The films of Francis Ford Coppola, at their core, are all about family. That theme goes for behind the camera as well as in front of it; according to interviews with Coppola on the Blu-Ray and 4K Ultra HD special features of the "Godfather" films, the director wished for the actors portraying the Corleone crime family to feel as much like a real family as possible before cameras began rolling. So, prior to making "The Godfather," Coppola arranged for the primary family members — Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, John Cazale and Talia Shire — to meet at an Italian restaurant in New York City, have dinner together and improvise as their characters the entire time.
With all that preparation, and the fact that the filmmakers were adapting Mario Puzo's 400-page novel into what became a three-hour movie whose narrative spans the length of a decade on screen,...
With all that preparation, and the fact that the filmmakers were adapting Mario Puzo's 400-page novel into what became a three-hour movie whose narrative spans the length of a decade on screen,...
- 3/17/2024
- by Bill Bria
- Slash Film
The Godfather, which just turned 50 last week, took out all the competition. Budgeted at $6 million, it earned $287 million in theaters. Its worldwide box office was 38.4 times its production costs. It was the first film in history to take in a million bucks a day. Completed ahead of schedule, director Francis Ford Coppola’s family film reflected his Sicilian roots and those of Mario Puzo, the author of the novel. But it wasn’t personal for them, just business.
Prior to 1972, the gangster movie genre traditionally presented a disillusioned underclass in morality plays which sent the same message: “Crime doesn’t pay.” The Godfather says it does. The Corleone Family at the center of the film and novel turn a profit. Puzo’s book charts the rise and fall of the “Mafia,” a word never spoken in the movie, from the vantage point of the most upwardly mobile of New York’s Five Families.
Prior to 1972, the gangster movie genre traditionally presented a disillusioned underclass in morality plays which sent the same message: “Crime doesn’t pay.” The Godfather says it does. The Corleone Family at the center of the film and novel turn a profit. Puzo’s book charts the rise and fall of the “Mafia,” a word never spoken in the movie, from the vantage point of the most upwardly mobile of New York’s Five Families.
- 3/29/2022
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola from the bestselling novel by Mario Puzo, has just hit another historic milestone: its 50th anniversary. Released on March 24, 1972, it is a landmark film that made and remade history. The ultimate saga, which can be seen in the recently-released The Godfather Trilogy 4K Ultra HD edition, follows an immigrant family as they rise in American society. The Corleones reflect the vantage point of one of the Five Families of New York’s organized crime ruling commission.
While the words “mafia” and “cosa nostra” are never used in the film, many of the scenarios reflect specific points in the mob’s story. Some of these are strictly from Puzo’s imagination for the novel, like the horse’s head in a Hollywood producer’s bed scene. There is no evidence in gangland history to a corresponding incident like that. However, one of the most...
While the words “mafia” and “cosa nostra” are never used in the film, many of the scenarios reflect specific points in the mob’s story. Some of these are strictly from Puzo’s imagination for the novel, like the horse’s head in a Hollywood producer’s bed scene. There is no evidence in gangland history to a corresponding incident like that. However, one of the most...
- 3/28/2022
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
Leave the screening, take the cannoli.
James Caan says that he walked out of an initial “The Godfather” screening after realizing director Francis Ford Coppola cut a key scene involving Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen. Caan played Sonny Corleone, the eldest son of mafia don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando).
“When Michael [Al Pacino] tells me he is going to take care of the cop and Sollozzo [Al Lettieri], I say, ‘You’ll get brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.’ There was a scene before in the same room that I had with Bobby [Duvall] that was like 10 pages long — and Francis cut all of it out!” Caan told The Hollywood Reporter in honor of “The Godfather”‘s 50th anniversary. “I was so pissed off, I couldn’t watch the rest of the film.”
Caan added, “But otherwise, [Coppola] gave me a great honor.”
Caan also dismissed the rumor that he...
James Caan says that he walked out of an initial “The Godfather” screening after realizing director Francis Ford Coppola cut a key scene involving Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen. Caan played Sonny Corleone, the eldest son of mafia don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando).
“When Michael [Al Pacino] tells me he is going to take care of the cop and Sollozzo [Al Lettieri], I say, ‘You’ll get brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.’ There was a scene before in the same room that I had with Bobby [Duvall] that was like 10 pages long — and Francis cut all of it out!” Caan told The Hollywood Reporter in honor of “The Godfather”‘s 50th anniversary. “I was so pissed off, I couldn’t watch the rest of the film.”
Caan added, “But otherwise, [Coppola] gave me a great honor.”
Caan also dismissed the rumor that he...
