New York cop Deke DaSilva loves his job on the decoy squad so much he has several times forgone promotion. So when he and his partner are assigned to a new anti-terrorist unit he is pretty hostile to the idea. The unit is run by a British expert who suspects a major terrorist is in town. His message is shoot to kill, which makes DaSilva even unhappier. But when bombs start going off he thinks again.

Nighthawks.1981.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 39 min
Size: 	2.24 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x554 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.221
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/2EB0AFC0644A750/Nighthawks.1981.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Bruce Malmuth & Gary Nelson – Nighthawks (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Tracy (Diana Ross), an aspiring designer from the slums of Chicago puts herself through fashion school in the hopes of becoming one of the world’s top designers. Her ambition leads her to Rome spurring a choice between the man she loves or her newfound success.

1.52GB | 1h 48m | 720×304 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/40EF300BB5C674D/Mahogany.1975.DVDRip.x264-NoRBiT.mkv
or
https://fikper.com/wp8YcCqFTT/Mahogany.1975.DVDRip.x264-NoRBiT.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Berry Gordy & Tony Richardson – Mahogany (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Lady Sings the Blues, like many enjoyable biopics, has little to do with presenting fact and everything to do with presenting the essence of a life. It has been both rightly and unfairly reviled by passionate fans of Holiday’s music as being highly fictionalized—and so it is, just as Amadeus, Funny Girl, and St. Louis Blues also use seeds of fact to grow fanciful tales of their respective subjects’ lives. It is also true that Diana Ross has little in common with Billie Holiday; their singing styles are markedly different, and Ross is far too slender and beautiful to believably imitate Holiday; to her credit, she does not try.

What she does do is turn in a remarkable performance, not necessarily as the Billie Holiday, but as “Billie Holiday,” the character created for Berry Gordy’s ambitious project, which unfortunately loses its identity along the way. The film is never sure what it wants to be, and the end result suffers for it, despite the critical acclaim heaped upon the film on its release. Lady Sings the Blues was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a nod for Ross herself as Best Actress, but lost in every category (she would, however, take home two Golden Globes).

Lady Sings the Blues wastes no time and pulls no punches; we are immediately thrust into a gritty black-and-white montage of Holiday being booked into a New York jail, set to the opening strains of Michel LeGrand’s apocalyptic score. The first few minutes of Ross’s performance as Holiday show her haggard, disheveled, manic—writhing in a straightjacket, confined to a padded cell, screaming inhumanly in the thrall of her addiction. From there, flashback scenes show us how she landed in such a sorry state, beginning with her rape by a drunk at the age of 14. It effectively sets the stage for what is to come. Director Sidney J. Furie brings the pain…by the truckload…but spends so little time exploring the mystique of Billie Holiday, the incredible spell that she cast by bringing so much emotion into her music and successfully transmitting it to her audience, that you wonder if he’d ever actually heard of her before taking on this project. Then again, a brief overview of Furie’s filmography—which includes the equally cliché-ridden and factually-challenged stinker Gable and Lombard—goes a long way towards perhaps explaining some of the choices made during this production.

The movie’s focus on soap-opera romance can further be attributed to Motown mogul Berry Gordy’s desire to create a hit, a blockbuster romance as a vehicle for Diana Ross. Back in the fifties, when the idea of a Holiday biopic had first been considered, both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner had been considered for the role; later, Dorothy Dandridge was set to star in a Holiday movie but died before the film could be made. Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, and Lola Falana were all contenders for this role, but Gordy’s passion to make Diana Ross a movie star and create a film with a primarily black cast that would find crossover appeal eventually decided the course of the production: when the movie went over budget (at two million dollars, it was already the most expensive movie starring a black cast ever made), Gordy even raised the money to finish it himself. It was a risky move for everyone involved, but one that eventually paid off spectacularly. Although Holiday fans held firm to their displeasure (“She was fine when she was in the Supremes,” groused famed jazzman Rahsaan Roland Kirk, “but why did she have to go and ruin my Lady Day dreams?”), Lady Sings the Blues succeeded beyond all expectations, becoming a smash hit and a critical darling—”This was one of the great performances of 1972,” declared Roger Ebert. Of course, he was referring to Diana Ross, but he would have done as well to have noted the two other standout actors in the film, two stunning breakout performances: Richard Pryor’s incredible dramatic turn as the ill-fated and lovesick Piano Man, and Billy Dee Williams as he redefined urban cool as ultra-suave gambler Louis McKay, Holiday’s long-suffering love interest, earning him instant stardom as “the black Clark Gable.” Together, these three take what might otherwise have been a dreadfully predictable and boring mess and shape it into something watchable.

