Douglas Caddy Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 Prominent astrologer Ray Grasse wrote on Facebook today: The new Scorsese film “The Irishman” is excellent, although a bit long for my tastes. I decide to look up the background info on some of the real-life characters - including the figure Joey Gallo (played by Sebastian Maniscalco). Quite an unusual case - this is from Wikipedia: While serving his sentence, Gallo was incarcerated at three New York State prisons: Green Haven Correctional Facility in Beekman, Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, and Auburn Correctional Facili...ty in Auburn. In 1962, while Joe was serving time in Attica, his brothers Larry and Albert, along with five other members of the Gallo crew, rushed into a burning Brooklyn tenement near their hangout, the Longshore Rest Room, and rescued six children and their mother from a fire. The crew was briefly celebrated in the press. While at Green Haven, Gallo became friends with African-American drug trafficker Leroy "Nicky" Barnes. Gallo predicted a power shift in the Harlem drug rackets towards black gangs and he coached Barnes on how to upgrade his criminal organization. Gallo was soon recruiting African-Americans as soldiers in the Gallo crew. His relationships with other Cosa Nostra inmates was distant; they reportedly called him "The Criminal" for fraternizing with black inmates. On August 29, 1964, Gallo sued the Department of Corrections, stating that guards inflicted cruel and unusual punishment on him at Green Haven after he allowed a black barber to cut his hair. The Commissioner characterized Gallo as a belligerent prisoner and an agitator. At Auburn, Gallo took up watercolor painting and became an avid reader, soon becoming conversant on Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Ayn Rand and his role model, Niccolò Machiavelli. He also regularly read The New York Times. Gallo worked as an elevator operator in the prison's wood-working shop. During a prison riot at Auburn, he rescued a severely wounded corrections officer from angry inmates. The officer later testified for Gallo at a parole hearing. According to Donald Frankos, a fellow inmate at Auburn, Gallo's philosophy was to be the best you can be, whether it was a cab driver or gangster; never settle for second best. Gallo tutored Frankos on Machiavelli, and Frankos taught Gallo how to play contract bridge. Frankos later described Gallo, "Joe was articulate and had excellent verbal skills being able to describe gouging a man's guts out with the same eloquent ease that he used when discussing classical literature.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 Netflix's 'The Irishman' is a monumental movie that only Martin Scorsese could attempt — and pull off https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-the-irishman-review-scorsese-delivers-an-epic-experience-2019-10?fbclid=IwAR3arYU7d_GtF307DMZeunTO5vcsGJvXxDNOvxzWyrtn2ULP49vVij4TJ7A Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 (edited) Saw "The Irishman" this past Sunday. Since I am not academically educated in any of the important aspects of film history and production, I will leave such deeper and more thoughtful evaluation and critiquing of this movie to our esteemed film experts like Joseph McBride. With that credibility disclaimer I would however still like to throw out my "Man On The Street" take. I sure didn't think this film was a masterpiece. Just some light observations that really distracted me in watching this overly LONG film. The audience at our local art film theater for this showing was 95% older than 60. Being that the film was almost twice as long as a typical movie, there seemed to be a steady stream of urgent bathroom needing audience members making their way through tight seating rows and grasping other aisle seat patrons on their arms and heads to brace themselves going up through the extremely poorly lighted exit path. The reaction of the audience patrons throughout the film was mostly very quiet, very subdued and I am guessing even bored at times. I didn't hear hardly any laughing at certain supposedly funny scenes. Watching someone get their head blown off several times in the film makes it hard to switch to a more lighthearted take on other scenes in between, imo. I was gradually aware that the film was as formulaic as it was in it's Italian mob depiction like so many other Mafia films of the last 30 years. You have to see the typical cars and boats being blown up, hit victims heads exploding with blood squirting out, brutal garroting of an unsuspecting dupe in the front seat of a moving car by his hit man killer in the back seat, ironic murderous Godfather attended baptisms of an innocent child in a Catholic/Christian Church, schmaltzy ballad Italian/American singer weddings, big black cars and black clothing funerals with duplicitous glances, ominous big boss meetings in old fashioned Italian restaurants, kind of ditzy big haired mob wives and big burley body guard goons standing behind their bosses with surly looks on their