1112 Miller's Crossing

[dwk]

It is a Fox title, so a new master was not possible as they will not let licensees create new masters.

[Finch]

Oh, really? Sorry if this was brought up before elsewhere.

[dwk]

Yeah, Fox and Sony will not let licensees create new masters. The Kino Insider mentioned that Fox got burned by someone in the past, so no more licensees accessing their materials for new masters.

[Drucker]

So the audio issue from the old Fox disc only affects the 5.1 track, right? Or is that the only one included?

[swo17]

The Fox disc has a second track with no missing audio

[cdnchris]

The Fox disc has a second track with no missing audio

Yes, the 4.0 one is fine, the 5.1 track has the missing cue.

What I find interesting about Criterion's edition is that there is no mention anywhere this is a "director's cut," almost like they were intentionally hiding it. They'll throw that term around sort of willy-nilly, too, as the specs for their Rushmore Blu-ray mention it's a "director's cut" even though, as far as anyone could confirm, there is no difference between previous releases. Love & Basketball also mentions it, but my understanding is that that is the only version that has been on home video, the theatrical release trimming a couple of seconds from a sex scene.

[therewillbeblus]

Jesus, Criterion!

[dwk]

Maybe the Coens or Fox didn't want it advertised. It is weird.

[therewillbeblus]

I decided to send an email to Mulvaney detailing my concern with the missing edit and asking if it was intentional or an error, despite being 99% sure I knew the answer. They wrote back:

I can confirm that the Coens made some minimal edits to the master for this Director-approved release of MILLER'S CROSSING. I hope this helps!

A shame- I guess I'll hang on to my Fox blu and double dip for the extras

[Roger Ryan]

Especially with it known that the product came from an older transfer, you would think news that it's a "brand-new director-approved edit" would increase sales. I'm certainly a tad more interested in it now that it's not identical to the disc I already own (meaning just the feature, not the supplements).

Perhaps the same Fox stipulation that a new master could not be created also demands the existing master not be tinkered with, so the Coens did it surreptitiously!

[FrauBlucher]

This came from the bluray.com forum...

I emailed Criterion and already heard back. I guess you can expect other edits as well.

Quote: Criterion...
I can confirm that the Coens made some minimal edits to the master for this Director-approved release of MILLER'S CROSSING.

I posted this yesterday which kind of went ignored.

[therewillbeblus]

Whoops, my bad Frau!

[FrauBlucher]

No problem. Just found it odd that such an admission from CC elicited no discussion

[Maltic]

Jesus, Criterion!

Ethics...

[Finch]

caps a holic Crit vs Fox

Folks on BR.com seem to think the old BD is a bit better encoded.

[yoloswegmaster]

Caps-a-holic is apparently the new BR.com now

[Finch]

Their caps aren't watermarked and don't come with carelessly written and incomplete (at best) reviews or idiot ramblings (at worst) disguised as reviews. Yes, their HDR screenshots are only an approximation due to the SDR conversion, but their caps are still more worth to me personally than BR and Beaver's. I'm glad the mods banned links to you know who. If it'd been up to me, I'd have done it a lot earlier.

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[PfR73]

Movie-Censorship.com has documented 76 differences between the two cuts.

[therewillbeblus]

Just watched this for the nth time, and found myself musing on another layer to Tom's motivations, that kind-of leans a bit more into Mr Sausage's a bit on the first page of this thread: That, through Caspar, Tom is able to actualize all the conscious and subconscious impulses he's harbored in his fractured yet complex relationship with Leo- and since he has no real emotional connection to Caspar, he's an easy target to do so, even filling the same role as boss (both to the community and to Tom) to allow this to be cathartic and meaningful.

Late in the film, Tom says, “I’d worry a lot less if I thought you were worrying enough” in such a gentle manner that you almost buy it, and in a sense, I kind of did this time around. This is definitely a progression of conscious manipulation, but it also feels like a subconscious working-through of what, and specifically how part of Tom desperately wants to communicate with Leo, yet is barred with shields to such vulnerability due to a rich history between the two, maybe complicated by his feelings for Verna, maybe not. It feels like a role playing exercise of a game, a subtler gesture that he’s able to safely express because of the lower-stakes nature of the relationship to Caspar, and the 'hat' (Hmm) he’s wearing as an actor behind enemy lines.

One could go further: he takes down his boss’ position of power, proving to himself how easy it might be, tricks him into the ultimate fate - again, in a safe way without ties or ‘heart’ invested in that character, but also gains his trust so slickly and earnestly that his boss turns on his own most trusted servant. Some of these impulses are immature (kill your boss in ‘pretend land’ and so forth), but some are more pragmatic and developed actions. Is this in part a self-fulfilling prophecy, for Tom to give himself evidence that Leo could turn on him, even kill him with the right influence from a Joe Shmoe walking into his office and whispering in his ear for a week? Could Leo throw away that rich history that Tom can’t, and does this faux-confirmation bias allow him to finally cut the cord himself at the end? I’m not sure, but I do know that when Tom looks back up at Leo walking away- regardless of how he’s spent almost two hours diving into exhausting shenanigans, been complicit in a bunch of murders, and almost setting a city on fire as an ante-upping vehicle in a superfluous mob war- there’s heartbreak and love remaining. He may have been successful at making a concrete decision, but he didn’t succeed at extinguishing the flame.

There are many instances we could draw from to exemplify this sensitive part of Tom, which is fair to label his 'heart', including his fallible reactivity to get the drop on Bernie just as much as what drove him to spare Bernie in the first place. But I suppose I'm most interested in what feels like the key moment in the film: When Tom begs Leo for the nth time to listen to him and not sacrifice his position, their positions, hell- it's more than that... what they have (talk about a relationship plea), and Leo rebuffs him. I'm not saying all the action in the film is sourced in Tom responding, maturely or immaturely, intelligently or emotionally, to Leo slapping him around. But it boils down to that question of why did Tom tell Leo about his relationship with Verna, why did he deliberately hurt his friend? To help Leo? To help himself? To test Leo to see what he'd do? To put himself in a better position to help Leo? I think it's all of these things and more- a tragic move that could only end in one place: death of their relationship. The film ends with them both physically alive, so a best case scenario perhaps, but the narrative feels to be about trying to save what cannot be saved, and what neither party is even sure they entirely want to be saved (but at least Tom feels compelled to save anyways, partly to his own frustration) against the friction of emotional fatalism.