Author: Peter J Patrick
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The DVD Report #379
New This Week Films about death and dying, especially those about children and adolescents with terminal illnesses, are generally not box office hits. You’d have to go all the way back to 1970’s Love Story to find a film about a young woman’s fight against impending death that brought in major coin. You’d have to…
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Oscar Profile #204: Anthony Hopkins
Born December 31, 1937 in Margam, Port Talbot, Wales to Muriel and Richard Hopkins, a baker, (Philip) Anthony Hopkins was encouraged to become an actor by Richard Burton, who was also born in Port Talbot and whom Hopkins met at the age of 15. Hopkins made his professional stage debut in 1960 at the Palace…
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The DVD Report #378
New This Week As comic book movies go, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the best of the CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) era. While I found the first film in the new series, 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, ultimately disappointing, the new film has a tighter script and fewer players to keep…
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Oscar Profile #203: Fredric March
Born August 31, 1997 in Racine, Wisconsin to John and Cora Bickel née Marcher, the future Fredric March was a rising banker with First National City (now Citibank) when an emergency appendectomy caused him to re-evaluate his life. An extra on screen from 1921, the year of his first marriage, he was on Broadway from…
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The DVD Report #377
New This Week Although Ivan Reitman has produced an occasional dramatic feature film in his almost-fifty-year Hollywood career, Draft Day is the first non-comedic film the director of Ghostbusters and Dave has helmed. Who this film was made for is open to question. It’s not a film for die-hard football fans who have derided the…
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Oscar Profile #202: Edmond O’Brien
Born September 10, 1915 in the New York City borough of the Bronx, Edmond O’Brien got his love of performing from friend and neighbor Harry Houdini who taught him the art of magic. A Shakespearean actor in his twenties, he had roles on Broadway in John Gielgud’s Hamlet in 1936; Orson Welles’ Julius Caesar in…
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The DVD Report #376
New This Week Stanley Kramer’s message films reached their apex with 1959’s On the Beach in which the world is coming to an end in the aftermath of a nuclear war which nobody won. Based on Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, the film focuses on five main characters – the commander of a U.S. submarine docked…
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Oscar Profile #201: Charles Boyer
Born August 28, 1899 in the small town of Figeac, France, the son of a merchant and his wife, Charles Boyer was an internationally famous actor who appeared in more than eighty films between 1920 and 1976. A philosophy student, he entertained soldiers while working as orderly in a local hospital during World War I.…
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The DVD Report #375
New This Week Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive is not only the idiosyncratic director’s best film ever, it could easily lay claim to being the best vampire movie yet made. Witty and constantly surprising, the film centers on centuries-old sophisticated vampires Adam and Eve (Tim Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) who survive on donated blood.…
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Oscar Profile #200: Teresa Wright
Born October 27, 1918, (Muriel) Teresa Wright became interested in acting after seeing Helen Hayes in Broadway’s Victoria Regina in 1936. Following her high school graduation in 1938 she was on Broadway herself as understudy to Martha Scott and Dorothy McGuire in Our Town. She took over the lead when Scott went to Hollywood to…
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The DVD Report #374
New This Week One of the landmark TV miniseries, James Clavell’s Shogun, first broadcast in 1980, was an event for which mass audiences stayed home much as they had for Roots three years earlier. The nine-hour film in which the Japanese actors speak Japanese without subtitles except when translating for captured English navy Pilot/Major Blackthorne…
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Oscar Profile #199: Alfred Newman
Born March 17, 1901 in New Haven, Connecticut, Alfred Newman was the eldest of ten children in a poor family. A child prodigy, he began studying music at the age of five, walking five miles each way every day to practice on a neighbor’s piano. He was able to supplement his family’s income by traveling…
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The DVD Report #373
New This Week In the light of the success of The Hunger Games comes the first of a series of films based on another young adult trilogy about a teenage heroine. Like The Hunger Games, the last book of the Divergent trilogy will be split into two films. The plot of Divergent is similar to…
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Oscar Profile #198: Vincente Minnelli
Born February 28, 1903 in Chicago Illinois to musical director Vincent Minnelli and his wife, Lester Anthony Minnelli developed his craft as a costume designer and set decorator. Changing his first name to Vincente, a Latinized version of his father’s name, Minnelli made his Brodway debut as costume designer for 1930’s Earl Carroll’s Vanities on…
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The DVD Report #372
New This Week Last week two by Billy Wilder, this week two by Delbert Mann as Kino Lorber continues to release outstanding United Artists films from the 1950s to the 1970s on Blu-ray. Mann won an Oscar for 1955’s Marty as did Paddy Chayefsky for his screenplay, Ernest Borgnine for his star-making performance and the…