faces. We also see the typical brutal rage filled kicking beating of some poor guy who offended the main characters like the one where Di Nero's Sheeran gives a local market owner a pummeling that looked just like the one Sonny Corleone gave his brother -in-law in the Godfather film in retribution for the brother-in-law's abuse towards his wife...Sonny Corleone's sister. Or the beating/kicking Joe Pesci gives Billy Batts in Goodfellas. These scenes seem too typical for the genre any more and after years of seeing them in so many other organized crime films they seem to run together in one's film memories. And there is even the typical Italian bond/obsession with food as always. Watching Russell Buffalinno's salad making with comments of how it's properly done and how much good bread is important etc. Again ... just another tired Italian American cultural cliche thing with these types of films. Di Nero's Sheeran's quiet staring with apprehension and/or maybe sadness and regret over and over is also overdone imo. We must have had a full 1/2 hour of those no dialogue stares and having to just look at DiNero's confused and maybe pained and regretful expressions and figure out on our own what he was thinking...other than how the hell did he ever end up in such a sordid and fragile mix of dangerous crime figures and an ego maniac boss in Hoffa? Other things to share but I'll end my admittedly very negative Man On The Street assessment of "The Irishman" with another criticism...what was the point of having that old doo-wop tune "In The Still Of The Night" playing over and over again during key scenes in the film? I just did not see or feel the musical score enhancing connection of this tune with the films characters and story line. The main characters in the film were from the World War Two generation and probably not into the doo-wop rock and roll music of the late 50's and early 60's. Much of the background music fit the times, culture and characters okay but much didn't and was again, a curious distraction. Even the casting pairing of Di Nero, Pacino and Pesci is getting kind of tired and over-done imo. How many Mafia films can you keep making with this same cast? And Di Nero looks as much like an Irishman as Clint Eastwood looks Italian. And I'm still pondering the film's references to the JFK assassination. Now the make up job on David Ferry DID make me laugh. Sorry for the really negative take. Maybe someone else can see this all in a different light. And lastly, after hearing what an epic film and achievement "The Irishman" was ( it should have kept it's book title - "I Hear You Paint Houses" ) I couldn't help comparing it to Oliver Stone's "JFK." I am still moved by Stone's film and watch it twice a year. "JFK" has elements of it's structure and pacing and casting and story line that truly fits the "Epic" description, much more legitimately that "The Irishman." IMO + Kudo's however to the make up job on Joe Pesci's Buffalino character when he was old and in prison. How did they make Pesci's scrunched up face and tooth loss jaw character look that real? Edited December 2, 2019 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Andrews Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 (edited) 7 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said: Prominent astrologer Ray Grasse wrote on Facebook today: The new Scorsese film “The Irishman” is excellent, although a bit long for my tastes. I decide to look up the background info on some of the real-life characters - including the figure Joey Gallo (played by Sebastian Maniscalco). Quite an unusual case - this is from Wikipedia: While serving his sentence, Gallo was incarcerated at three New York State prisons: Green Haven Correctional Facility in Beekman, Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, and Auburn Correctional Facili...ty in Auburn. In 1962, while Joe was serving time in Attica, his brothers Larry and Albert, along with five other members of the Gallo crew, rushed into a burning Brooklyn tenement near their hangout, the Longshore Rest Room, and rescued six children and their mother from a fire. The crew was briefly celebrated in the press. While at Green Haven, Gallo became friends with African-American drug trafficker Leroy "Nicky" Barnes. Gallo predicted a power shift in the Harlem drug rackets towards black gangs and he coached Barnes on how to upgrade his criminal organization. Gallo was soon recruiting African-Americans as soldiers in the Gallo crew. His relationships with other Cosa Nostra inmates was distant; they reportedly called him "The Criminal" for fraternizing with black inmates. On August 29, 1964, Gallo sued the Department of Corrections, stating that guards inflicted cruel and unusual punishment on him at Green Haven after he allowed a black barber to cut his hair. The Commissioner characterized Gallo as a belligerent prisoner and an agitator. At Auburn, Gallo took up watercolor painting and became an avid reader, soon becoming conversant on Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Ayn Rand and his