Boardwalk
Empire: The Complete Series
(2010 - 2014/HBO Blu-ray Box Set)/GoodFellas:
25th
Anniversary Edition
(1990/Warner Blu-ray)/The
Frank Sinatra 5-Film Collection
(1945 - 1964/Anchors
Aweigh/On
The Town/Guys
& Dolls/Ocean's
11/Robin
& The Seven Hoods/Goldwyn/MGM/Warner
Blu-ray Set)/The Long Good
Friday (1980/HandMade
Films/Arrow U.K. Region B Import Blu-ray)
Picture:
B/B+/B/B Sound: B/B+/B-/B- Extras: B/B+/B/B Main
Programs: B/A-/B-/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The
Long Good Friday
Import Blu-ray Set is now only available from our friends at Arrow
U.K., can only play on Blu-ray players that can handle Region B
Blu-ray releases and can be ordered from the link below.
Now
we revisit some film and TV favorites, all connected by the Gangster
genre including two classic films with nice upgrades...
Boardwalk
Empire: The Complete Series
(2010 - 2014) has wrapped up after a five season run that was richer
than it might have been, but the show quit while it was ahead and did
what it could do. I felt it lost track of a few things, but this new
HBO Blu-ray Box Set brings it all together with a bonus disc. Here
are the five season repeated in this set, including all extras and
the same top rate picture/sound performance...
One
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11412/Boardwalk+Empire:+The+Complete+First+Season
Two
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11763/Boardwalk+Empire:+The+Complete+Second+Seas
Three
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12298/Boardwalk+Empire+%E2%80%93+The+Complete
Four
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13019/Boardwalk+Empire:+The+Complete+Fourth+Seaso
Five
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13263/Big+Driver+(2014/Lionsgate+DVD)/Boardwalk+Em
The
new extras on the bonus disc, all in HD, include The
Final Shot: A Farewell To Boardwalk Empire
(a half-hour long), Anatomy
Of A Hit,
Building
The Boardwalk,
Shooting
The Series,
Designing
The Series
and Visual
Effects,
the latter of which are shorter clips.
Martin
Scorsese's GoodFellas:
25th
Anniversary Edition
(1990) is back and finally in a new edition that has the long-overdue
upgrade sound and picture serious fans have been waiting for. We
first reviewed the classic years ago at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3690/GoodFellas+(1990/Warner
Nice
to see it return, influential and enduring as ever, appreciating in
value and power a quarter-century later in a new edition wit a letter
from Scorsese, a new hardcover mini-booklet and a repeat of extras
done for later releases of the film on home video including two
feature-length audio commentary tracks: a Cast
and Crew Commentary
and a Cop
and Crook Commentary,
plus featurettes Getting
Made,
Public
Enemies: The Golden Age Of The Gangster Film,
Made
Men: The GoodFellas Legacy,
The
Workaday Gangster,
Paper
Is Cheaper Than Film
and the Original Theatrical Trailer. The new featurette offers new
interviews and called simply Scorsese's
GoodFellas.
Nice, but could have been longer and richer at only a half-hour.
The
Frank Sinatra 5-Film Collection
(1945 - 1964) collects The Chairman Of The Board in two films from
MGM, two from Warner and one from Samuel Goldwyn. Three are new to
us.
George
Sidney's Anchors
Aweigh
(1945) is the first of two Sinatra Navy Musicals with Gene Kelly
looking for fun and women in Los Angeles and includes the famous
dance between Kelly & Sinatra where Sinatra had to keep up with
Kelly. Not bad and has some good moments, though supporting actors
like Kathryn Grayson, Dean Stockwell and Edgar Kennedy add dimension
to the film. Sidney could handle the Musical genre well, but it can
be uneven at times despite what works.
Stanley
Donen & Gene Kelly co-directed On
The Town
(1949) is considered a bit more successful critically and
commercially, though they are not playing the characters from Aweigh.
This was considered groundbreaking for its outdoor Technicolor
shooting in New York City and Jules Munchin becomes part of their
team looking for fun and women, here played by no less than Anne
Miller, Betty Garrett and Vera-Ellen. Though I am not the biggest
fan of this one either, it has more energy and chemistry going on
throughout. Still, it is also worth a good look.
Guys
& Dolls
(as noted before) is one of the great triumphs of Samuel Goldwyn in
his reign as an independent one-man studio producer. He paid then
big bucks for the stage musical, hired Joseph L. Mankiewicz to write
and direct, retained the original score, had Michael Kidd's great
choreography, shot the film in CinemaScope (here in its original,
wider 2.55 X 1 early configuration, looking good enough for an older
video master) and the result is one of the most interesting and
beautiful of all Hollywood widescreen musicals. Marlon Brando,
Vivian Blane, Jean Simmons and a great supporting cast join Sinatra
for a film about hustling, surviving and making it big in New York.
Though it does not get enough credit for this, this early hit helped
make widescreen filmmaking legitimate and permanent. The film is not
perfect, but it is ambitious and worth seeing.
Ocean's
11 is
here in its original version and is the same Blu-ray edition as the
50th
Anniversary
Blu-ray we reviewed at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10532/Love+Ranch+(2010/NEM/E1+Blu-ray)+++Ocean%
Gordon
Douglas' Robin
& The Seven Hoods
(1964) is also a musical, but a wacky comedy where the Robin Hood
set-up has been turned into a Depression-Era Gangster Musical with a
great cast that includes Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Bing
Crosby, Peter Falk, Victor Buono, Barbara Rush and some fun,
uncredited turns by Edward G. Robinson, Tony Randall, Hans Conried
and then-choreographer, actress and future hit singer Toni Basil.
