criterionforum.org

I figured since this was a Warners release, this would be the best place for it.

Mean Streets
Goodfellas
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Who's That Knocking at My Door
After Hours

Some great films, obviously (Alice and After Hours have aged particularly well), but a somewhat disappointing set on the extras front. The commentaries are only partial, and not always intelligently aligned to the movie. In Mean Streets, for example, we hear an anecdote about the shooting of the beach scene over a much earlier sequence. The cheap and cheesy featurettes often completely recycle the information from the commentary - or vice versa.

It's hard to believe that a motormouth like Scorsese had so little to say about these films - and how on Earth does one interview so many participants in a film as dense as Goodfellas and still not come up with a complete commentary? At least the commentary track skips over the dead patches. . .

I think the reason these commentaries suck isn't because they're "incomplete" -- like you said, zedz, the discs skip past the parts without commentary, so it's not like there are dead spots -- but rather because they're non-scene-specific. The participants (for the most part -- I think the "cop and crook" commentary on Goodfellas is an exception) weren't watching the movie as they were being recorded, so they just rattle off anecdote after anecdote, some interesting, many not. This is why Marty is less interesting than usual. In fact, much of the audio for the commentaries was pulled from the same recording sessions that gave us those lame featurettes. There's significant overlap between the featurettes and the commentaries, particularly on Goodfellas but also Who's That Knocking and maybe all the others, I don't remember. Some of the exact same clips are repeated in featurette and commentary! Pathetic!

But, of course, this box would be a good deal even if the discs were all barebones.

Is Goodfellas the first Blu-ray double-dip? Way to go, Warner Bros.

Matt wrote:Is Goodfellas the first Blu-ray double-dip? Way to go, Warner Bros.

Full Metal Jacket, Casino Royale, and Stranger Than Fiction have all double-dipped already, with Watchmen coming again in a couple of months.

Matt wrote:Is Goodfellas the first Blu-ray double-dip? Way to go, Warner Bros.

There is also the BDs that Warner first release as Digibook and then re-release on regular cases like Amadeus and Natural Born Killers.

Matt wrote:Is Goodfellas the first Blu-ray double-dip? Way to go, Warner Bros.

There has been quite a lot of double dips. Most of them are from Warner.

I'm personally waiting for the 'mega-super-ultimate-fucking-this-is-the-shit' edition version. Come on Warner, any day now...

I'm waiting for one of these to be called "Penultimate Edition". Which would make a lot of sense.

I'll only buy the "Funny how?" edition.

It appears disc one in the new GoodFellas release is the exact same Blu-ray disc currently available. Disc two is a DVD of the documentary Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film, which was previously released in Volume Four of the Warner Gangster Collection. The only thing new about this release will be the little booklet included in the digibook packaging.

Murdoch wrote:I'll only buy the "Funny how?" edition.

And it would have a bunch of trinkets from the movie like those ridiculous sets for Casablanca, Blade Runner, and JFK: a carton of bootleg cigarettes; a coat check ticket from the Copacabana; a bloody handgun; a clove of garlic and a razor blade; the keys to a Pink Cadillac; a kilo of coke . . .

When you open the box, it's empty and then someone shoots you