Subtitle The.Big.Gundown.1966.EXTENDED.US.1080p...

When Ennio Morricone's soundtrack was released in America by United Artists soundtrack LP, it had only thirteen tracks while RCA Italy's later 1981 LP had 23 tracks. GDM in Italy released a 24-track CD in 2001, but the soundtrack CD included here is the expanded 25-track edition issued by GDM in 2012. The expanded U.S. cut Blu-ray and DVD also features an isolated music and effects track (in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono on the former) while the Italian cut Blu-ray features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo isolated score track which is actually a reconstruction using the album tracks rather than the music stem of soundtrack (which would have been mixed down to mono). The Italian cut also features an optional subtitle commentary track on the score. The commentary not only includes remarks about each of the cues as they occur, but also points out scenes deleted from the American cut and their narrative value. Although the mono DTS-HD Master Audio Italian track is in great condition, one almost wishes that Grindhouse had been able to marry this stereo reconstruction of the track to the dialogue and effects as the score has a thrilling and vibrant presence here.

subtitle The.Big.Gundown.1966.EXTENDED.US.1080p...

Besides the music commentary subtitle track on the Italian cut, the included booklet also features an essay on the music by Gergely Hubai (as well as a track listing for the CD on the back of the booklet). The booklet also features an essay on the political aspects of the film by Joyner and an essay by Hubai about the differences between the Italian cut and the original U.S. theatrical cut. A DVD-ROM .pdf file on the DVD features an expanded version of the essay with a bullet point rundown of the differences as well as a 6-page Columbia Pictures Editing Memo (which also specifies that the three deleted bits contained here in the expanded U.S. cut were left in the TV version, no doubt to compensate for censored portions). (Eric Cotenas)

Sergio Leone's landmark Western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, the most famous of the so-called 'spaghetti westerns' and the third in the Clint Eastwood 'Man With No Name' trilogy, has been reissued with some very special scenes added as an extra supplement.The reason the scenes have been added as an extra feature and not re-interpolated into the film proper is simple: they only exist in the Italian language! They are subtitled in English for the less-cultured serape-and-cheroot fans, on the DVD only! The material constitutes fourteen minutes cut from the original 1966 Rome release, the Italian - language - only version of the film that clocks in at a whopping three hours in length. Apparently this long version is the one Leone would consider his definitive cut. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has been exhibited as short as 130 minutes in duration. For almost ten years, American video editions of the film have been the longest available, 161 minutes. It seems the film was cut from 176 or so minutes to 161 before it was dubbed into its various international language versions. So even though Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood are clearly mouthing English words in the new scenes, there never was any final English dialog recorded for them.

One frustrating thing about the deleted scenes is simply finding them on the disc. It takes some menu surfing to reach them, almost as if they were a hidden feature. The English subtitles don't appear automatically, which means new DVD fans unfamiliar with subtitle options might not realize they are accessable. That's regrettable, but is far better than the Image laserdisc. Apparently by error or omission, it contains all the cut scenes without subtitles at all.

What was clearly needed was a way of interpolating the cut scenes into the movie. Savant suggested that some programming be done to allow a second viewing alternative, a menu option that would interrupt the movie when needed to skip down to the appropriate missing scene, play it in Italian with subtitles, and then skip back to pick up the movie where it left off. MGM never considered this option and I was told that it was not possible. At the time there was at least one DVD release that did this exact trick: Earthlight was a documentary of space-views of Earth that had several viewing options based on menu selection: sections of the show grouped by subject, with or withoutmusic or explanatory titles, etc. 041b061a72