Author: Peter J Patrick
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The DVD Report #470
New This Week Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special is the best supernatural thriller to come down the pike in a long time. It is also one of the few good films to have been released so far this year, which is not surprising as it comes from the director of Take Shelter and Mud, two very…
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Oscar Profile #293: Kathy Bates
Born Kathleen Doyle Bates in Memphis, Tennessee on June 28, 1948, the third child of a mechanical engineer and a homemaker, Kathy Bates’ paternal grandfather was author Finis Bates. A great-great grandfather was Andrew Jackson’s physician in New Orleans. Majoring in theatre at Southern Methodist University from which she graduated in 1969, Bates immediately moved…
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The DVD Report #469
New This Week Criterion has done its usual fine job of restoring Jean Renoir’s first masterpiece, 1931’s La Chienne (The Bitch), as well as his earlier-in-the-year first talkie, On Purge Bébé (Baby’s Laxative), which is presented as an extra on the release of La Chienne, its first ever home video release in the U.S. The…
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Oscar Profile #292: Faye Dunaway
Born January 14, 1941 in Bascom, Florida to John Dunaway, a U.S. Army NCO and his wife Grace, a housewife, Faye Dunaway grew up in Florida, attending both Florida State University and the University of Florida before attending Boston University from which she graduated with a degree in theatre in 1962. Immediately after graduation she…
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The DVD Report #468
New This Week Joel and Ethan Coen have had a strong track record writing, directing and producing films for more than thirty years, so they’re allowed an occasional misstep. One such misstep is their latest film, Hail, Caesar!, an ambitious take on the Hollywood studio system in its last days in the early 1950s. Billed…
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Oscar Profile #291: James Gleason
Born May 23, 1882 in New York, New York, writer-actor-producer-director James Gleason was the son of actors William and Mina Gleason (nee Crolius). He began acting in his parents’ stock company in Oakland, California as a teenager before serving in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. After the war he played on the London…
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The DVD Report #467
New This Week With the 2016 Tony Awards being presented this coming Sunday June 12th, now is a great time to reflect on the Movie musicals adapted from Broadway shows since the dawn of the Tony era in 1947. It wasn’t until 1953 that the hit musicals of the era began to show up on…
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Oscar Profile #290: Howard Hawks
Born May 30, 1896 in Goshen, Indiana, Howard Winchester Hawks was the eldest of five children of one of the Midwest’s wealthiest families. The family moved to Pasadena, California due to his mother’s poor health after the birth of her fifth child in 1906. He would attend Cornell University in Ithaca, New York studying mechanical…
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The DVD Report #466
New This Week The Weinsteins (Harvey and Bob) are notorious for making drastic changes to films before their release, none more so than the 1998 Miramax release 54, which had been written and filmed by its writer-director Mark Christopher as Saturday Night Fever meets Cabaret but came across as a poor man’s Thank God It’s…
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Oscar Profile #289: John Carradine
Born Richmond Reed Carradine on February 5, 1906 in New York, New York, and billed as Peter Richmond, then John Peter Richmond through 1935, John Carradine eventually amassed 350 known screen and television credits beyond the 70 he claimed he did not get credit for in silent films, making him the most prolific actor in…
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The DVD Report #465
New This Week Film noir, a French term meaning “black” or “dark” film, was coined by Italy-born French film critic Nino Frank in 1946. It’s a term that is applied to the stylish Hollywood crime dramas that were prevalent from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Many of these films were not major hits…
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Oscar Profile #288: Henry Hathaway
Born March 13, 1888 in Sacramento, California as Henri Leopold de Fiennes Hathaway, the child actor turned director Henry Hathaway was the son of American actor and stage manager Rhody Hathaway and his wife, Belgian aristocrat Lillie de Fiennes who acted under the stage name Jean Hathaway. Young Hathaway began his film career circa 1910…
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The DVD Report #464
New This Week I finally caught up with the box office phenomenon Deadpool on Blu-ray. I laughed myself silly during the hilarious opening credits, which spoofs both the action sub-genre of superhero movies and the film itself. I wish the rest of the film had been as clever or as funny. Ryan Reynolds gives one…
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Oscar Profile #287: Christopher Plummer
Born December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, (Arthur) Christopher (Orne) Plummer was the son of a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University and a stockbroker. His great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Sir John Abbott, the third Prime Minister of Canada in the 1890s. Actor Nigel Bruce was his second cousin.…
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The DVD Report #463
New This Week It looks like I jumped the gun on Deadpool, which releases this week, not last week. That’s OK, there were other releases to keep me busy in the interim. Acorn has released a superb version of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None from the recently aired TV miniseries. There have been…
