Author: Peter J Patrick
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Oscar Profile #212: Jack Nicholson
Born April 22, 1937 in Neptune, New Jersey, Jack Nicholson was raised by his maternal grandparents believing them to be his parents and his showgirl mother his older sister. He grew up on the Jersey shore, attending high school in Manasquan. He learned the truth from a reporter in the mid-seventies after both his mother…
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The DVD Report #386
New This Week Philip Seymour Hoffman gives perhaps his finest performance as a German intelligence officer in A Most Wanted Man. Reassigned to the port city of Hamburg after botching an operation in Berlin, Hoffman’s character uncovers the details of the funding of Islamic extremists that has befuddled his bosses as well as the Americans…
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Oscar Profile #211: Dustin Hoffman
Born August 8, 1937 to Lillian and Harry Hoffman, a prop supervisor at Columbia, Dustin Hoffman had originally wanted to be a concert pianist but turned to acting instead, making his stage debut at the Pasadena Playhouse opposite Gene Hackman in the late 1950s. He and Hackman moved to New York in pursuit of Broadway…
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The DVD Report #385
New This Week You want box sets and compilations? We got box sets and compilations. Of the seventeen films Steven Spielberg made between 1971’s Duel and 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, nine of them were made for Universal. Eight of them are included in Universal’s new-to-Blu-ray Steven Spielberg Director’s Collection. Missing is Schindler’s List,…
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Oscar Profile #210: Joan Fontaine
Born October 22, 1917 to British parents in Tokyo, Japan, Joan de Bouvier de Havilland, better known as Joan Fontaine, was the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland by fifteen months. A sickly child, Joan moved to California with her mother and sister after her parents’ separation in 1919 while still a baby. She returned…
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The DVD Report #384
New This Week Federico Fellini’s 1960 classic, La Dolce Vita was the fifth highest grossing film of 1961, the year of its U.S. release, coming in behind 101 Dalmatians, West Side Story, El Cid and The Parent Trap, raking in more than twice as much as the next highest grossing film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which…
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Oscar Profile #209: Franz Waxman
Born December 24, 1906 in Upper Silesia, Germany, now Slaskie, Poland, Franz Wachsmann, later Waxman, pursued his dream of a career in music despite his family’s misgivings, supplementing his piano, harmony and composition lessons with his salary as a bank teller. The young composer found a job arranging music for a popular Berlin jazz band…
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The DVD Report #383
New This Week One of the nicest surprises of the last TV season was the miniseries Fargo, based on, but different from the 1996 film of the same name, produced by, but not directed by, the Coen Brothers. The protagonist here is Billy Bob Thornton as a malevolent killer, and he’s as good as you…
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Oscar Profile #208: Irving Berlin
Born May 11, 1888 in Tyumen, Russian Empire, Israel Isidore Beilin, whose family name was later changed to Baline became known to the world as Irving Berlin. With his family at the age of five, he escaped a pogrom by the Cossacks after the burning of their house to make their way to New York.…
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The DVD Report #382
New This Week Considered by many to be the greatest horror film of all time, William Friedkin’s 1973 classic The Exorcist and its 2000 director’s extended cut re-release have seen numerous DVD releases going back to 1998, as have the original’s four sequels, 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1990’s The Exorcist III, 2004’s Exorcist: The…
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Oscar Profile #207: George C. Scott
Born October 18, 1927, George C. (Campbell) Scott was the son of a Buick executive who raised him single-handedly after his mother’s death when he was just 8 years old. Enlisting in the U.S. Marines at 18, his primary duty from 1945 to 1949 was to serve as an honor guard at the burial of…
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The DVD Report #381
New This Week For his first feature film, French director Serge Bourguinon wanted Hollywood star Steve McQueen to play the traumatized amnesiac who forms a friendship with a lonely 12-year-old girl in Sundays and Cybèle, but producer Romain Pines told him he couldn’t afford McQueen, but he could afford Hardy Kruger. Waylaid by Pines on…
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Oscar Profile #206: Victor Fleming
Born February 23, 1989 in La Canada, California, Victor Fleming entered the film business as a stunt man in 1910. He had a side job repairing cars. It was in this capacity that he was discovered by director Allan Dwan while working on one of his his cars in 1913. Dwan gave him a job…
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The DVD Report #380
New This Week An early front-runner for this year’s Best Foreign Film award, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida is the Polish-born director’s first film made in his homeland. The Oxford-educated documentarian and feature film director has made an astonishing film set in the early 1960s and filmed as though it were actually made in 1962. The film…
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Oscar Profile #205: James Wong Howe
Born Wong Tung Jim in Canton, China on August 28, 1899, master cinematographer James Wong Howe emigrated to America at the age of five to join his father who had emigrated to the state of Washington the year of young Jimmie’s birth. He purchased his first camera from a drugstore at the age of 12.…