role model, Niccolò Machiavelli. He also regularly read The New York Times. Gallo worked as an elevator operator in the prison's wood-working shop. During a prison riot at Auburn, he rescued a severely wounded corrections officer from angry inmates. The officer later testified for Gallo at a parole hearing. According to Donald Frankos, a fellow inmate at Auburn, Gallo's philosophy was to be the best you can be, whether it was a cab driver or gangster; never settle for second best. Gallo tutored Frankos on Machiavelli, and Frankos taught Gallo how to play contract bridge. Frankos later described Gallo, "Joe was articulate and had excellent verbal skills being able to describe gouging a man's guts out with the same eloquent ease that he used when discussing classical literature.' It did become a strange ethno-cultural war between Gallo and the Mob, one of its two climaxes being Gallo hiring or otherwise convincing a black assassin to shoot down Mob boss Joe Columbo at an Italian-American pride rally at Columbus Circle in New York, at the height of Columbo's strident defense of Italian-American heritage against Mafia stereotyping. At bottom may have been Gallo's insistent sense that he and his brothers were slighted by New York's Mob hierarchy when the Gallos made war against the Profaci-Columbo family they had once served. Columbo's protests affected the making of The Godfather, which never utters the words Mafia or Cosa Nostra. NB that the Gallos are rumored to have been hired to shoot Albert Anastasia in the Park Sheraton Hotel barber shop, though they are not name-checked when this scene occurs, with splendid art direction, in The Irishman. In 1976, when Bob Dylan rehashed Joe Gallo's life story in the bathetic folk ballad "Joey," rock critic Lester Bangs delivered all Gallo hagiographers the death blow, recounting how Gallo once ripped an album by Dylan associates The Byrds off his wife's stereo and threw it down the apartment building's trash chute, calling the Byrds "fags." https://www.villagevoice.com/1976/03/08/dylan-dallies-with-mafia-chic-joey-gallo-was-no-hero/ Edited November 28, 2019 by David Andrews Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Andrews Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 (edited) 5 hours ago, Joe Bauer said: We see the also typical brutal rage filled kicking beating of some poor guy who offended the main characters like the one where Di Nero's Sheeran gives a local market owner a pummeling that looked just like the one Sonny Corleone gave his brother -in-law in the Godfather film in retribution for the brother-in-law's abuse towards his wife...Sonny Corleone's sister. My grandmother, a proud Polish-American family woman, loved The Godfather for its heimisch ethos. Watching The Irishman tonight, I could hear her yelling "Give it to him!" when De Niro stomped the guy who touched his daughter. As if these things don't happen. Edited November 28, 2019 by David Andrews Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Andrews Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 (edited) Jimmy Hoffa, Chuckie O'Brien, and government surveillance: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/jimmy-hoffa-my-stepfather-and-me/598372/ Written by Chuckie's stepson, a former DoJ attorney. Discusses the Kennedys and King. Edited November 28, 2019 by David Andrews Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ecker Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 Three and a half hours? I assume that The Irishman has an intermission. I wouldn't sit through Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, or any other "masterpiece" without an intermission. Tell me that this latest Mob job has one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted November 28, 2019 Author Share Posted November 28, 2019 In the version I saw at the theater, it did not have an intermission. GWTW was a piece of middle brow schmaltz that Hollywood tried to sell as some kind of work of art, which it was not. Lawrence of Arabia is a really fine film in every way: the writing, direction, editing, photography. And what can one say about that cast that has not been said already? I really admire the ending of that film. It is beautifully done. The kind of directing that Scorsese will never be able to match if he lives to be a hundred. I wouldn't even call The Irishman a decent film. Its a bloated 160 million dollar mediocrity. A product of that economic pac man Netflix. Which is the only way it could have been financed. Because with Netflix, it does not matter if each and every film makes money on its own. The selling point they have is a wide variety of choices and genres. In fact, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix combined make more films per year than the studios. Who could have predicted that ten years ago? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ecker Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 For a three-and-a-half hour movie with no intermission, they need to have a couple of porta potties in the aisles. (With windows in the doors so you don't miss anything.