goodfellas

no, just college students

no but godfather def has this 'family' thing that gives it a warm glow

The oldest brother's a sociopath, the middle one's a wuss, the youngest glowers. Meanwhile the sister is fucking Frank Sinatra. I never really felt the glow.

Maybe the glow was from the cannolis in the oven.

alfred people really care, they sure care for real, especially older italian type guys

and yeah maybe we do like that warmth and people accept the romanticism, a bit

that's part of how films work, and why they resonate

someone alert the authorities

if the goal is apparently to find a mob movie that doesn't make the mob glamorous, goodfellas aint it.

well ya, the whole POINT of goodfellas is what a great life these guys had, how untouchable they were, what the attraction was

its like drug movies, whether you revel in the puke and DTs or suggest junkies are fun-loving saints, you're saying drugs are a BIG DEAL, that taking them gives you a great story.

the first godfather starts at a wedding. the second at a catholic bar mitzvah. there's tons of scenes of vito tenderly attending to his kids in 2. i mean, the family gets mad corrupted and fragmented, but dont tell me people dont dig on the family vibe. thats what really set it apart from your other gangster movies.

I was going to say: Drugstore Cowboy flits in and out of romanticism really well.

Henry Hill: [narrating] Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I'd either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies.
[Henry leaves the witness stand and speaks directly to the camera]
Henry Hill: Didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke, I'd go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over.

can't believe henry hill doesn't 'learn something' at the end

as a former punk rocker, i was appalled

there's tons of scenes of vito tenderly attending to his kids in 2. i mean, the family gets mad corrupted and fragmented, but dont tell me people dont dig on the family vibe

But that's why, I think, Coppola uses the present-day stuff as counterpoint: the family feeling was brief and intense. Post-Vito it's all a sham, and probably always was. Because it's your dad's life at stake and because your oldest brother's a doofus, you're going to slowly assume control of the family. Not a heartwarming message.

gomorrah is a p good mob movie that doesnt romanticize the mob much. really at all.

though i think a lot of ppl around here hated it.

oh for sure.

dont get me wrong, i agree.

but i still think people like to dwell on the warm family stuff.

people def vibe off the power of goodfellas, but theres an absence of romantic longing - also in godfather love theres an aspect of we all know and agree this is THE quality filmmaking isnt that great, which grates - feel like w/goodfellas theres more sheer delight

i dont think these problems totally indict the godfathers or anything, but they certainly spark suspicion that there might be something deeply lame going on

ya gomorrah rather aggressively tries to de-romanticize it.

i mean godfather is a fall from grace movie. vito's era is definitely seen as a golden age.

Did Tommy tell you about my painting?

Look at this.

It's beautiful.

One dog goes one way and
the other goes the other.

One's facing east, the other west.

He's saying, "Whaddya want from me?"
The guy's got a nice head of white hair.

Beautiful. The dog looks the same.

gomorrah more like boremorrah

longing for an era when both dogs went the same way

*sniffle*

canonical films with romantic longing arouse the suspicion they might be lame, gotcha

"Don't you try to sell me your false bill of goods, Welles!"

i didnt say that...?

just tryin to unpack the gfather's appeal a bit. and thats definitely a part of it.

There's a powerful documentary influence throughout "Goodfellas," and a lot of the camerawork and visual devices (freeze frames and title cards) make that lineage clear.

matt zoller seitz more like matt making up ignorant bullshit seitz

sorry slock, was an xpost to ice cream people def vibe off the power of goodfellas, but theres an absence of romantic longing - also in godfather love theres an aspect of we all know and agree this is THE quality filmmaking isnt that great, which grates - feel like w/goodfellas theres more sheer delight

IM SRY DA CROUPIER THAT U R A SAD OLD ITALIAN TYPE GUY WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN CROSSES TO BARE HERE LISTEN TO THIS VIOLIN MUSIC

neither side of that Salon debate impressed me too greatly

xpost whatsamattayou

"Lay off the drugs. They're turnin' your mind into mush."

donnie brasco, not a great movie but not terrible, does well w this de-romanticising aspect imho - pacino sitting round in a slobby tracksuit, a penny-pinching leech and kinda stoopid w it

the problem with chasing a film that successfully deromanticizes the mob is you're chasing a film that makes organized crime look boring and unpleasant. enjoy that ride!

as far as the eras go the mob had more power in godfathers time and less in brascos w/goodfellas being in the middle - i dont particularly buy that they were ever as refined as the godfather but they were at that point a ridiculously prominent criminal enterprise, some say wired all the way up to the presidency - by the time brasco rolled around they were much diminished

casino

by the time brasco rolled around they were much diminished

thanks to the powerful investigative acumen of film critics

'the godfather' is about the top men in one of the five families, 'goodfellas' not really. de niro and henry aren't even made men.

what i mean is: the protagonists in 'the godfather' don't get their hands so directly dirty

ya all u see in goodfellas is their immediate bosses. it never goes all the way up.

do we know what paulies rank is

ambassador to the court of st james

wikipedia says capo (I checked when Morbz complained Vito's stance on drugs has more consequence than Pauly's - well, duh)

the sopranos best shows the revenue decline in the five families, johnny sacramoni is an underboss and he gets all about a maserati and a mcmansion

[all excited about]

'the godfather' is about the top men in one of the five families, 'goodfellas' not really. de niro and henry aren't even made men.
...
ya all u see in goodfellas is their immediate bosses. it never goes all the way up.

I've always found this interesting about Scorsese's gangster movies - sequentially they climb the mafia's ladder of power in terms of who they focus on (Mean Streets = bottom-feeding street thugs, Goodfellas = foot soldiers in a crew, Casino = middle management/capos), but he never goes all the way to the top. In all of those movies you catch glimpses of the old guys in the back room, counting the money, quietly running the show, but they are always in the background. I'd initially hoped that Gangs of New York was gonna be the story about that generation of guys, the proto=Godfather types, but that isn't how it worked out. Maybe Marty feels Scorsese already covered that ground as well as possible, and just doesn't want to bother or it isn't interesting to him anymore...

er COPPOLA

i think those guys are just less interesting. they're just rich guys who let everyone else do the bad stuff for them.

I'm guessing its both the sense that Godfather told that story well enough and his general identification with the class of mobster that still has to deal with Joe Pesci

yeah i mean the story of anyone's rise is always gonna be more interesting than the point at which they get to lounge by the pool (or lounge in the dingy backroom of a grocery store) and count their winnings.

and yet Hannibal Rising is not more interesting than Hannibal