-ray and increasingly 4K UHD Blu-ray upgrades of films previously released on DVD make up the bulk of home video releases now. Among the new 4K UHD releases, all…
-
Oscar Profile: They Were Never Nominated
Some longtime actors and actresses seem to be nominated for an Oscar every time they take a role in a high caliber film. Some are nominated just once or twice in their long careers. Still others fail to be nominated at all, no matter how hard they try. Everyone knows that such legends as Lon…
-
Home Viewing with Peter #877
With the 2024 Tony nominations just a week away, now is the perfect time to catch up with or watch again some of the previous Tony award-winning performances that were later captured on film. Tonys were first presented in 1947 for shows that opened on Broadway in the 1946-1947 season. Ingrid Bergman, a Best Actress…
