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« An Apple Barrel Bright Set Giveaway | Main | Freelance Friday: Mod Podge Mother's Day... »
Today on Teaching Thursdays we wanted to share with you this delightful, decoupage mirror. Cathie and Steve designed this mirror, and it is a perfect craft for beginners. Have your tween or teen create this Mod Podge mirror. It will be a perfect addition to place on their dresser.
PLAID Supplies
· FolkArt ® Acrylic Colors - Navy Blue, 2 oz.
· Mod Podge ® Gloss, 8 oz.
Other Supplies
Hot Glue Gun Helpers Wood framed mirror Foam Paintbrush Floral scrapbook Paper Scissors Hot glue Velvet ribbons Rhinestones
1. Paint the wood portion on the frame with Navy paint. Allow to dry. Add a second coat of paint. Let dry.
2. Cut the flowers from the scrapbook paper. For this design we just applied the flowers to the lower corner. Coat the back of the papers with Mod Podge. Position the papers onto the front corner of the mirror. Use your fingers to press any air bubbles. Allow to dry for 15 min. Topcoat with a layer of Mod Podge. Smooth your brushstrokes. Apply the Mod Podge to the entire frame to create a gloss finish.
3. Hot glue ribbons around the outer edge of the mirror. Glue rhinestones to the front of the frame.
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If we ordered the world differently, everyone would know Rodrigo Medellin.
As it is, the world knows the names of presidents, of mass murderers, and of supermodels. (Medellin did get his start thanks to his appearance on a game show, but that's not why we should know his name.)
Medellin is a Mexican biologist. Bats are his specialty, but he's come to be synonymous with Mexican mammals of all kinds, and with them their habitats. So, in effect, he is synonymous with the wildlife of Mexico.
If the world were ordered according to its biological richness, Medellin would be known worldwide.
It's been estimated that 10% of all the world's species live in Mexico, the only country to span six ecological zones. It ranks second or third among the world's nations for mammal diversity, fourth for reptiles, amphibians and vascular plants, and 10th for birds.
Viewed from a geologic perspective, Mexico owes its unique character in great part to the collision, 6 million years ago, of North and South America. Viewed from a human perspective, Mexico owes its preservation, in part, to Rodrigo Medellin.
Medellin grew to love wildlife early, and was invited to start his university education at age 12 after appearing on The Great 64,000 Peso Contest, a TV show modeled on The $64,000 Question.
He gave up a strict focus on bats because, he said, he felt a great weight of responsibility for the nation's wildlife as a whole, given that so few do the kind of work he does. (He's one of only a couple dozen scientists studying mammals in Mexico.) His work has helped create vast preserves that will be protected in perpetuity in one of the world's most unique landscapes.
Earlier this month, Medellin won the Wildlife Trust Conservation Scientist Award, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at the ceremony in New York City. (Batman comes to Gotham was a common refrain.) He's more at home in the field, he said, and I'm sure he wouldn't care how many people know his name. He spoke with quiet passion about his life's work.
Which is the preservation of the land and living things that make Mexico Mexico. Which make the world the world. Which makes Rodrigo Medellin a name we should know.
Wildlife Trust
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subset: commoncrawl


text: There have been a couple of times I've been in a game on Xbox and I have a 3-bar connection while the remaining players have a 1-bar. I have no idea how that happens or how often it's occurred, but there are at least two instances I can recall. One game, I had a player accuse me of using a lag switch. I told him that I didn't know what caused it but it was really that big of an issue he should have left. He responded by saying that he recorded footage of the game and I believe he has the intention on reporting me for improper tampering. I have no idea how to use a "lag switch" nor do I have any intention of using one if I knew how. Anybody know what might cause this issue and, if push comes to shove, how I can prove that I didn't tamper with anything? Any assistance the community could provide is appreciated. I'm a fan of this game and a regular on Xbox Live, and I would hate to have repercussions fall upon me for something that I have not done.


