Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Made in Italy marks the feature writing and directing debut of actor James D’Arcy (Dunkirk). It also marks the first starring role of Micheal Richardson, the actor who legally changed his name from Neeson to that of his late mother with his father’s blessing in 2018. Richardson plays the soon to be…

New This Week Last week, I recommended six TV series to consider for giving as gifts to those who still prefer physical media to here today-gone tomorrow streaming services. This week I have six times six or thirty-six recommendations for you to buy for yourself or for giving to a serious cineaste who doesn’t already…

New This Week Inasmuch as this is my 700th DVD Report, it’s as good a time as any to take a look back at my first column which appeared on May 8, 2007 when the DVDs released that day were spiffed up re-releases of The Caine Mutiny, To Catch a Thief, The Guns of Navarone,…

New This Week Australia has long produced high quality Blu-rays of Hollywood films unavailable in the U.S., but those Blu-rays were not playable on U.S. Region 1 players and available only as imports. Earlier this year, Australia’s Imprint label from ViaVision began releasing Hollywood films on region-free Blu-rays that will play on U.S. Region 1…

New This Week Earlier this year, Criterion released a long overdue Blu-ray upgrade of Destry Rides Again starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Released in New York in late 1939, the film had its Los Angeles debut in early 1940, becoming eligible for the 1940 Academy Awards, the year Stewart won his Oscar for The…

New This Week Criterion capped off a stellar month of Blu-ray releases with a director-approved two-Blu-ray special edition of Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite from a new 4K digital master. The first disc is the original theatrical release of the film with commentary by Bong and British critic Tony Rayns. The second disc is Bong’s…

New This Week Sunrise at Campobello was not only one of the first films released on DVD by Warner Brothers when they inaugurated their Warner Archive in March 2009, it was one of the best and best-known films that had failed to receive a regular release from Warner Home Video in the then-13-year-old medium. It…

New This Week Sergeant York, given a long overdue Blu-ray upgrade by Warner Archive, was the highest grossing film of 1941. Adjusted for inflation, it is still one of the biggest moneymakers of all time. When the film was being made, public opinion in the U.S. was strongly isolationist and the producers went to great…

New This Week The Chalk Garden, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, is the 1964 film version of a celebrated 1950s British play with one of the most unusual production histories of any such play. The play about the clash between the imperious dowager Mrs. St. Maugham and Miss Madrigal, the mysterious governess she…

New This Week The Elephant Man has been given a new 4K digital restoration by the Criterion Collection. Shot in gorgeous black-and-white, David Lynch’s 1980 film is told from the perspective of London surgeon Frederick Treves, played by Anthony Hopkins, who first encounters the severely deformed John Merrick, played by John Hurt, in a freak…

New This Week Never Steal Anything Small, released in 1959, is one of the most obscure films of James Cagney’s lengthy career. Released in the early days of VHS, the film was never released on DVD until now that Kino Lorber has made it available on both DVD and Blu-ray. The third and last film…

New This Week Roman Holiday has finally been released on Blu-ray thanks to a 4K film transfer from Paramount. The 1953 classic had not previously been remastered since its 2002 DVD Special Edition which was only a slight improvement over its previous release. Time has been kind to this Cinderella in reverse story about a…

New This Week Brute Force and The Naked City have received long overdue U.S. Blu-ray releases from Criterion. The films were the two biggest hits of American writer-director Jules Dassin’s Hollywood career which lasted from1940 through his blacklisting during the filming of 1950’s Thieves’ Highway. After his move to France in 1952, Dassin became an…

New This Week Death on the Nile, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, was the second of four elaborate films made from the works of Agatha Christie by the producing team of John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin whose credits ranged from 1968’s Romeo & Juliet to 1984’s A Passage to India. Home video rights…

New This Week The Sign of the Cross, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, is a historically important film from 1932 that resurrected the career of producer-director Cecil B. DeMille, made a star of Claudette Colbert, and saved Paramount from bankruptcy. The prolific DeMille, one of the founders of Paramount, hadn’t had a hit…