۱۳۸۸ آذر ۲۴, سه‌شنبه

Public Enemies

Public Enemies is a 2009 American crime film co-written and directed by Michael Mann. Set during the Great Depression, it focuses on the true story of Bureau of Investigation agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale)'s attempt to stop criminals John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham), and Pretty Boy FloydChanning Tatum). The film is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's non-fiction book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34.



Plot

The film opens in 1933 as Pretty Boy Floyd is running from Melvin Purvis and eventually Purvis takes Pretty Boy Floyd down. John Dillinger is brought to the Indiana State Prison by his partner John "Red" HamiltonJason Clarke), under the disguise of a prisoner drop. Dillinger and Hamilton overpower several guards and free members of their gang including Charles Makley (Christian Stolte) and Harry Pierpont (David Wenham). The jailbreak goes off without a hitch, until gang member Ed Shouse (Michael Vieau) beats a guard to death. A shootout ensues as the gang makes its getaway. Dillinger's friend and mentor Walter Dietrich (James Russo) is killed, and a furious Dillinger kicks Shouse out of the car. The rest of the gang retreats to a farm house hideout, where crooked East Chicago, Indiana cop Martin Zarkovich (John Michael Bolger) convinces them to hide out in Chicago, where they can be sheltered by the local Mafia. (
In East Liverpool, Ohio, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and several other Bureau of Investigation agents and East Liverpool Cops are running down Pretty Boy Floyd. Purvis kills Floyd and is promoted by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), who is struggling to expand his Bureau into a national police agency, to lead the hunt for John Dillinger, declaring the first national "War on Crime."
In between a series of bank robberies, including a violent one at the First National Bank in East Chicago, Indiana, where Dillinger kills an East Chicago cop, Dillinger meets Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) at a restaurant and proceeds to woo her by buying her a fur coat. Frechette falls for Dillinger even after he tells her who he is, and the two quickly become inseparable.
Melvin Purvis leads a failed ambush at a hotel where he believes Dillinger is staying. An agent is shot and killed by the occupant. After the man escapes, Purvis realizes the killer wasn't Dillinger but Baby Face Nelson. After this incident, Purvis requests that Hoover bring in professional lawmen who know how to catch criminals dead or alive, including Texas "cowboy" Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang).
Police finally find Dillinger and arrest him and his gang in Tucson, Arizona. Purvis arrives that evening and briefly talks with Dillinger; Dillinger tries to size Purvis up and manages to unnerve him with his talk about the agent killed by Nelson. Dillinger is extradited back to the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, where he is locked up by Sheriff Lillian Holley (Lili Taylor) pending trial. Dillinger and a few inmates, chief among them is Herbert Youngblood (played by Michael Bentt), carve a fake wooden gun and use it to escape the jail in Sheriff Holley's Police Cruiser. Dillinger is unable to see Frechette, who is under tight surveillance. Dillinger learns that Frank Nitti's (Bill Camp) Chicago Outfit associates are now unwilling to help him; Dillinger's crimes are motivating the U.S. government to begin prosecuting interstate crime, which imperils Nitti's lucrative bookmaking racket.
Later, Dillinger meets fellow bank robber Tommy Carroll (Spencer Garrett) in a movie theater; with him is Ed Shouse, who wants to rejoin the gang. Carroll goads Dillinger into a bank robbery job in Sioux Falls, promising a huge score. Even though Baby Face Nelson is involved, whom he doesn't like, Dillinger agrees. A shootout (triggered by Nelson shooting a cop outside the bank) occurs in which Dillinger is shot in the arm, and Carroll is shot and left for dead. They retreat to Nelson's wilderness hideout in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, where Dillinger's wounds are treated; the gang is disappointed to find that their haul is only a fraction of what they expected. Dillinger expresses hope he can free the rest of his gang still in prison, including Pierpont and Makley, but Red convinces him this is unlikely to happen.
Purvis and his men apprehend Carroll (who is still alive) and torture him to find the rest of the gang's location. They arrive at Little Bohemia and Purvis organizes another failed ambush, in which several civilians are killed in the cross-fire. Dillinger and Hamilton escape separately from Nelson and the rest of the gang. Agents Winstead and Hurt (Don Frye) pursue Dillinger and Hamilton through the woods on foot, engaging them in a running gun battle in which Hamilton is shot and fatally wounded. Trying to escape along the road, Nelson, Shouse and Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff) hijack a Bureau car, killing several agents in the process, including Purvis's partner Carter Baum (Rory Cochrane). After a car chase, Purvis and his men kill Nelson and the rest of the gang. Farther down the road, Dillinger and Hamilton steal a farmer's car and make good their escape; Hamilton dies later that night and Dillinger buries his body, covering it in lye.
Dillinger manages to meet Frechette, telling her he plans to do one last job that will pay enough for them to escape together. However, when Dillinger drops her off at a hotel that he thinks is safe, he watches helplessly as she is captured by the FBI. An interrogator, the brutish Agent Harold Reinecke (Adam Mucci) viciously beats Frechette to learn Dillinger's whereabouts until she fabricates a location where Dillinger is hiding. Agent Reinecke investigates and realizes that he has been lied to. He returns and beats Frechette in order to teach her a lesson. Frechette begins sneering that they missed their chance to capture him at the hotel, and that Dillinger's anger will know no bounds when he hears about her treatment; Purvis and Winstead arrive and angrily break up the abusive interrogation. Meanwhile, Dillinger is meeting with Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), who tries to recruit a disinterested Dillinger in a train robbery with his associates, the Barker Gang. After hearing about the massive reward, Dillinger agrees to pull the robbery and flee the country the next day. Dillinger receives a note from Billie through his lawyer, Louis Piquet (Peter Gerety), telling him not to try and break her out of jail.
Through crooked cop Zarkovich, Purvis enlists the help of a madam and Dillinger acquaintance Anna SageBranka Katic), threatening her with deportation if she does not cooperate. She agrees to set up Dillinger, who is hiding with Sage. (
That night Dillinger and Sage see a Clark Gable movie called Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theater. When the movie is over, Dillinger and the women leave as Purvis moves in. Dillinger spots the police, specifically Reinecke and is shot several times before he can draw his gun against the cop who harmed Frechette. Agent Winstead, who fired the fatal shot, listens to Dillinger's last words. Purvis departs to inform Hoover that Dillinger is dead.
Later, Winstead meets Frechette in prison. He tells her that Dillinger's dying words were "Tell Billie for me, 'Bye bye Blackbird.'" The closing text reveals that Melvin Purvis quit the FBI a year later and died by his own hand in 1960, and that Billie lived out of the rest of her life in Wisconsin following her release in 1936.

