Feb 13 2007
Critically Acclaimed “Departed” Out On DVD
“The Departed” is up for five Academy Award nominations including best picture and best director for seven-time nominee Martin Scorsese. Now it is out on DVD.
The special edition two-disc DVD is full of special features, including nine additional scenes with introductions by Scorsese.
In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a cop working reluctantly undercover in the mafia. But if you think it’s just another Scorsese mob film, think again.
“It was a departure for Scorsese, I think, too, because he got to do another film about the sort of mob underworld, but this was also mixed with, you know, intelligence, counter-intelligence, the, you know, police department, the FBI, Irish mobsters in Boston — as opposed to Italian guys in New York,” DiCaprio told The Early Show contributor and People magazine Assistant Managing Editor Jess Cagle. “Certainly my character, I got to play somebody who was constantly in angst — having 24 hour panic attacks, which is something that I — I never got to do before.”
Besides DiCaprio, the film has an all-star cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Matt Damon — but it seems all were in awe of Jack Nicholson.
“You never, never, never know what to expect with him, because he can off the cuff and just say anything or do anything,” DiCaprio said. “And playing my character and playing that intense fear that I had constantly about being found out as this mole and he was the main, you know, force of nature there that was trying to catch me. And to have him be in character constantly, help — just helped me — it really did … it did instill the fear in you.”
Nicholson leads a cast of Academy Award veterans. However, “The Departed” received only one acting nomination. In one of the bigger surprises of the Oscar season, that honor went to first-time nominee Mark Wahlberg, who admits he’s come a long way from his days as a juvenile delinquent.
“The amazing thing was when I got the call that I was nominated, I got to call my parents and tell them good news that made them cry for the first time in my life,” he told the press after being nominated. “I called them the 20 or 25 times I was arrested and one of them had to get on a train or a bus and bail me out and they had to use the money they were going to use for food to feed their nine kids, so to make them proud and to use all that experience and put it to good use was definitely a blessing.”
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