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 15 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said: Will 'The Irishman' Netflix Debut Ding Thanksgiving Box Office? https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/will-irishmans-netflix-debut-ding-thanksgiving-box-office-1257973 With Denver buried under a foot of snow for Thanksgiving, people around here won't be driving out to theaters, in any case. The city looks like Lower Slobovia this morning. The good news is that I can stay indoors and watch The Irishman in my living room on Netflix, with as many intermissions as I need. The bad news is that the film, evidently, sucks. Although, I have to confess that I have always liked Martin Scorcese's films-- especially his Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, and The Departed, which caused post-traumatic flashbacks of my medical school/ER experiences in Boston (and Providence.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 (edited) My wife had to leave her seat for a bathroom break and there was no intermission. My wife generally likes to discuss her thoughts on films we see together as we drive home after. She just had hardly anything to say about "The Irishman." I think she shared something about how she just didn't get or feel a connection to the film story line, including the script and the main characters. My main image flashbacks of this film are ones of Di Nero's silent facial shots mixed with bloody shootings, bombings, garroting and Al Pacino's highly animated ice cream sundae eating. Edited November 29, 2019 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ecker Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 Here's some weird trivia, if it's true. According to Wikipedia, the onscreen title of the movie is "I Heard You Paint Houses," which is the title of the book. As far as I know, this is a Hollywood first. Use an onscreen title that's different than the title of your movie. Just think, when the movie starts you could assume that you're in the wrong theater, get up and leave, and save three and a half hours of your life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Andrews Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 (edited) For an analog, people should look at the 2006 film of All The King's Men, also adapted by Steve Zaillian and directed by him. I'll check in later with some comments on The Irishman. Do read that article posted above, on surveillance in the Hoffa age, and now, Edited November 28, 2019 by David Andrews Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Mitcham Posted November 29, 2019 Share Posted November 29, 2019 14 hours ago, Ron Ecker said: Here's some weird trivia, if it's true. According to Wikipedia, the onscreen title of the movie is "I Heard You Paint Houses," which is the title of the book. As far as I know, this is a Hollywood first. Use an onscreen title that's different than the title of your movie. Just think, when the movie starts you could assume that you're in the wrong theater, get up and leave, and save three and a half hours of your life. Agreed, Ron. Watched it yesterday and wish I could get those three wasted hours back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 Dan E. Moldea wrote on Facebook today: Our friend and colleague, investigative journalist Scott M. Burnstein, the top expert in the country on the Detroit Mafia, reports that the Detroit field office of the FBI might be on the verge of proceeding with a preliminary investigation of my reported claims of Frank Cappola who insists that Jimmy Hoffa is buried at the PJP Landfill in Jersey City, New Jersey. Coppola, who has executed a sworn statement at my request and offered to take a polygraph test, gave me a 45-min...ute tour of the site on September 29, culminating with the alleged “exact location” of Hoffa’s grave. I videotaped the entire tour. According to Scott, “One person directly connected to the ongoing investigation calls the recent tip that the slain Teamsters boss was buried in a mob-owned New Jersey landfill ‘intriguing,’ and something that ‘needs to be taken seriously.’” Presumably, the FBI’s Detroit field office is seeking authorization from FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. to take the next step. Stay tuned. Also, for those interested, our friend and colleague, Eric Shawn, will host a one-hour special about the Hoffa case, coinciding with the release of the fabulous but false-fact-filled film fantasy “The Irishman” on Netflix—featuring Frank Cappola and Phillip Moscato Jr., among others—on Fox News tonight at 10:00 P.M., Eastern. See More gangsterreport.com The Gangster ReportFBI Agents In Detroit "Intrigued" By New Developments Out Of NJ In Quest To Find Jimmy Hoffa's… November 27, 2019 — The Detroit FBI office doesn’t dismiss new revelations in the search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains, according to sources in federal law enf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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