The DVD, at least, is certainly watchable—a good, crisp widescreen transfer combined with rich colors add up to a dazzling presentation; viewers have the choice of somewhat subdued but balanced 5.1 digital sound or the original mono, for those who like to kick it old-school. The deleted scenes aren’t very engaging (except for the one in which Billy Dee goes all Superfly on the drug-dealing bandleader), and the commentary is a little too self-congratulatory for my taste, but hey—considering everything that Gordy and Furie went through to get this puppy made, I guess they’ve earned that. And winding up the special features is a rather expansive “making of” retrospective documentary featurette.
~DVD Verdict

1.95GB | 2h 24m | 855×364 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D57A56421EB151A/Lady_Sings_the_Blues.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Sidney J. Furie – Lady Sings the Blues [+ Commentary] (1972) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Brass-balled, Bronx-born auteur Abel Ferrara is one of those two-fisted screen bards that always follows through on each sucker punch, his heart beating with Sam Fuller’s blood. His scorching morality plays and tainted-psyche humanizations are raw nerves exposed and chewed through, like a naked tornado called Hyde to Scorsese’s more calculated risk-taker Jekyll. However, what makes an Abel Ferrara film for me isn’t plot or casts of meaty, dilemma-torn characters. It’s in the gritty city itself, a filmmaking toybox for tones, textures, sounds, music and aesthetic. When Ferrara looks at New York City, he knows its tourist-trap beauty is bullshit and the lurid truth is in the blackened gum on the bottom of the postcard rack. He’s the director who would probably kick my pasty ass all the way to Chinatown if he heard this flowery praise.

Excluding his one-time-only skin flick, Fear City (1984) was Ferrara’s third feature, a gutter-noir thriller set in the armpit of pre-gentrified Times Square and seen almost exclusively at night. Ferrara didn’t perceive the skyscrapin’ billboards and excessive wattage as a sinfully exciting paradise like Las Vegas; rather, his menacing midtown purgatory is as literally dark as the after-hours sky. Shot so that buildings have no edge definition and color lies in the negative space of shadow, the ubiquitous neon of the ’80s is unusually used here as paint on a deep black canvas. (Check out the French DVD cover below for reference.)

As for its premise, Fear City would work on a double bill in one of the era’s 42nd Street grindhouse theaters. Said to be modeled after Ferrara and his long-time screenwriter Nicholas St. John, ex-boxer Matt “Matty” Rossi (Tom Berenger) and biz partner Nicky Parzeno (Jack Scalia) run the Starlite Talent Agency, basically a harem of on-call strippers. A bumpy credits-sequence ride through the streets postulates Times Square as nothing more than a one-stop peep show, in which we’re allowed our first glimpses (more like gawking glares) of a topless Loretta (Melanie Griffith) on the stage. Within the first ten minutes, you know of hell and decadence: gratuitious boobies, a stripper stabbed by a serial killer, a club-owner shakedown, and neck-licking lesbianism (the latter only appearing in the European cut, to be discussed later).

Tom Berenger stands in for Ferrara, Jack Scalia for Nicky St. John.

The narrative catalyst is indeed “The New York Knifer,” a nunchuck-wielding manifesto writer who may or may not be exclusively attacking Matty and Nicky’s girls. Could it be an operation staged by their competition, Goldstein? (Please tell me this guy’s a reference to Screw founder Al Goldstein.) Will Matty’s mob bosses in the downtown social clubs show any leniency as Starlite’s dry-erase board of scheduled working girls (not work safe) is gradually wiped cleaner? Can Matty conquer his sleepless agony over accidentally killing a guy in the ring and ruining his boxing career? Are he and Loretta meant to be together forever, or will they be undone by her smack-habit relapses at the first signs of duress? And brash homicide dick Al Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams, who may as well be brandishing a Colt 45 with Tarantino-giggly lines like “There’s nothing I hate more than guineas in Cadillacs”), will he ever stop busting Matty’s chops?

“Nobody’s clean,” says Billy Dee’s former vice cop, and he ain’t kidding in this setup. With the slasher at large, tensions and subplot boiling points run high and red, and Ferrara relishes this amped-up zone to muck with audience moralities. When the boys beat up an innocent architect at a strip joint because he’s spotted with an Xacto knife, the aftermath pays little penance: it was a mistake that could NOT be avoided. This and a shot of Matty tossing a gun into the East River (in view of the still-standing World Trade Center) reflect modern allusions after one wiseguy offers: “This bastard was meant to be caught, not prevented. You can never prevent terrorism.” Black-and-white readings be damned.

Even rooting for troubled Matty in his alleyway showdown with this karate killer, Ferrara’s Fear City refuses empowerment through the idea of an antihero. It loves, hates and understands its sleaze as a certainty that these characters may win minor victories, yet they’ll never escape the inevitable downward trajectory of their lives. It’s too schlocky with its physical training montages, redundant flashbacks and diseased entertainments to dare consider its depth, but it’s notably compassionate and naturalistic in its grim vivacity. Fear City is like a Cassavetes giallo set in 1984, not the year but an alternate universe of Orwellian terror. Except Big Brother was severely maimed in the first reel.

1.82GB | 1h 36m | 906×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F31F0CBB6BFD1DF/Abel_Ferrara_-_(1984)_Fear_City.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Abel Ferrara – Fear City (1984) first appeared on Cinema of the World.