Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Warner Home Video has released Amadeus on 4K Ultra HD. Nominated for 11 Oscars and winner of 8, Amadeus was based on Peter Shaffer’s acclaimed play originally performed in London with Paul Scofield as Antonio Salieri, the 18th Century court composer of Emperor Joseph II and Simon Callow as his rival, boy musical genius, Wolfgang…

In 2025, around 19.7 million Americans watched the Academy Awards ceremony. Oscar viewership fluctuates year by year, however, the last time the ceremony drew in a U.S. audience of more than 40 million was back in 2014. The figure recorded in 2021 was the lowest ever and marked a drop-off of over 50 percent from…

I am often asked what my favorite year at the movies was. The answer is I don’t have one but ask me what do I think the most interesting year at the movies was, and I will tell you without hesitation, 1968. What makes 1968 so interesting is that it was a transition year. The…

Just days out from this year’s Oscars, you can find all but two of this year’s nominees for Best Picture and other major awards streaming on your TV in the U.S. and in most other places in the free world. Some are also available on Blu-ray. The two not yet available are A Complete Unknown…

Whether you’ve seen this year’s Oscar-nominated actors in their currently-Oscar-nominated performances or not but would like to see them in other projects, here’s a rundown of some of the films in which they also gave outstanding performances. Someone the other day remarked that Adrien Brody is the male Vivien Leigh. British acting legend Leigh played…

Three of this year’s major Oscar nominees have just been given sparkling 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo releases. Universal is responsible for two of them, Wicked which it released theatrically, and Conclave, which was released theatrically by its subsidiary, Focus Features. Wicked was a box-office phenomenon that quickly became the highest grossing adaptation of a…

The Criterion Collection has released 4K Blu-ray upgrades of two legendary films of the last century, 1950’s Winchester ‘73 and 1990’s The Grifters. Anthony Mann, who rose to fame with such 1940s films noir as T-Men and He Walked by Night, turned to the western genre with the noir western, Winchester ‘73, his first film…

Kino Lorber has released two of 1958’s brightest comedies, Teacher’s Pet and Houseboat, on long overdue Blu-rays. Both films were nominated for two Oscars each. Both received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, losing to The Defiant Ones. Teacher’s Pet was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Gig Young. Houseboat was also nominated for Best…

After several delays due to the horrific L.A. fires, we are just two days from the announcement of the Oscar nominations for films released in 2024. My expectation is that the ten films nominated for Best Picture will be Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, A Real Pain, Sing…

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…