Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile #443: Christopher Hampton
Born January 26, 1946 in Faial, Azores, Portugal to British parents, Christopher Hampton’s father was a marine telecommunications engineer. He spent his early childhood in Egypt, Hong Kong and Zanzibar among other places. He was educated at a prep school in Surrey, Lancing College in West Sussex and at Oxford University where he read German…
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The DVD Report #619
New This Week A Face in the Crowd may have been a flop on its initial release in 1957, but the film, given a new 4K restoration by the Criterion Collection, has long since been recognized as one of the great films of its era. Released the same year as The Bridge on the River…
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Oscar Pfofile #442: Frank Skinner
Born December 31, 1897 in Meredosia, Illinois, Frank Skinner was the composer of more than 200 film scores utilized in close to 500 films. He was the author of several textbooks on arranging, composing and orchestrating music, most notably 1934’s F. Skinner’s Simplified Method for Modern Arranging and 1950’s Underscore. A graduate of the Chicago…
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The DVD Report #618
New This Week The House of the Seven Gables, a 1940 Oscar nominee for Best Original Score, has been given a Blu-ray upgrade by Kino Lorber. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 gothic novel followed the author’s oft-filmed The Scarlet Letter by one year, but unlike that work, The House of the Seven Gables had been filmed only…
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Oscar Profile #441: Paul Lukas
Born May 26, 1891 in Budapest, Hungary, Paul Lukas was the son of Adolf Munkácsi and Mária Schneckendorf. He was later adopted by Mária (née Zilahy) and János Lukács, an advertising executive, possibly in 1895, the year given as his year of birth during his lifetime. Lukas volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1913 and…
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The DVD Report #617
New This Week None Shall Escape, a 1944 Oscar nominee for Best Original Story, has been given a Blu-ray only release by Sony. Although not a huge hit in its original engagements, this film, directed by André De Toth (House of Wax) was not a “B” picture as is commonly believed, but a major release…
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Oscar Profile #440: William A. Fraker
Born September 29, 1923 in Los Angeles, California, William A. Fraker III was the son of William A. Fraker, Jr., Department Head of Still Photography at Columbia, and his Mexican born wife who fled Mazatlan, Mexico with her mother and sister on a mule during Mexico’s revolution in 1910. Both parents died of influenza in…
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The DVD Report #616
New This Week Welcome to Marwen and On the Basis of Sex pose the same conundrum. What should we watch first, these recent narrative films about the real-life people portrayed, or the more acclaimed documentaries about their lives? I would say that if you have limited knowledge of them, watch the narrative film first, you…
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Oscar Profile #439: Bonita Granville
Born February 2, 1923 in New York, New York, Bonita Granville was the daughter of stage performers Rosina (née Timponi) and Bernard “Bunny” Granville. Unsurprisingly, she became a child actress at 9, and made her film debut at 10. Granville’s second credited screen role was as Fanny Bridges, the young dancer daughter of Una O’Connor…
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The DVD Report #615
New This Week Vice is the seventh of 2018’s eight Oscar nominees for Best Picture to receive a home video release. Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, A Star Is Born, and winner Green Book have all been previously released. Roma may never be released owing to the whims of streaming service Netflix, which…
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Oscar Profile #438: W. Howard Greene
Born August 16, 1895 in River Point, Rhode Island, William Howard Greene, whose nickname was “Duke”, was a pioneer in color cinematography. He won two honorary Academy Awards for his work before color cinematography became an Oscar category and was then nominated in each of the first five years in which it was a category…
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The DVD Report #614
New This Week If Beale Street Could Talk, based on James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, was one of the best reviewed films of 2018, a major year-end award winner that somehow managed to miss an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Writer-director Barry Jenkins’ prior film, Moonlight, won three Oscars out of the eight it was nominated…
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Oscar Profile #437: Tom Berenger
Born May 31, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois as Thomas Michael Moore, the future Tom Berenger’s father was a printer for the Chicago Sun-Times and a traveling salesman. After graduating from Rich East High School in Park Forest, Illinois in 1967, Moore studied journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, but decided to seek…
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The DVD Report #613
New This Week Mary Poppins Returns tries to recapture the magic of the 1964 original, and mostly succeeds. The film is a mirror image of the original, with characters and situations in the same mode, but different. Emily Blunt is the practically perfect nanny without Julie Andrews’ lilting voice, but with the same ability to…
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Oscar Profile #436: Greta Garbo
Born September 18, 1905 in Stockholm, Sweden to a mother who later worked in a jam factory and a father who was a laborer, Greta Gustafffson (later Garbo) was the middle of three children in an impoverished family that lived in a slum. Her father became ill during the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1919, began…
