Leone OUTITW & OUTIA among 2003's best DVD's
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http://movies.nytimes.com/pages/movies/homevideo/index.html In 2003's DVD Cupboard: Aliens, Astronauts and Alternate Endings
By PETER M. NICHOLS
Published: December 26, 2003
By midyear about half the American public still did not have DVD players, but the other half was grabbing up DVD's at the fastest rate ever for a new format. And it wasn't just movies the buyers craved; the appetite grew for extras: behind-the-scenes documentaries, commentaries, interviews, alternate endings, deleted scenes, trailers. Since one disc often couldn't hold it all, multiple-disc sets became commonplace, usually with the movie on one DVD and the extra features on another.
Plenty of room suits Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Paramount), which unfolds slowly and rhetorically to savor the texture and rhythms of the great westerns Leone admired. Extreme close-ups, many of Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda and Jason Robards, against vast backdrops distinguish a film that took way too much time (165 minutes) for Hollywood's taste. On a second disc Bernardo Bertolucci, who shares a story credit with Leone, says it was his idea to star a woman (Claudia Cardinale) in a western.
While there is no single "best DVD" this year, Leone's film could qualify, as could his meandering 229-minute gangster epic ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (Warner), released on two discs in June.......
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