Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile #248: Wendy Hiller
Born August 15, 1912 in Bramhall, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a cotton manufacturer, Wendy Hiller began her acting career in the 1930s with a repertory theatre in Manchester. Following her great success in 1934 in Love on the Dole, she married the play’s author, Ronald Gow, 15 years her senior, in 1937, the same…
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The DVD Report #425
New This Week Thomas Hardy’s 1878 novel Far From the Madding Crowd has been filmed at least five times beginning a hundred years ago in in 1915. The best known version until now has been John Schlesinger’s 1967 film starring Julie Christie as the headstrong heiress and Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp as…
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Oscar Profile #147: Agnes Moorehead
Born December 6, 1900 in Clinton, Massachusetts to a Presbyterian minister and his mezzo-soprano wife, Agnes Moorehead was encouraged by her mother to perform and was singing church solos at age three. At ten she joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera where she sang and danced for four years. At her father’s insistence she left…
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The DVD Report #424
New This Week Here we are in the eighth month of 2015. Windows, with great fanfare, has just released Windows 10 with free upgrades for Windows 7 and 8 users. With smart TVs, as well as smart phones, tablets and other equally intelligent hardware, access to digital media has never been greater. We can now…
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Oscar Profile #246: Marcello Mastroianni
Born September 28, 1924 in Fontana Liri, Lazlo, Italy, Marcello Mastroianni soon moved with his family to Turin and then Rome. He made his film debut as an extra in 1939’s Marionettte at the age of 14. His first starring role was in 1951’s The Accusation aka The Charge Is Murder. He became a major…
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The DVD Report #423
New This Week Criterion has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Stephen Frears’ breakthrough film My Beautiful Laundrette. Although Frears had made his feature film debut with Gumshoe in 1971, his interim career had been spent mostly on British TV with only the 1984 British noir The Hit making it to the big screen. Later renowned…
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Oscar Profile #245: Jeff Bridges
Born December 4, 1949 in Los Angeles, California the second son of actor Lloyd Bridges and his actress wife Dorothy Dean Bridges, Jeff Bridges made his screen debut as an infant in mother’s arms in 1951’s The Company She Keeps alongside eight years older brother Beau. The younger Bridges was a child actor on numerous…
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The DVD Report #422
New This Week A welcome surprise, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is not only the best science fiction film to come down the pike in a long, long time, it’s the best film released so far this year in any genre. Garland, whose novel The Beach was made into a film by Danny Boyle in 2000,…
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Oscar Profile #244: Hal B. Wallis
Born Aaron Blum Wolowicz on October 18, 1988, Harold Brent Wallis’ name was legally changed by his parents on September 14, 1889. In his early twenties Wallis was managing a Los Angeles movie theatre owned by Warner Brothers where he met and married comedy film star Louise Fazenda in 1927. Around the same time he…
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The DVD Report #421
New This Week Helen Mirren delivers another outstanding performance as Maria Altmann, the real life naturalized American citizen who took on the Austrian government in her 80s and won despite their efforts to stall the court case until she died. She would live to be 94. At issue was a painting of her aunt Adele…
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Oscar Profile #243: Morgan Freeman
Born June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee to Mayme Edna Freeman, a teacher and her husband, Morgan, a barber, Morgan Freeman has been ac ting since the age of 9 when he performed in a school play. After serving four years in the U.S. Air Force (1955-1959), Freeman began to pursue his acting career in…
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The DVD Report #420
New This Week With rare exception, Al Pacino’s films since winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman on his eighth nomination twenty-two years ago have been disappointing. Aside from his occasional TV work, nothing he’s done in the intervening years has put him in awards contention. His latest, Danny Collins, won’t do that either,…
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Oscar Profile #242: Jane Fonda
Born December 21, 1937 in New York, New York to legendary actor Henry Fonda and his second wife, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Fonda would become a legend in her own right at an early age. Traumatized by the suicide of her mother when she was twelve, the actress made her stage debut in a…
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The DVD Report #419
New This Week Criterion has released Blu-ray upgrades of two more cinematic masterpieces, The Fisher King and The Bridge. The only non-British member of Monty Python, Terry Gilliam achieved great success with 1974’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail which he co-directed with Terry Jones. He returned to the quest for the Holy Grail with…
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Oscar Profile #241: Al Pacino
Born April 25, 1940 in the East Harlem, New York to Rose and Salvatore Pacino who divorced when he was two, Al Pacino was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in the Bronx. Easily bored in school, he passed the time repeating plots and character voices from the films he had seen. Acting in…
