Author: Peter J Patrick
-
Oscar Profile #413: Nicholas Musuraca
Born October 25, 1892 in Riace, Calabria, Italy, Nicola (later Nicholas) Musuraca emigrated to the U.S. with his father in 1907 when he was 14. They settled in Brooklyn where his father’s brother was already living. Musuraca began his show business career as a chauffer for silent film director and producer J. Stuart Blackton. He…
-
The DVD Report #589
New This Week Leave No Trace is one of the rare films to receive a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Director Debra Granik’s first narrative film since 2010’s Winter’s Bone, which made a star of Jennifer Lawrence, Leave No Trace has the potential to do the same for New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie. Although McKenzie…
-
Oscar Profile #412: Brandon De Wilde
Born April 9, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York, Brandon De Wilde was the only son of Dutch immigrants. His father was actor and Broadway stage manager Frederic de Wilde (1914-1980) and his mother Eugenia (1915-1987) was a part-time actress. Frederic De Wilde was the stage manager for 1950’s The Member of the Wedding which was…
-
The DVD Report #588
New This Week The Farmer’s Daughter has long been one of the most sought-after titles unavailable in the U.S. on Laserdisc, DVD, or Blu-ray, even though it has been widely circulated in other parts of the world. Kino Lorber has come to its rescue with a stunning new Blu-ray and DVD release of the 1947…
-
Oscar Profile #411: Jackie Cooper
Born September 15, 1922 in Los Angeles, California, John (Jackie) Cooper (Jr.) was the nephew of actress Julie Leonard, writer Jack Leonard and by marriage, director Norman Taurog. His father abandoned the family when he was just two years old. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother who was an extra in films.…
-
The DVD Report #587
New This Week My Man Godfrey has been given a beautiful 4K restoration for its Blu-ray debut by Criterion. The look of it is leap years beyond Criterion’s previously released DVD which was itself a marvel considering that the film had been a victim of public domain hell after Universal goofed and failed to renew…
-
Oscar Profile #410: Peggy Wood
Born February 9, 1892 in Brooklyn, New York, Mary Margaret (Peggy) Wood was the daughter of journalist Eugene Wood and telegraph operator Mary Gardner Wood. A lilting soprano, she began taking singing lessons at the age of 8 and made her stage debut at 18 in a production of Naughty Marietta. She made her Broadway…
-
The DVD Report #586
New This Week Dietrich and von Sternberg in Hollywood was easily the best classic Blu-ray release within the last twelve months, but what were the other “bests” of this period? Looking back and slightly ahead, here are my top picks from October 2017 through September 2018: October 2017 Best New Release – Baby Driver (2017)…
-
Oscar Profile #409: M.J. (Mike) Frankovich
Born September 29, 1909 in Bisbee, Arizona, Mitchell John (Mike) Frankovich was one of four children of immigrant Yugoslavians Yova and Melica Frankovich. When the children were small, the Frankovich family left the copper-mining town of Bisbee en route to California but stopped in Tonopah, Nevada, for several years after the elder Frankovich won its…
-
The DVD Report #585
New This Week Woman Walks Ahead is a well-intentioned though historically inaccurate film of the events leading up to the assassination of Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in Grand River in the Dakota Territory on December 15, 1890. Portrait painter Susanna Carolina Faesch Schlatter, called Catherine Weldon in the film, was the…
-
Oscar Profile #408: George Clooney
Born May 6, 1961 in Lexington, Kentucky, George (Timothy) Clooney is the son of Nina Bruce (née Warren) and former TV host Nick Clooney. The late legendary singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was Clooney’s father’s sister. Clooney’s first role as an actor was as an extra in the 1978 mini-series Centennial filmed near his Kentucky…
-
The DVD Report #584
New This Week Book Club is a film for women of a certain age. That age is somewhere younger than 67, the age of the four lifelong female friends who are the main characters in the film. Anyone that age or more, and anyone who knows women of that age or higher, will know how…
-
Oscar Profile #407: Ethan Hawke
Born November 6, 1970 in Austin, Texas, Ethen Hawke has been actor since the age of 13. He is a great-grandnephew of Tennessee Williams on his father’s side. His maternal grandfather, Howard Lemuel Green, served five terms in the Texas Legislature and was a minor-league baseball commissioner. Hawke made his stage debut in a school…
-
The DVD Report #583
New This Week First Reformed is the latest in writer-director Paul Schrader’s long list of thought-provoking films. Schrader has said that no matter what he does, the first line of his obituary will be that he wrote Taxi Driver. Probably so, but he also wrote the screenplays for two of Martin Scorsese’s other most acclaimed…
-
Oscar Profile #406: Steve McQueen
Born March 24, 1930 in Beech Grove, Indiana, Terence Steven (Steve) McQueen was the son of a stunt pilot who left McQueen’s mother six months after meeting her. Unable to cope with raising a child on her own, she sent the future actor to live with her parents in Slater, Missouri in 1933 at the…
