Although parts of the commentary track titled "The Cast and Crew" seemed worthwhile to me, I got bored with it. The 13 commentators heard are Scorsese, Pileggi, Liotta, Bracco, Sorvino, Pesci, De Niro, Hill, actor Frank Vincent (Billy Batts), producers Irwin Winkler and Barbara De Fina, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and film editor Thelma Schoonmaker. When you play this commentary track, about 21 minutes of the film where no commentary has been provided is omitted, although you have to know the movie extremely well to notice where the skips occur.
Disc 1 of the two-disc "Goodfellas" Special Edition DVD set contains the feature film plus both commentary tracks, all on one side of the disc. I make a point of this because there was an earlier DVD version of "Goodfellas" where you had to flip the disc to see the whole movie.
Disc 2 of the two-disc "Goodfellas" Special Edition DVD contains bonus materials with a combined running time under an hour. My favorite was the 4-minute-25-second featurette "Paper Is Cheaper Than Film," which compares Scorsese's thumbnail sketches of scenes with the corresponding actual footage used in the film. I also liked the eight-minute featurette "The Workaday Gangster," which is commentary on the lifestyle of the low-level mobster?for example, Henry Hill admits that he was scared every day of his life. The disc also contains what I thought was a rather ordinary 29-minute making-of documentary consisting of clips interspersed with interviews similar to those heard on "The Cast and Crew Commentary." Another featurette on the disc is the 13-minute "The Goodfellas Legacy," where filmmakers Jon Favreau, Albert and Allen Hughes, Joe Carnahan, Richard Linklater, Antoine Fuqua, and Frank Darabont tell what "Goodfellas" has meant to them.
Below I've listed all the special features of the "Goodfellas" Special Edition DVD set.
DVD Details:
- Two-Disc Set
- Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
- Feature Run Time: 2 Hours 25 Minutes
- MPAA Rating: R
- English Dolby Digital 5.1
- French Dolby Digital 2.0
- English Subtitles
- Spanish Subtitles
- French Subtitles
- Audio Commentary by Cast and Crew
- Audio Commentary by Henry Hill and U.S. Attorney
- List of Awards
- Making-Of Documentary: "Getting Made" (29 min.)
- Documentary on Mob Life: "The Workaday Gangster" (8 min.)
- Filmmakers Comment: "The GoodFellas Legacy" (13 min.)
- Sketches to Shots: ?Paper Is Cheaper Than Film? (4 min. 25 sec.)
- Theatrical Trailer
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