[edit] Cast


 



 Pre-production


Public Enemies is based on Bryan Burrough's 2004 non-fiction book, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. Burrough had originally begun researching the subject with the aim of creating a miniseries. The idea was accepted by HBO and Burrough was made an executive producer, along with Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions, and was asked to write the screenplay.[9] However, Burrough had no experience in screenwriting, and says his drafts were probably "very, very bad. Ishtar bad." He began simultaneously writing a non-fiction book, which he found easier, spending two years working on it while the interest in the miniseries disappeared.[9] Burrough's book was set to be published in the summer of 2004 and he asked HBO to return the movie rights. They agreed and after the book was released, the rights were re-sold to production companies representing Michael Mann and Leonardo DiCaprio, the latter of whom was interested in playing John Dillinger. Burrough met with a representative and then heard nothing for three years.[9] The actor eventually left the project to appear in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island.[10]
In 2007, Mann renewed interest in the project with Universal Pictures backing it. He wrote the screenplay with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman and also directed.[3] Of the screenplay, Burrough has said "it's not 100 percent historically accurate. But it's by far the closest thing to fact Hollywood has attempted, and for that I am both excited and quietly relieved."















Filming

Principal photography began in Columbus, Wisconsin on March 17, 2008[12] and continued in Chicago, Illinois; Aurora, Illinois; Joliet, Illinois; Lockport, Illinois; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Beaver Dam, Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Madison, Wisconsin; and several other places in Wisconsin until the end of June 2008, including the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, the actual location of a 1934 gun fight between Dillinger and the FBI.[13] Some parts of the film were shot in Crown Point, Indiana, the town where Dillinger was imprisoned and subsequently escaped from jail. The actual 1932 Studebaker used by Dillinger during a robbery in Greencastle, Indiana was also used during filming in Columbus, borrowed from the nearby Historic Auto Attractions museum.[14]
The decision to shoot parts of the film in Wisconsin came about because of the number of high quality historic buildings. Mann, who had been a student at University of Wisconsin–Madison,[15] scouted locations in Baraboo and Columbus as well as looking at 1930s-era cars from collectors in the Madison area.[16] In addition, the film was shot on actual historical sites, including the Little Bohemia Lodge, and the old Lake County jail in Crown Point, Indiana, where Dillinger staged his most famous escape where legend has it he fooled jail guards with a wooden gun[17] and escaped in the sheriff's car.[11] Scenes were shot at places that he frequented in Oshkosh. The courthouse in Darlington is the location for the courthouse scenes. A bank robbery scene was shot inside the Milwaukee County Historical Society, a former bank in Milwaukee that still has much of the original period architecture.[18]
In late March 2008 portions of the film were shot at Libertyville High School. Footage includes one of the school's science labs, an office, the school's front entrance, and the locker rooms.
In April 2008 the production filmed in Oshkosh.[19] Filming occurred downtown and at Pioneer Airport, including scenes shot using a historic Ford Trimotor airliner owned by the Experimental Aircraft Association.[20] Later that month, filming started at the Little Bohemia Lodge. In April and May 2008, film crews shot on the grounds of Ishnala, a historic restaurant in the Wisconsin Dells area.
The film became a flash point in the public debate about the "film tax credits" [21] which are offered by many states. According to a study by Wisconsin's Department of Commerce, the state of Wisconsin gave NBC Universal $4.6 million in tax credits, while the film company spent just $5 million in Wisconsin during filming.
Michael Mann, the director, decided to shoot the movie in HD format instead of using the traditional 35 mm film.

