Author: Peter J Patrick
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Home Viewing with Peter
There is no article this week. We’ll be back next week.
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Oscar Profile: Kate Winslet Revisited
Born October 5, 1975 in Reading, Berskshire, England, Kate Elizabeth Winslet was one of four children of a barmaid and a swimming pool contractor, both of whom were part-time actors. Actor Robert Bridges was her mother’s brother. Winslet made her acting debut in a TV commercial at the age of 2, and as a teenager…
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Home Viewing with Peter #975
The Oscars are coming this Sunday. All ten films nominated for Best Picture are available for viewing at home as are the four films nominated for acting awards that are not nominated for Best Picture and all but one of the films nominated for Best International Feature. Here’s where you can find them: Frankenstein and…
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Oscar Profile: Franco Zeffirelli
Born February 12, 1923 in Florence, Italy, Franco Zeffirelli was the product of an affair between a fashion designer and a wool and silk dealer, both of whom were married to others. Unable to give her child either name, his mother came up with “Zeffiretti”, the little breezes mentioned in Mozart’s opera, Indomeneo. However, the name…
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Home Viewing with Peter #974
Not only have home video releases slowed down, but the processing plants that print DVDs and Blu-rays have also slowed down or gone out of business. That’s one of the reasons for the slowdown of Warner Archive releases. Half of their January releases were delayed until early February and only a measly three Blu-ray upgrades…
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Oscar Profile: Dustin Hoffman Revisited
Born August 8, 1937 to Lillian and Harry Hoffman, a prop supervisor at Columbia, Dustin Hoffman had originally wanted to be a concert pianist but turned to acting instead, making his stage debut at the Pasadena Playhouse opposite Gene Hackman in the late 1950s. He and Hackman moved to New York in pursuit of Broadway…
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Home Viewing with Peter #973
Song Sung Blue is a refreshing musical biography that brings back memories of such 1950s films as 1952’s With a Song in My Heart with Susan Hayward as Jane Froman, 1953’s So This Is Love with Kathryn Grayson as Grace Moore, 1955’s triumvirate of Love Me or Leave Me with Doris Day as Ruth Etting,…
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Oscar Profile: Robert Duvall Revisited
Born January 5, 1931, in San Diego, California, Robert Duvall was the son of an amateur actress and a U.S. Navy Rear Admiral. His lineage traces back to early Maryland. His father expected him to attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis, but he chose to act instead. Studying at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse while working…
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Home Viewing with Peter #972
The advertising catchphrase for Marty Supreme is that it is about a young man with a dream no one respects, who goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness Now on VOD (Video on Demand), the year’s most heavily hyped film was in production during last year’s Oscar race when its star, Timothée Chalamet…
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Profile: Kathy Bates Revisited
Born Kathleen Doyle Bates in Memphis, Tennessee on June 28, 1948, the third child of a mechanical engineer and a homemaker, Kathy Bates’ paternal grandfather was writer Finis Bates. A great-great grandfather was Andrew Jackson’s physician in New Orleans. Majoring in theatre at Southern Methodist University from which she graduated in 1969, Bates immediately moved…
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Home Viewing with Peter #971
Two of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture have been newly released on Video on Demand (VOD), the successor to Pay-Per-View for theatrical releases prior to streaming and/or home video. Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel about the courtship and early marriage of Agnes and William Shakespeare and their grief over the…
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Oscar Profile: Paul Thomas Anderson Revisited
Born June 26, 1970 in Los Angeles, California to Edwina and Ernie Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson’s father was a radio and TV personality, horror host and announcer and one of the first owners of a VCR with a vast collection of classic films for his son to cut his teeth on. Young Anderson began shooting…
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Home Viewing with Peter #970
Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Rex Ingram’s 1921 silent masterpiece, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the 1916 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez The four horsemen (War, Conquest, Famine and Death) wreak havoc on the family of Julio Madariaga, a Spanish born adventurer who amassed a fortune in the New World…
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Oscar Profile: William Powell Revisited
Born July 29, 1892 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, William (Horatio) Powell was the only child of Nettie and Horatio Powell. He moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri in 1907 where he graduated from Central High School in 1911. He then moved to New York where he entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in…
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Home Viewing with Peter #969
The weather outside is frightful but the availability of new film releases for your 4K and Blu-ray collection is delightful. Newly released are 2025’s Wicked: For Good, One Battle After Another, Bugonia, Roofman, and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, on 4K and Blu-ray; mystery classics Death on the Nile,Evil Under the SunThe Mirror Crack’d, and…
