Category: Home Viewing with Peter

It wasn’t until after World War II ended that televisions became affordable. By the late 1940s, most homes in the U.S. had a 12-inch black-and-white TV set. Although most programming was live, TV stations also looked to old movies to fill the gap. By the early 1950s, you could find lots of movies from the…

It’s time to look back on what we reviewed in 2024 when home video releases became fewer and farther between and streaming failed to fill the gap for most of the year. Here is a reminder of a few of the home video releases that we reviewed: In January, we reviewed Shout! Factory’s mammoth multi-disc…

Saving the best for last, Warner Archive has closed out the year with the release of John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers on 4K UHD. Released in May 1956, The Searchers became the no. 1 film at the box-office in its second and third weeks of release, ending up as the tenth highest grossing film…

A handful of 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray releases have helped make the season bright and cheerful. Sony has unexpectedly released 1942’s The Talk of the Town, which has never had a Blu-ray release, direct to 4K UHD. Nominated for 7 Oscars, The Talk of the Town was one of two classic comedies made by…

It’s two weeks and a day before Christmas and the year-end precursor awards to the Oscars are in full swing. Traditionally, we would be planning spending part of the Christmas holiday season going to the movies to catch some of the big year-end releases. This year, we may have already seen everything we wanted to…

In celebration of Columbia’s 100th anniversary, Sony has released a 20-film collection of Frank Capra’s films made for the studio between 1928 and 1939 plus a fall length documentary, Frank Capra: Mr. America. All the films are presented in standard Blu-ray, but nine of them are also presented in 4K UHD Blu-ray as well. Eleven…

New to home video on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray are four of the best suspense films ever made and a once popular musical released over the course of the last sixty-five years. The films in chronological order are Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller, North by Northwest; William Wyler’s 1968 musical, Funny Girl; Sam Raimi’s 1998 morality…

Shout Select has released a 4K Ultra HD restoration of Oliver Stone’s 1989 Vietnam War film, Born on the Fourth of July. Nominated for 8 Oscars and winner of two for Best Director and Best Film Editing, the film with a screenplay by Ron Kovic and Stone, is based on Kovic’s 1976 autobiography originally scheduled…

1955’s The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell and 1956’s The Proud and Profane are two of the lesser-known war movies from the 1950s newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Directed by Otto Preminger, Warner Bros.’ The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, set in the post-Worl World I years, was nowhere near the success of the studio’s…

The Wizard of Oz has probably seen more home video releases than any other film. The new release, called The Wizard of Oz: 85th Anniversary Theater Edition (4K UHD + BD + DIG/Steelbook) [Blu-ray] retails for $75 but is currently on sale at Amazon for $68 vs the 2019 stand-alone 4K Blu-ray which retails for…

Josh Margolin’s Thelma is based on an episode in the life of his now-103-year-old grandmother, Thelma Post, when she was 93. Thelma was the widow of director Ted Post (Hang ‘em High, Magnum Force). She’s played in the film by June Squibb who made her Broadway debut as one of the strippers in the original…

The Criterion Collection released a DVD of G.W. Pabst’s 1929 classic Pandora’s Box in 2006. Three years later a 2K restoration of the film was made by the George Eastman House financed by Hugh Hefner. That restoration is the source of Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition which includes all the extras from the DVD release. The…

The Criterion Collection has released a 4K UHD Special Editon of Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim, two of the horror meister’s classic films from 1943. Producer Lewton, a longtime story editor for David O. Selznick, was hired to head RKO’s new horror unit in 1942 where he turned out…

Warner Archive has released three newly restored dramas from the 1940s on Blu-ray, of which one is a genuine classic while the other two are interesting footnotes on the era. The classic is 1948’s I Remember Mama. Based on the 1943 novel, Mama’s Bank Account, which takes place between 1908 and 1910 is not, as…