Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile #316: Mercedes McCambridge
Born March 16, 1916 in Juliet, Illinois, Mercedes McCambridge was the daughter of an Irish-American farmer and his wife, who was of Irish, English and German extraction. Educated in Catholic schools, she graduated from Mundelein University in Chicago before embarking on a career as an actress. Called by Orson Welles “the greatest living radio actress”,…
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The DVD Report #492
New This Week Travis Knight is making his directorial debut with the brilliantly conceived Kubo and the Two Strings, but he is no stranger to the world of animated films. He was the lead animator on Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls, all of which were among the finest animated films of recent years. Although Kubo…
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Oscar Profile #315: Miklos Rozsa
Born April 18, 1907 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) to Jewish parents, Miklos Rozsa’s father was a well-to-do industrialist and landowner, his mother was a pianist. He himself studied the violin from the age of five. In 1926 he began studying music composition at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1929, his violin concerto was performed there.…
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The DVD Report #491
New This Week Two of the screen’s great fantasy films, Frank Capra’s nearly 80-year-old Lost Horizon and Nicholas Meyer’s nearly 40-year-old Time After Time, have been given very welcome Blu-ray upgrades. 1937’s Lost Horizon was originally released at 132 minutes, but over time lost 25 minutes of its running time mostly due to cuts made…
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Oscar Profile #314: Anne V. Coates
Born December 12, 1925 in Surrey, England, Anne V. Coates grew up thinking she’d like to be a horse trainer. After graduating college, however, she served as a nurse in Sir Archibald McIndoe’s pioneering plastic surgery in East Grinstead, but found it a harrowing experience. From there she gravitated toward film, where she worked with…
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The DVD Report #490
New This Week One of the most exciting shows on TV the last two seasons has been the Starz cable TV series, Outlander based on Diana Gabaldon’s series of historical fantasy novels. There have now been eight in Gabaldon’s series published between 1991 and 2014. In the first season of the show, based on the…
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Oscar Profile #313: Robert Riskin
Born March 30, 1897 in New York New York, Robert Riskin was one of five children born to Russian Jewish parents. As a teenager, he worked for a shirt-manufacturing firm which sent him to Florida at the age of 17 to run a film production company for them. He turned out one and two reel…
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The DVD Report #489
New This Week The Star Trek phenomenon is fifty years old this year. If you want to understand the phenomenon, it’s best that you immerse yourself in Star Trek – The Original Series, which ran on TV from 1966 to 1969. Failing that, you should at least familiarize yourself with Star Trek – The Motion…
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Oscar Profile #312: Natalie Wood
Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, California on July 20, 1938, the future Natalie Wood’s parents were Russian and Ukraine immigrants who barely spoke English. They changed the family name to Gurdin when they became U.S. citizens. At the age of four, while the family was living in Santa Rosa, the production company for…
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The DVD Report #488
New This Week Captain Fantastic, including the prestigious Cannes Un Certain Regard Directing Prize. The film, which is a modern take on Swiss Family Robinson, stars Viggo Moretensen as the father of six who is raising his children in the rugged Northwest wilderness to be self-sufficient. Home-schooled, the oldest (George MacKay) is smart enough to…
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Oscar Profile #311: Joseph F. Biroc
Born February 12, 1903 in New York, New York, Joseph Francis (Joe) Biroc started his career in 1918 at the age of 15 as a lab assistant at Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then America’s film capital. Later a camera assistant at Paramount Studios in Long Island, he moved to Hollywood in the…
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The DVD Report #487
New This Week Pan’s Labyrinth has been given a new 2K mastering by the Criterion Collection and released both separately and as part of the Trilogia de Guillermo del Toro on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The trilogy also includes the previously released Chronos and The Devil’s Backbone. While del Toro’s fantasy films are generally…
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Oscar Profile #310: Morrie Ryskind
Born October 20, 1895 in New York City, Morris (Morrie) Ryskind was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He attended Columbia University but was suspended shortly before he was due to graduate after he called university president Nicholas Murray Butler “Czar Nicholas” in the humor magazine Jester in 1917. Ryskind was criticizing Butler for refusing…
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The DVD Report #486
New This Week The opening sequence of David Yates’ The Legend of Tarzan makes us think we’re going to see a sequel to Hugh Hudson’s excellent 1984 film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, but soon deteriorates into another unnecessary remake of a classic. In this case, an oft-filmed one. Edgar Rice…
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Oscar Profile #309: Ida Lupino
Born February 4, 1918 in London, England, Ida Lupino was the daughter of actors Stanley Lupino and Connie Emerald and the niece of actor Lupino Lane. Her theatrical ancestry goes back centuries to Bologna, Italy. Accompanying her mother to an audition, she was given the role her mother, the lead in the 1932 British film,…