Post-production

Music

Mann also brought composer Elliot Goldenthal on board to score the film; Goldenthal also scored Mann's 1995 film Heat to critical acclaim.[23] Jazz musician Diana Krall also makes a cameo appearance singing the ballad "Bye Bye Blackbird," while Dillinger and his new love interest Billie Frechette share their first dance. A duduk is also featured in the movie.

[edit] Font

Mann commissioned graphic designer Neville Brody to create a new font which would be used in the film's title sequence and associated publicity material.[24] Brody had previously worked with Mann on the titles for Heat and The Insider.[25] Brody created a font he called New Deal. His brief was to create something which evoked the Depression era the film is set in.[24] Mann initially suggested using the London Underground typeface Johnston as a reference.[25] Brody and his team took inspiration from Soviet Constructivist styles, the New Deal program and in particular the publicity material of the WPA as a basis for the font.[25] The final design was selected and refined from more than 300 options.[25] According to Brody the font is "solid, clearly masculine and immovable."[24]

Rating

In the United States Public Enemies has received an MPAA rating of R for gangster violence and some language.[26]. In the United Kingdom, the film received a 15 certificate from the BBFC with consumer advice "Contains Strong Violence."[27] In Germany, Public Enemies only received an FSK 12 rating.

Box office

The movie opened at number three behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with $25,271,675. The following weekend it had a 45.5% drop to $13,794,240 for a total of $66,221,110. The next three weekends the movie would go on to have decent drops of 46% or less.[36] As of November 8, 2009 the film has a worldwide gross of $201.4 million in revenue, twice its reported production budget.











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۱۳۸۸ مهر ۲۸, سه‌شنبه

Goodfellas

Goodfellas (also styled GoodFellas) is a 1990 semi-fictional crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of three gangsters, spanning three decades.



Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before The Last Temptation of Christ but, when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy. The title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series and for Brian De Palma's 1986 comedy Wise Guys, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta talked often with Pileggi, who shared with the actors research material that had been left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.


Goodfellas performed well at the box office, grossing $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget; it received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards but only won one for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and was named best film of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics. Goodfellas is often considered one of the greatest films ever, both in the genre of crime and in general and was deemed "culturally significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress.
The film employs around 300 uses of the word "fuck" , ninth most in film.






Plot


In the opening scene, the Irish-Italian protagonist Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) admits, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," referring to his idolizing the Lucchese crime family gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn in 1955. Feeling the connection of being a part of something, Henry quits school and goes to work for them. His Irish father, knowing the true nature of the Mafia, tries to stop Henry after learning of his truancy, but the gangsters ensure that his parents no longer hear from the school by threatening the local postal carrier with dire consequences should he deliver any more letters from the school to Henry's house. Henry is able to make a smooth living for himself, also learning the two most important lessons in life: "Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut," which is said to him after young Henry remains silent after a court hearing. This establishes the tone for the rest of the film.



Henry is soon taken under the wing of the local mob captain, Paul "Paulie" Cicero (Paul Sorvino, based on the actual Lucchese mobster Paul Vario) and Cicero's close Irish associate Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro, based on Jimmy Burke). They help to cultivate Henry's criminal career, and introduce Henry to the entire network of Paulie’s crime syndicate. Henry and his friends soon become successful, daring, and dangerous. Jimmy loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci, based on Tommy DeSimone) is an aggressive psychopath with a hair-trigger temper. In late 1967, Henry commits the Air France Robbery and it marks his debut into the big time of organized crime. Enjoying the perks of their criminal activities, the friends spend most of their nights at the Copacabana night club with countless women. Around this time, Henry meets and later marries a no-nonsense Jewish girl from the Five Towns named Karen (Lorraine Bracco). Karen at first is troubled by Henry's criminal activities, but when a neighbour assaults her for refusing his advances, Henry pistol-whips him in front of her, displaying all of the viciousness and confidence of proven gangsters. She feels vindicated, intrigued, and aroused by the act, especially when Henry leaves her the gun he used on her neighbor.


