• Casino 1995 Receptions
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• Casino 1995 Reception

Sheldon Adelson embodied everything conservative Americans want the country to be: He was a self-made billionaire, a mega-donor to the Republican Party and a prominent champion of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Martin Scorsese's fascinating new film 'Casino' knows a lot about the Mafia's relationship with Las Vegas. It's based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, who had full access to a man who once ran four casinos for the mob, and whose true story inspires the movie's plot. Like 'The Godfather,' it makes us feel like eavesdroppers in a secret place.The movie opens with a car bombing, and the figure of. Casino is a 1995 crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese.Robert De Niro stars as Sam 'Ace' Rothstein, a Jewish-American top gambling handicapper who is. Joe Pesci's wife (at the time of filming), Claudia Haro, played Trudy, the co-hostess and band leader of 'Ace's High'.Haro and Pesci divorced and she remarried. She was convicted in 2000 of two counts of attempted murder for hiring a hitman to try and kill her other ex-husband, a stuntman. Casino ( 1995 ) Master director Martin Scorsese depicts the sloping depth of a casino mafia boss’ fall. Filmed in a semi-documentary fashion about the life of the gambling paradise Las Vegas and its dark mafia underbelly.

Casino 1995 Receptions

The casino mogul died at age 87 after a long illness, according to an announcement from his family and the company he founded, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, on Tuesday.

An American dream come true

Born in Boston to a poor immigrant family, Adelson's extraordinary rise to becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world has been hailed a 'true American dream.' With thrift, drive and risk-taking, the son of a Lithuanian taxi driver began selling newspapers at 12 and started a vending machine business at 16. After dozens of attempts at starting a business in various fields, the several-time entrepreneur made his first fortune in 1979 as one of the founders of computer industry expo COMDEX in Las Vegas.

With this first bucket of gold, Adelson got a foothold in Sin City, where he would later purchase the Sands Hotel and Casino in 1989 and turned it into the largest privately-owned convention center in the U.S. In 1995, he sold COMDEX to Japan's SoftBank Corporation for more than $800 million. 'Sheldon wanted to be richer than Bill Gates. He always wanted to be No. 1,' a former CEO of Comdex told The New York Times in 2008.

Now a Las Vegas landmark, the Venetian hotel casino opened in 1999 on the ground where the Sands used to stand, complete with its own Grand Canal and gondoliers. But Adelson's ambitions didn't stop there. Across the world in China, Adelson saw a historic opportunity after the 1999 handover of Macao to take the Venetian to the former Portuguese colony. That turned out to be one of his most visionary decisions, which would see Macao overtaking Las Vegas to be the world's highest-grossing gambling hub, an even bigger money-spinner for Adelson's casino empire.

Having made his name taking chances in life – and often getting it right – Adelson transformed the gambling capitals in the West and the East into the iconic cities they are today.

Mafia!, also known as Jane Austen's Mafia!, is a 1998 comedy film directed by Jim Abrahams and starring Jay Mohr, Lloyd Bridges (in one of his final films), Olympia Dukakis and Christina Applegate.

The film spoofs Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather series and various other mafia films, notably Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995). It also parodies films in other genres, ranging from Forrest Gump to Il Postino and The English Patient.

Plot[edit]

Like the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, the narrative of Mafia! consists of a series of flashbacks interwoven with the main plot. Tony is the son of a prominent Mafia don, Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker Cortino. As the film opens, Tony introduces the main thread when he exits a Vegas casino and walks to his car, accompanied by a voiceover explaining his philosophy of life. When he starts the car, it explodes.

The story then regresses more than half a century to describe the boyhood of Tony's father, Vincenzo, who was born in Italy, the clumsy son of a Sicilian postman. One day, while making a delivery for his father, Vincenzo trips and the parcel bursts open, revealing a strange white powder. The parcel's recipient, concluding that the delivery boy has seen too much, tracks Vincenzo to a street fair, where he kills his father. The boy escapes to America, where he grows to young manhood, marries, and struggles with poverty before finally finding his destiny as a mafia boss.

The film then visits the recent past; Tony has just returned from the Korean War and is bringing his idealistic Protestant girlfriend, Diane, to meet his family and friends at his big brother Joey's wedding reception (a parody of Connie Corleone's wedding in the beginning of the 1972 film The Godfather). During the festivities, however, Vincenzo is shot 47 times in an attempted hit and nearly dies. Tony announces his intention to kill Gorgoni, a drug lord with whom Vincenzo had refused to do business before the attack. Diane leaves him, saying he's abandoned the peaceful ideals of his youth, and adding that she'll never be anything to his Sicilian family but 'that Protestant chick who never killed anyone.' Tony avenges the attack, then goes into hiding in Las Vegas, where Cesar Marzoni offers him the opportunity to manage his casino, The Peppermill. Tony accepts and his casino is a great success until he meets a femme fatale, Pepper Gianini, hired by Marzoni as part of a deep-laid plan to distract him from his duties and to drive a wedge between him and Joey.

