Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Winner of 79 international awards, Ang Lee’s film of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain with a screenplay by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Hud) and Diana Ossana, was as sure a bet to win 2005’s Best Picture Oscar as any film in history. But it didn’t. Was it backlash against the film’s…

New This Week For me, two intriguing, if greatly different, films were the highlight of the 2004 Oscar year. They were Alexander Payne’s sly comedy, Sideways and Clint Eastwood’s modern tragedy, Million dollar Baby. Sideways entered the Oscar race with five nominations and won one. Million Dollar Baby came in with seven nominations and went…

New This Week The third time proved to be the charm for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings as The Return of the King, the third film in the J.R.R.R. trilogy which became the third film to win eleven Oscars, tying with Ben-Hur and Titanic as the all-time biggest winner. Everything comes together in…

New This Week For the first time in 24 years a musical won the Oscar for Best Picture. Rob Marshall’s innovative film version of Kander and Ebb’s Chicago was catnip for Oscar voters in that it was about two of their favorite subjects: show business and the newspaper business, as well as being set in…

New This Week Everybody’s favorite child actor of the early 1960s, little Ronny Howard directed his first theatrical film, a short, at the age of 15. By his late twenties and now known as “Ron” Howard, he had become an accomplished A-list director. By the time of 1995’s Apollo 13 he was already a seasoned…

New This Week 2000 was the year in which such eagerly awaited films as All the Pretty Horses; Pay It Forward; Unbreakable and The Legend of Bagger Vance disappointed critics and fizzled at the box office, causing studios to scramble for titles to promote for the year’s top Oscars. It might have been the perfect…

New This Week 1999 is remembered as the year the suburban expose, American Beauty,won the Oscar, but the film’s road to victory was an uncertain path. The National Board of Review began awards season with Sam Mendes’ film at the top of their list, but gave their Best Director prize to Anthony Minghella for their…

The 1998 Oscar season was the first one I participated in on the first Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board (UAADB). Discussions about that year still raise hackles on some of the participants who are still around.

New This Week Once in a great while I get a warm feeling about a film that either isn’t on anyone’s radar or worse, has been dismissed out of hand before it even opens. Such was the case with Titanic, which had been getting bad press all year long. Its cost overruns doubled its initial…

New This Week For much of the year, the only films it seems anyone was talking about were Fargo and Flirting With Disaster, which were released in early Spring. It seemed that they would easily be among the year’s Best Picture nominees. Fate was kind to the former, but had different plans for the latter.…

New This Week 1995 was probably the hardest year to handicap in all of Oscar history. The early awards favorite was the critically liked box-office success, Apollo 13, about the problems encountered by the moon-bound mission, and child star turned major film director Ron Howard did in fact win the DGA for Best Director, a…

New This Week Nostalgia was very much evident in 1994’s major Oscar contenders. Three of the five films nominated for Best Picture and all four acting winners were in films set in previous eras. The fourth Best Picture nominee was made in the style of 1940 thrillers and the fifth, though set in contemporary times,…

Peter’s making a big move cross-country. In all the hubbub and time-consumption required for such a move, he will be unable to supply his weekly DVD Report. He will return as soon as everything is settled. Please keep him in your thoughts and wish him luck in his new location!

New This Week CLICK HEREfor other new releases this week. Nominated for twelve Academy Awards, and winner of seven, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List received a total of 72 worldwide awards and 22 additional nominations. The Holocaust drama juxtaposes the awakening conscience of German factory owner Oskar Schindler with that of the conscienceless concentration camp commandant…

New This Week CLICK HEREfor other new releases this week. An old-fashioned western with a modern twist led the fractured 1992 Oscar race. Veteran Clint Eastwood’s revenge western, Unforgiven received nine nominations and four wins for Best Picture; Director; Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman) and Editing. Eastwood had also been nominated for Best Actor. The film’s…