Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Here are some new DVD releases and a few recent ones that may have slipped through the cracks: Daniel Craig is back for a second go at James Bond in Quantum of Solace. With a screenplay co-written by Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash) and direction by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, The Kite Runner), this…

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, what better time to talk about my favorite Irish films? Here then my chronological evaluation of a baker’s dozen. Ten are available on DVD, and three that aren’t, but should be. No one made more films about the Irish than John Ford whose characters seemed to be Irish even when they…

Now that the Oscars are over, last year’s major award winners and contenders are being released on DVD and Blu-ray. The first Best Picture nominee to hit home video is Gus Van Sant’s Milk,nominated for eight Academy Awards and winner of two for Sean Penn’s portrayal of California’s first openly gay elected official and for…

Buz Luhrmann’s long-in-gestation epic Australia, about life in that country’s northern cattle country at the outset of World War II was one of last year’s most anticipated films. Lackluster reviews and tepid box office have culminated in an earlier-than-anticipated DVD release. Given the mostly negative reviews, I found the film better than I would have…

Guy Ritchie has had a checkered career. The audacious British director burst onto the international scene with the manic crime caper comedies, 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and 2000’s Snatch, and then squandered his talent with 2002’s Swept Away, a dreadful remake of the classic Italian film as a star vehicle/vanity production for…

This coming Sunday brings with it the presentation of the 81st Annual Academy Awards. Though none of this year’s Best Picture nominees is yet available on DVD, films with other major nominations have been released. Joining the previously reviewed WALL-E, The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and The Visitor are two films featuring…

Improperly marketed as a satire, Oliver Stone’s W. is a sobering look at the man who was president of the United States for the last eight years. Sure, there are some funny moments, but most of those are the ones that are overly familiar from the much seen trailer. The film covers the presidency of…

The legion of fans of the much admired actress can rejoice now that Warner Bros. has finally released some of her most requested films in its Natalie Wood Collection. Two of the titles in the set, Splendor in the Grass and Gypsy ,have been re-mastered for better picture and sound quality over their previous releases…

Lots to cover this week with the release of one major film from 2008 and fourteen older films, all but one of which are new to DVD. If you’re a Woody Allen fanatic you’ll love his latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. If not you’ll find little to like in it. The title doesn’t refer to…

The big release of the week is the Criterion Collection’s long awaited release of Douglas Sirk’s 1954 film Magnificent Obsession. John M. Stahl’s original 1935 version is included on a bonus disc. The original novel was written by Lloyd C. Douglas, whose religious-themed The Robe was a huge box office hit in 1953, prompting new…

There are lots of new and recent DVDs to catch up with this week. Sony/Columbia is one of the stingier companies when it comes to releasing classic films so it’s a cause for celebration when they come up with something for us like The Films of Michael Powell even if the collection contains only two…

It’s time to look back at the best DVD releases of 2008, which I cite as follows: Murnau, Borzage and Fox How the West Was Won (Blu-ray) Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration (Blu-ray) Fanny The Third Man (Blu-ray) Quo Vadis Becket (Blu-ray) The Lubitsch Musicals Persepolis (Blu-ray) The big news of…

Every year, DVD distributors make a dent in the long list of films not available on commercial DVD in the U.S., but it’s a slow process. This year they finally gave us Fanny and early next year they’ll give us Rachel, Rachel. We should be grateful for those, but there is so much more out…

Ho, Ho, Ho! It’s that time of year again. If it’s worth saying, it’s worth repeating. From November of 2007, here once again are a few of my favorite Christmas films. Though not a Christmas film in the strictest sense, so much of George Cukor’s sublime 1933 version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women takes…

The Fox in Fox’s massive new DVD box set, Murnau, Borzage and Fox, is not the studio but William Fox, the titular head of Fox Studios who was fast becoming the most powerful mogul in the business in the late 1920s. In 1926, Fox had already put into motion plans to catch up with industry…