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Be a Junnatha – a seeker. The P.S. continues.
The first book is Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power. He never published it while he was alive, it was published posthumously; and meanwhile, before it was published, many of your so-called great men had already stolen from the manuscript.
Alfred Adler was one of the "greatest" psychologists. He is one of the trinity of psychologists: Freud, Jung and Adler. He is simply a thief. Adler has stolen his whole psychology from Friedrich Nietzsche.
Adler says: Man's basic instinct is the "will to power." Great! Who was he trying to deceive? Yet millions of fools are deceived. Adler is still counted as a great man. He is just a pygmy, only to be forgiven and forgotten.
George Bernard Shaw steals his whole basic philosophy from Nietzsche. Great G.B.S. – Nobel prizewinner, George Bernard Shaw. Whatsoever he says is contained in only a few sentences of Nietzsche's Will to Power.
Even a so-called great Indian saint was not far behind Adler and Shaw. His name is Shri Aurobindo. He is worshipped by millions all over the world as the greatest sage of the age. He stole his idea of superman from the manuscript of Will to Power. Shri Aurobindo was only a mediocre scholar, nothing much to brag about.
Nietzsche's book was not published until many years after his death. His sister prevented it. She was a great businesswoman. She was selling other books which were already published, and waiting for the right moment when Will to Power could best be sold. She was not concerned about Nietzsche, his philosophy, or his contribution to humanity.
Why didn't Nietzsche himself publish the book while he was alive? I know why. It was too much even for him. He was not an enlightened man. He was afraid, afraid of what was going to happen to him if he published. And the book is pure dynamite! He always kept it under his pillow, even while asleep. He was afraid it may fall into the wrong hands. He was not a brave man as people usually think of him, he was a coward. But strange are the ways of existence: sometimes even a coward is showered with stars, and that's what happened to Nietzsche.
Adolf Hitler stole his whole philosophy from Nietzsche. Hitler was incapable of doing anything right; he was such an idiot, he should really have been in India, not in Germany, and become a disciple of Muktananda. I can suggest a beautiful name for him: Swami Idiotananda! That's what he was, the suprememost idiot of human history. He thought he understood Nietzsche. It is very difficult to understand Nietzsche; he is so subtle, so deep, and so profound. It is beyond the reach of any idiotananda.
Almost all the talks in the Osho Online Library are available as downloadable audiobooks.
This series of talks is available in print.
This series of talks is available as an ebook.
You can also experience some of these talks on video.
Discover more about this revolutionary approach to meditation.


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It's that time of year again when the Girl Scouts are out in full force hitting you up for your cookie orders.
So what's a Girl Scout to do so she can stand out from the troop?
Well, one little trooper in Long Beach, California, is teaming up with her mom -- who has come up with the ultimate cookie pairing idea.
With every box you buy, the girl's mom will tell you which wine to pair with the dessert.
For example, she recommends pairings Lemon Creams and Riesling, Do-Si-Do's with champagne, and Thin Mints with a Cabernet. (CBS)


