Gangs of New York (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
This motion picture event from acclaimed director Martin Scorsese earned 10 Academy Award(R) nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, along with 5 Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Song! Leonardo DiCaprio (TITANIC), Cameron Diaz (CHARLIE'S ANGELS), and Daniel Day-Lewis (THE BOXER) star in this epic tale of vengeance and survival! As waves of immigrants swell the population of New York, lawlessness and corruption thrive in lower Manhattan's Five Points section. After years of incarceration, young Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) returns seeking revenge against the rival gang leader (Day-Lewis) who killed his father. But Amsterdam's personal vendetta becomes part of the gang warfare that erupts as he and his fellow Irishmen fight to carve a place for themselves in their newly adopted homeland!
Gangs of New York may achieve greatness with the passage of time. Mixed reviews were inevitable for a production this grand (and this troubled behind the scenes), but it's as distinguished as any of director Martin Scorsese's more celebrated New York stories. From its astonishing 1846 prologue to the city's infernal draft riots of 1863, the film aspires to erase the decorum of textbooks and chronicle 19th-century New York as a cauldron of street warfare. The hostility is embodied in a tale of primal vengeance between Irish American son Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his father's ruthless killer and "Nativist" gang leader Bill "the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis, brutally inspired), so named for his lethal talent with knives. Vallon's vengeance is only marginally compelling; DiCaprio is arguably miscast, and Cameron Diaz (as Vallon's pickpocket lover) is adrift in a film with little use for women. Despite these weaknesses, Scorsese's mastery blossoms in his expert melding of personal and political trajectories; this is American history written in blood, unflinching, authentic, and utterly spectacular. --Jeff Shannon
Gangs of New York (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Accessories
 There Will Be Blood
Batman Begins (Widescreen Edition)
The Aviator (Two-Disc Special Edition)
The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration Giftset (The Godfather / The Godfather Part II / The Godfather Part III) [Blu-ray]
Kill Bill - Volumes 1 & 2 [Blu-ray] (Amazon.com Exclusive)
No Country for Old Men
GoodFellas
Dark City (New Line Platinum Series)
L.A. Confidential
Cloverfield
Gangs of New York (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Reviews
The movie is GREAT, the way it was shot, the camera work, the exceptional action, the story-lines, everything. My humble description can even remotely capture the splendor of this work. The story is incredibly deep, the dialogs are unbelievably smart and trough to life. The masterful story developing when it goes through waves to culmination is mesmerizing. I can't speak about this work otherwise as in superlative terms and it is why it had 10 academy nominations. In every shot, angle, camera movement, music there is so much of cool, artistic interpretation and sophistication.
It presents a bad history of the draft riots and worst of all it misreprents race relations of the period in ways that simply offensive. The bowery boys, the closest model to what is shown in the film, were as their name suggests located in the Bowery, not five points. On the positive side, in terms of sets and getting the look of the historical setting correct, the film is excellent. The chinese population at the time of the film was tiny and not mixed into the five points. The point of the film could have been the continuity of gang violence in the five points and the continuity in terms of "gangs" cynically claiming to be for their people and against anyone different from them. The director totally misrepresents the tiny Chinese community of the era. And then there are the Chinese.
If anything racial is to be said, the director makes sure Daniel-Day Lewis or one of his evil minions says the words. The nature of the five points itself is completely misrepresented. While he has no problem with violence in other parts of the film, the racial violence of the draft riots is something that he is shy about and repeatedly quick cuts away from. While there were Chinese communities in the US in the era, they were not in New York.
. To make the hands of the noble Irish gangs even cleaner, the director makes their gang and even their church tolerant and integrated. The director tries his best to ignore such events. The police of the era were a gang as much as any gang and they very much protected their own. There was never anyone like Butcher Bill running the neighborhood.
Cameron Diaz is miscast, in over her head in terms of acting and very forgettable. This film is bad history. And if you really wanted an honest film, the film would have shown a five points with a mixed african-american and Irish population up to the draft riots at which point the Irish population turned on the african-american population with incredible violence. If one of the police had been slaughtered and hung up as shown the film, they would have come down hard on everyone involved rather than (as in the film) ignoring it. Daniel-Day Lewis also gives what I would consider his finest performance in the film and acts Leonardo DiCaprio off the screen. The director might have used the draft riots in particular to show how quickly "victim" becomes the new oppressor. And his heroic Irish gangs of the five points just happen by coincidence to have been occupied fighting the nativists.
The problem for the director of course is the fact that his centerpiece for the film, the civil war draft riots, involves his heroic gangs going a racial rampage which involved acts of unbeleivable viciousness. The other thing absolutely wrong in the film is how the police are shown (or not shown). What the director wants to do is make a dreamworld story of the salt-of-the-earth Irish rising against their "nativist" oppressors to bring about a new golden age in the streets of new york. It misrepresents the situation in the five points in almost every way. It might have also been about the pointlessness of revenge.
It contains brutal fighting. It's worth watching. The acting of main actors are good. It's a beautiful picutre.
Dolby Digital Audio French 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz . #History of the Five Points (SD, 14 min). Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz. #Trailers (SD, 5 min). LPCM Audio English 6912 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit. Disc size: 48,30 GB. Average video bit rate: 22.67 Mbps.
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz . #Costume Design (SD, 8 min). VC-1 BD-50. #Discovery Channel Special: Uncovering the Real Gangs of New York (SD, 35 min). #Exploring the Sets of Gangs of New York (SD, 23 min).
Movie size: 41,75 GB. #Audio Commentary. Subtitles: English SDH / French / Swedish / Norwegian / Danish / Finnish / Icelandic. Running time: 2:46:35. Version: U.S.A / Region Free.
#Set Design (SD, 9 min). #U2 Music Video: The Hands That Built America (SD, 5 min).
This may sadly indicate a growing trend, where an existing DVD transfer is run through an upscaler and put out on Blu-Ray, with the lie that it is a 1080p transfer. I've just learned to be more careful about buying a Blu-Ray of something I already have on DVD. The movie is a great, but we're talking about the Blu-Ray version of it. This is the worst Blu-Ray transfer I have yet seen.
I guess that is what the scoundrels who put out this Blu-Ray were banking on. Judging from the many favorable reviews on this forum, many buyers' eyes or video system cannot tell the difference. I went back and watched some of the DVD version on an upscaling player, and it was indistinguishable from the Blu-Ray; both were well below the usual quality of a Blu-Ray.
I already had the original DVD version, and expected a 1080p top quality transfer for the Blu-Ray, which this is not.
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