On June 11, 1970, Tommy (with Jimmy's help) brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent), a prominent mobster of the Gambino crime family, for insulting him about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days. However, Batts was a made man, meaning that he could not be touched without the consent of his Gambino family bosses. Realizing that this was an offense that could get all of them killed, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy place the bloodied Batts in the trunk of Henry's car with the intent of burying him upstate, then drive to Tommy's mother's house to retrieve the tools needed to do so. They manage to bury Batts in the intended area, but six months later Jimmy learns that the burial spot will be the site of a new property development. Thus, they are forced to exhume Batts' half-decomposed corpse and move it to another location.


Henry begins to see a mistress named Janice Rossi (Gina Mastrogiacomo). When Karen finds out, she threatens to kill the both of them with a revolver pointed at his face, demanding to know if he really truly loves her. However, she cannot bring herself to kill him and an enraged Henry states he has other things to worry about such as getting killed on the street. Soon, it gets harder for Henry to evade the law. Paulie sends him and Jimmy to collect from an indebted Florida gambler in Tampa, and they hang him in the lion's den at a public zoo to intimidate him further after a bloodthirsty beating fails to sway the man. Henry, Jimmy, the gambler, and most of the crew (except for Tommy) are then arrested thanks to the gambler's sister, who is a typist for the FBI. In prison, Henry sells drugs to support his family on the outside. Soon after he is released in 1978, the crew commits the infamous Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport. In the meantime, Henry further establishes himself in the drug trade after seeing its high potential for profit, and convinces Tommy and Jimmy to join him. Things start to turn sour when the crew members ignore the advice of Jimmy not to buy expensive things from their share of the stolen money, and in return Jimmy has them killed one by one as various bodies are discovered across the city, (in a montage set famously to Layla). Things are further complicated as Tommy is killed by two Gambino capos for his part in Billy Batts' murder (among other things), after being fooled in thinking that he is going to be made. The family he was joining had to hedge in order to avoid a war.


The year is now 1980. Henry is on the cusp of making a big deal with his associates in Pittsburgh. A nervous wreck from his cocaine usage and lack of sleep, he runs around trying his best to get things organized. However, this does not stop him from being caught by narcotics agents and sent to jail. When he returns home, Karen tells him that she has flushed what amounted to $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent the FBI agents from finding it during their raid. As a result, Henry and his family are left virtually penniless. Paulie feels his loyalty to Henry has been betrayed and decides to give him $3200 in exchange for having nothing to do with him ever again. Henry turns down a hit with Anthony in Florida from Jimmy when he realizes he would be killed. He then decides to enroll in the Witness Protection Program as a mole for the FBI to protect himself and his family. Finally letting go of his gangster connections, he now has to face the prospect of living in the real world, the one thing he has always tried to run away from, stating, "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook." He longs for the life when he was a gangster and was in action.


The film ends with title cards explaining that Henry has been clean since 1987; Paul Cicero died in Fort Worth Prison of respiratory illness in 1988 at 73; and Jimmy is serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in a New York State prison, not being eligible for parole until 2004 (although he died of lung cancer in 1996).








Development


Goodfellas is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy. Martin Scorsese never intended to make another mob film until he read a review of the book and this inspired him to read it while working on the set of Color of Money in 1986.He had always been fascinated by the Mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read.After he read Pileggi's book, the filmmaker knew what approach he wanted to take: "To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it."According to Pileggi, Scorsese cold-called the writer and told him, "I've been waiting for this book my entire life." To which Pileggi replied "I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life".

Scorsese originally intended to direct the film before The Last Temptation of Christ, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he decided to postpone Wise Guy. He was drawn to the documentary aspects of Pileggi's book. "The book Wise Guys gives you a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium - how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it's done".He saw Goodfellas as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian-Americans "from slightly different angles".He has often described the film as "a mob home movie" that is about money because "that's what they're really in business for".


