Author: Peter J Patrick
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The DVD Report #455
New This Week Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth is thought to be a cursed play. It is never referred to in the theatre by its name but as “the Scottish play”. IMDb lists 98 exact title film and TV adaptations to date and numerous adaptations under different titles, most notably Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film Throne of Blood.…
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Oscar Profile #278: Oscar Future
It was last November when Wesley asked me to put together a list of ten films I was looking forward to in 2016. I couldn’t do it for various reasons. For one, I had just taken over the editorship of my community newspaper which required a lot of detailed concentration in putting together the combined…
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The DVD Report #454
New This Week Category fraud is nothing new at the Oscars, but this year there were more examples of it than usual with three performances that were clearly leads pushed by their studios for consideration in support, two of which made the cut and one which didn’t. Rooney Mara in Carol, out on home video…
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Oscar Profile #277: Donald Crisp
Born July 27, 1882 in London, England, George William (Donald) Crisp was one of eight children. Educated at Oxford, University, he emigrated to America in 1906. Spotted singing in concert on the ship, he was immediately offered a job by opera impresario John C. Fisher. He spent his first year in New York in Grand…
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The DVD Report #453
New This Week Films about newspapers, like the papers themselves, are a dying breed. If they have to go out of fashion, they are going out on a high note with Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s Oscar winning film about the investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests within the Archdiocese of Boston and the…
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Oscar Profile #276: Lauren Bacall
Born Betty Joan Perske in New York City on September 16, 1924, the future Lauren Bacall was the daughter of a salesman and a secretary who divorced when she was five. Bacall was her mother’s maiden name, albeit spelled with a single “l”. Originally interested in dance, she switched to acting in high school and…
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The DVD Report #452
New This Week Introduced with the title card “a picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear”, Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 film The Kid was the beloved comic’s first feature-length film. Personally restored by the then 83-year-old Chaplin in 1972 and now by Criterion on Blu-ray and standard DVD, The Kid is a triumph in every conceivable…
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Oscar Profile #275: Adolphe Menjou
Born February 18, 1890 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a French father and Irish mother who was a distant cousin of James Joyce, Adolphe Menjou was the epitome of debonair and suave to generations of film-goers for nearly fifty years, but he didn’t start out that way. He toiled as a laborer, haberdasher and sometimes waiter…
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The DVD Report #451
New This Week One of the most anticipated films of last fall’s movie season, Scott Cooper’s Black Mass, failed to live up to its promise of Oscar nominations for Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton. Although both these actors, as well as Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Rory Cochrane, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, and others…
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Oscar Profile #274: Tom McCarthy
Born Thomas Joseph (Tom) McCarthy in New Providence, New Jersey on January 30, 1966, the actor-writer-director was the third of five children of Carol and Eugene McCarthy, a salesman and later president of an NYC textile company. A graduate of New Providence High School, Boston College and Yale School of Drama, he made his screen…
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The DVD Report #450
New This Week One of Steven Spielberg’s best films and arguably the best studio film of 2015, Bridge of Spies tells the fascinating story behind an exchange of prisoners between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. In 1957, attorney James B. Donovan reluctantly defended accused Soviet spy Rudolf…
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Oscar Profile #273: Tom Hanks
Born Thomas Jeffrey (Tom) Hanks in Concord, California on July 9, 1956, America’s Most Popular Actor (according to a January 2016 Harris Poll) is of English-German ancestry on his father’s side and Portuguese on his mother’s. Raised by his father after his parents’ divorce in 1960, he attended Chabot College and California State University at…
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The DVD Report #449
New This Week You can get a jump on the remaining episodes of the PBS broadcast of the final season of Downton Abbey with the newly released Downton Abbey Season 6 now available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. For the last six years the show has been seen in the U.K. in the autumn…
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Oscar Profile #272: Jack Lemmon
Born John Uhler (Jack) Lemmon III on February 8, 1925, the future eight-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner was born in an elevator on the way to the delivery room at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. His father was the president of a donut company. Lemmon was president of the famed…
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The DVD Report #448
New This Week Every year, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its Oscar nominations, there are several potential nominees whose failure to be nominated is disappointing. This year is no exception. Only time will tell if purging the Academy of long-time members without an Oscar nomination who haven’t worked in ten…
