The Godfather Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I have an odd fascination with fan made videos. I don't care if it's a 12 year old who got his hands on a copy of Adobe Premiere or a grown man who edits together fan made trailers for films that never existed (I love me some Raiders of the Lost Ark 1951 or Ghostbusters 1954), if someone spends enough time to put together a video born out of their passion for film, chances are I'm probably going to watch it at least once. Now, if you happen to edit together a music video for a catchy song comprised of film quotes, well, I'm probably going to play it on a loop for at least half an hour.

That is exactly what I've been doing with the below music video for Ricardo Autobahn's "The Golden Age of Video". Ricardo's own site describes it as "an epic production constructed of disco beats and film samples", which I'd say is a pretty fair assessment. Granted, it's not exactly the best song ever, but how can you not get a kick out of something that strings together samples from Freaks, Ghostbusters, The Godfather, Star Wars, Robocop, On the Waterfront, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and even Short Circuit into an addicting little medley? There's a good bit of TV show clips thrown in for good measure, but the majority of the 'lyrics' are taken from a bevy of film classics.

Oh, and if your place of work has a problem with Bill Murray describing what he just did to a ghost's rear end, I suppose his refrain classifies this as lightly not-safe-for-work. Enjoy.

Do you lean back on your couch to watch The Godfather and think: "God, if only I had a glass of Godfather vodka right now..."?

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Paramount Pictures and Iconic Brands have joined forces to launch The Godfather Italian Organic Vodka -- booze to get drunk by whilst feeling like a good, organic human being. (Yes, that last bit is all me.) This latest movie-meets-booze linkage will hit shelves in April of 2010, joining libations like Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka and Trump Vodka.

Richard DeCicco of Iconic Brands notes the powerful brand behind The Godfather, since it's one of the most beloved movies of all time, and seems to think that's enough of a reason. Luckily, nestled right after that, THR quotes alcohol consultant Arthur Shapiro: "The Godfather Vodka sounds a little bit like its hokey. The brand would need more going for it than merely the linkage and the borrowed credentials of the motion picture."

Well said, Richard! Would any of you Godfather fans out there actually avoid purchasing your regular vodka mainstay to fork over some cash for retro movie marketing? Maybe if it was cans of pet food, I'd dig the audacious twist, but Paramount -- you can keep your vodka.

Summertime seems to be movie list-making time in just about every publication. I imagine it's because once you slap Chris Pine or Christian Bale onto a summer magazine cover, you're stuck waiting for the fall buzz to kick up ... or anxious film writers out there are hoping to remind audiences that they can ease the pain of mindless blockbusters with meat-and-potato classics. Either way, we get a lot of lists.

Esquire has a particularly interesting one up, though. They've compiled a collection of 75 movies they feel every man should see in his lifetime, and go so far as to suggest they've all shaped American manhood in some fashion. Some of the choices are obvious classics: In the Heat of the Night, 12 Angry Men, Chinatown, The Godfather, North by Northwest, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The French Connection. Some are a little more on the forgotten side, like Fitzcarraldo and Run Silent, Run Deep.

But some of the choices are a little questionable. Iron Man? Three Kings? Runaway Train? Lone Star? Enjoyable sure, but are they must watch classics? Did Lone Star really shape modern manhood? I'm pretty sure Iron Man didn't considering it came out oh, exactly one year ago. Surely Easy Rider or Death Wish should have two of those spots. Doesn't John McClane deserve a rank above Johnny Dangerously? No Goodfellas? Why only one John Wayne (The Searchers) and no Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck?

Check out the list and ponder whether you think watching all 75 of these makes (or has made) a true man, as Esquire's version has me a little worried. Then come back and tell us what films you think are more essential than these.

*And no, clearly no one thinks there's an essential list for women. We may have to put that one together here on Cinematical.

Somehow I missed this on Thursday, but apparently so did everyone else, since I didn't see it linked anywhere. Roger Ebert was hanging out at a post-production studio in Chicago, watching the restored new print of The Godfather, when he was unexpectedly joined by Larry and Andy Wachowski, the famously inaccessible duo behind The Matrix, Speed Racer, and (people forget) Bound. Afterward, he got a chance to chat with them -- not in a conventional interview setting, complete with a hovering publicist (the brothers don't do that, remember?), but over a beer.

Ebert was impressed with the "zillionaires": "Nice people. Friendly. No Hollywood attitude." He writes that "[t]he blogosphere paints them as mysterious recluses, which may add to the legend but doesn't match the reality." But their being nice and friendly doesn't make them any less mysterious and reclusive: I'd wager that Ebert only ran the piece because of their reputation for not giving interviews or talking to anyone in the press.

Anyway, it's really interesting to "hear" them speak, though they mostly talk about the difficulties of keeping a moving 35 mm shot in focus and the brilliance of Coppola's Godfather shot selection. It's funny how keeping silent for a while will make such brief, mundane snippets into objects of arcane fascination. (Though since I think the Wachowskis are pretty formidable visual artists themselves, I find their perspective on that sort of thing interesting in its own right.)

No photo, of course; all you get is that old shot of the two admiring a Matrix comic book.