Screenplay

Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay and over the course of the 12 drafts it took to reach the ideal script, the reporter realized that "the visual styling had to be completely redone… So we decided to share credit".They decided which sections of the book they liked and put them together like building blocks.Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that they did not need to follow a traditional narrative structure. The director wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode but start in the middle and move backwards and forwards. Scorsese would compact scenes and realized that if they were kept short, "the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific".He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of Jules and Jim and use "all the basic tricks of the New Wave from around 1961".Several of the names of the characters were also changed such as Tommy "Two Gunn" DeSimone becoming Tommy DeVito; Paul Vario becoming Paulie Cicero and Jimmy "The Gent" Burke becoming Jimmy Conway.[9] Since the title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series and for Brian De Palma's 1986 comedy Wise Guys, Pileggi and Scorsese decided to change the name of their film to Goodfellas.







Casting


Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film.The director cast Ray Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild and Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film.The actor had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him that Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, Liotta met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film.[5] The actor campaigned aggressively for a role in the film but the studio wanted a well-known actor. "I think they would've rather had Eddie Murphy than me", the actor remembers.

To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book.De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on.Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart.To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a mob wife but was unable to because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen because she "thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role".Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character but found it challenging finding "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened".

Distribution


Goodfellas had its world premiere at the 1990 Venice Film Festival where Scorsese received the Silver Lion award for Best Director.It was given a wide release in North America on September 21, 1990 in 1,070 theaters with an opening weekend gross of US$6.3 million. It went on to make $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget.


Reviews

The film received very positive reviews from critics and currently has a 96% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a 89 metascore at Metacritic. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances… The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast-cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous".USA Today gave the film four out of four stars and called it, "great cinema — and also a whopping good time".David Ansen, in his review for Newsweek magazine, wrote "Every crisp minute of this long, teeming movie vibrates with outlaw energy".In his review for Time, Richard Corliss wrote, "So it is Scorsese's triumph that GoodFellas offers the fastest, sharpest 2 1/2-hr. ride in recent film history".However, Anthony Lane in the The Independent wrote, "There is a short, needling comedy of violence and cowardice somewhere inside this stylish film, and it is worth watching more than once to prise it free. Scorsese himself chickened out, I think; perhaps the Mob got to him after all".William Fugazy, of the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, a watchdog group on ethnic injustice, which claims a membership of 10 million and consists of 76 of the largest heritage groups in the United States, called for a boycott of the film and wanted Warner Bros. to ban it. "It's the worst stereotyping, the worst portrayal of the Italian community I've ever seen. Far worse than The Godfather. One killing after another", he said.Scorsese responded to this criticism by saying, "As Nick Pileggi always points out, there are 18 to 20 million Italian-Americans. Out of that, there are only 4,000 alleged organised crime members. But, as Nick says, they cast a very long shadow".
Awards

Goodfellas was nominated for six Academy Awards including Joe Pesci for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Lorraine Bracco for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Picture, Scorsese for Best Director, Thelma Schoonmaker for Best Film Editing, and Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi for Best Adapted Screenplay.When Joe Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (the only Academy Award the film won),his entire speech was "This is an honor and a privilege, thank you".It is on of the shortest Oscar-acceptance speech, after William Holden's, who simply said, "Thank you", upon winning for Stalag 17, and Alfred Hitchcock's ("Thank you" and other unintelligible words) when he received an Honorary Oscar. Later, Pesci admitted that he did not say more, because "I really didn't think I was going to win".


Goodfellas was nominated for five Golden Globes including Best Director, Best Motion Pictures, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Screenplay.[28] It failed to win any of these awards. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The New York Film Critics Circle voted Goodfellas the Best Film of 1990, Robert De Niro was named Best Actor for his performance in the film and in Awakenings, and Scorsese was voted Best Director.The Los Angeles Film Critics Association also voted Scorsese as Best Director, GoodFellas as Best Film,awards for Pesci and Bracco as Best Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively, and Best Cinematography to Michael Ballhaus for his work on the film.The National Board of Review voted Pesci as Best Supporting Actor.The National Society of Film Critics voted Goodfellas Best Film of 1990 and Scorsese as Best Director.American Film magazine declared Goodfellas the best film of 1990 according to a poll of 80 movie critics.















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Chinese Coffee

Chinese Coffee (2000) is a play by Ira Lewis which was made into an independent film and released in New York as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, starring Al Pacino and Jerry Orbach. Pacino directed and was introduced by Robert De Niro during the open ceremony.

Shot almost exclusively as a one-on-one conversation between the two main characters, it chronicles friendship, love, loss, and humor of daily life. After years of withholding it, Pacino allowed it to be released on June 19, 2007 as a part of a three-movie boxed set called Pacino: An Actor's Vision.