- 3/21/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
72 544x376 Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
By Fred Blosser
“The Don Is Dead,” a 1973 crime drama directed by Richard Fleischer, is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics. Unassuming but sharply executed, it may offer a bracing slice of old-school pizza for viewers who were disappointed by David Chase’s “The Many Saints of Newark” earlier this year. In Fleischer’s film, an unexpected heart attack claims Don Paolo Regalbuto, one of three powerful crime bosses in an unnamed American city. Since organized crime abhors a vacuum even more than nature does, the “national commission” of bosses quickly meets to decide the fate of the Regalbuto crime Family. No one ever uses the word “Mafia,” but wink-wink, you know whose these guys are anyway. One of the three bosses with whom Don Paolo shared control over their city, Don Jimmy, is away in prison and represented at...
By Fred Blosser
“The Don Is Dead,” a 1973 crime drama directed by Richard Fleischer, is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics. Unassuming but sharply executed, it may offer a bracing slice of old-school pizza for viewers who were disappointed by David Chase’s “The Many Saints of Newark” earlier this year. In Fleischer’s film, an unexpected heart attack claims Don Paolo Regalbuto, one of three powerful crime bosses in an unnamed American city. Since organized crime abhors a vacuum even more than nature does, the “national commission” of bosses quickly meets to decide the fate of the Regalbuto crime Family. No one ever uses the word “Mafia,” but wink-wink, you know whose these guys are anyway. One of the three bosses with whom Don Paolo shared control over their city, Don Jimmy, is away in prison and represented at...
- 11/30/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
To the public, Alec Baldwin’s Colt .45 stands as a symbol of perhaps criminal incompetence, but to insiders it also represents a pathetic epitaph to that mythic genre, the “indie” movie.
The indie Western already was in dire straits because of lack of funding and distribution until Baldwin came along as both star and producer of Rust – a sort of Dennis Hopper of the 2020s. The film was under-budgeted at $7 million on a 21-day shooting schedule. Its crew was rebellious, inexperienced and seemingly oblivious to the protocols governing movie weaponry.
Besides all this, no one seemed to be running the show among the usual cluster of producers and executive producers (including Baldwin’s manager).
By contrast, indie producers traditionally were proud to take their bows. Upon completing Easy Rider, Hopper once boasted proudly that his film crew was essentially “a dysfunctional family.” The dysfunction worked for him in the ’60s...
The indie Western already was in dire straits because of lack of funding and distribution until Baldwin came along as both star and producer of Rust – a sort of Dennis Hopper of the 2020s. The film was under-budgeted at $7 million on a 21-day shooting schedule. Its crew was rebellious, inexperienced and seemingly oblivious to the protocols governing movie weaponry.
Besides all this, no one seemed to be running the show among the usual cluster of producers and executive producers (including Baldwin’s manager).
By contrast, indie producers traditionally were proud to take their bows. Upon completing Easy Rider, Hopper once boasted proudly that his film crew was essentially “a dysfunctional family.” The dysfunction worked for him in the ’60s...
- 10/28/2021
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
72 544x376 Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
By Fred Blosser
We moviegoers are a caring, law-abiding community, or at least we’re assumed to be, but regardless of how timid or tender-hearted we are, producers know that we’re usually pushovers for movies about Big Heists. As long as the crime is perpetrated against an institution like a bank, a multinational corporation, or a casino, and no person is threatened or injured, the protagonists’ antisocial behavior becomes an abstraction. We’re free, vicariously, to admire their ingenuity and tenacity as they carry out their complicated scheme. But what if the story is based on a big payout that directly endangers an innocent person? Then it becomes harder to sell the concept as escapist entertainment, as journeyman filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Hubert Cornfield discovered in the mid-1950s, when they both became interested, independently, in a 1953 novel by Lionel White.
By Fred Blosser
We moviegoers are a caring, law-abiding community, or at least we’re assumed to be, but regardless of how timid or tender-hearted we are, producers know that we’re usually pushovers for movies about Big Heists. As long as the crime is perpetrated against an institution like a bank, a multinational corporation, or a casino, and no person is threatened or injured, the protagonists’ antisocial behavior becomes an abstraction. We’re free, vicariously, to admire their ingenuity and tenacity as they carry out their complicated scheme. But what if the story is based on a big payout that directly endangers an innocent person? Then it becomes harder to sell the concept as escapist entertainment, as journeyman filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Hubert Cornfield discovered in the mid-1950s, when they both became interested, independently, in a 1953 novel by Lionel White.
- 5/22/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Scarface hadn’t been made when Pete Townshend’s 1974 song “The Punk and the Godfather” came out, but The Godfather certainly had. The Who’s anthem was a musical allegory about the rock scene, but the lyrics might as well be interpreted as a conversation between Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. Possibly right before they rumble.
