We rented the DVD last night. As well as being an excellent flick, (one of Marty Scorcese’s best, I think), the music was superb. The soundtrack very neatly dovetails with the plot (american gangs vs. Irish gangs in 19th century NY) and uses lots of musical juxtaposition-Irish trad, then American tunes, sometimes layered one on top of the other. And a lot of the cuts were from the Alan Lomax collection. I don’t know if the musical editor won an Oscar or not, but wow…Anybody else seen this movie yet?
Wished we’d seen it in an actual movie theatre, but we live in the boonies.
I saw ‘Gangs’ on it’s release.Scorsese is a brilliant director,but the film has been ‘hacked to bits’! (oh for the directors cut!)
Daniel Day-Lewis is very good (De-Niro was originally offered the part of ‘Bill the Butcher’),ANYONE would have been better in his part than Di Caprio (he’s really a light weight Rom-Com actor ain’t he?).
The sets and costumes were good,as was the music.
Did you spot Finbar Furey strolling through the pub singing ‘New York Girls’?
Thanks for the heads-up, Janice. That’s right up my alley. I can’t believe I still haven’t bought a DVD player, but when I do… aah, CD-quality sound.
It’s the fahncy cable I’m paying for, it’s turned me into a movie scavenger rather than a careful connoisseur.
Have fun in Goderich!
Yes! The opening sequence, where they prepared for the fight inside the brewery, had music by Otha Turner, the master Mississippi fifer who died last winter at the age of 94. He’s one of my very favorites. Shimmy She Wobble is the name of the piece they used in the film.
Otha lived his whole life in poverty and relative obscurity, but he collected a six figure check from Scorcese and got a whole lot of notoriety in his last months. Hopefully his family (many of whom he taught the music to) will carry on the tradition.
Seems that people either hated or loved this movie - I loved it, which is not to say that it was a great movie - just really engaging and enjoyable for me (and the whole family as well). The 3 hours went by pretty quickly, and that opening scene preparing for the gang fight was extraordinary. DDL was over the top but lots of fun, Cameron Diaz was surprisingly good and DiCaprio (no fans here) was adequate. I guess DDL movies have good soundtracks; I’d like to get this and The Last of the Mohicans - esp. that last scene when they’re chasing up the side of the mountain - breathtaking music, cinemetography and fight choreography.
Philo
Too much violence and profanity in this movie. I was quite surprised to hear a well-sung shapenote hymn of the era in it.
Well, the title is pretty indicative of the content… 
The movie was inspired by a book which purported to be a history. The violence, profanity and poverty depicted in the movie was quite a bit milder than that in the book.
I loved the movie.
But I love West Side Story, too.
“…it’s alarming how charming I feel…”
I loved the movie too. I appreciate being taken out of my own life for a couple hours once a week or so, don’t watch t.v, not looking for a history lesson, and I enjoy movies for their own sake most of the time.
By the way, I just saw and thoroughly enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp ~ that one had a great sound track too! 
(Of course, I highly doubt it was historically very accurate)
Mary
I thought it was cool that it had Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune back in the day and “Founder” of Greeley, Colorado (where we live) in it!
Horace sent his right hand man Thomas Meeker to start Greeley around the turn of the century as a utopian society… I’m not sure it’s “utopian” necessarily - it is a great place to live - but it must have been a nicer scene than what was going on with all the “Gangs of New York”!!!
That was one of those movies I thought was really well done… glad that I saw it but don’t know that I want to see again!