Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Richard Linklater was among the first and most successful of directors to emerge from the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s, so why aren’t his films more readily available on DVD and Blu-ray? Linklater’s latest film, Bernie, is the first to get a Blu-ray release out of the gate since A…

New This Week The year’s first major box-office success, The Hunger Games has been released on Blu-ray and DVD with almost as much fanfare as the film itself. It went on sale at midnight the night before its official release date of August 18th at any retailer who cared to either stay open or open…

New This Week John Ford did not set out to make a cavalry trilogy, but because three films he made between 1948 and 1950 with John Wayne were about the U.S. Cavalry, those films have ever since been linked together as Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy. In point of fact, Wayne plays the same character in 1948’s…

New This Week Whit Stillman has made only four films in a twenty-three career. His first three, Metropolitan; Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco were made four years apart in 1990, 1994 and 1998 respectively, with the fourth, Damsels in Distress made thirteen years later in 2011. That title will be released on Blu-ray…

New This Week Terrence Davies’ film of Terrence Rattigan 1952 play, The Deep Blue Sea, gets the post-war era of still struggling bombed out London right. The story itself about the bored middle-aged wife of a British Judge who leaves him for a Royal Air Force pilot is somewhat less compelling due to the film’s…

New This Week Very few today would dispute Singin’ in the Rain’s reputation as the greatest studio musical of all time, but it wasn’t always so. Released in late March, 1952, the film was a modest success when first shown, but won no major awards. It was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture…

New This Week Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, filmed in 2005 and barely released in September, 2011, was generally well received by the critics although it did have some very vocal dissenters. I found myself decidedly in the middle. The film’s basic story is about a spoiled prep school brat (Anna Paquin) who causes a horrific traffic…

New This Week The Vietnam War lasted from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. It followed the first Indochina War which began in 1949. U.S. involvement began in what was then known as French Indochina in an advisement capacity in 1950. Involvement increased in the early 1960s when the…

New This Week This year’s Oscar winner, The Artist, is an unusual film in more ways than the one. The obvious is that it is a black-and-white silent film made in Hollywood by a French director with French stars with title cards in English. More than that, however, it is told from the perspective of…

New This Week Stage versions of Disney’s films have been a Broadway staple since Beauty and the Beast opened in April, 1994. The Lion King has been playing on The Great White Way since October, 1997, Mary Poppins since October, 2006. In addition to The Lion King and Mary Poppins, there are currently three other…

New This Week When I lived in Manhattan in the 1970s I attended many films on their opening day, often spotting celebrities in the crowd. Only once, however, did I attend a premiere with the star of the film sitting to the left behind me and commenting on the film for its entire running time.…

New This Week All DVDs discussed this week are Blu-ray upgrades of previously released films. The centerpiece of this month’s Universal 100th Anniversary upgrade is 1973’s The Sting which was nominated for ten Oscars and won seven. The film, which has been restored to its original luster, really didn’t deserve all those Oscars – it…

New This Week Generally dismissed by critics, Man on a Ledge, the feature film debut of director Asger Leth, is an efficient thriller. You may question the many coincidences and general credulity of it once it’s over, but during the film’s intense 102 minute running time you’ll be too busy wondering what’s going to happen…

New This Week Mary Norton’s 1952 novel, The Borrowers was previously filmed three times, twice for TV in 1973 and 199,2 and once for the big screen in 1997. Now Japan’s master animator, Hayao Miyazaki, has adapted it as an animated feature under the title of The Secret World of Arrietty. Although the direction was…

New This Week The story of Glenn Close’s thirty year struggle to bring Albert Nobbs to the screen dominated last year’s pre-Oscar nomination talk for almost the entire year. So much so, that by the time the film opened, its mixed reviews seemed to suggest that the talk was much ado about nothing. Nothing could…