Jessie is an aging career criminal who has been in more jails, fights, schemes, and lineups than just about anyone else. His son Vito, while currently on the straight and narrow, has had a fairly shady past and is indeed no stranger to illegal activity. They both have great hope for Adam, Vito’s son and Jessie’s grandson, who is bright, good-looking, and without a criminal past. So when Adam approaches Jessie with a scheme for a burglary he’s shocked, but not necessarily uninterested.

	
Family Business.1989.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 53 min
Size: 	2.57 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/2D4D2944B492659/Family_Business.1989.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Sidney Lumet – Family Business (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Adapted by Julian Barry from his own Broadway play, Lenny manages to be both brutally frank and highly romanticized in detailing the short life and career of influential, controversial stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce. The chronology hops, skips and jumps between Lenny (Dustin Hoffman) in his prime and the burned-out, strung-out performer who, in the twilight of his life, used his nightclub act to pour out his personal frustrations at great, boring length. We watch as up-and-coming comic Bruce courts his “Shiksa goddess,” a stripper named Honey (Valerie Perrine). With family responsibilities, Lenny is encouraged to do a “safe,” conformist act, but he can’t do it. Constantly in trouble for flouting obscenity laws, Lenny develops a near-messianic complex, which fuels both his comedy genius and his talent for self-destruction. Worn out by a lifetime of tilting at Establishment windmills, Lenny Bruce died of a drug overdose in 1966. Director Bob Fosse chose to film Lenny in black-and-white, giving the film the texture of a documentary. Though a film as verbally graphic as Lenny could not have been made when the real Lenny Bruce was alive, audiences in 1974 responded, to the tune of an $11 million gross.
Hal Erickson, AMG

897MB | 01:46:34 | 608×336 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/EBA1115A1A24D29/Lenny.avi
https://nitro.download/view/59D77E821F0EC77/Lenny.idx
https://nitro.download/view/CDAD2EFF5C83B9A/Lenny.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:english (hoh), deutsch (hoh), français, italiano, castellano, nederlands, svensk, norsk, dansk, suomi, portugues, magyar, helleniki

The post Bob Fosse – Lenny (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Georgie Soloway, a pop hit love song writer who cannot love, himself, or others. He spends his days with various women flying his plane, and dropping in to the world around him.

2.60GB | 1h 48m | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/846D56361B9AE64/Ulu_Grosbard_-_(1971)_Who_Is_Harry_Kellerman_and_Why_Is_He_Saying_Those_Terrible_Things_About_Me.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Ulu Grosbard – Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In 1969, following an anti-establishment path blazed famously by Bonnie and Clyde, then-X-rated Midnight Cowboy lumbered into the cinema consciousness and swiped the Best Picture Oscar. While Hollywood was producing Hello, Dolly! (also nominated that year), Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight and director John Schlesinger were chronicling the bizarre tale of a wannabe male prostitute and a sickly cripple trying to survive together on the New York City streets.

Academy voters had a lot to be impressed with — tenacious, unrelenting performances, Waldo Salt’s fearless screenplay adaptation — but, perhaps they were also swayed by Midnight Cowboy’s distinct feeling Schlesinger paints New York as an uncomfortable amalgam of society ladies and society dregs, a city slathered in advertising messages, covered in money and hopping with cheap hustlers. In the last 35 years, the word “gritty” has often been used to sum up the film, accurately, usually referring to the disgusting abandoned apartment our two protagonists call home.

Hoffman, in his first lead role since The Graduate, is Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, a limping, slimy looking loser who wanders the streets aimlessly, trolling payphones for change and dreaming of moving to Florida. Voight, in his breakout after six years of TV work, plays Joe Buck, an ultra-naïve Texas boy who comes to New York with delusions of Park Avenue women paying him for sex.

A fool and his money are soon parted, of course, and Buck (“I’m not a real cowboy, but I’m one hell of a stud!”) is broke and homeless quickly. After Ratso meets Joe at a bar — and promptly rips him off — he eventually offers up his condemned, heat-free living space, and the two bond in an unexpected way that is both awkward and touching.

There’s a sad symbolism to the lead roles that makes the characters’ simpatico even more tragic. Buck, the strapping Texan, eyes his New York future like a modern-day immigrant. His image of rich dames in bed is about as false as the adage about streets made of gold, and his lack of urban savvy means he doesn’t speak the language either. Ratso is New York itself circa 1969, welcoming to a point, cynical, and heading toward certain crumbling. Together, they work low-level shoplifting, attend a Factoryesque party — where they pretty much fit in — and fantasize about magic bus tickets to Miami.

In the years since the film’s initial release, as Voight’s become an acclaimed performer and Hoffman an acting superstar, images from Midnight Cowboy have become iconic. Nearly every movie fan has seen the lonely photo of Voight with his trademark cowboy hat and a scruffy Hoffman with greased-back hair. There’s Hoffman hollering, “Hey, I’m walking here!” at a stray taxicab. And there’s the pair’s freaky pas de deux set to a radio jingle for orange juice.

In perfect step with the acting and setting is the superb editing by Hugh A. Robertson, also nominated for his work. In addition to choosing an ideal rhythm for the one-on-one sequences, he also creates uncomfortable jigsaw puzzles of images, rat-a-tatting troubled pasts and a troubling New York to an unsuspecting audience. The editing contributes in making Midnight Cowboy a maverick effort, much like the editing of another tide-turner from 1969… Easy Rider. The world was going to change.

https://nitro.download/view/45773347686D1B8/John_Schlesinger_-_(1969)_Midnight_Cowboy.mkv

Language(s):English, Italian
Subtitles:English, French, Portuguese

The post John Schlesinger – Midnight Cowboy (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Upon moving to Britain to get away from American violence, astrophysicist David Sumner and his wife Amy are bullied and taken advantage of by the locals hired to do construction. When David finally takes a stand it escalates quickly into a bloody battle as the locals assault his house.

