Archive for 2020

October 10, 2020

GOODFELLAS FOREVER: And yes, it’s a guy thing.

To those who label GoodFellas a morality play that leaves us exiting the theater appropriately updated on the evils of the Mafia, I ask this: Knowing how his story ended, do you think Joe Pesci’s character Tommy DeVito would have done things any differently? If he’d had his life to live over, would he have gone into plumbing or roofing before expiring of a heart attack in his Barcalounger? Would he have chosen the life of a square? I think not. Even knowing things would end with a gunshot in the face (oh, sorry! — spoiler alert), I think Tommy would have considered it a fair trade. After all, he started out as a nobody and got to live like a medieval lord, for a while. Tommy got to kill with impunity, laugh and drink and play cards all day, to wallow in riches. It couldn’t last, and didn’t, but for him the glory was worth the price.

GoodFellas, which was released 30 years ago this fall, serves up a more convincing, more potent dose of gang life than any other picture, and awed fascination with its gory glory is why it has always been a black-comic underworld adventure for its mostly male fans. We watch it over and over because it’s fun. Dark fun, sure. It’s the cynical, anarchic flip side of Hillary Clinton’s earnest commencement-day wish for “more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living.” As much of a buzz as young Hillary got from student sit-ins, that’s what Henry Hill gets from entering a packed nightclub through its kitchen like he’s pope of the Copa. GoodFellas is, crucially but not exclusively, a buddy movie. Guys watch it in the same frame of mind we have when watching two beefy men in trunks pummel each other in a ring: We couldn’t do that, but what a supernatural plane of existence it must be.

The movie’s director, Martin Scorsese, has described its last act as a kind of “attack” that he hoped would leave the audience contemplating the wages of sin. As punishment rained down upon each mobster in turn, we were to have gained a sense that the moral points had been set down as firmly as they would have been in a 1940s crime saga, in accordance with General Principle no. 1 of Hollywood’s Production Code: “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.”

Read the whole thing. After his post-Raging Bull wilderness in the 1980s, Goodfellas was a brilliant return to form for Martin Scorsese, and even its last act is much more watchable than the endless last hour of Scorsese’s recent (nearly) straight-to-Netflix movie, The Irishman, whose last hour ground on interminably. I doubt the latter film will garner too many repeat viewings, unlike the perennially watchable Goodfellas.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 10th, 2020

A HOLIDAY FROM CANCEL CULTURE: Don’t Defend Columbus–Celebrate Him. Dozens of cities have taken down their statues of Columbus, but he and the Italian immigrants who paid for those statues deserve tribute, not blame.

Posted at 2:58 pm by John Tierney on Oct 10th, 2020

YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Three Inconvenient Truths 60 Minutes Forgot to Mention in Its Story on California Wildfires and Climate Change.

CBS journalist Scott Pelley recently visited Butte County, California, to report on the wildfires devastating the Golden State.

Government statistics show that more than 8,300 wildfires have burned some 4 million acres to date. The flames have claimed 31 lives and destroyed nearly 8,700 structures. One of those structures belonged to Fire Station 61 Chief Reed Rankin, who saw his home reduced to a charred skeleton after a September blaze.

“[It’s] nothin’ but a foundation with a metal roof on top of it,” Rankin, who has spent more than 28 years as a firefighter, told Pelley. “It’s completely burned down.”

CBS had a wonderful opportunity to explore the devastating impact and causes of California’s fires. Unfortunately, it was an opportunity missed. The 60 Minutes segment focused primarily on climate change, a topic that is covered in depth virtually every single day.

California’s historic wildfires received scant attention, and all but the most attuned viewers would have concluded that the wildfires are simply the result of global warming. That’s because Pelley spent a total of seven seconds of the 13-minute segment explaining a primary cause of California’s megafires.

“Climate isn’t the only reason,” Pelley says of the wildfires at one point. “Decades of aggressively putting out every forest fire allowed brush to pile up like kindling.”

Pelley is correct. There is a widespread scientific consensus that California’s aggressive efforts to suppress fire have made the state ripe for megafires. But this is the last 60 Minutes viewers hear on the mismanagement of California’s forests.

Unexpectedly, as they say at Bloomberg.com: CBS ‘Global Warming Special’ Host [Scott Pelley] Likened Warming Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 10th, 2020