Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week The Criterion Collection has released a content-loaded two-disc 4K digital restoration of Raoul Walsh’s seminal 1941 actioner High Sierra on Blu-ray. Marking the moment when the gritty gangster films of the 1930s began giving way to the romantic fatalism of 1940s film noir, to quote the notes on the Blu-ray case’s back…

New This Week VCI Entertainment has released a 4K restoration of Angel on My Shoulder in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. This is significant as the 1946 classic has long been confined to public domain hell giving the impression that this was a shoddily made B-film, not the major production it was. The restoration brings it…

New This Week The Criterion Collection has released state-of-the-art restorations of Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned on Blu-ray. Released in 1986, Mona Lisa was the breakthrough film of writer-director Jordan who two years earlier had scored a cult hit with The Company of Wolves. His future successes would include The Crying…

New This Week Warner Archive has released Blu-ray upgrades of The Naked Spur, The Window, and Santa Fe Trail. The Naked Spur was the third of eight collaborations between James Stewart and director Anthony Mann, five of which were westerns. Winchester ‘73 and Bend of the River came before, The Far Country and The Man…

New This Week This coming Sunday, September 26, 2021, will be the 71st time Tony voters bestow their award for Best Musical presented on Broadway for the theatrical season for which they are casting their votes. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of Broadway theatres for the 2020-2021 season, this year’s awards are…

New This Week Universal has released a no-frills Blu-ray edition of State of the Union, Frank Capra’s 1948 film from the Howard Lindsay-Russell Crouse Pulitzer Prize-winning play of 1945. Set in the early days of the Truman presidency, the play was about the Republican Party’s search for a viable candidate to run against Truman in…

New This Week Beasts of No Nation makes its home video debut on a Criterion Edition Blu-ray and standard DVD six years after its Netflix streaming and limited U.S. theatrical run. Making a film of Nigerian-American writer Uzodinma Iweala’s best-selling 2005 novel was a passion project for director Cary Joji Fukunaga. The director of 2009’s…

New This Week 1967’s Thoroughly Modern Millie gave Julie Andrews her third smash-hit musical role after Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Looking rather shabby in previous VHS and DVD releases, Kino Lorber’s brand-new Blu-ray from Universal’s 4K restoration finally does the film justice on home video. The story from writer Richard Morris, best…

New This Week Unique among home video releases, the Criterion Collection’s Original Cast: Company has been released on Blu-ray, sourced from a newly restored 4K digital transfer. The holy grail for both documentary and theater afficionados, this rare look at Broadway behind the curtain was made the weekend just after Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking musical had…

New This Week Dominic Cooke is one of the leading directors of contemporary London’s plays and musicals. His production of Follies starring Imelda Staunton was filmed and given a limited release as National Theatre Live: Follies in 2017, the same year as Cooke’s first film, On Chesil Beach, was released. Cooke’s planned full-length film version…

New This Week Paramount Presents has released the theatrical cut of Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film Almost Famous on Blu-ray for the first time. Crowe’s Oscar winner (for Best Original Screenplay) was previously released on Blu-ray ten years ago in its Bootleg (director’s) Cut only. The new Blu-ray from a 4K film transfer includes both versions…

New This Week John Kraskinki’s 2018 dystopian horror film, A Quiet Place, was a huge hit. It was inevitable that there would be a sequel. A Quiet Place: Part II had its world premiere in New York on March 8, 2020, but further shows were put on hold as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. It…

New This Week With the DVD and Blu-ray releases of new films still at a post-pandemic premium, most new releases continue to be of classic films, many of them courtesy of Kino Lorber and Warner Archive. Newly released are four of note from Kino and three from Warner. Two of the Kino releases are Cecil…

New This Week The Pianist has finally been given a U.S. release on Blu-ray. The closest the 2002 Oscar-winning film came to a U.S. Blu-ray release previously was on a Region “A” Canadian release a few years ago. Based on the autobiography of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Shout Select release is loaded with extras…

New This Week Finally available on Blu-ray, Criterion’s 4K restoration of Howard Hawks’ 1938 comedy classic, Bringing Up Baby, was well worth the wait. Four years prior to the film’s release, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night and Hawks’ Twentieth Century ushered in the era of screwball comedy with Capra’s film winning a slew of…