Plot

When Harry Levine, an aging, unsuccessful Greenwich Village writer is fired from his job as restaurant doorman, he calls on friend and mentor Jake, ostensibly to collect a long-standing debt. Harry solicits his opinion on his latest manuscript, a work of semi-fiction based on their longtime friendship. Although he initially denies having read it, Jake later attacks it on aesthetic grounds, and deep-seated feelings of betrayal and jealousy surface and lead to a traumatic confrontation. Written by Gabe Taverney (duke1029@aol.com
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The English Patient

The English Patient is a 1996 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje. The film, directed by Anthony Minghella, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Ondaatje worked closely with the filmmakers.

[Synopsis
The film is set during World War II and depicts a critically burned man, at first known only as "the English patient", who is being looked after by Hana (Juliette Binoche), a French-Canadian nurse in a ruined Italian villa. The patient is reluctant to disclose any personal information but through a series of flashbacks, viewers are allowed into his past. It is slowly revealed that he is in fact a Hungarian geographer, Count László de Almásy (Ralph Fiennes), who was making a map of the Sahara Desert, and whose affair with a married woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) ultimately brought about his present situation. As the patient remembers more, David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a Canadian thief/intelligence operative, arrives at the monastery. Caravaggio lost his thumbs while being interrogated by officers of the German Afrika Korps, and he gradually reveals that it was the patient's actions that had brought about his torture.

In addition to the patient's story, the film devotes time to Hana and her romance with Kip (Naveen Andrews), an Indian sapper in the British Army. Due to various events in her past, Hana believes that anyone who comes close to her is likely to die, and Kip's position as a bomb defuser makes their romance full of tension.

[Production
In his book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film (2002) Michael Ondaatje records his conversations with the film's editor and sound designer Walter Murch, who won two Academy Awards for the film. Murch describes the complexity of editing a film with multiple flashbacks and timeframes; he edited and reedited numerous times and notes that the final film features over 40 time transitions.

The movie was filmed on location in Tunisia and Italy.


Reception

The film garnered widespread critical acclaim and was a major award winner as well as a box office success; its awards included the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Juliette Binoche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, winning out over Lauren Bacall for The Mirror Has Two Faces (it would have been Bacall's only Oscar win, and in her acceptance speech Binoche commented that she had expected Bacall to win). Anthony Minghella took home the Oscar for Best Director. Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor. In all, The English Patient was nominated for an impressive 12 awards and ultimately walked away with 9. It is the highest-grossing non-IMAX film (and second highest-grossing film overall) to never reach the weekend box office top 5.

The English Patient is one of only two Best Picture winners (Amadeus the other) to never enter the weekend box office top 5 since top 10 rankings were first recorded in 1982.

Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert gave the movie a 4/4 rating, saying "it's the kind of movie you can see twice - first for the questions, the second time for the answers."[5]

Awards and honors

1996 Academy Awards
Won, Best Picture
Won, Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Juliette Binoche
Won, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Stuart Craig and Stephanie McMillan)
Won, Best Cinematography (John Seale)
Won, Best Costume Design (Ann Roth)
Won, Best Director (Anthony Minghella)
Won, Best Film Editing (Walter Murch)
Won, Best Original Score (Gabriel Yared)
Won, Best Sound (Walter Murch, Mark Berger, David Parker, and Christopher Newman)
Nominated, Best Actor in a Leading Role: Ralph Fiennes
Nominated, Best Actress in a Leading Role: Kristin Scott Thomas
Nominated, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Anthony Minghella)
1997 Golden Globes, USA
Won, Best Motion Picture - Drama
Won, Best Original Score - Motion Picture (Gabriel Yared)
Nominated, Best Director - Motion Picture (Anthony Minghella)
Nominated, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama: Ralph Fiennes
Nominated, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama: Kristin Scott Thomas
Nominated, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture: Juliette Binoche
Nominated, Best Screenplay - Motion Picture (Anthony Minghella)
1997 BAFTA Awards, UK
Won, Best Film
Won, Best Cinematography (John Seale)
Won, Best Editing (Walter Murch)
Won, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Juliette Binoche)
Won, Best Screenplay - Adapted (Anthony Minghella)
Won, Best Music (Gabriel Yared)
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The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero crime thriller film directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins. Christian Bale reprises the lead role. The film follows Bruce Wayne/Batman (Bale), District Attorney Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart), Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and their struggles and journey in combating the new rising threat of a criminal who goes by the name of the "Joker" (Heath Ledger).


