Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Little Women is the last of the nine 2019 Oscar nominees for Best Picture to make it to home video. Winner Parasite, as well as 1917, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, and Ford v Ferrari have all been previously released on DVD and Blu-ray. The Irishman and Marriage Story…

New This Week Show Boat first appeared as a best-selling novel by Edna Ferber (Giant) in 1926. It was adapted into a legendary musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which opened on Broadway in late 1927. It has been made into a film three times, in 1929, 1936, and 1951. Fans have been…

New This Week 1917 is the best film about the foot soldier since 1998’s Saving Private Ryan and the best film about the foot soldier in World War I since the triumvirate of All Quiet on the Western Front, Journey’s End, and Westfront 1918, all from 1930. What director Sam Mendes (Skyfall) couldn’t have known…

New This Week How Green Was My Valley had its world premiere at the Rivoli Theatre on Broadway between 49th and 50th streets on October 28, 1941. It wouldn’t open in Los Angeles until January 8, 1942 in a year when the cutoff for Oscar consideration was January 12 instead of December 31 of the…

New This Week Bombshell is a highly entertaining take on the Fox News scandal that evolved when Gretchen Carlson, one of the network’s star news anchors, sued network news honcho Roger Ailes for sexual harassment when she was fired by the network. Although the film is classified as a drama, much of it is played…

New This Week Dark Waters may not be at the top of anyone’s list of the best films of 2019, but it may be the most important. Directed by Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, Carol, Wonderstruck), the film is about Rob Bilott, the corporate defense attorney who successfully sued DuPont on behalf of its Parkersburg,…

New This Week Knives Out is a film that has grossed $164 million to date and has received considerable award recognition including an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. While I can understand the film’s popularity given the moviegoing public’s hunger for a great murder mystery, even if this isn’t that, it’s the film’s awards…

New This Week Jojo Rabbit is the seventh of the nine films nominated for Best Picture at the 2019 Academy Awards to be released for home viewing. The Irishman and Marriage Story are available for screening through Netflix. Ford v Ferrari, Joker, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and the winner, Parasite, have previously been released…

New This Week Ford v Ferrari was nominated for four 2019 Oscars and won two for Film Editing and Sound Editing. It was also nominated for Best Picture and Sound Mixing. As such, it falls behind 1966’s Grand Prix, which was only nominated for just three Oscars for Film Editing, Sound, and Sound Effects, but…

New This Week Grand Illusion was the first foreign language film honored with a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. We know that all the Oscar winners for Best Picture through 2018 have been released on DVD and/or Blu-ray, but what about the winners for International Film, previously known as Best Foreign Film or Best…

New This Week Parasite, which has been winning the lion’s share the foreign language film awards doled out by the various critics’ groups and organizations for films released in 2019, is the latest from director Bong Joon Ho, best known in the U.S. for his 2013 debut American film, Snowpiercer. Nominated for six Oscars, the…

New This Week Pain and Glory is Pedro Almodovar’s third film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film (previously known as Best Foreign Language Film) following 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and 1999’s All About My Mother. Almodovar was himself nominated for his direction and screenplay of 2002’s…

New This Week Holiday was such a huge hit in 1930 that they remade it eight years later. Ironically, the much better 1938 version was a flop at the time, but has long since been considered one of the greatest sophisticated comedies of all time whereas the 1930 version has been all but forgotten. Based…

New This Week 1917 may well be on its way to becoming the fourth film about World War I to win an Oscar for Best Picture, following Wings (1927/28), All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/30), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Those films and few others about the war have even been nominated for Oscar’s…

New This Week The Peanut Butter Falcon, Wild Rose, and Luce are three under-the-radar films that have factored into year-end 2019 awards but are not considered major players in this year’s Oscar race. The Peanut Butter Falcon was among the Top Ten Independent Films of the Year singled out by the National Board of Review.…