DVD Review HTF REVIEW: The Martin Scorsese Collection (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). (1 Viewer)

[Herb Kane]

Keith,

Sorry to hear you are unhappy with my A/V assessment of the movie.



My set-up can be found here:

http://www.martinloganowners.com/sys...book_view.html


Herb.

 

[Haggai]

Yeah, I was wondering why the real-life "Morrie" had his name beeped out. Henry talks about him being whacked on the commentary, so it's certainly not because the guy's still alive.

Henry also sort of cleared something up that I noticed this time around watching the movie. When De Niro says to him, "forget about tonight," there's the voiceover from Ray Liotta saying, "the poor bastard never knew how close he game to getting whacked that night," or something like that. But then the very next scene is the one where they do kill him, so I was wondering, wait a minute, was it that same night? The movie didn't make it clear. On the Cop/Crook commentary, the real-life Henry says it was two nights later.

 

[Paul Strilka]

yeah, the editing of those two scenes together always confused me

 

[John Hodson]

Full details, and artwork, of the MGM Martin Scorsese box - now confirmed - have been posted at DVD Times here ; those SEs look quite tasty don't they?

 

[Haggai]

Non-anamorphic widescreen on NY, NY doesn't look so tasty. I've never seen the movie before, but now I definitely think I'll pass on the collection and just get Raging Bull. I'll probably get Last Waltz, too, which I never got around to picking up, so I guess it makes sense now to wait until the price drops, as per the info in that press release.

Raging Bull SE specs look fabulous. I wonder what the "storytellers" commentary is all about?

 

[John Hodson]

Oops didn't notice the non-anamorphic bit; but this is MGM after all...

 

[Dene]

Does it really matter that much if a 1.66:1 film is given a non-anamorphic release?

I just watched New York, New York on VHS a few days ago and the black bars were very slight.

 

[Estevan Lapena]

I'll be getting Raging Bull from the MGM set for sure. Looks like a MEGA MEGA MEGA improvement from the OOP disc.

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

Scorsese wanted New York, New York to be shot and projected at 1.37:1 but it was shot open matte with 1.66:1 headroom. Scorsese wanted the movie to look as close in style to a vintage, pre-widescreen Minelli musical as possible.

I think that, like the recent DVD transfer of Coppola's One from the Heart, it should have been transfered at 1.37:1. Of course, One from the Heart itself was shot in and for 1.37:1 and was shown in cinemas at 1.37 - it has no headroom to play with anyway. Unlike The Shining, but that's another matter altogether!

I already have The Last Waltz and Boxcar Bertha is the only Scorsese movie I don't like, so I'm on the fence about this one.

I hope that we see a Criterion Scorsese boxed set comprisng of:

American Boy (55 min)
Italianamerican (45 min)
Street Scenes (75 min)
The Big Shave (6 minutes)
It's Not Just You, Murray! (15 minutes)
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (9 minutes)

Total time: 205 minutes

New restored transfers
Commentary on each film
New interviews
Vintage home movies (he has STACKS of the stuff)

All this could fit onto 2 discs. 3 at the most. It would make a great package for fans. One can but dream!

 

[Sean A]

(quote)Yeah, I was wondering why the real-life "Morrie" had his name beeped out. Henry talks about him being whacked on the commentary, so it's certainly not because the guy's still alive. (Quote)

Actually , in the film, every character's name except for Henry Hill's has been changed . Even those like Tommy who would not be around to complain ! There must have been some legal reason for this . (Also notice in one of the documentaries, when they show photos of the real Henry with his co-horts, their faces have been blanked out )

 

[Haggai]

Yeah, you're right about the names being changed, Sean A. I guess they could refer to some of them on the Hill/McDonald commentary because the first names were the same: Jimmy Conway was really Jimmie Burke, Tommy DeVito was Tommy DeSimone, Paulie Cicero was Paul Valio. Morrie must have been totally different from the guy's real name. Kind of weird that they didn't let Hill and McDonald know about that before they recorded the commentary, though.

I also noticed the blacked out faces in one of the documentaries. Which brings up another question about the movie--when the babysitter gets off the phone with Henry and then calls from the same phone, just like he told her not to do, she takes out the plane ticket, but there's a black strip in the freeze frame over the ticket! What's that all about?

 

[Sean A]

That's always been in the film . I would figure that somehow the name of the airline or an identifying symbol was visible on the ticket, and they had to cover it up.

Also, since Scorsese will sometimes use very "cinematic" techniques in his films to create an emotion (such as jump-cuts, slow motion, quick pans,extreme close-ups, etc) that often take his films out of the realm of the purely "naturalistic" or "realistic", he may have thought that putting that Black Bar on the screen would cause the audience to be put on edge a bit since it was the type of thing you don't usually see in a narrative (as opposed to documentary) film .

 

[Erin C]

Is there missing dialogue in Mean Streets? In the first bar scene around 20 minutes into the film Johnny Boy asks the bartender if they can turn the jukebox down. He says no, that the girls like it loud,and Johnny Boy says something about the girls being skanks,then Johnny Boy leans in and says something else quickly but nothing is heard and nothing comes up on the subtitles.
Has this always been edited out? Since no one else has commented on this yet i'm not sure if this is a disc error or not. Perhaps I should listen to the commentary for my answer?