Author: Peter J Patrick
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The DVD Report #440
New This Week Of all John Ford’s great films, the one that tends to get the least amount of respect these days is 1937’s The Hurricane. Maybe it’s because the film has been out of general circulation for so long that younger generations have not seen it. Maybe it’s because of the advances in special…
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Oscar Profile #263: Paul Muni
Born Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund on September 22, 1895 in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine), Chicago reared Yiddish stage actor Muni Weisenfreund became one of Hollywood’s greatest stars after changing his name to Paul Muni. He married actress Bella Finkel after appearing with her on the Yiddish stage in 1921. Segueing from the Yiddish theater to…
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The DVD Report #439
New This Week Nostalgia reigns supreme with the Blu-ray and DVD release of Guy Ritchie’s update of the classic 1960s TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the new-to-Blu-ray upgrades of films originally released from eleven to sixty years ago. The original TV version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ran for four seasons beginning in…
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Oscar Profile #262: Tilda Swinton
Born November 5, 1960 to Judith Balfor and the now 90-year-old Major-General Sir John Swinton, Katherine Mathilda Swinton can trace her distinguished lineage back to before the 11th Century Norman Conquest. Educated in three schools, she was a classmate and friend of Princess Diana. After a break to do volunteer work in Kenya, she graduated…
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The DVD Report #438
New This Week Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional Sherlock Holmes has been a consistent film and TV favorite since 1900. The character’s latest incarnation is in Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes starring Ian McKellen who Condon directed to an Oscar nomination in 1998’s Gods and Monsters, for which Condon won an Oscar for his screenplay. Mr.…
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Oscar Profile #261: Conrad L. Hall
Born in Tahiti on June 21, 1926, Conrad Lofcadio Hall was the son of James Norman Hall, co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty, the cousin of actors Jon Hall and Ben Chapman. Originally intent on a job in journalism, Hall drifted into the University of Southern California’s cinema school from which he graduated in 1949.…
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The DVD Report #437
New This Week Inside Out is director Peter Doctor’s first film since winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for 2009’s Up. It could well win him a second Oscar. I wish that I could join in in the enthusiasm, but I can’t. I find the film a near-miss. It’s clever and cute, perhaps too…
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Oscar Profile #260: Phillips Holmes
Born July 22, 1907 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Phillips Holmes was the eldest of three children of actors Taylor Holmes (1878-1959) and Edna Phillips (1878-1951). He, his sister Madeline and their younger brother Ralph all joined the family profession, with young Phillips making his film debut as his father’s son in 1918’s Uneasy Money. A…
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The DVD Report #436
New This Week It amuses me to no end that young audiences that dote on superhero and cartoon characters turn their noses up at musicals in which singers spontaneously burst into song because they’re “unrealistic”. Audiences of fifty years ago had no such problem. Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, Original Broadway Cast…
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Oscar Profile #259: Maureen O’Hara Updated
This is an update of the profile I wrote on the legendary Irish-born red-headed screen icon, Maureen O’Hara, five years ago. I said at the time that she may well be the greatest living actress never to have been nominated for an Oscar. The Academy rectified that deficiency when they presented her with an honorary…
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The DVD Report #435
New This Week Masaki Kobayashi was one of Japan’s great post-war directors whose most enduring work was 1964’s Kwaidan, the most expensive Japanese film made up to that time. The film, which was an anthology of ghost stories, was a bigger hit outside of Japan than within despite having won a special jury prize at…
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Oscar Profile #258: Ridley Scott
Born November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Northumberland (now Tyne and Wear), England, Ridley Scott was the middle of three sons of an officer in the Royal Engineers. While he intended to follow his father into the Army, his older brother Frank having gone into the Royal Nany, his father encouraged him to pursue his…
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The DVD Report #434
New This Week One of the silliest disaster movies ever, Brad Peyton’s San Andreas is nevertheless a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously. The film opens with helicopter pilot Dwayne Johnson and team rescuing a woman whose car crashes and rolls down a cliff thanks to her texting while driving in…
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Oscar Profile #257: Helen Hayes
Born October 10, 1900, Helen Hayes (Brown) was the daughter of actress Essie Hayes and her husband, Frank Brown, a clerk. She began acting in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of 5, quickly followed by her first professional stage performance in The Royal Family. She made her Broadway debut…
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The DVD Report #433
New This Week Rumor has it that Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s When Marnie Was There will be Studio Ghibli’s last theatrical release. If so, the Japanese animation giant will have gone out in grand style. Yonebayashi was a long-time collaborator of Hayao Miyazaki, having worked on Spirited Away and other classics, acting as key animator on such…
