From Mario Puzo, the best-selling author of The Godfather, comes the riveting saga of the life, loves and dreams of the infamous Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano. Directed by the Academy Award winning director of The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino, this epic motion picture stars Christopher Lambert (Highlander) in the most powerful performance of his career.

World War II is finally over, and a war-torn world is at rest. But for Sicily, who dreams of independence from Rome’s oppressive, ironhanded regime, the struggle has just begun. Three powers have always ruled the island (the Church, the Landowners and the Mafia) until Salvatore Giuliano pronounced himself the fourth.

Determined that Sicily shall gain its freedom, Giuliano and his “brothers”, rob and ransom the rich, cold-bloodedly murdering all who dare to defy or betray them. As Giuliano proudly redistributes his newfound wealth among the peasants, Don Masino, the head of the Sicilian Mafia, declares that Giuliano must be stopped: at any cost. Now it’s a fight for survival, as the bloodiest manhunt in Italian history sweeps the countryside of the notorious outlaw, Giuliano.

3.37GB | 2h 26m | 1024×436 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9144F20FD785AE0/The.Sicilian.1987.DC.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Michael Cimino – The Sicilian [Director’s Cut] (1987) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Structures within the time frame of empirical perspectives have a tendency to unknowingly look in the wrong direction. Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978) overcomes this problem by focusing on an intensely felt portrayal of the characterisation within a closed community that allows us to see the universality of a doom-inflected generation that blindly followed the path shown by the state. Time allows the peaceful reign to negate the demand for instantaneous discourse and the setting up of ideological walls that soon become entrenched. Over 30 years since it was first released, The Deer Hunter has become what it always was: a deep-rooted immersion into American blue-collar life.

The debates that have surrounded The Deer Hunter since the seventies points towards F. Scott Fitzgerald’s old adage: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Cimino’s drama does far more than simply function; it’s an awkward, uneasy paean to a dying class that will soon be destroyed by the oncoming march of globalisation. The film begins in Clairton, a small industrial town in Pennsylvania mostly populated by Russian Americans who work in one of the many steel mills that hum with noise in the backdrop. Friends Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) are about to leave for Vietnam, but before they do so Steven is wed while Nick proposes (to a young Meryl Streep).

Cimino dampens the ardour for a climax of excited military aggression by ruminating for the first hour in Clairton, focusing on the trio, their friends and families. This sharp gaze is magnified via ceremonies and rituals which act as echo chambers and doubling devices, allowing Cimino to slowly observe the trifecta that will be visited by tragedy in all its forms. These events are never telegraphed to the audience but merely pondered on, offering multiple readings that change viewer perception. Synonymous with the film are the controversial Russian roulette scenes that Michael, Nick and Steve are forced to take part in. Roger Ebert has this to say at the time: “Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will apply to the war as a whole. It is a brilliant symbol because, in the context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war superfluous.”

Cimino’s The Deer Hunter is often labelled as a divisive film, having received numerous dressing downs from social commentators as well as established critics, but to attack it as part of an historical analysis is unfair. Its aim is not the Vietnam War but the experience that binds and destroys, in the the same way that Tolstoy’s War and Peace is not about the Napoleonic Wars. It’s a welcome pleasure to have The Deer Hunter back in cinemas again – courtesy of Park Circus – not least for once again confirming that the film’s ambiguity can be as forceful and powerful as the occasional scorn poured upon it. More relevant than its mordant copyists (such as Scott Cooper’s recent Out of the Furnace), here Cimino offers up an honest, earnest reflection on tumultuous times and epochal characters.

3.29GB | 3h 03m | 1024×432 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/1417AFA071C29D2/Michael_Cimino_-_(1978)_The_Deer_Hunter.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/F5120876B9741F8/Michael_Cimino_-_(1978)_The_Deer_Hunter.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/F36D4E36E64F49C/Michael_Cimino_-_(1978)_The_Deer_Hunter.part2.rar
https://nitro.download/view/4734F0B0DA81038/Michael_Cimino_-_(1978)_The_Deer_Hunter.part3.rar
https://nitro.download/view/86DD10B6C0E9338/Michael_Cimino_-_(1978)_The_Deer_Hunter.part4.rar

Language:English, Russian, Vietnamese, French
Subtitles:None

The post Michael Cimino – The Deer Hunter (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Brooklyn Academy of Music writes:
Amidst the wide open majesty of Montana, an ex-con turned preacher (Eastwood) resumes his bank robbing ways when he teams up with a brash young scofflaw (Bridges). Clint Eastwood’s tough guy terseness plays nicely off Jeff Bridges’ goofy amiability in this wonderfully loose-limbed combination of ‘70s road movie, buddy comedy, and heist film, which marked the feature debut of The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino.

3.46GB | 1 h 54 min | 1024×436 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/103BD8479A4B468/Thunderbolt.and.Lightfoot.1974.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, Russian

The post Michael Cimino – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot [+commentary] (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot Synopsis [AMG]
As much an eccentric character study as a road movie, Michael Cimino’s directorial debut follows the adventures of a quartet of misfits in their life of crime. Retired thief Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood) and sweet drifter Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) meet cute when Thunderbolt jumps into Lightfoot’s stolen car to escape a gunman. The pair embarks on an oddball journey to get Thunderbolt’s loot from an old robbery before his former associates, the sadistic Red (George Kennedy) and cretinous Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), get to it first, but all four are too late; the one-room schoolhouse hiding place has apparently vanished. So instead, the four play house and work legit jobs while they plot to rob the same place Thunderbolt and Red hit before. Although the plan goes awry, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot discover that they may still have succeeded-or so they think. As the easy-going mediator between the two, Eastwood’s Thunderbolt was a move away from his tough cop-westerner image; his audience accepted this then-atypical performance enough to turn Thunderbolt and Lightfoot into a moderate hit. Bridges received his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but Cimino turned down a subsequent deal with Eastwood, moving instead to his artistic peak with The Deer Hunter (1978) and career nadir with Heaven’s Gate (1980).

4.37GB | 1h 54mn | 1280×544 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/A0CC55111DAD92A/Thunderbolt.and.Lightfoot.1974.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Michael Cimino – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.