Casino 1995 Reception Party

Vincenzo recovers from his 47 gunshot wounds and visits Las Vegas, where he officially names Tony his successor. Joey, furious at being passed over, is told 'You get Wisconsin.' The Don then returns home, where he falls victim to his 5-year-old grandson, Chucky, who assassinates him by spraying him with malathion (parody of Vito Corleone's heart attack in The Godfather). The film returns to the present after Tony catches Joey and Pepper cavorting in a hotel room together and walks out in disgust - only to have his car explode.

Tony is horribly but temporarily disfigured, and attends his father's funeral in a wheelchair, where he spots the killers when he sees little Chucky taking a payoff. However, he decides to postpone vengeance until he can win back Diane's love and put his life in order. Diane has by this time become President of the United States, and is on the brink of declaring total world disarmament when Tony goes looking for her. He persuades her to put world peace on the back burner until after their wedding. During the ceremony, with the help of Vincenzo's mother (Dukakis), several henchmen, and an Eskimo, he settles the family's accounts in an orgy of slaughter (filmed similarly to the end of The Godfather), even arranging the harpooning of Barney the Dinosaur as a bonus.

Cast[edit]

Casino 1995 Reception Ideas

• Jay Mohr as Anthony 'Tony' Cortino
• Lloyd Bridges as Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker Cortino
  • Louis Mandylor as young Vincenzo
  • Jason Fuchs as Vincenzo Cortino as a boy
• Christina Applegate as Diane Steen
• Billy Burke as Joey Cortino
• Pamela Gidley as Pepper Gianini
• Olympia Dukakis as Sophia Cortino
  • Sofia Milos as young Sophia
• Joe Viterelli as Dominick Clamato
• Tony Lo Bianco as Cesar Marzoni
• Blake Hammond as Fatso Paulie Orsatti
• Phil Suriano as Frankie Totino
• Vincent Pastore as Gorgoni
• Marisol Nichols as Carla
• Carol Ann Susi as Mrs. Clamato
• Gregory Sierra as Bonifacio
• Catherine Lloyd Burns (uncredited) as Woman in Vegas Show

Release[edit]

Box office[edit]

In its opening weekend the film took $6,577,961 in 1,942 theatres, averaging $3,387. In total in the US, the film made $19,889,299.^[2]

Critical reception[edit]

Mafia! received generally negative reviews with a 14% 'rotten' rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 42 reviews and a 4/10 rating.^[3]

James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote

Airplane! and The Naked Gun ..., two early entries into what has become a thriving comedy subgenre, worked in large part because the humor was fresh. Now, countless movies later, many of the jokes seem recycled, even when they aren't. ... Mafia! ... has its funny moments, but, in the wake of the hilarious There's Something About Mary, it seems more than a little lame. ... The volume of jokes is extremely high, presumably as a form of insurance—if one fails, maybe the next will succeed. The problem is, Mafia! contains too many duds. And, when you're not laughing, you start to realize how little this film has to offer beyond the diluted humor. ... Mafia! isn't a terrible film, and it will probably provoke at least a burst or two of laughter from even the most grim viewer. On the whole, however, it's a weak parody that is better suited to video viewing than a theatrical experience.^[4]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film two out of four stars, wrote

Yes, I laughed during Jim Abrahams' Mafia!, but even in mid-chortle I was reminded of the gut-busting experience last week of seeing There's Something About Mary. It is the new movie's misfortune to arrive after, instead of before, the funniest comedy of the year. ... Mafia! is the kind of movie that can never entirely fail, but can succeed to various degrees. It doesn't rank with Abraham's earlier efforts. And in a town where There's Something About Mary is playing, it's not the one to choose.^[5]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote

Casino 1995 Reception Games

There are a handful of laughs in Mafia!, but most of the movie feels oddly repressed. ... The underworld gags are limited and repetitive, without the ripely promiscuous media-age lunacy that, in a comedy like The Naked Gun, made you feel as if the film were tickling funny bones you never even knew existed. Jay Mohr, as the Michael Corleone surrogate, and Billy Burke, as his psycho-hothead brother, don't even look the part—they're like preppies clowning in a Harvard spoof—and so the film gets virtually no lift from its performers. ... Still, when Mohr's Anthony Cortino grabs his brother's head and gives him the kiss of death, leaving a bright red smear of lipstick ... well, we may all know this genre's tricks too well by now, but that doesn't mean they can't make you smile.^[6]

References[edit]

Casino 1995 Reception

1. ^ ^ab'Jane Austen's Mafia - Box Office Data'. The Numbers. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
2. ^'Mafia!'. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
3. ^'Mafia!'. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
4. ^Berardinelli, James. 'Mafia!'. Reelviews. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
5. ^Ebert, Roger (July 24, 1998). 'Mafia!'. Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago, Illinois: Sun-Times Media Group. Retrieved February 11, 2012 – via rogerebert.com.
6. ^Gleiberman, Owen (July 31, 1998). 'Mafia!'. Entertainment Weekly. New York City: Meredith Corporation. Retrieved February 11, 2012.

External links[edit]

• Jane Austen's Mafia! on IMDb
• Jane Austen's Mafia! at AllMovie
• Jane Austen's Mafia! at Rotten Tomatoes