Author: Peter J Patrick
-
Oscar Profile #233: Joaquin Phoenix
Born Joaquin Rafeal Bottom in Puerto Rico on October 28, 1974, the middle child of five of a New York Jewish mother and California father of mostly English heritage, his parents who were then members of the Children of God missionaries changed the family name to Phoenix. With older siblings named River and Rain and…
-
The DVD Report #410
New This Week Sometimes the story behind a film is as interesting as the film itself. Such is the case with four films new to Blu-ray, only one of which is making its home video debut. Described as an Iranian vampire western, Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is none of…
-
Oscar Profile #232: Rumer Godden
Born (Margaret) Rumer Godden in Sussex, England on December 10, 1907, the future novelist grew up with her three sisters in a section of colonial India that is now part of Bangladesh where her father was a shipping company executive. Sent to England for schooling, she and her sisters were brought back to India at…
-
The DVD Report #409
New This Week Another week, and another 2014 Oscar hopeful that ended up empty-handed has made it home to Blu-ray and DVD. Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, a biographical drama about artist Margaret Keane (born 1927) and her husband, Walter, was expected to be one of the major year-end releases and a serious Oscar contender for…
-
Oscar Profile #231: John Mills
Born February 22, 1908 in Norfolk, England, the son of a mathematics teacher and a theatre box-office cashier, Lewis Ernest Watts Mills is bettered remembered as the distinguished Oscar winning actor, John Mills. Interested in acting from an early age, Mills made his professional acting debut in Five O’Clock Girl at the London Hippodrome in…
-
The DVD Report #408
New This Week A Most Violent Year started out the 2014 awards season with promise, winning National Board of Review awards for Best Picture, Actor Oscar Isaac (tied with Birdman’s Michael Keaton) and Best Supporting Actress Jessica Chastain. Aside from a few critics’ nominations for Chastain, however, that was it for J.C. Chandor’s third film.…
-
Oscar Profile #230: Jane Darwell
Born Patti Mary Woodward on October 15, 1879 in Palmyra, Missouri to railroad president William Woodward, who claimed to be a direct descendant of Andrew Jackson, and his wife, the future actress first wanted to be a circus rider, then an opera singer and even thought of entering the convent before finally deciding to become…
-
The DVD Report #407
New This Week It’s funny how the awards circuit works these days. For decades a film that won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival in September was automatically a major contender for year-end awards up to and including the Oscar for Best Picture. The 2014 winner, The Imitation Game, joined the discussion,…
-
Oscar Profile #229: Keir Dullea
Born May 30, 1936 in Cleveland, Ohio, Keir Dullea was raised in New York’s Greenwich Village, the son of book store owners and educated in Pennsylvania’s George School, and later Rutgers University and San Francisco State University before making his acting debut at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse in 1956. He made his TV debut as…
-
The DVD Report #406
New This Week The film version of Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller Unbroken, about the life of Louis Zamperini, was the early Oscar favorite last year with director Angelina Jolie talked about as a potential Best Director Oscar winner and star Jack O’Connell as the next big thing. While the film opened to strong box office at…
-
Oscar Profile #228: Roger Deakins
Born May 24, 1949 in Torguay, Devon, England, the son of an actress and a builder, Roger Deakins developed an early love for painting. Educated at the Bath School of Art and Design and the National Film and Television School in Buckinghamshire, his newfound love of photography led to a job as a cameraman on…
-
The DVD Report #405
New This Week Before the awarding-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi made him a household name, Ang Lee was known for a trilogy of Taiwanese films, two of which were back-to-back Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees. The first of the trilogy, 1992’s Pushing Hands, about a Chinese tai chi master…
-
Oscar Profile #227: Robert Montgomery
Born Henry Montgomery, Jr., the son of the owner of the New York Rubber Company, on May 21, 1904 in Fishkill Landing (now Beacon), New York, the future actor-producer-director Robert Montgomery had a privileged childhood. His father’s fortune, however, was gone by the time he committed suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1922.…
-
The DVD Report #404
New This Week Among the Warner Archive’s new releases is a film I haven’t seen in nearly fifty years, and with luck will never see again. I remembered not liking Frank Tashlin’s The Alphabet Murders very much, but I had forgotten how really bad it was. Tashlin spent forty years in Hollywood from1933 to his…
-
Oscar Profile #226: Cary Grant
Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England on January 18, 1904, the future Cary Grant grew up in a working class family. When he was nine he was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. In truth, she had been placed in a mental institution. His father remarried when he was ten and…
