Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Married people slept in separate beds and only the wicked had sex outside of marriage in old Hollywood, right? Wrong! There was plenty sex both inside and outside of marriage on screen before the Production Code came into full force in mid-1934, and good and bad people getting away with murder as well. Having hit…

Lots of people seem to have trouble with the ending of No Country for Old Men, this year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor. I don’t get what they don’t get. The dreams that Tommy Lee Jones reveals to his wife, Tess Harper, at the end of the film may…

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t bestow many career achievement awards. When they do, they’re usually reserved for legendary stars like Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, Deborah Kerr and Peter O’Toole or directors like Howard Hawks, King Vidor, Blake Edwards and Sidney Lumet who might otherwise not have an…

I had hoped to review Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There and Warner Bros. Fordibben Hollywood, Vol. 2 this week, but I’ve been told their DVD releases scheduled for today have been postponed, the former to May 6, the latter to March 25. No matter, there are still lots of other new releases to keep us…

Every year we thrill at certain Oscar winners, scoff at others. Here are a few thoughts on some winners for which the thrill remains. Six Best Picture Winners In only its third year in 1930, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its award to what is still one of the great films…

Just in time for this Sunday’s presentation of the 80th Annual Academy Awards, DVD companies have released some of the year’s major contenders. They include Michael Clayton,nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay; In the Valley of Elah nominated for Best Actor; Elizabeth: The Golden Age, nominated for Best…

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is an author whose time has come again. Since the 1990s, films and handsome TV productions of her handful of novels published between 1810 and 1818, have been made, remade and reinterpreted numerous times. Where once only Pride and Prejudice was widely known as a cinematic work, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park,…

A long, but ultimately rewarding film, Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is informed by its gorgeous cinematography by ace Roger Deakins and the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Hailed as a revisionist take on a time-tested story, the film really doesn’t add much to the legend…

The death of Heath Ledger on Oscar nomination day set a pall over the 80th annual Academy Awards, already suffering from uncertainty due to the Hollywood writers’ strike. It was just two years ago that the then 26-year-old actor was nominated for starring in the youth-to-middle-age story of conflicted gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar in…

Last week we took a look back at the Oscars of 25, 50 and 75 years ago. This week, with the release of the 40th Anniversary Edition of In the Heat of the Night and the forthcoming release of the 40th Anniversary Edition of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, it is a good time to…

With the nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards less than a week away, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the films Oscar liked 25, 50 and 75 years ago. Twenty-five years ago the Best Picture nominees were E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Gandhi, Missing, Tootsie and The Verdict,…

Inexplicably lost among the summer blockbusters, Stardust rightfully won the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award as the most overlooked film of 2007. Judging its DVD sales numbers, it could also emerge as the most overlooked DVD of 2007-2008. Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake), this rollicking adventure is worth all the year’s blockbusters and sequels…

A traditional way to start the New Year is to review the prior year’s best, so without ado, here is my ten best list of DVD releases for 2007. 1. Ford at Fox. A massive 24-film set including: Pilgrimage, The Prisoner of Shark Island, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath,…

Merry Christmas to all! And to all a good movie on DVD! With the opening of Tim Burton’s film version of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd this past weekend, it’s time for my third and final dissertation on the evolution of the movie musical. I left off in 1978 with the dismal screen adaptation of another…

Finally! I now have my copy of the Ford at Fox box set. It is the DVD collection of the year, and well worth waiting for, but I have to caution that it is not for everyone. The casual collector will probably be satisfied with the previously available Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk,…