Al Pacino played both men in both movies, and in each film, he begins the story as a punk. But in The Godfather, at least, he grows into the establishment. Michael becomes don. Tony was a shooting star on the other hand, one on a collision course with an unyielding atmosphere. Both roles are smorgasbords of possibilities to an actor, especially one who chased Richard III to every imaginable outcome. Each are also master criminals. But which is more masterful?
The obvious answer would seem to be Michael Corleone because he turned a criminal...
Al Pacino played both men in both movies, and in each film, he begins the story as a punk. But in The Godfather, at least, he grows into the establishment. Michael becomes don. Tony was a shooting star on the other hand, one on a collision course with an unyielding atmosphere. Both roles are smorgasbords of possibilities to an actor, especially one who chased Richard III to every imaginable outcome. Each are also master criminals. But which is more masterful?
The obvious answer would seem to be Michael Corleone because he turned a criminal...
- 5/7/2021
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
Hubert Cornfield’s smoothly directed, moody kidnapping story is mysterious, engaging and well acted, but opts for an anti-thriller vibe with a curiously unsatisfying ending. Was this really the plan, or did the irksomely capricious Marlon Brando just not want to cooperate with the director? Brando is terrific anyway. The well-cast Rita Moreno, Richard Boone and Pamela Franklin are short-changed by directorial and editorial decisions that don’t give us enough of a purchase on the characters. The overcast weather on the French coast is a plus, but not the director’s choice of a downbeat, arty finish.
The Night of the Following Day
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date May 25, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, Pamela Franklin,
Jess Hahn, Gérard Buhr, Hugues Wanner, Jacques Marin, Al Lettieri.
Cinematography: Willy Kurant
Film Editor: Gordon Pilkington
Art Direction Jean Boulet
Original...
The Night of the Following Day
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date May 25, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, Pamela Franklin,
Jess Hahn, Gérard Buhr, Hugues Wanner, Jacques Marin, Al Lettieri.
Cinematography: Willy Kurant
Film Editor: Gordon Pilkington
Art Direction Jean Boulet
Original...
- 5/1/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Happy Monday, dear readers! We have a brand new slate of home media releases to look forward to as we head into a new month, and there are some great films coming out on Tuesday that genre fans will definitely want to pick up. Rlje Films is finally releasing Horror Noire on both Blu-ray and DVD this week, and they’re also bringing home arguably the most talked-about horror film of 2020 as well: Rob Savage’s Host. Kino Lorber is showing some love to Dark Intruder with their new 2K Blu, and Code Red is giving us more reasons to fear the water with their Blu-ray for The Great Alligator.
Other releases for February 2nd include Satan’s Blood, Sky Sharks, Deadcon, and Hellkat.
Dark Intruder
Brand New 2K Master! Dark Intruder stars Leslie Nielsen (Forbidden Planet) as Brett Kingsford, an Occult expert who is brought in by police to help...
Other releases for February 2nd include Satan’s Blood, Sky Sharks, Deadcon, and Hellkat.
Dark Intruder
Brand New 2K Master! Dark Intruder stars Leslie Nielsen (Forbidden Planet) as Brett Kingsford, an Occult expert who is brought in by police to help...
- 2/2/2021
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
The actor’s ruined handsomeness was perfect for his portrayal of a psychopathically violent gangster in this classic 1971 thriller
Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are renowned for small-screen comic masterpieces such as Porridge and The Likely Lads, but in 1971 they scripted the deadly serious and horribly gripping London crime picture Villain, now rereleased on Blu-ray. It’s an extremely lairy and tasty piece of work in which Richard Burton gave one of his best, most lip-smackingly gruesome performances: this film’s easily as good as the far better known Get Carter with Michael Caine, released that same year.
Villain is based on the novel The Burden of Proof from pulp author James Barlow, reportedly an inspiration for Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm. Producer Elliot Krasner had originally commissioned a treatment from Hollywood actor-writer Al Lettieri, (who played the drug lord Virgil Sollozzo in The Godfather), but Clement and...
Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are renowned for small-screen comic masterpieces such as Porridge and The Likely Lads, but in 1971 they scripted the deadly serious and horribly gripping London crime picture Villain, now rereleased on Blu-ray. It’s an extremely lairy and tasty piece of work in which Richard Burton gave one of his best, most lip-smackingly gruesome performances: this film’s easily as good as the far better known Get Carter with Michael Caine, released that same year.