Quote:
Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The screenplay by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman is based upon Gordon M. Williams’s 1969 novel “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm” Peckinpah’s 1971 film Straw Dogs was one of the most controversial of his legendary career.. The film’s title derives from a discussion in the Tao Te Ching that likens the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog to forms without substance.

The film is noted for its violent concluding sequences and a complicated rape scene. Released theatrically the same year as A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry, the film sparked heated controversy over the perceived increase of violence in cinema.

The film premiered in U.S. cinemas on December 29, 1971. Although controversial in 1971, Straw Dogs is considered by many to be one of Peckinpah’s greatest films. A remake directed by Rod Lurie was released on September 16, 2011.

Production:
Sam Peckinpah’s two previous films, The Wild Bunch and The Ballad of Cable Hogue, had been made for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. His connection with the company ended after the chaotic filming of Cable Hogue wrapped 19 days over schedule and $3 million over budget. Left with a limited number of directing jobs, Peckinpah was forced to travel to England to direct Straw Dogs. Produced by Daniel Melnick, who had previously worked with Peckinpah on his 1966 television film Noon Wine, the screenplay was based on Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm.

Peckinpah’s adaptation of the novel drew inspiration from Robert Ardrey’s books African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative, which argued that man was essentially a carnivore who instinctively battled over control of territory. A significant difference between the novel and the film is the Sumner couple have a daughter who is also trapped in the farmhouse. Peckinpah removed the daughter and rewrote the character of Amy Sumner as a younger and more liberated woman. The film was shot on location at St Buryan, Cornwall.

Beau Bridges, Stacy Keach, Sidney Poitier, Jack Nicholson, and Donald Sutherland were considered for the lead role of David Sumner before Dustin Hoffman was cast. Hoffman agreed to do the film because he was intrigued by the character, a pacifist unaware of his feelings and potential for violence that were the very same feelings he abhorred in society.[13] Judy Geeson, Jacqueline Bisset, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, Carol White, Charlotte Rampling, and Hayley Mills were considered for the role of Amy before Susan George was finally selected. Hoffman disagreed with the casting, as he felt his character would never marry such a “Lolita-ish” kind of girl. Peckinpah insisted on George, an unknown actress at that time.

Controversy
The film was controversial on its 1971 release, mostly because of the prolonged rape scene that is the film’s centerpiece. Critics accused director Peckinpah of glamorizing and eroticising rape and of engaging in misogynistic sadism, and male chauvinism,[16][17] especially disturbed by the scene’s intended ambiguity—after initially resisting, Amy appears to enjoy parts of the first rape, kissing and holding her attacker, although she later has traumatic flashbacks. It is claimed that “the enactment purposely catered to entrenched appetites for desired victim behavior and reinforces rape myths”. Another criticism is that all the main female characters depict straight women as perverse with every appearance of Janice and Amy used to highlight excessive sexuality.

The violence provoked strong reactions, many critics seeing an endorsement of violence as redemption, and the film as fascist celebration of violence and vigilantism. Others see it as anti-violence, noting the bleak ending consequent to the violence. Dustin Hoffmann viewed David as deliberately, yet subconsciously, provoking the violence, his concluding homicidal rampage being the emergence of his true self; this view was not shared by director Sam Peckinpah.

The village of St Buryan was used as a location for the filming with some of the locals appearing as extras. Local author Derek Tangye reports in one of his books that they were not aware of the nature of the film at the time of filming, and were most upset to discover on its release that they had been used in a film of a nature so inconsistent with their own moral values.

Censorship
The studio edited the first rape scene before releasing the film in the United States, to earn an R rating from the MPAA.

In 1984, Straw Dogs gained more notoriety in the UK after the British Board of Film Classification banned it per the newly introduced Video Recordings Act, “because of Amy’s violent rape”. The film had been released theatrically in the United Kingdom, with the uncut version gaining an ‘X’ rating in 1971 and the slightly cut US R-rated print being rated ’18’ in 1995. In March 1999 a partially edited print of Straw Dogs, which removed most of the second rape, was refused a video certificate when the distributor lost the rights to the film after agreeing to make the requested BBFC cuts, and the full uncut version was also rejected for video three months later on the grounds that the BBFC could not pass the uncut version so soon after rejecting a cut one.

On July 1, 2002, Straw Dogs finally was certified unedited on VHS and DVD. This version was uncut, and therefore included the second rape scene, in which in the BBFC’s opinion “Amy is clearly demonstrated not to enjoy the act of violation”. The BBFC noted that:
“The cuts made for American distribution, which were made to reduce the duration of the sequence, therefore tended paradoxically to compound the difficulty with the first rape, leaving the audience with the impression that Amy enjoyed the experience. The Board took the view in 1999 that the pre-cut version eroticised the rape and therefore raised concerns with the Video Recordings Act about promoting harmful activity. The version considered in 2002 is substantially the original uncut version of the film, restoring much of the unambiguously unpleasant second rape. The ambiguity of the first rape is given context by the second rape, which now makes it quite clear that sexual assault is not something that Amy ultimately welcomes.”
@Wiki

Straw Dogs.Commentary synched.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 57 min
Size: 	1.97 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x560 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.145
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s
#2:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Commentary by film historian Stephen Prince)

https://nitro.download/view/8D2FFF053AA5107/Straw_Dogs.Commentary_synched.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, French, Spanish

The post Sam Peckinpah – Straw Dogs (1971) first appeared on Cinema of the World.