While it's visually stunning, Casino has just never compared to Goodfellas for me. The story is fascinating, and Sharon Stone really earned that Golden Globe, but when you watch the Casino Special Edition DVD, you get a good sense of what went wrong, as well as right. The bonus features are really great, getting into the details behind the film's look and feel and the difficulties the crew encountered while filming in Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps.

The 2.35:1 anamorphic picture looks stunning. Check out Robert DeNiro's pink suit (not to mention the exploding car) in chapter 1. The opulent Vegas sets look crisp, clean, and impressive. I love the scene in chapter 3 where Ginger throws the poker chips all over the casino. It's so colorful and presents so much detail. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack sounds excellent, as is to be expected from any Scorsese film. And, as much as I hate the voiceover narration, it comes through clearly over the music.

The extras on this disc are abundant and of very high quality. My favorite is the "Casino: The Story" featurette, in which Scorsese and writer Nicholas Pileggi (who also wrote Goodfellas) discuss how the project got started and how it differed from Goodfellas. Whereas Goodfellas was adapted from the book, Pileggi was writing Casino as he went, and Scorsese just threw the whole thing together in his head—not too shabby under the circumstances.