Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile #591: Francis Ford Coppola Revisited
Born April 7, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, Francis Ford Coppola’s father Carmine was a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. His mother Italia was a former actress. Two years after his birth his father was named principal flautist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the family moved to Woodside, Queens. Originally trained as a musician,…
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The DVD Report #769
New This Week Guillermo del Toro’s 2021 version of Nightmare Alley is the fifth and last of the year’s ten Best Picture Oscar nominees to be released on DVD and Blu-ray prior to the awards being given out next Sunday. It follows the releases of Dune, King Richard, Belfast, and West Side Story. Licorice Pizza…
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Oscar Profile #590: John Ford Revisited
Today is St. Patrick’s Day. No one in the history of film symbolizes St. Patrick’s Day, and the Irish in general, more than John Martin Feeney, known professionally as John Ford. Contrary to public perception, Ford was not born in Ireland, but in in Cape Elizabeth, Maine on February 1, 1894. One of eleven children…
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The DVD Report #768
New This Week With the DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases of Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version of West Side Story, this is a good time to take a look at Spielberg’s Oscar history, his many nominated and award-winning films having long been available on home video. Spielberg is the most successful of living producer-directors. He…
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Oscar Profile #589: Douglas Trumbull
Born April 8, 1942 in Los Angeles, California, Douglas Trumbull was the son of an aerospace engineer who had briefly worked as visual effects creator for 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. His mother, who died when he was 7, was an artist. As a child, he liked to construct mechanical and electrical devices such as…
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The DVD Report #767
New This Week As the horrors of life in the time of senseless war unfold before our eyes in the ongoing TV and social media coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, two films new to home video deal with those issues in a muted way. Belfast, nominated for seven Oscars, and Flee, nominated for…
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Oscar Profile #588: Giuseppe Rotunno
Born March 19, 1923, Giuseppe Rotunno entered the film industry as a still photographer at Cinecitta Studios in Rome but lost his job due to his anti-fascist views. Conscripted and sent to Greece in 1942, he then served as a newsreel cameraman with the Italian army film unit. In 1943, he was captured during the…
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The DVD Report #766
New This Week House of Gucci was one of 2021’s most eagerly anticipated films. Despite mixed reviews and an indifferent box-office, it started off well with year-end awards, winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for Lady Gaga. Gaga was then nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Actress-Drama which…
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The DVD Report #765
New This Week The Criterion Collection has released a 4K digital restoration of Leo McCarey’s Love Affair by the Museum of Modern Art on Blu-ray. Long consigned to public domain hell, release prints of the film until now have all been regretfully dismal. McCarey liked the story so much he filmed it twice. His 1957…
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Oscar Profile #587: Andrew Garfield
Born August 20, 1983 in Los Angeles, California, Andrew Garfield is the son of an American father and an English mother. He moved with his parents and older brother to Surrey, England when he was three. He holds joint American and British citizenship. Garfield made his acting debut at 9 in a local Surrey production…
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The DVD Report #764
New This Week Few films have seen as many DVD and Blu-ray releases as Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy classic Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The 2001 DVD release from MGM, the initial Blu-ray release from Warner Brothers in 2011, and the Criterion Blu-ray from November 2018, sourced from…
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Oscar Profile #586: Geoffrey Unsworth
Born May 26, 1914 in Lancashire, England, Geoffrey Unsworth was a British cinematographer who worked on some of the most important films in cinema history spanning more than forty years. Unsworth began his career with British Gaumont in 1932 when he was 18. He went to work for Technicolor in 1938 where his first assignment…
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The DVD Report #763
New This Week Criterion has finally released a Blu-ray upgrade of Douglas Sirk’s 1956 film Written on the Wind after most of Sirk’s other films have long been available in the format. What is odd about the delay in the release is that Written on the Wind, long available on standard DVD, is the only…
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Oscar Profile #585: Judi Dench Revisited
Born December 9, 1934 in Yorkshire, England, to a physician who was also general practitioner for a local theatre and his wife, the wardrobe mistress, Judith Olivia (Judi) Dench grew up to become one of her country’s greatest actresses. Although she intended to become a set designer, she followed her brother Jeff into acting school…
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The DVD Report #762
New This Week Jane Campion, who is the presumptive frontrunner for this year’s Oscar for Best Director for The Power of the Dog is already an Oscar winner. She won her first Oscar for her screenplay for 1993’s The Piano, which has been given a transformative new release from Criterion on UHD 4K and Blu-ray.…
