Today – I woke up, saw my girlfriend off, threw some bacon and french
toast on the stove, listened to some Christmas music, and prepared to
sit down and finally watch Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park and probably something else. I didn’t have to leave the house ’til 3:30 or 4, and Park
is only 85 minutes long. Some point into Harry Simeone Chrorale’s “The
Little Drummer Boy” (a beautiful song, and I’ll stand by that), I felt
a certain…calling. The Christmas spirit was calling, so I decided to
start the day with the first hour-and-a-half of Fanny and Alexander. Television version, of course, which means…the Christmas party.

Just as I always hope to have a wedding like in The Deer Hunter (and to have nothing remotely similar to anything else in The Deer Hunter EVER happen to me), I want a Christmas party like the Ekdahl’s. Warts and all.

I
figured I’d check the mail first, so I walked down and what’s at my
feet – a package from Amazon not due ’til tomorrow, containing none
other than the Godfather Trilogy – Coppola Restoration Blu-Ray. My only Black Friday indulgence, to my credit.

So I didn’t get around to Van Sant’s latest. What’ll you do.

Of course, Fanny and Alexander is
as wonderful as the first and, until today, last time I saw it eighteen
months ago. It really is true, nobody’s ever done it like Bergman, at
least not as well.

But that Godfather Blu-Ray…oh my God. I’m still relatively new to Blu – saw No Country and Pirates 3 on it and parts of Wall-E, Speed Racer, Cuckoo’s Nest, 2001…some
others my roommate has around (it’s his player, so he’s loading up of
course). But wow…I really just watched the first fifteen or twenty
minutes from One (yeah, I watched The Sopranos…do
something), part of the Sicily stuff. Can’t wait to watch…well, the
baptism, certainly, but even though I watched the film fairly recently
on DVD, and I’m really a Part II
man myself, I could watch the whole thing through again and it would
feel fresh. I know it’s an overused phrase, that feeling of seeing it
again for the very first time, but I can’t think of any other way to
put it. The dialogue sounded familiar, the characters seemed the same,
but the film itself…brand frickin’ new.

I was afraid based on
some screencaps I saw that most of the image was just brightened
overall; that we might get some more definition, but lose that great
“Prince of Darkness” stuff, but man, those scenes in the Don’s office
are pitch black, even darker than I remember it being on DVD (the only
way I’ve seen it to date). The red on his flower is captivating.

And good Lord am I glad they kept that grain in.

And this is just the first twenty or so minutes. Man am I mad I have finals right now…

But
suffice to say, even though I grew up in the age of home video and have
never know any other way, I am in a state of constant amazement that I
can watch masterpieces like Fanny and Alexander (the five-hour version, to boot!) and The Godfather any time I want. That really is pretty amazing. Good way to start the weekend, too.

Scott can be reached at Snye@megazinemedia.com