The Irishman [CRITERION COLLECTION] (DVD) [2020]

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In all the material is decent, but I guess I was expecting more for such a big title, with maybe more new material from Criterion, and I’m especially surprised there wasn’t anything about the questionable details behind Sheeran’s account of what happened to Hoffa, or anything else he confessed to. Closing

The Irishman DVD Release Date November 24, 2020 The Irishman DVD Release Date November 24, 2020

New documentary about the making of the film featuring Scorsese; the lead actors; producers Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Jane Rosenthal, and Irwin Winkler; director of photography Rodrigo Prieto; and others from the cast and crewOn the flip side, Pesci plays a diminutive man who tries to remain invisible, and he easily steals the film with an understated, wonderfully nuanced, utterly revelatory performance that's the antithesis of his loudmouth, fast-talking, over-the-top work in both GoodFellas and Casino. Reportedly, Pesci turned down the part of Russell Bufalino more than 50 times before Scorsese and De Niro finally coaxed him out of retirement. He never raises his voice, recites his lines with uncharacteristic deliberation, and proves silence is golden with an array of vivid reaction shots that speak volumes about Bufalino's ruthless nature and grasping, manipulative personality. It's a riveting turn that engenders renewed respect for the venerable Pesci and justly earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. (Pacino got one, too, by the way.)

The Irishman (2019) - IMDb The Irishman (2019) - IMDb

Filling in the academic angle is a new 21-minute video essay by Farran Smith Nehme called Gangster’s Requiem, which looks at how Scorsese’s style has developed through the years and how all of it ends up applying to this film, usually through referencing some of his other films and deconstructing a handful of sequences. Criterion also includes a 5-minute episode from a New York Times online series, Anatomy of a Scene, which features Scorsese talking over the Frank Sheeran appreciation night sequence, explaining the decisions behind the framing and general flow of the sequence (he also went out of his way to get Harvey Keitel and Pacino in a shot together just because they had never been in a scene together before).New video essay written and narrated by film critic Farran Smith Nehme about The Irishman's synthesis of Scorsese's singular formal style Archival interview excerpts with Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran and International Brotherhood of Teamsters trade union leader Jimmy Hoffa It is also a teaming up of his old pals for one last ride. Robert De Niro has not appeared in a Scorsese film since Casino. Neither has Joe Pesci who basically retired from the movies in 1998. Harvey Keitel last worked with Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ. Al Pacino is the new boy, his first time working with Scorsese.

The Irishman [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray] [2 Discs] The Irishman [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray] [2 Discs]

The ultimate tragedy of The Irishman is that Sheeran is incapable of singing his song of self with the kind of unblinking honesty that might lead him through regret and toward redemption. Near the end of the film, Sheeran asks that his door be left slightly ajar, a mirror of something that occurs in an earlier scene between him and Hoffa. The way Scorsese photographs Sheeran through the opening reveals a man drained of all his perceived power, and distressingly content with the unholy mess he’s left behind. Image/Sound Expanding on that latter topic is The Evolution of Digital De-Aging, a short 13-minute featurette created by Netflix. Though not all that long I will say it does a decent job getting into how the technology works (starting with these special cameras that also get mentioned a lot in the previous two supplements) and then how they had to properly capture a variety of expressions from the actors to make sure they could replicate their performances as exact as they could. Though I could look past a lot of them there are issues around the effects in the end product, yet despite that I still found it a fascinating look into not only the technology but the art that went behind it. The Irishman isn't Scorsese's best film, but it's a film that perfectly sums up the man, his style, and what he means to the motion picture industry. It's also a movie that, in its purest sense, reminds us what movies are all about. No one except Scorsese makes 'em like this anymore, and that's a crying shame. Scorsese’s choice, in many of these early scenes, to expensively and time-consumingly de-age his principal cast members with digital technology has the strange effect of making Sheeran’s recollections seem that much more like an idealized fantasy that cannot hold. The technical showboating—softening and erasing wrinkles, making flaccid skin seem taut—is subtle enough to not be mortifying, yet apparent enough that the CGI stitching tends to show, especially in brighter scenes. It also plays rather potently meta, since The Irishman gathers a murderer’s row of American acting elites—not only De Niro and Pacino, but Joe Pesci (as Sheeran’s mentor Russell Bufalino) and Harvey Keitel (as Philadelphia-based don Angelo Bruno)—three of whom Scorsese has worked with multiple times over his very long career.The Irishman is a companion piece to Martin Scorsese's other gangster films, Goodfellas and Casino. The treatment of females in this movie is superficial. Sheeran's and Bufalino's wives are just there to chain smoke. Only Sheeran's daughter Peggy shows unhappiness as to her father's chosen profession. Even then the old Peggy is wasted. At one point I did wonder why the film had a de-aged Holly Hunter playing Peggy. Only to realise she was played by Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar for playing Hunter's daughter in The Piano. No one depicts the violent, vicious, and labyrinthian world of organized crime with more precision and gusto than Martin Scorsese. Operatic in scope and brimming with beauty despite the grisly subject matter, his gritty portraits of gangsters and their various milieus remain undisputed masterworks that continually dazzle the senses no matter how many times we've seen them. Though only four of Scorsese's 60-odd films deal specifically with the Italian mafia, the legendary director forever will be known as the genre's most passionate and lyrical chronicler. A nice touch, though, is the addition of archival footage featuring Frank Sheeran and Jimmy Hoffa and apparently used as references for the film. Sheeran’s footage (running 6-minutes) comes from recordings author Charles Brandt made for his novel, “I Heard You Paint Houses.” The excerpts showcase Sheeran talking about his alleged involvement in the Hoffa disappearance along with his general methodology behind hits (or “painting houses”). He also shows off his watch (from Hoffa) and his ring (from Russell Bufalino).

The Irishman [CRITERION COLLECTION] (Blu-ray) [2020]

Video Essay: "Gangsters' Requiem"(HD, 21 minutes) - Film critic Farran Smith Nehme connects The Irishman to Scorsese's personal experience and his other legendary gangster pictures while examining the director's style, the relationships between the characters, and the movie's underlying themes. Smith dissects several scenes and examines many of the subtle touches that make The Irishman such a textured, nuanced film.Yet, Frank couldn't walk away from his skill. He started to paint houses, kill people with a lot of blood splatter, as a contract killer. He became a hitman for the Italian-American Bufalino crime family and the only Irishman to be accepted in the Bufalino's higher echelon of trusted family members. Criterion has thankfully made this a two-disc set, giving the film the entirety of the first disc. All supplemental material can be found on the second disc. The second disc, like the first one, is dual-layer, so this led me to assume there would actually be a lot of content to be found, but it barely runs over a couple of hours in the end. Things are a bit iffy around the de-aging effects. I won’t get much into the effects, as they’ve been written about ad nauseum, other than to say I had no issue with them, but similar to how they look in the Netflix presentationthere can be a waxiness aroundfacial features when the effects are being applied. It's not always noticeable, but when it is it stands out. Newly edited roundtable conversation among Scorsese and actors Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, originally recorded in 2019 Table for Four: Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci"(HD, 19 minutes) - This 2019 roundtable discussion unites the four legends, who reminisce about how they met and chat about the genesis of The Irishman, the film's length, tone, and characters, the joys of working together, and the movie's unique technical challenges. Terrific rapport and some great anecdotes distinguish this jovial yet substantive dialogue.