Category: Home Viewing with Peter

There are lots of things we can do with our time other than watch movies, but the best place to watch them when we want to watch them is on a widescreen LCD or plasma TV screen via a state-of-the-art DVD player. The trouble is we are at the mercy of the big DVD companies…

Last week, I briefly mentioned the 50th Anniversary Edition of Funny Face, which I’ve now seen. Restored from the original negative, the film looks stunning. One of the most gorgeous films ever made, previous home video editions have been so washed out and ugly anyone discovering the film for the first time on VHS or…

Gross-out comedies don’t win Oscars but they do have a rich tradition in film…that is to say they make lots of money. Starting with National Lampoon’s Animal House in 1978, the genre basically was about, and generally appealed to, adolescent boys and grown men in arrested adolescence. In the 1980s, films in the genre included…

The movie musical has a long history going back to the first talking film, The Jazz Singer . In the first few years of the talkies it seemed every other film was a musical, from 1928’s The Singing Fool to 1929’s The Broadway Melody , Applause , The Love Parade and Hallelujah to 1930’s Under…

You know it’s Fall when Hollywood begins to release its big gun Oscar hopefuls and the year’s earlier contenders start to make it to DVD. So far this year there’s been only one film consistently generating Oscar buzz and it’s just been released on DVD. Actress Sarah Polley’s directorial debut, Away From Her, is a…

Sunday, September 16 is the broadcast date for the 59th Annual Emmy Awards. I basically hate the Emmys. I watch the show every year and kick myself afterward for wasting my time. The show is long and boring and they give out way too many awards, usually to the same shows and people they awarded…

We’re going to take a little digression this week, folks. Before there were DVDs there were CDs. Before there were movies available for home consumption, there were records. From the introduction of the LP, in the late 1940s, to well into the 1980s, one of the most popular recording genres was the original cast album.…

Oscar has never been kind to films made in languages other than English. Even in the waning days of silent films when all films shown in the U.S. were released with English subtitles, masterpieces such as Carl Theodore Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc and G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (both of which are available…

I began going to the movies in earnest fifty years ago, the summer I was 13. Many of the films I saw in theatres in 1957, as well as many of that year’s films I’ve since caught up with, are currently available on DVD. The year’s big awards winner, and still deserving of all its…

Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Columbo and Jessica Fletcher are beloved in their own right, but no sleuth, professional or otherwise, had as long an on-screen career as Charlie Chan, whose series of films lasted from 1929 through 1949, with occasional revivals on both the big and small screens in the years since. Chan,…

The story of the 300 Spartans fighting to the death against the Persian army has been told for 2500 years. The CGI effects-heavy film made from Frank Miller’s (Sin City) graphic novel doesn’t have anything in it likely to stay with you more than 2500 minutes (that’s less than 2 days). Miller, who never lets…

While any time may be the right time, hot summer nights are especially ideal for chilling out with a good thriller. There’s nothing like breaking out in a cold sweat to bring the temperature down. DVD companies seem to know that and have just released a slew of films that do just that. Focusing on…

If one hasn’t gotten their fill of Harry Potter by reading the newly-published seventh and final book in the series or going out to see the film version of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, one can plan a marathon showing of the first four films on DVD, Harry Potter…

What does an orphanage in Bombay have to do with a wedding in the Copenhagen suburbs? Nothing and everything as you will find out After the Wedding if you stick with it. The 2006 Oscar-nominated Danish film, directed by Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, Brothers), which plays like the last act of Fanny without the comedy,…

Bridge to Terabithia, the current number one best-selling DVD according to Rentrak, is the second filmed version of the 1978 Peabody Award winning novel. The first was a 1985 made-for-TV movie that played on PBS. Disney’s marketing of the film made it seem as though it were another Narnia. Though it has elements of Disney’s…