Author: Peter J Patrick
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The DVD Report #552
New This Week Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner was itself based on Philip K. Dick’s 1966 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Hampton Fancher, who was one of three screenwriters on the earlier film, as was Dick, was one of two on the new one. Amazingly, you…
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Oscar Profile #375: Bruce Beresford
Born August 16, 1940 in Sydney, Australia, Bruce Beresford was the son of an electrical goods salesman and his homemaker wife. Interested in film making from an early age, he made several short films beginning in 1959 while still in his teens. Having graduated from the University of Sydney in 1964, he moved to England…
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The DVD Report #551
New This Week It, Stephen King’s 1986 novel, was first filmed as an award-winning TV miniseries in 1990. The first part dealt with the disappearance of children in 1960 and the second part with new disappearances thirty years later. The 2017 theatrical version, deals with the first part with the time updated to 1989. With…
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Oscar Profile #374: Harold Rosson
Born April 6, 1895 in New York, New York, Harold “Hal” Rosson came from a film-making family. His older brothers, Arthur and Richard were successful directors and his younger sister, Helene, was an actress. Rosson began his film career in 1908 as an actor at the Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn, working his way up the…
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The DVD Report #550
New This Week American Made is about a clandestine CIA-run drug-trafficking operation in Central America that was exposed as part of the Iran-Contra Affair during the latter days of the Reagan presidency. It follows the exploits of former TWA pilot Barry Seals from the age of 32 in 1972 to his murder in 1986 by…
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Oscar Profile #373: Fred MacMurray
Born Fredrick Martin MacMurray on August 30, 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois, Young Fred was raised in Wisconsin from the age of five. A saxophone player in college, he later became a singer and as such had featured roles in the 1930’s Three’s a Crowd and 1933’s Roberta on Broadway. He became a life-long friend with…
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The DVD Report #549
New This Week The Mountain Between Us was the last of the major 2017 films released to the home video market in 2017. The film from Hany Abu-Assad, the acclaimed Dutch/Arabian director of Paradise Now, features excellent cinematography from Mandy Walker (Hidden Figures) and the expected fine performances from stars Idris Elba as a doctor…
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Oscar Profile #372: Gloria Grahame
Born November 28, 1923 in Los Angeles, California to Reginald Hallward, an architect and author, and Jean Grahame, a British stage actress and acting teacher, Gloria Grahame (Hallward) began acting in theatre while still in high school. Signed to an MGM contract she made her film debut in 1944’s Blonde Fever, followed by a small…
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The DVD Report #548
New This Week Dunkirk is one of the year’s most acclaimed films. Before Christmas, it had already earned 99 nominations and 18 wins from various awards bodies. Critically, it is the best reviewed war movie since Saving Private Ryan nearly twenty years ago. On a technical level, it is an outstanding film. Dramatically, however, like…
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Oscar Profile #371: Christmas Movies
Technically, no Christmas movie has ever won a Best Picture Oscar, but one film in which the holiday is prominently featured did win the big prize. 1960’s The Apartment, which takes place primarily from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve, doesn’t so much celebrate the holiday as observe it. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Jack…
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The DVD Report #547
New This Week Detroit is the latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal who won Oscars for 2009’s intense Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker, and additional nominations for 2012’s equally intense hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty. This time they’ve turned their attention to the race riots in the…
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Oscar Profile #370: Charlton Heston
Born October 4, 1923 in No Man’s Land, now part of Wilmette, a wealthy suburb of Chicago, Illinois, John Charles Carter became Charlton Heston after his parents’ divorce, his mother’s remarriage and adoption by his stepfather. Charlton was his mother’s maiden name, Heston was her new husband’s surname. The highly imaginative child became interested in…
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The DVD Report #546
New This Week Auntie Mame, everybody’s favorite relative, was based on novelist Patrick Dennis’ real-life eccentric aunt who first came to the world’s attention in his 1955 bestselling novel, quickly followed by the 1956 Broadway smash hit starring Rosalind Russell and then the Oscar-nominated 1958 film that became the biggest box-office hit of 1959. Filmed…
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Oscar Profile #369: Frances McDormand
Born June 23, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois, Frances McDormand was the adopted daughter of Canadian-born parents, Noreen Eloise (Nickleson), a nurse from Ontario, and The Rev. Vernon Weir McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister from Nova Scotia, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She began her stage career after graduating from Yale in…
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The DVD Report #545
New This Week Your Name., not to be confused with the current Call Me by Your Name, was the highest grossing film in Japan in 2016 and the fourth highest grossing film in Japanese history. Less successful in the U.S., the film earned the 2016 Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Animated Feature, and…
