Monday, August 20, 2007

"Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots..."

"...to live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough." Jagger could have been singing about Taxi Driver itself in that little Travis Bickle-esque rant. Feast your eyes upon this loverly two-disc special edition DVD that has been placed atop my must-have list posthaste. I love surprises like this--the set came out last week and I heard of it only this morning through the also-loverly Kim Morgan via her wondrous and magical Sunset Gun site. A full exploration of said DVD will be forthcoming, although of course like any sane person, I am a tad hesitant to revisit the sordid world of Travis, Iris, Sport, et. al., having purged myself of the obsessive Taxi Driver virus some time ago. I'm probably going to spin on down to Borders this after-work and snag it--rueing the fact that I always trash those Borders email coupons for 30%-off deals that clutter up my in-box (that's what she said...). That's how they get you.

P.S.: I utterly despise the cover artwork on this DVD set (actually, on all the DVDs of this film) because it gives away what is supposed to be the jolt of seeing Travis with a Mohawk. Scorsese has repeatedly said that is the moment in the film when the audience is to finally sever its sympathetic ties with Travis, and for it to be featured on the cover of the DVD is an act of artistic larceny. What is so wrong with these original one-sheets? They are two of the greatest movie posters ever.

2 comments:

FireInTheSun said...

I just read about this re-release the other day. Truly one of the greatest. And yes, I am full agreement with you about the mohawk cover image. They should have chosen otherwise.

Speaking of old school Scorcese, I just re-watched Mean Streets the other day. Love the young H.K/DeNiro energy, not to mention the grittiness and the kick-ass soundtrack...

Will Errickson said...

Of course my local Borders had no copy of this in stock, so I went ahead and ordered it much cheaper through Amazon, so it'll be a couple days... can't wait.