The film is silly obvious, one-note and rightly the last major 'rat
pack' film.
It
has some good moments, but is too much and for fans only. The songs
are not even too memorable.
Extras
include a hardcover mini-booklet inside the slidecase, while we get
trailers, live action shorts and animated cartoons (usually in
standard definition) across all five films. Aweigh
adds a clip about adding Jerry Mouse with Gene Kelly in a classic
live action/animation moment, Guys
repeats its DVD extras, Ocean's
repeats its Blu-ray extras and Hoods
adds a feature length audio commentary track by Frank Sinatra Jr. and
a vintage featurette on the making of the film in What
They Did To Robin Hood.
Neil
Jordan's The
Long Good Friday
(1980) has been issued plenty of times on home video worldwide and we
have covered it three times before, but finally, it has been upgraded
with a ton of extras and looking better than I have ever seen it
before. We've had writers here who loved it, as in this coverage of
an older U.S. DVD...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3644/The+Long+Good+Friday+(Anchor+Bay
And
in my case, thinking it is good, if not always great in this
Australian DVD import...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9256/The+Long+Good+Friday+(1980/Umbrel
...or
this U.S. Blu-ray version that was underwhelming...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10258/Long+Good+Friday+(1980)+++Mona+Lisa+(1986
Extras
include a new booklet with informative text, while Blu-ray #1 adds
two Original Theatrical Trailers, Hands Across the Ocean has five
scene redubbed as some people (including U.S. audiences) cannot
understand Cockney accents, 3 brief Interviews clips with Producer
Barry Hanson, Screenwriter Barrie Keeffe and Director of Photography
Phil Meheux, vintage Bloody
Business: The Making Of The Long Good Friday
documentary featurette and a feature-length audio commentary track by
Director by John Mackenzie.
The
second Blu-ray is actually only in the Arrow Limited Edition Blu-ray
Box Set with Mona
Lisa
(also needing a serious upgrade that we hopefully will see soon; see
older coverage elsewhere on this site) including the interesting
short film Apaches
(1977, 28 minutes), Phil Meheux doing an introductory piece on the
short film, vintage Q&A with Bob Hoskins and John Mackenzie form
March 2000 and five brand new interviews with Barry Hanson, Barrie
Keefe, Phil Meheux, First Assistant Director Simon Hinkly and
Assistant Art Director Carlotta Barrow. Diehard fans will want to
get the double film set.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image across all five Empire
seasons looks nice, though I sometimes thought while some shots
looked great, a few here and there did not work for me as much as
they did for my three colleagues. Still, this is a top rate
presentation per the usual high standards of HBO and their Blu-ray
releases.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on GoodFellas
is another solid 4K upgrade of a Martin Scorsese film (see Taxi
Driver
elsewhere on this site) by Scorsese himself that very much improves
on the older HD master used on the obsolete HD-DVD we reviewed that
was recycled and later lightly cleaned up for the several Blu-ray
releases of the film to now. This time out, we get better detail,
depth, definition, color (Video Black and Video Red in particular)
though I still think the disc is holding back the master a bit.
Still, this is the best since I saw a brand new 35mm print of the
film in 1990 bringing out the brilliant Michael Ballhaus
cinematography.
Though
passable, I found issues with all five transfers for the film on the
Sinatra set from the 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image
transfers on Aweigh
and Town
(the dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor
could look better overall despite some good shots), 1080p 2.55 X 1
digital High Definition image transfer on Guys
(EastmanColor is uneven and the film needs some restoration despite
also having some nice shots) and the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High
Definition image transfers in Ocean's
(as already discussed in the older review) and Hoods
(a little rough at times for a dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor release). All can
show the age of the materials used, but these are actually is far
superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film on home
video. Warner and company need 4K upgrades for all of them down the
line.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Goodnight
is a new 2K upgrade that even annihilates the U.S. Blu-ray with the
best playback and palpability of the images I have ever seen of the
film. This includes some demo shots.
In
the sound department, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix
on the Boardwalk
episodes are pretty consistent throughout with some great moments
throughout the shows where the sound really kicks in, though the show
knows how to use silence as well. GoodFellas
has the same audio strategy (Scorsese involved in both) and has been
nicely upgraded from its poorer lossy Dolby Digital DVD, HD-DVD and
even older Blu-ray releases. Having the film in lossless sound is a
revelation from the hit records to nuances in the dialogue delivery
and the advanced mix itself. All the hard work gives a new edge and
impact to a film that was already a classic on arrival.
The
Sinatra set has a mix of mixes including a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix upgrade on Dolls
that is better than the DVD with traveling dialogue and sound
effects, but could use some work. The rest of the films are DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mixes that are good, but
sometimes can be shrill in parts to the point that 2.0 Mono would
have been better, especially in the case of Hoods.
That
leaves Goodnight
with a decent PCM 2.0 Mono presentation that shows the age and budget
of the film, but sounds better than it ever has and it needed the
help.
You
can order The
Long Good Friday
Import Blu-ray, double film set with Mona Lisa and more among other
exclusive offerings at...
http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
