Category: Movies

24 Things You Might Not Know About “Goodfellas”

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Adam D’Arpino presents 24 Things You Might Not Know About Goodfellas.

Regular readers know the drill: using just D’Arpino’s list, here are my three favorite facts…

5. The famous “funny how?” scene wasn’t in the script.

Maybe the most famous (and certainly the most quoted) scene in Goodfellas comes at the beginning, when Pesci’s Tommy DeVito jokingly-yet-uncomfortably accosts Henry Hill for calling him “funny.” In addition to being the driving force behind the scene on screen, Pesci is also responsible for coming up with the premise.

While working in a restaurant, a young Pesci apparently told a mobster that he was funny—a compliment met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Pesci relayed the anecdote to Scorsese, who decided to include it in the film. Scorsese didn’t include the scene in the shooting script so that Pesci and Liotta’s interactions would elicit surprised and genuine reactions from the supporting cast.

8. Only five murders take place on screen.

Despite its reputation as a violent movie, the number of on-screen deaths actually portrayed in Goodfellas is a surprisingly tame five (Spider, Billy Batts, Stacks Edwards, Morrie, and Tommy), or 10 if you include the results of Jimmy Conway’s handiwork following the Lufthansa heist. Of course, it’s worth mentioning that violence, and the threat of violence, is a constant presence throughout the film. Still, compared to a body count of 214 in John Woo’s Bullet in the Head, released in the same year, or 255 in Saving Private Ryan, or even 24 in Scorsese’s Best Picture winner The Departed, Goodfellas isn’t terribly bloody.

13. The real life Henry Hill was just as surprised as you are that he never got whacked.

Henry Hill’s testimony against some of the most ruthless and powerful Lucchese crime family associates led to roughly 50 convictions, his stint in witness protection was short-lived, and as Hill learns from the very beginning, rule number one in the wiseguy world is “never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” So why was Hill able to live to be a (relatively) old man and die of natural causes, instead of ultimately meeting a violent end like so many of his past associates?

According to Hill, he had absolutely no idea. In 2010, he told the Telegraph, “It’s surreal, totally surreal, to be here. I never thought I’d reach this wonderful age,” and hypothesized he was still standing simply because “there’s nobody from my era alive today.” Following his death in 2012, The Guardian hypothesized that bureaucratic disorganization in the organized crime world or fame might have kept Hill standing.

Click here for the full list.

Source: Mental_Floss.

 

Top 10 Biggest Design Flaws In The U.S.S. Enterprise

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I got a kick out of Charlie Jane Anders and Diana Biller’s Top 10 Biggest Design Flaws In The U.S.S. Enterprise. 

Here are my top three design flaws using Anders and Biller’s list…

9. No Seatbelts

We get it. It’s fun to watch a dozen or so people get tossed around a bridge during a battle sequence — definitely more fun than just seeing a camera shake up and down while all the crew members remain safely strapped into their seats. But seriously, you’d think that after enough concussions caused by people falling out of their chairs, the Enterprise designers would just add some damn restraints. Class action lawsuit, anyone?

6. Only One Transporter Room

Especially early on in the series, when they don’t seem to have shuttlecraft yet, this is a serious problem. There’s only one transporter room, and if you put that out of action, nobody gets on or off the ship. In “The Enemy Within,” the transporter conks out, and Sulu and his team are screwed, notes Altman. Also, in “Wink of an Eye,” Kirk fiddles with one component on the transporter, and the Enterprise is cut off from the planet’s surface. The ship’s blueprints actually show more than one transporter room, but on screen there only appears to be one, and it’s easy to put out of action.

3. Super easy to make the Enterprise blow up

This is a big one. In “That Which Survives,” we discover you can make the Enterprise explode by screwing around with the bypass valve in the matter-antimatter integrator room, “adjacent to main engineering — which is easy to get in and out of, especially for beautiful women without midriffs,” says Altman. And here’s one area where the Enterprise-D is definitely not superior: there are at least a half dozen warp core breaches listed on Memory Alpha. So why aren’t there better fail-safes in place? The crew was usually left to try to either eject the core, which wasn’t a particularly reliable procedure, or to separate the starship. If they managed to do one of those things and prevent a cataclysmic explosion, they would still only be left with impulse and battery power. Surely there must be a better way. (More pleasant, but potentially just as lethal: the Warp Core Breach cocktail.)

Check out the full list for more Star Trek  fun.

Source: io9.

Z-View: “The Quiet Ones”

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The Tagline:  Something unspeakable is happening to Jane Harper.

The Overview:   *** Beware –  spoilers are found below ***

The Quiet Ones is based on real events (yeah, right) which took place in 1974 when a college professor along with three of his students studied a young girl named Jane in an effort to explain away her supposed supernatural powers.

Jane has no memory of her past, no family and believes she is possessed by a spirit named Evey.  Evey sometimes lives in a doll.  Perhaps Jane has telekinetic powers.  Maybe it is the thing that possess her.  Either way one of them is a firestarter.  The professor plans to explain things scientifically and also to get Jane to push the evil possessing her into a doll which they can then destroy.  How does he plan to do this?  By depriving Jane of sleep.

At this point it doesn’t matter because most of the audience is already snoring.

*** Even More Spoilers Below ***

The Good

  • Olivia Cooke who plays Jane.

The Bad:

  • The story is a jumbled mess.
  • No real scares.
  • No real characters to root for… not even Jane.

The Ugly:

  • The feeling you have after watching The Quiet Ones.

 

Rating: 1 out of 5

 

 

Z-View: Shaft #1 by David F. Walker and Bilquis Evely

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Shaft is an on-going series published by Dynamite.  Shaft created by Ernest Tidyman.

