re: Better movie: Casino or Goodfellas

I am glad to see that everyone recognizes that while Casino is good Goodfellas is better.

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One is the modern masterpiece of the genre - and one of the most influential films of a generation, and the other is a fun, diverting, caricature of LV gangsters. Sharon Stone is an abortion.

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I am often shocked at what passes for a legit question on this board.

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Meh - it's legitimate, because of the apples to apples comparison (numerous actor crossovers, same director, same genre, similar pacing, use of music) - and while not denying your point:

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One is the modern masterpiece of the genre - and one of the most influential films of a generation

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Certainly in the "post-Cagney" era, really The French Connection, Godfather I&II and Goodfellas stand out, but I argue that Casino is right there.

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Sharon Stone is an abortion.

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I'm not sure what this means. I thought her part as Gun Moll/Femme fatale/sympathetic antagonist was a big challenge and she consistently delivered emotionally charged scenes. I found her to be believable. Apparently the consultants agreed.

Sharon Stone delivered a very realistic portrayal of her charaacter. It wasn't Sharon Stone that you hated, it was that fricking low life, gold digging, pimp fricking, drug using, child abusing, con artist, (yet beautiful) viper of a female character that she played.

Scorcese should have dialed that character down to "mostly despicable" from "vile demonic count".

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I mean she was miscast.

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Deniro was miscast in the film, other than being right about the same age (as Rosenthal was supposed to be at the end of the film). You know who would have been awesome (and they had him in the film)?

Kevin Pollak.

In Stone's case, they were looking for somebody who could really pull off the showgirl "good looks" and charisma the girl had in real life. I'm not sure who was on the radar in the mid 90s they could have cast who could have looked right and pulled off some of those scenes. Honestly, they had people who knew all of the people involved in the story, on the set every day and they disagree with this criticism - to the contrary, most remarked how close to real life Stone played it.

And you brought up Lawrence of Arabia - I really didn't appreciate the movie until I watched it as an adult (in Iraq, no less). As an interesting parallel to Stone's portrayal of the fictionalized Geri Rosenthal, Alec Guiness' Feisal was apparently so convincing, that when he went around some of the filming locations, in costume, some people believed he was Feisel resurrected.

THAT is acting (akin to Andre Royo who was given drugs and told he looked like he "needed a fix" while on location for The Wire - Royo, whose character Bubbles was a junkie, refers to this as his "street oscar".)

hijack


I got to see a restored 70mm print of LOA in 2004 or 5 at the AFI theater in Silver Spring, MD. mind=blown. I cant even put that experience into words. That made it number one on my personal GOAT list.


Never heard that story about Royo. He was so awesome as Bubbles.

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Never heard that story about Royo. He was so awesome as Bubbles.

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Continued hijack

I'm really scratching my head, but I cannot think of any actor carrying a character for 5 or more seasons (okay 60 episodes) and doing it better than Royo did with Bubbles on The Wire.

There were other great performances on the show - and we have other performances to look at - certainly Chiklis' Vic Mackey and Gandolfini's Tony Soprano - but temper that with the fact that those guys were THE stars of those respective shows. Ditto for Cranston's Walter White of Breaking Bad.

To tie it back in - 20 years or so ago, before movies were ruined by Michael Bay and computer chips, great acting was found in films directed by Martin Scorcese, Ridley Scott, Tarantino and the Coens (among others).

Now, it is found in the great cable dramas.

ETA: The Sopranos, in fact, was just an attempt to make Goodfellas into a series - there were something like 25 to 30 cast crossovers over the years.

Pesci puts a dude's head in a vice.

That's cool.

But Goodfellas all the way