Nolan's inspiration for the film was the Joker's comic book debut in 1940, and the 1996 series The Long Halloween, which retold Two-Face's origin. The Dark Knight was filmed primarily in Chicago, as well as in several other locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Nolan used an IMAX camera to film some sequences, including the Joker's first appearance in the film. On January 22, 2008, after he had completed filming The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger died from a toxic combination of prescription drugs, leading to intense attention from the press and moviegoing public. Warner Bros. had initially created a viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, developing promotional websites and trailers highlighting screen shots of Ledger as the Joker, but after Ledger's death, the studio refocused its promotional campaign.

The film was released on July 16, 2008 in Australia, on July 18, 2008 in North America, and on July 24, 2008 in the United Kingdom. Before its box office debut in North America, record numbers of advance tickets were sold for The Dark Knight. It was greeted with positive reviews upon release,and became only the second film to earn more than $500 million at the North American box office, setting numerous other records in the process. It is also the fourth highest grossing film worldwide, and only the fourth film to earn more than $1 billion, worldwide.The film received numerous awards nominations and two Academy Awards for Best Sound Editing and Best Supporting Actor for Ledger's performance.


The Joker (Heath Ledger)


The Joker (Heath Ledger)

Plot

In Gotham City, the Joker robs a mob bank with his accomplices, whom he tricks into killing one another, ultimately killing the last one himself. While investigating the robbery, Batman and Lieutenant James Gordon contemplate including new district attorney Harvey Dent in their plan to eradicate the mob. However, Batman wonders if Dent can be trusted. Wayne runs into Rachel Dawes and Dent, who are dating, and after talking to Dent, he realizes Dent's sincerity and decides to host a fundraiser for him. Mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and the Chechen meet with other underworld gangsters to discuss both Batman and Dent, who have been cracking down on the mobster's operations. Lau, a Chinese mafia accountant, informs them that he has hidden their money and fled to Hong Kong in an attempt to preempt Gordon's plan to seize the mobsters' funds and hide from Dent's jurisdiction. The Joker appears and offers to kill Batman for half of the mafia's money, but they flatly refuse and Gambol places a bounty on the Joker's head. Not long after, the Joker kills Gambol and takes control of his men.

In Hong Kong, Batman captures Lau using a skyhook, and delivers him to the Gotham City police, where Lau agrees to testify against the mob. Dent and Gordon arrest the mob, and in retaliation the Joker issues an ultimatum to Gotham: people will die each day until Batman reveals his identity. When Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and the judge presiding over the mob trials are killed, the public readily blames Batman, prompting Wayne to decide to reveal his identity. Before Bruce can turn himself in, Dent holds a press conference to try and persuade the public not to sell Batman out just because of one terrorist. However the public, though grateful for everything Batman has done for the city, insists that things have now reached a point where Batman must make the sacrifice, so Dent announces that he himself is Batman and is arrested as part of a plan to draw the Joker out of hiding. The Joker attempts to ambush the police convoy carrying Dent, but Batman and Gordon intervene and capture him. In recognition of his actions, Gordon is appointed the new police commissioner.

Later that night, Dent and Dawes disappear. At the police station, Batman interrogates the Joker, who reveals that Dent and Dawes' police escorts were corrupt police and have placed them in warehouses rigged with explosives on opposite sides of the city—far enough apart so that Batman cannot save them both. Batman leaves to save Dawes, while Gordon and the police head after Dent. With the aid of a smuggled bomb, the Joker escapes police custody with Lau. Batman arrives, but finds Dent instead of Dawes. Batman successfully saves Dent, but the ensuing explosion disfigures Dent's face. Gordon arrives at Dawes' location too late, and she perishes when the bomb detonates. Unable to cope with this new level of chaos, Maroni goes to Gordon and offers him the Joker's location. Aboard a cargo ship, the Joker burns Lau to death atop a pile of half the mob's money, and has the Chechen killed before taking control of his men.

Meanwhile, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, Coleman Reese, finds out Batman's identity and after failing to blackmail the company, decides to go public. However, realizing that he does what he does only because of Batman, the Joker changes his mind about revealing Batman's identity and issues a public ultimatum: either Reese is killed within the hour, or he will blow up a hospital. When attempts on Reese's life are foiled, the Joker goes to the evacuated hospital, disguised as a nurse, and frees Dent from his restraints, convincing him to exact revenge on the people whose corruption led to Dawes' death. Dent begins by flipping a coin to decide if he should kill the Joker, and spares him. The Joker destroys the hospital on his way out, and then escapes with a hijacked bus full of hospital patients.