Writer: David F. Walker

Artist: Bilquis Evely

Colorist: Daniel Miwa

Cover Shown: Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz & Ivan Nunes

Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine with all the chicks? Shaft! Created by author Ernest Tidyman, and made famous in a series of novels and films, iconic hero Shaft makes his comic book debut in an all-new adventure. He’s gone toe-to-toe with organized crime bosses, stood up to the cops, squared off against kidnappers, and foiled assassination attempts. But who was John Shaft before he became the hardboiled investigator with a reputation as big as New York City itself?

*** Beware – spoilers may be found below ***

The Good

  • Ernest Tidyman’s John Shaft gets his own comic!
  • 10 Cool Variant Covers: Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz & Ivan Nunes’ cover [shown above] is my favorite followed by covers created by Sanford Greene, Francesco Francavilla, Matt Haley, Michael Avon Oeming and Ulises Farinas.
  • Love the art by Bilquis Evely.
  • Daniel Miwa’s colors compliment Evely nicely.

The Bad:

  • Juius Tate and Knocks Persons.

The Ugly:

  • What happens when you don’t take a dive ordered by Junius Tate and Knocks Persons.

 

Shaft #1 should appeal to fans of the Shaft movies and is for mature audiences due to adult language.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Z-View: Escape from New York #1 by Christopher Sebela and Diego Barreto

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Escape From New York is an on-going series published by Boom Studios.

Writer: Christopher Sebela

Artist: Diego Barreto

Colorist: Marissa Louise

Letterer: Ed Dukeshire

The crime rate in the United States has risen 400 percent. After humiliating the President in front of the world and destroying America’s one chance to end World War III, Snake Plissken has become America’s Most Wanted man in a land of criminals and the insane. Everyone wants Snake dead. Luckily, Snake knows the feeling all too well. War hero. Outlaw. Renegade. Snake’s back!

*** Beware – spoilers may be found below ***

The Good

  • John Carpenter’s Snake Plissken get his own comic!
  • 5 Cool Variant Covers: Declan Shalvey’s cover [shown above] is my favorite followed by covers created by Alice X. Zhang, Tim Bradstreet, Riley Rossmo and Jay Shaw.
  • Picks up where the movie Escape From New York left off.

The Bad:

  • Plissken doesn’t look more like Kurt Russell [perhaps a licensing issue?]
  • The art needs a more gritty feel.
  • The twins: Romulus and Remus.

The Ugly:

  • What happens when Plissken tells a soldier to get out of a helicopter.

 

Escape from New York #1 should appeal to fans of the movie, Escape from, oh, you know.  

Rating: 4 out of 5

Z-View: “A Simple Plan”

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The Tagline:  “Sometimes good people do evil things..“

The Overview:   *** Beware –  spoilers are found below ***

Hank [Bill Paxton] and Sarah [Bridget Fonda] are living the American Dream.  Married and expecting a child, Hank works at the local feed store and Sarah is a librarian.  Known and respected by folks in their small town, things seem wonderful for the young couple.

When Hank, his dim-witted brother, Jacob [Billy Bob Thorton] and Jacob’s alcoholic friend, Lou [Brent Briscoe] accidentally stumble across a downed plane buried in the snow, they find their morality tested.  The plane contains a dead pilot and over four million dollars cash.

Hank wants to report their find to the police with hope there will be a reward. Lou wants to keep the money and say nothing.  Jacob sides with Lou. Ultimately, they decide that Hank will keep the money for the three. If no one comes calling after the plane is found in the spring, they will split the money equally and leave town going their separate ways.

It is a simple plan.  What could go wrong?

*** Even More Spoilers Below ***

The Good

  • Hank’s simple plan.
  • How when the plan begins to almost immediately unravel, the steps taken to correct things leads to worse events.
  • The twists along the way.
  • Director Sam Raimi creates so many suspenseful scenes.
  • Screenwriter Scott B. Smith skillfully adapts his novel of the same name.
  • How logical choices lead to unreasonable actions.
  • Paxton, Fonda, Thorton and Briscoe are excellent in their roles.
  •  “That man’s got a gun, Hank.  When he sees the plane, he’s gonna shoot you both.”

The Bad:

  • The evil that good people will do for money.
  • Making a pact with a dimwit and mean drunk.
  • When two of the three break their promise not to tell anyone what they found.
  • When Lou comes calling for his share of the money.
  • When the sheriff comes around asking questions.
  • When the FBI agent comes asking about the plane… and is he really FBI?

The Ugly:

  • When one bad decision forces worse choices.
  • When people don’t die straight away.
  • Learning how people talk about you when you’re not there.
  • The pain of betrayal.

 

Rating: 4 out of 5

15 Things About “Payback” That You Probably Didn’t Know

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Sean Hutchinson and Mental_Floss present 15 Things About Payback That You Probably Didn’t Know.

Here are my three favorite things…

5. HELGELAND WAS INSPIRED BY GRITTY CRIME DRAMAS FROM THE 1970S.

He used films like The Getaway, Dirty Harry, and Charley Varrick for visual references. In fact, the restaurant that Stegman takes Val to is named Varrick’s as a nod to Charley Varrick.

11. HELGELAND WAS FIRED AS DIRECTOR BEFORE THE FILM WRAPPED PRODUCTION.

He and the studio disagreed over the original ending of Payback, and when a consensus couldn’t be achieved, Helgeland was fired. A new director was brought in to reshoot—these new scenes make up about 30 percent of the theatrical cut.

15. IN 2007, HELGELAND WAS ABLE TO RE-CUT THE FILM INTO HIS ORIGINAL VISION.

It was released as Payback: Straight Up—The Director’s Cut.