Villain is based on the novel The Burden of Proof from pulp author James Barlow, reportedly an inspiration for Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm. Producer Elliot Krasner had originally commissioned a treatment from Hollywood actor-writer Al Lettieri, (who played the drug lord Virgil Sollozzo in The Godfather), but Clement and...
- 3/26/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Before kicking off his on-stage interview with Francis Ford Coppola following the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Coppola’s seminal “Apocalypse Now: Final Cut,” fellow director Steven Soderbergh took a moment to recognize one of the film’s key collaborators who was seated in the sold-out Beacon Theater audience. “His onscreen credits don’t really describe fully his influence or his abilities,” Soderbergh told the crowd. “He’s a filmmaker in his own right, an author, he’s also, for a lot of people of my generation and yours [Coppola], a sound and image guru: Walter Murch.”
Fittingly enough, just one night later, the first documentary about Hollywood sound design, “Making Waves,” also premiered at Tribeca, in which Murch’s colleagues make the full-throated case that he is the godfather of the modern movie sound. Like his closest collaborators, Coppola and George Lucas, Murch had the unusual distinction of not only...
Fittingly enough, just one night later, the first documentary about Hollywood sound design, “Making Waves,” also premiered at Tribeca, in which Murch’s colleagues make the full-throated case that he is the godfather of the modern movie sound. Like his closest collaborators, Coppola and George Lucas, Murch had the unusual distinction of not only...
- 4/30/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
A spoof? A black comedy? Michael Hodges and Michael Caine’s hardboiled ‘foreign intrigue’ comedy lays on the movie references and clever dialogue, going the distance in the arcane, hipster-noir subgenre. Caine is always good in that mode, and Mickey Rooney gets a supporting role that can only be called bizarre.
Pulp
DVD
Arrow Video USA
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date , 2017 / Available from Arrow Video
Starring: Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott, Nadia Cassini, Leopoldo Trieste, Al Lettieri, Robert Sacchi, Luciano Pigozzi.
Cinematography: Ousama Rawi
Film Editor: Patrick Downing
Original Music: George Martin
Produced by Michael Klinger
Written and Directed by Mike Hodges
Mickey King writes Pulp, lives Pulp, very soon could be Pulp!
After their success with the brutal, now-classic gangster thriller Get Carter, the ‘three Michaels’ Caine, Hodges and Klinger came up with this precociously spoofy takeoff on cheap pulp mysteries, appropriately titled Pulp. Filmed in sunny Malta,...
Pulp
DVD
Arrow Video USA
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date , 2017 / Available from Arrow Video
Starring: Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott, Nadia Cassini, Leopoldo Trieste, Al Lettieri, Robert Sacchi, Luciano Pigozzi.
Cinematography: Ousama Rawi
Film Editor: Patrick Downing
Original Music: George Martin
Produced by Michael Klinger
Written and Directed by Mike Hodges
Mickey King writes Pulp, lives Pulp, very soon could be Pulp!
After their success with the brutal, now-classic gangster thriller Get Carter, the ‘three Michaels’ Caine, Hodges and Klinger came up with this precociously spoofy takeoff on cheap pulp mysteries, appropriately titled Pulp. Filmed in sunny Malta,...
- 12/19/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
By Lee Pfeiffer
By 1974 John Wayne was in the twilight of his long, distinguished film career that had spanned six decades. Although the genre that we associate him most with, the Western, was still in vogue, the trend among audience preferences had clearly shifted to urban crime dramas. Surprisingly, Wayne had never played a cop or detective - unless you want to count his role in the lamentable "Big Jim McLain", a 1952 Warner Brothers propaganda film that served as a love letter to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In that turkey, Wayne played an investigator for Huac, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee that served as McCarthy's private police force, presumably searching out commie infiltrators. All they ended up doing was ruining the lives of left-wing people in the arts and academia. Wayne, for his part, remained unapologetic for his support of Huac even after McCarthy's popularity plummeted and he ended his career in shame and disgrace.
By 1974 John Wayne was in the twilight of his long, distinguished film career that had spanned six decades. Although the genre that we associate him most with, the Western, was still in vogue, the trend among audience preferences had clearly shifted to urban crime dramas. Surprisingly, Wayne had never played a cop or detective - unless you want to count his role in the lamentable "Big Jim McLain", a 1952 Warner Brothers propaganda film that served as a love letter to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In that turkey, Wayne played an investigator for Huac, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee that served as McCarthy's private police force, presumably searching out commie infiltrators. All they ended up doing was ruining the lives of left-wing people in the arts and academia. Wayne, for his part, remained unapologetic for his support of Huac even after McCarthy's popularity plummeted and he ended his career in shame and disgrace.
- 7/16/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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