Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile #613: Christopher Nolan
Born July 30, 1970 in London, England, Christopher Nolan is the son of a British advertising executive and an American flight attendant and English teacher. He holds dual British and American citizenship as does his younger brother and sometimes collaborator, Jonathan. Nolan began making short films with his father’s Super 8 camera when he was…
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The DVD Report #791
New This Week Paramount has finally given us a U.S. Blu-ray release of Lasse Hallstrom’s 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Swedish writer-director Hallstrom scored two 1987 Oscar nominations for writing and directing My Life as a Dog, a rarity for a foreign film director. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape was only his second Hollywood film.…
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Oscar Profile #612: Gina Lollobrigida
Born July 4, 1927, Gina Lollobrigida is an Italian actress, photojournalist, and politician who is running for the Italian Senate in next month’s elections at the age of 95. Lollobrigida made her film debut in minor roles in 1946. Coming in third in 1947’s Miss Italy contest, she gained national exposure. In 1949 she married…
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The DVD Report #790
New This Week Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat has had an unusual history. Released between the director’s two most critically acclaimed films, 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans and 1999’s The Insider, the film met with mixed reviews upon its initial release but later became a huge hit with younger critics. Mann, who honed his…
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Oscar Profile #611: Bruce Dern
Born June 4, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois into a prominent American family, Bruce Dern’s mother was the niece of poet Archibald MacLeish and his father was the son of former Utah Governor and sitting Secretary of War under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Dern. His godfather was future Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. A lifelong avid runner…
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The DVD Report #789
New This Week 1955’s The Killing was the third classic heist film of the 1950s following John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Jules Dassin’s Rififi, but it was a first in many ways. It was the first film version of a novel by Lionel White (The Night of the Following Day) and the first to…
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Oscar Profile #610: Jeremy Irons
Born September 19, 1948 on the Isle of Wight, England to an accountant and his wife, Jeremy Irons is an award-winning British actor. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic where he made his professional stage debut in 1969. By 1971, Irons firmly established his stage career as John the Baptist opposite David Essex as…
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The DVD Report #788
New This Week Criterion has released a picture-perfect Blu-ray edition of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car. That Hamaguchi’s masterful creation would win every critics group award for Best Foreign Language or International Film of 2021 was never in dispute. That it would win the Best Film award from the three most prestigious U.S. critics’ groups,…
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Oscar Profile #609: Peter Bogdanovich
Born July 30, 1939 in Kingston, New York, the son of a pianist and painter and his wife, Peter Bogdanovich grew up loving movies. From the age of 12 in 1952, he kept a record of every film he saw on index cards complete with reviews and continued to do so until 1970. He saw…
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The DVD Report #787
New This Week Imprint has released a Blu-ray of Richard Fleischer’s 1961 film Barabbas, a biblical epic about early Christians in the tradition of The Sign of the Cross, Quo Vadis, The Robe, Ben-Hur, King of Kings, and the yet to be seen The Greatest Story Ever Told, taken from the 1950 Nobel Prize-winning novel…
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Oscar Profile #608: Benedict Cumberbatch
Born July 19, 1976 in London, England, Benedict Cumberbatch is the son of actors Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch). He is a grandson of submarine commander Henry Carlton Cumberbatch who fought in both World Wars and a great-grandson of diplomat Henry Arnold Cumberbatch, Queen Victoria’s Council General in Turkey and Lebanon.…
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The DVD Report #786
New This Week The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is an action-packed comedy co-written by Nicolas Cage superfans Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, and directed by Gormican. It stars Cage as himself and Cage superfan Pedro Pascal as a Cage superfan who convinces the actor to co-write and produce a film that the two will…
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Oscar Profile #607: Ernest Borgnine
Born January 24, 1917 in Hamden, Connecticut, Ermes Effron Borgnino, known professionally as Ernest Borgnine, was the son of Italian immigrants. His parents separated when he was two years old, and he spent the next four and a half years liiving in Italy with his mother. His parents then reconciled, moving to New Haven, Connecticut…
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The DVD Report #785
New This Week Everything Everywhere All at Once was heavily promoted as an action-adventure film in which an aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an adventure where she alone can save the world. The film’s multi-universe plot gets her into all kinds of crazy situations. For me, however, it works better as a carefully…
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Oscar Profile #606: Lee J. Cobb
Born December 8, 1911 in Bronx, New York, Lee J. Cobb (born Leo Jacoby) was interested in acting from an early age. He ran away from home at 16, joining the Harmonica Rascals with whom he made a short subject in Hollywood in 1929 before returning to New York where he studied accounting at New…