Are you ready to see Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as partners in Righteous Kill? Is it the casting pair-up you've been waiting 35 years for? Or does it feel too strange to watch a whole movie in which they're all buddy buddy? Perhaps you were fully satisfied with their showdown as enemies in Heat, even though the esteemed veteran actors had much less screen time together. Personally, I like the idea of them going head to head better, but that's mainly because they're both such huge figures that having them team up seems a bit unfair to the other side. As enemies they're like the Incredible Hulk and the Abomination or Iron Man and Iron Monger, to compare them with recent superpowered showdowns in cinema.

It's difficult to choose the better actor of the two, or even decide who's been the more successful Hollywood player. De Niro's been in a lot more films, but his ratio of bad films to good might have suffered as a result. Meanwhile, they've both arguably become too much of caricatures of themselves, to the point where it's sometimes hard to tell which performances are intentional self-parodies and which are accidental. However, despite the difficulty of pitting De Niro against Pacino for a general comparative showdown, there are a number of easily corresponding roles among them. So, just for fun, I've come up with seven specific character showdowns, chosen my pick for which is the better performance, and invite you all to vote on your favorite, whether you agree or disagree with my own.

After the jump ... De Niro vs. Pacino -- it's on!

Cinematical has been passed along these images which are making the rounds and demonstrate how Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather looks following a print restoration before its run at the New York Film Forum beginning tomorrow (the second one has been included after the jump).

Christopher Campbell made the initial mention of the plans for showing that film and Part II over the next few weeks, leading up to their Blu-Ray release on September 23rd (fans of Part III will just have to tough it out). Mind you, these comparsion shots are indicative of only the print, and not necessarily what those discs will look like.

New York City's Film Forum will be screening both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II during a special three week engagement beginning September 12. And yes, it's a big deal. The first two installments of Francis Ford Coppola's trilogy are often featured in repertory houses, sure, but Film Forum's presentation is of newly restored 35mm prints, which were produced under the direction of Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis and the supervision of film historian and master preservationist Robert A. Harris. The Godfather will run solo from September 12 through September 18, then The Goffather Part II will run solo from September 19 through September 25, and finally, back-to-back screenings will be featured from September 26 through October 2 (the double feature does, unfortunately, require separate admissions). As far as I can tell, neither of these digitally restored classics includes new computer-generated characters or backgrounds, and obviously the guns are likely to still be guns rather than walkie talkies.

If you can't make it to NYC for any of these shows, Paramount is apparently also releasing the restored films in other select cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or, you can check out the new versions as part of "The Godfather, the Coppola Restoration collection," which also includes a remastered Godfather Part III, on DVD or Blu-Ray beginning September 26 23 (the DVDs may be purchased in a 5-disc box set, which includes two discs of special features, or separately, in case you like to forget about Part III; the Blu-Ray versions seem to be only offered together in a 4-disc set).

Too much merchandising can saturate the classiness of a film, but I still think any actor who has played an iconic character should stick with that role through and through. Decades ago I was down for any movie star reprising a role for an animated spin-off (Mary Steenburgen, you're constantly giving me reasons to love you), and today I support anybody who follows his or her character to the world of video games. So, regardless of whether or not Francis Ford Coppola approves, kudos to Robert Duvall for being involved with Electronic Arts' upcoming game version of The Godfather II.

While other actors from the Godfather sequel have at least allowed their likenesses to be represented, just as they had with The Godfather: The Game before, Duvall's role in the game is more significant. Variety reports that his character, Tom Hagen, features prominently as an adviser to the player, and Duvall is recording new voiceover dialogue for this purpose. As with the first game, Al Pacino has chosen to not be involved (he's obviously holding out for that Scent of a Woman game to mark his video game voice work debut).

(In honor of Mother's Day, we're launching a series of posts today written, in part, by our mothers after we asked them one simple (yet very complex) question: What's your favorite movie and why?)

I take a lot of credit for my mom's burgeoning cinephilia. Used to be that she'd balk at anything remotely suspenseful, frightening or "unpleasant" (I think because she makes herself so emotionally available when she watches a movie that a nasty one can really wound), but I'm happy to report that last year, she voluntarily sat through No Country for Old Men, and even enjoyed it. When I asked her to name her favorite movie, she rattled off a list long enough that I had to stop her and tell her that this isn't the assignment. When I insisted she narrow it down to one, she regretfully cast off House of Games, You Can Count on Me and The Savages (Laura Linney is beloved in the Novikov household), and landed on The Godfather. By the end of the movie, she says, she feels like one of the family -- which is slightly terrifying, but I can see what she means. She tells me, "I can watch it every day and never get tired of it;" I believe her. And I'm awfully proud of her choice.

Getting tired of all this Clinton/Obama stuff yet? Look, regardless of who I'm voting for, I think it's pretty disgusting how some people compare Obama to a terrorist because of his name. A pimp? Totally. A terrorist. No. When asked what his three favorite movies of all time were, Obama recently named The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and Lawrence of Arabia. Not for nothing, but if you're running for President, do you think naming two Godfather films as your favorites might scare off a few people? Great films, no doubt, but in such a tight race why bring up your love for fictional mafia families?

Anyway, Obama also admitted that if a film based on his life were ever made, he'd want Will Smith to play him. Of course! Who wouldn't want Smith to play them in a film? Heck, I'd want Smith to play me too ... and I'm not even black! On why he'd want Smith and not, say, 50 Cent, Obama notes, "Will and I have talked about this because he has the ears!" Surprisingly, however, Smith is not one of Obama's favorite actors. They include Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, John Q. Obvious, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Angela Bassett. Looks like someone's definitely got their groove back.