Martin Scorsese

[Noiretirc]

The Art Directors Guild released a statement on Scorsese's Flux genAI endorsement.

All of this pushback gives me hope.

Hope that Scorsese - All The Films will be...complete soon?

[pistolwink]

This is the key point from the ADG statement—and the key fact about AI in my opinion:

Generative AI is only capable of producing this type of ‘cinematic intelligence’ by ingesting large swaths of copyrighted work, likely scraped from the internet without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency.

The entire business model of this sort of AI is one of theft and enclosure of the commons.

I assume Scorsese is doing this because they're giving him a big fat check he'll put to decent use, not because he actually plans to do much "advising." That doesn't make it any better.

[hearthesilence]

MoMA is screening a rare 35mm preservation print of Gangs of New York courtesy of the George Eastman Museum and Scorsese's production company. Part of their current series, "Immigrant Nation: People in Transit" (no doubt inspired by the current political climate), the first screening was tonight and there's another on July 10. It's a beautiful print (the scene where Amsterdam is surrounded by a fog of dust is spotless) and given the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, I strongly recommend going to this just to see it fill the entire span of MoMA's T1 stage, it really benefits from it.

I actually saw this film when it first opened, so it was a real treat to see it again this way, especially when the DVD's and Blu-rays have all been lacking despite incremental improvements with each reissue. When the movie was first released, the most timely thing about it was the election that alluded to the 2000 recount. Everything else felt like a time capsule, but it's become much more powerful now because the "Natives"' vile anti-immigration sentiments no longer sound dated, they're now a spot-on mirror of the Republican Party, both in ideology and personality.

My main reservations about casting remain. No doubt it would've been impossible to get the same financing without stars like DiCaprio and Diaz, but I still wish all of the Irish characters had been played by Irish actors. And it sticks out how Amsterdam is able to heal back into his good looks no matter how much injury is inflicted on him, even when it's done with the intention of disfiguring him. But those reservations faded pretty quickly, partly by the film's presentation but above all by the sad timeliness that's made this film age better than it should.

I should add that deep into the film, it really sank in how some of Daniel Day-Lewis's mannerisms and diction brought to mind Robert De Niro, who was originally cast as Bill the Butcher. To be clear, it's no imitation, nor was it apparent before, but with De Niro's performance in Killers of the Flower Moon now burned into memory, the parallels between their characters is apparent, as if William King Hale could've been a proud descendant of the other. (Figuratively speaking of course, given the backstory with Jenny.) Taken together, the two complete a dark picture of American history as one driven by supremacist leanings.

[lazarus]

That's great news that this print exists. I hope it makes it to the West Coast, specifically the Academy Museum. I think the film is a messterpiece, and my issues aren't really with the casting (DiCaprio appropriately tortured, Diaz appropriately feral), but with the choppiness resulting from what we know were ordered cuts. But it contains some of the best filmmaking of this century, and I think the controversy surrounding it will continue to fade and future viewers will go in with a more open mind, not to mention connect it to more recent events as you said.

I still hold out hope that Scorsese will change his mind and give us his longer, preferred cut, now that Weinstein is out of the picture. The Mr. Scorsese documentary showed that it's still a painful memory for him so why not get the closure? Otherwise, at the risk of sounding morbid, we will be left to petition his descendants when it isn't his decision anymore.

[hearthesilence]

This is a myth that refuses to die despite many articles and interviews that have clarified this over and over again. I think part of the problem is coming from people who don't understand how the editing process works with big studio films, and even film students I know who have gone on to work in the business have explained to me that it's not something they ever learned in school.

The cut that was ultimately released is the only cut Scorsese approved. Anything else was a work-in-progress and never considered to be a finished cut, not the one that somehow leaked and became bootlegged, and not the one seen by a few journalists in late 2001, and even that cut was clearly presented as a work print, so much that people who saw it identified it as such. It's understandable if people prefer it, but those cuts were definitely not finished, and the overwhelming majority of films start out much longer than the released version and get whittled down as they're worked on. The first few cuts tend to include everything just so everyone involved can see what they have and determine whether it plays fine. Just because a scene or a moment was scripted then shot doesn't mean a director will want to keep it - I get why some people will think everything shot belongs in a film, but that's rarely how a film gets made. The filmmaker may ultimately determine something doesn't work or isn't needed for a variety of reasons, and Scorsese has said that many times regarding Gangs of New York, even venting his frustration how this rumor that the film was compromised in the editing process won't go away.

It's common for directors to later wish they had done things differently - Scorsese has said that there are things in Mean Streets that make him "cringe" nowadays - but that's something else entirely.

[nowhereisaplace]

I am almost certainly not going to get a chance to get over to see this tomorrow and I haven’t seen it since its initial run, but have been wanting to revisit it lately. Hearthsilence, what is it about the current home video presentation that it gets wrong?

[hearthesilence]

The original Blu-ray was horrible, and it may be why Disney quietly remastered it in 2010. IIRC, that updated 2010 master is still being used for the current Blu-ray and it isn't bad at all. It's usually pretty cheap too (I used to see it for well under $10 every now and then). Not perfect and could certainly be improved since it's so old, but it's still fine. Since this is 2.35:1, the Blu-ray has to be letterboxed, and tbf, there's exactly how I'd want it, but there's just no comparison to seeing this unfurled across the entire span of a theater, and of course you have the advantage of an excellent film print over a digital master.