Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Disney’s new film Saving Mr. Banks is a tribute to the perseverance of Walt Disney in getting Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers to allow him to make a film of her beloved character. The Disney studio is just as earnestly trying to get the legion of lovers of Mary Poppins to see…

New This Week Long regarded as one of the great films of the 1970s, the greatest in my estimation, Robert Altman’ 1975 masterpiece, Nashville has finally been given the deluxe treatment on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Set over the course of a few pivotal days in the country music capital, the film features Altman’s patented…

New This Week Is your life too hectic to schedule weekly viewings of even your most cherished TV shows? Does it frustrate you to have to wait a whole week to find out what’s going to happen next to your favorite characters? Now with full seasons of shows conveniently streamed or packaged in one DVD…

New This Week Sight & Sound, the influential British film monthly began publication in 1932. Since 1952 they have compiled and published a list of the ten greatest films of all time submitted by film critics, and latterly, film directors, from around the world. Interestingly, Orson Welles’Citizen Kane, which had led the poll from 1962…

New This Week It was fifty years ago this week that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated, a momentous event that no one who lived through it will ever forget. It was the first national tragedy that was played out before the public’s eyes on television and that medium…

New This Week Six of the week’s seven classic film upgrades on Blu-ray are from Warner Bros., the seventh is from Fox. A fitting Veterans Day release, William Wyler’s masterpiece, 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives, is the quintessential film about the hardships faced by World War II’s homecoming G.I.s. Its universal appeal holds…

New This Week Today is Election Day in the U.S. For those of you in this country, how do you plan to spend your evening after the polls have closed? Will you stay close to your smart phone, computer or TV waiting for the returns or will you completely tune out and read a book…

New This Week Movie production has changed so much in the eighteen years, that it seems incredible now that 1995’s sleeper hit, Before Sunrise, which was made on a shoestring, was in fact a major studio production. It was made by Columbia. Nine years later, the sequel Before Sunset was produced by another major studio,…

New This Week Science fiction and horror are film genres that have stood the test of time. From the silent era to today, both genres have meant big bucks at the box office while often winning critical plaudits as well. Two of this year’s most popular science fiction films, Pacific Rim and World War Z…

New This Week One of the scariest reads ever, William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist made just as scary a film when released in December, 1973. Eagerly anticipated, the film was a critical sensation and a world-wide box office phenomenon. Especially when seen at night in a darkened theatre, the film haunted audiences for…

New This Week By the end of the Great War, subsequently known as World War I, audiences were tired of films and plays about the war. In 1924, however, war stories were once again popular fodder. Broadway saw three plays that had opened in rapid succession, the most famous and popular of them being Lawrence…

New This Week No scandal ever rocked Hollywood more than that of Ingrid Bergman, the beloved star of Casablanca and The Bells of St. Mary’s who, leaving her neurosurgeon husband and ten-year-old daughter behind, went to Italy to make a movie and became pregnant with the director’s baby. The director was, of course, Roberto Rossellini…

New This Week So much for director Steven Soderbergh’s assertion that the made for TV movie, Behind the Candelabra would be his last film. He’s already at work on The Knick, a mini-series with Clive Owen due next year. Behind the Candelabra was a film he tried to get made for theatrical release but no…

New This Week Last year’s premiere season of Showtime’s Homeland won nine of the twelve Primetime Emmys it was nominated for including Outstanding Drama Series as well as Lead Actor (Damian Lewis) and Actress (Claire Danes) in a Drama Series. Just in time for next week’s Emmys, where it’s been nominated for eleven of the…

New This Week Michael Shannon turns in another excellent performance as another guy out of the mainstream, this time an introverted hit man nicknamed The Iceman. Ariel Vroman’s film may be the best American gangster film since GoodFellas, certainly since The Departed, it’s that’s good and that unsettling. The film opens with Shannon stalking and…