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Joe Pesci

Joe Pesci

10 films on Best Blurays9 in 4K1 in HD

Joe Pesci photo

Joseph Frank “Joe” Pesci (born February 9, 1943) is a Italian-American actor, comedian, singer and musician. He is known for his roles as violent mobsters, funnymen, comic foils and quirky sidekicks. Pesci has starred in a number of high profile films such as Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, Once Upon a Time in America, My Cousin Vinny, Easy Money, JFK, Moonwalker, Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Lethal Weapon films. In 1990, Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the psychopathic mobster Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, ten years after receiving a nomination in the same category for Raging Bull.

Biography from TMDB

Leading role · Director: Chris Columbus

Video format: 4K Streaming

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Disney+ has Streaming in 4K

Video Notes:

Fox has Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1995 Fox LaserDisc

Leading role · Directors: Colin Chilvers & Will Vinton & Jerry Kramer & Jim Blashfield

Best English-Friendly & Video:

OG Version: 1989 US Image Entertainment LaserDisc

2005 Edited Version - Re-Edited and Censored: UK Warner Bros Blu-ray

2005 Edited Version - Uncensored: UK Warner Bros DVD

Sources: movie-censorship.com (opens in a new tab)

Upcoming Release:

Germany Plaion Blu-ray with uncensored cut and 4:3 version

Video Notes:

Film Whisperer's restoration is better

Additional Info:

Censorship changes for Blu-ray: https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=224122

Leading role · Director: Chris Columbus

Best English-Friendly & Video:

2020 30th Anniversary Edition 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1991 Fox Video LaserDisc

Leading role · Director: Martin Scorsese

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

2019 Universal 4K Blu-ray

Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

France Seven7 has Dolby Vision and Atmos unlike the US disc but was most likely encoded in the wrong color space

Best Audio:

Cinema DTS, Blu-ray 5.1, DVD 5.1

Leading role · Director: Martin Scorsese

Video format: 4K Streaming

Best English-Friendly & Video:

Criterion Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

Netflix has 4K Streaming

Leading role · Director: Martin Scorsese

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly & Video:

Imprint Australia 4K Blu-ray

Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · blah-ray.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab) · facebook.com (opens in a new tab)

Upcoming Release:

Capelight 4K announced for 2026

Video Notes:

Imprint Australia 4K Blu-ray has slightly better compression than Criterion 4K Blu-ray.

The master in DV looks all but identical to the Criterion’s HDR grade. Detail-wise, FiM’s encode looks like it uncovered a tiny bit of extra high-frequency information that got filtered on the Criterion. See nicolas review

Best Audio:

1990 Criterion LaserDisc/1993 MGM LaserDisc/2002 R2 MGM DVD

Audio Notes:

1990 Criterion LaserDisc/1993 MGM LaserDisc/2002 R2 MGM DVD are the best. See blah-ray https://blah-ray.blogspot.com/2018/01/raging-bull-1980.html

Imprint Australia 4K Blu-ray has better audio than Criterion 4K Blu-ray, from nicolas:

I believe that what’s on Imprint’s 4K is one of the good mixes MGM and Criterion released during the LaserDisc days. Music is powerful and detailed, dialogues have excellent fidelity and ambient sounds have perceptible depth. I compared the "new" 2.0 with the anemic 5.1 as well as the Criterion 4K mix and could clearly hear the improvements.

Leading role · Director: Martin Scorsese

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

WB 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:

1991 WB LaserDisc

Audio Notes:

But Warner Bros 4K Blu-ray is very similar.

Supporting role · Director: Sergio Leone

Video format: UHD Blu-ray

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray

229 min cut (Theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)

Video Notes:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts

229 min cut (Theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray, caps

The 4K includes both theatrical and extended cuts. It's overall a solid upgrade over previous discs, but some will strongly dislike the color grading.
There are some issues with encoding and grain management.


Nic's review:

Some definitely messed with it as there’s grain management going on that resulted in magnetic, squishy grain movement. Both cuts (4K discs) are affected and it doesn’t look like an encoding issue to me as the bitrates don’t drop down to single digits á la Paramount or StudioCanal. During opticals, the lowest I’ve noted on the Extended 4K was around 30 MB/s vs. ~5 MB/s more for the theatrical cut.

Darker scenes are mostly (but not always) better but when it gets brighter, particularly in exteriors or scenes like the Jennifer Connelly dance scene at minute 38, I can’t unsee the digital tinkering as it does some damage texturally.

I compared it with the Eagle Pictures and Warner Bros Fox Blu-ray of the extended cut and they all look fine without grain management like that. Eagle Pictures’s Blu-ray is an older one if anyone’s curious and credited to another authoring house than 64Biz, which did the 4K.

Other than that, except for some encoding-related chroma noise that peeks through in the DV layer, Eagle Pictures did everything right. They corrected the framing to 1.85, kept the original English titles, the English restoration note, subtitles, HDR/DV is gentle and respectful of the source black levels are better than on the Warner Bros/Fox Blu-ray. Without that grain management, this would’ve been the all-timer release we all longed for.

Best Audio:

251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray

229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc

Audio Notes:

251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray (24-bit, Eagle Pictures is 16-bit, not audible)
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc (missing 2 minutes, but original mono mix was never released on DVD/Blu-ray)

Additional Info:

Extended edition adds scenes cut from the theatrical, but from a much lower quality source. It's intended to approximate the original cut, but to what extent that is true is debatable.
US theatrical cut is infamously bad, was panned at release and never re-released on home video.

Supporting role · Director: Oliver Stone

4K · Excellent
Best English-Friendly:

Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray

Upcoming Release:

Theatrical Cut 4K Blu-ray in August

Best Video:

Director's Cut: Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray

Theatrical Cut: Shout! Factory Blu-ray (included with collector's edition)

Best Audio:

Theatrical Cut: The Shout UHD DTS-HD 2.0

Audio Notes:

Theatrical Cut: The Shout UHD DTS-HD 2.0 seems to be the same mix overall as the 1992 laserdisc PCM 2.0 but its not a straight port.  Even though there are some minor differences, it does not seem to be a downmix of the 5.1.  It could possibly be a new mastering.  It has just a tiny bit more dynamic range than the laserdisc, but the laserdisc has a bit more presence in the lower and midrange frequencies.

Supporting role · Director: Robert De Niro

4K · Solid
Best English-Friendly & Video:

MVD 4K Blu-ray

Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)

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