Out of the hospital, Dent goes on a personal vendetta, confronting Maroni and the corrupt cops one by one and flipping his coin to decide their fates. Now with complete control over the Gotham mob, the Joker announces to the public that anyone left in Gotham at nightfall will be subject to his rule. With the bridges and tunnels out of the city closed due to a warning by the Joker, authorities begin evacuating people by ferry. The Joker has explosives placed on two of the ferries—one ferry with convicts, who were evacuated in an effort to keep the Joker from freeing them, and the other with civilians—telling the passengers the only way to save themselves is to trigger the explosives on the other ferry; otherwise, he will destroy both at midnight. Batman locates the Joker and the hostages he has taken. Realizing the Joker has disguised the hostages as his own men, Batman is forced to attack both Gordon's SWAT team and the Joker's henchmen to save the real hostages.

The Joker's plan to destroy the ferries fails after the passengers on both decide not to destroy each other. Batman finds the Joker, and after a brief fight, is able to subdue him, preventing him from destroying both ferries. When Batman refuses to kill the Joker, the Joker acknowledges that Batman is truly incorruptible, but that Dent was not, and that he has unleashed Dent upon the city. Leaving the Joker for the SWAT team, Batman searches for Dent. At the remains of the building where Dawes died, Batman finds Dent holding Gordon and his family at gunpoint. Dent judges the innocence of Batman, himself, and Gordon's son through three coin tosses. As the result of the first two flips, he shoots Batman in the abdomen and spares himself. Before Dent can determine the boy's fate, Batman, who was wearing body armor, tackles him over the side of the building. Gordon's son is saved, but Dent and Batman fall to the ground below resulting in Dent's death.Knowing that the citizens of Gotham will lose hope and all morale if Dent's rampage becomes public news, Batman convinces Gordon to hold him responsible for the murders. Images are shown of Gordon delivering the eulogy at Dent's funeral and smashing the Bat-Signal. Police swarm the building, and Batman flees as Gordon and his son watch.


Mystery writer Andrew Klavan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, compared the extreme measures that Batman takes to fight crime with those U.S. President George W. Bush used in the War on Terror. Klavan claims that, "at some level" The Dark Knight is "a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war." Klavan supports this reading of the film by comparing Batman – like Bush, Klavan argues – "sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past."Klavan's article has received criticism on the Internet and in mainstream media outlets, such as in The New Republic's "The Plank."Reviewing the film in The Sunday Times, Cosmo Landesman reached the opposite conclusion to Klavan, arguing that The Dark Knight "offers up a lot of moralistic waffle about how we must hug a terrorist – okay, I exaggerate. At its heart, however, is a long and tedious discussion about how individuals and society must never abandon the rule of law in struggling against the forces of lawlessness. In fighting monsters, we must be careful not to become monsters – that sort of thing. The film champions the anti-war coalition's claim that, in having a war on terror, you create the conditions for more terror. We are shown that innocent people died because of Batman – and he falls for it".Benjamin Kerstein, writing in Azure, says that both Klavan and Landesman "have a point," because "The Dark Knight is a perfect mirror of the society which is watching it: a society so divided on the issues of terror and how to fight it that, for the first time in decades, an American mainstream no longer exists."

The Dark Knight garnered over 150 nominations from various critics and organization awards at year's end, winning for various aspects of the film. Most notable, however, was Heath Ledger's almost complete sweep of over twenty awards for acting, including the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The Dark Knight also received nominations from the Writers Guild of America (for Best Adapted Screenplay), the Producers Guild of America, and the Directors Guild of America, as well as a slew of other guild award nominations and wins. It was nominated for Best Film at the Critics Choice Awards and was named one of the top ten films of 2008 by the American Film Institute.

The Dark Knight was nominated for eight Academy Awards for the 81st Ceremony, breaking the previous record of seven held by Dick Tracy for the most nominations received by a film based on a comic book, comic strip, or graphic novel. The Dark Knight won two awards: B Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger and Best Sound Editing. It was additionally nominated for six others, these being Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup, and Best Film Editing. Christopher Nolan was notably snubbed[neutrality disputed] from a nomination in any of the categories he was up for (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and controversy ensued[citation needed] regarding the lack of a Best Picture nomination for either The Dark Knight or WALL-E, two films noted for being both critical and commercial successes. Heath Ledger was the first posthumous winner of the Best Supporting Actor award, and only the second posthumous acting winner ever (Peter Finch posthumously won the Best Actor award for his performance in the 1976 film Network). In addition, Ledger's win marked the first win in any of the major Oscar categories (producing, directing, acting, or writing) for a superhero-based film. Notably, Richard King's win in the Sound Editing category blocked a complete awards sweep of the evening by the eventual Best Picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire.


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