Amazon.com: THE GODFATHER: Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather (1972) is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible. After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels.
THE GODFATHER PART II: This brilliant companion piece to the original The Godfather continues the saga of two generations of successive power within the Corleone family. Coppola tells two stories in Part II: the roots and rise of a young Don Vito, played with uncanny ability by Robert De Niro, and the ascension of Michael (Al Pacino) as the new Don. Reassembling many of the talents who helped make The Godfather, Coppola has produced a movie of staggering magnitude and vision, and undeniably the best sequel ever made. Robert De Niro won an Oscar®; the film received six Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1974.
THE GODFATHER PART III: One of the greatest sagas in movie history continues! In this third film in the epic Corleone trilogy, Al Pacino reprises the role of powerful family leader Michael Corleone. Now in his 60's, Michael is dominated by two passions: freeing his family from crime and finding a suitable successor. That successor could be fiery Vincent (Andy Garcia)... but he may also be the spark that turns Michael's hope of business legitimacy into an inferno of mob violence. Francis Ford Coppola directs Pacino, Garcia, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Eli Wallach, Sofia Coppola, Joe Montegna and others in this exciting, long-awaited film that masterfully explores the themes of power, tradition, revenge and love. Seven Academy Award® nominations, including Best Picture.
Amazon.com: On the DVD People used to say this was Frank Sinatra's world, and the rest of us just lived in it. After watching the multiple special features in the box set The Godfather - Coppola Restoration, one might conclude it's actually time for a cultural and historical revision: This is the Corleone family's world. The rest of us better tread lightly. Actually, the point of the half-dozen or so features crammed onto a disc accompanying the beautifully restored The Godfather, The Godfather II and The Godfather III, is that The Godfather movies have penetrated popular culture in such a deep and meaningful way that they are second-nature to everything. David Chase, creator of and writer on The Sopranos, for example, describes in the featurette "Godfather World" that his hit HBO series was intended to be the story of the first generation of mobsters actually influenced by Francis Ford Coppola's hit trilogy. Joe Mantegna calls the three films "the Italian Star Wars." (Mantegna co-stars in The Godfather III.) Alec Baldwin says no matter what one is doing, one is compelled to stop and watch the films if they're on television. Richard Belzer calls the films "a religion." And so on. A number of people similarly testify in "Godfather World" to the importance and ubiquitousness of The Godfather and its sequels in American life. There's no point in arguing, so its best to move on to the other featurettes, including "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't," reviewing in detail much of what has been said about Paramount's mistreatment of Coppola, about casting fights (Steve McQueen as Michael?), about the studio's assumption they were getting a quick-and-dirty B-movie, and about producer Robert Evans' determination to keep his choice of director and unlikely actors under his wing. Fresh information within the special features, however, begins with "… When the Shooting Stopped," a fine study of post-production on The Godfather, with several surprising and fascinating facts. Among emerging details is an explanation of why Michael Corleone's scream toward the end of The Godfather III is silenced out. (Hint: it was meant to be the inverse of a sound effect in the first movie.) "Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather" talks about the painstaking work of restoring the first two films, beginning with a phone call from Coppola to Steven Spielberg (after the latter's DreamWorks studio became part of the Viacom family) asking if he'd request money from Paramount for restoration work. "The Godfather On the Red Carpet is a negligible series of fawning statements about the movie from hot young actors, while "Four Short Films" are brief and enjoyable takes on different aspects of The Godfather's impact on modern living. --Tom Keogh
Stills from The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration Giftset
The Gold Standard of Digital Film Restoration There are so many reviews on these 3 films that I will just comment on the quality of the restoration. This has to be one of the top 5, if not the best, jobs done on film restoration to date. Paramount used one of the best restoration labs in the world, owned by Warner Brothers, to restore this film only after a Kodak owned lab cleared it as being sturdy enough to run through the digitizing equipment. The whole restoration was spurred by a letter to Spielberg from Coppola asking him if he could get Paramount, who had recently been bought by Viacom if they would do a restoration on the Godfather films. The head of Paramount didn't even hesitate to cut the large check to fund the restoration. The result? Coppola says its more beautiful then he remembered it. The extent of the restoration is included on the Bonus disc. And in that the clip you will see that the filmographer instead of filming the scenes correctly exposed and then having the lab darken the frames went with shooting the scenes dark, the result being there is no detail in the black areas of the film. This explains how difficult it was to get this quality of a restoration, which meant finding the best copy available, which still left much to be desired, and going frame my frame and digitally correcting the image. What is impressive is that the WB Studio lab consulted the original filmographer. I don't know if there is an Academy Award for restoration, but if there is, I know this team deserves it.
NOTE: There seems to be some here that don't like the way the film looks. I suggest they watch Emulsional Rescue - Revealing the Godfather on the bonus disc. Anyone that buys the set, may want to watch it first too to see how the films were shot, underexposed and with an orange tint, and the care taken to restore that look and even in 1 scene improve on it. Watching this feature first will show that its the way it was shot and meant to look, not the restoration.
Subtitles I have the old Videos of this collection. I can't believe they would put this on Blu-Ray and not include English Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. CCs don't cut it anymore. If I buy, it will be the older non Blu-Ray set.
As advertised ... mint condition.. Received item as advertised ... arrived in mint condition and will be looking forward to our next transaction.
Film Geek Conspiracy. I give Godfather 1 & 2 five stars as films, but I give this Blu-Ray 1 star for picture quality. I spent a good half hour playing with my TVs settings to get something that didn't remotely resemble a Vaseline smeared mess. I know part of the problem is the brilliance and audacity of Gordon Willis' LOW light cinematography that most HD TVs can't re-create it's velvety depth, but I feel like there could have been a decent compromise in this somewhere.
Since I know that both Scorsese and Coppola oversee the Blu-Ray restorations of their films, I can almost guarantee that any little hiss pop and crackle that remains on this print (and the reviled Gangs of New York Blu-Ray) were left in by the directors in an attempt to leave some of the filmic warmth. To bad BD is a medium that is tirelessly striving for window-like perfection.
Almost HD A Must Have Godfather I and II looks way better thanthe DVD's great restoration but part III is almost HD quality like it was filmed five years ago
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