Happy HanaRamaKwanzmas!

Merry Christmas/Happy Hannukah/Whatever Floats your Boat to the handful of us here!

happy holidays................ yut yut.

and have a safe rest of the year....

All the best, a'body.

Let's all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas all!!!!!!

Happy Festivus.

While it came down a bit yesterday, it looks like my only real chance of a truly white Christmas is the time that I will spend in Skyrim this morning!

We spent Christmas eve watching The Walking Dead until the grownups came in with "A Christmas Story"

quickly the living room was empty, I enjoyed it thou.

I ended up watching The Godfather Part II Christmas morning. I decided to spend the holidays with The Family.

I thought you didn't like that series?

I am still not a big fan, but I got a deal on the set that I could not refuse. The bonus disc alone was worth the price. I still prefer Leone's crime epic, but the first two movies really look outstanding on Blu -- having only seen the older unrestored video transfers, the new ones are definitely a revelation. I did, however, decide that I will never again under any circumstances rewatch the third one.

The third is terrible, but I thought the second installment was brilliant. DeNiro, especially, does a fine job.

I will grant you that I enjoyed the first two much more this time. I agree about DeNiro in Part II, but I do have to say that I prefer the first film. Do you have the Blus? One of the featurettes on the bonus disc shows DeNiro screen-testing for the part of Michael in the first one. He would have been terrible at that, but Coppola said that he saw something in that screen test that made him think of DeNiro first when he decided to tell the story of young Vito in the sequel.

What really made me sad watching them was seeing John Cazale in action. I now have four of his five films on Blu. (The only one that I do not have is The Deer Hunter, but I am not a fan of that film, Academy Award-winner or not. (All five of the movies that he completed before his death were nominated for Best Picture, and three out of the five won.)

It also made me sad to watch Pacino in the first two and then see him in the third. He had talent once. Not anymore.

I think one of the problems with Pacino is the characters he is cast in now. In Part I and II of the Godfather, Michael is still learning the ropes. Even in Part II, as head of the family, Michael is still a young leader. Now, it appears that Pacino is always cast as a true godfather type, and it's cliched and dull. That said, I did like Pacino in Donny Brasco. I thought he and Depp had good chemistry, and I found Pacino's godfather role to work, partly because he played a sympathetic character, and it was easy to see that there was some good in his otherwise mob-member character.

Incidentally, I do have the Blus of Godfather. I think most of the extras are the same ones that appeared on the last DVD boxed set.

Nope. There is an archive section that has the same supplements as the DVD set, and the commentaries are the same, but the rest of the supplements are new to the Blus, including a making-of documentary and a very good featurette on the restoration. There is also a monumentally useful "organizational chart" of the Family, associates and rivals. Even watching them back-to-back, I still forgot who some characters were.

But sadly, I still think that it is Pacino's acting, not the characters. I have always pegged his descent into self-parody with Scent of a Woman, but watching The Godfather Part III again it may have been that film instead.

I could have sworn I had the organizational chart in a previous release. Hmmm. Now I'm going to have to check out the extras again.

They may. I am just going by how the Blu-Ray extra disc is organized. There are several features on the main menu, and you select "DVD Archive" to go to a seperate menu that contains all of the older supplements. I assumed that anything on the main menu was new. On the other hand, I may be mistaken about where the charts are located -- maybe they were in the archive section. I will have to check.

I wonder if it has anything to do with standard definition versus high definition? I will have to check it out.

Incidentally, apparently a 4K Blu-ray player is being showcased at CES this year. Not sure if displays are being showcased as well.

They are indeed.