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E. coli is a common type of bacteria that can get into food, like beef and vegetables. E. coli is short for the medical term Escherichia coli. The strange thing about these bacteria — and lots of other bacteria — is that they're not always harmful to you.
E. coli normally lives inside your intestines, where it helps your body break down and digest the food you eat. Unfortunately, certain types (called strains) of E. coli can get from the intestines into the blood. This is a rare illness, but it can cause a very serious infection.
Someone who has E. coli infection may have these symptoms:
One very bad strain of E. coli was found in fresh spinach in 2006 and some fast-food hamburgers in 1993. Beef can contain E. coli because the bacteria often infect cattle. It can be in meat that comes from cattle and it's also in their poop, called manure. Cow poop in your food? How does that happen? Not on purpose, of course, but it can happen if the manure is used for fertilizer (a common practice to help crops grow) or if water contaminated with E. coli is used to irrigate the crops.
E. coli can be passed from person to person, but serious E. coli infection is more often linked to food containing the bacteria. The person eats the contaminated food and gets sick.
Here are some foods that can cause E. coli poisoning:
Heat can kill E. coli, so experts recommend that people cook beef (especially ground beef) until it is cooked through and no longer pink. Choosing pasteurized juice is another way to avoid possible infection.
Lastly, some experts recommend washing and scrubbing vegetables before eating them. But others say E. coli is hard to remove once it has contaminated produce, such as spinach, lettuce, or onions. The solution, they say, is to take more steps so that E. coli doesn't come in contact with crops.
If someone has symptoms of E. coli poisoning, the doctor will run some blood tests and take a sample of the person's stool (poop). The blood and stool can be checked to see if a harmful strain of E. coli is present. Even though diarrhea is one of the main symptoms, the person shouldn't take anti-diarrhea medicines because they can slow down recovery time.
Some people recover at home, while others need to be in the hospital. In some cases, E. coli poisoning can cause life-threatening kidney problems.
Adults are the main people in charge of preventing E. coli infection by serving well-cooked meat, cleaning countertops when preparing meats, and being aware of any recalls affecting contaminated vegetables or other products.
But kids can help, too. Here are three ways:
Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD Date reviewed: January 2013


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2013 EMTSEF Special Awards
Apr 02, 2013
2013 EMTSEF Special Awards
American Meteorological Society
AMS will offer 4 certificates to individual or team projects.
For teams, each team member will receive a certificate.
2013 Senior Fair Winners
Apr 01, 2013
Senior Division
1st Place - Grand Physical Scienes
And "2013 Best of Show"
Michael Trinh, Plano East Senior High School (Plano, TX)
Jessica Hong, Clark High School (Allen, TX)
2013 Junior Fair Winners
Apr 01, 2013
2013 Grand Award Winners
Junior Division
1st Place - Grand Life Sciences
and "2013 Best of Show"
Nicky Wojtania, Rice Middle (Plano, TX)
Rounding Down to Zero ? how much...


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Posted: Apr 5, 2013 9:00 AM
Updated: Apr 5, 2013 10:52 AM
CORPUS CHRISTI - Seven Corpus Christi residents facing federal charges for copying and selling CDs and DVDs pleaded guilty.
William Joseph Henneberger, 32, Ruth Gloria Henneberger, 36, Daniel Justino Diaz, 34, Vanessa Pecina, 30, Leticia Perez Aguilar, 39, Joe Silvas, 43, and Joe Cruz Hernandez, 31, all face up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000 when sentenced in July.
Six of the defendants were selling the goods at flea markets in Corpus Christi. Joe Silvas is the owner of the now-closed Bomb Records.
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04/27/2013 Becky Stoyle Rewrites The Record Books On Senior DayBecky Stoyle breaks the school record in the triple jump and sets the UMass Track & Field Complex facility record. 04/20/2013 Throwers Launch Minutewomen Through Holy Cross InvitationalThe Minutewomen throwers combined for 64 of the team's 168.5 points in Saturdays meet. 04/14/2013 Minutewomen Continue Outdoor Success In First Home MeetBecky Stoyle and Katharine Finnegan each move up in the UMass record book in the Minuteman Invitational 04/07/2013 Women's Track Fires Off The Blocks At AICThe Minutewomen were the front-runners of the AIC Invitational, scoring 213 points in their outdoor season opener. 03/09/2013 139 UMass Student-Athletes Named To Atlantic 10 Fall Commissioner's Honor RollA league-record 1,637 student-athletes recognized for achieving 3.5 GPA's or higher. As a freshman in 2012: Outdoor: Competed in the triple jump, claiming a mark of 36-1 as well as the long jump at the New England Championships (5/11) ... Leaped a distance of 36-2 in the triple jump at the A-10 Championships (5/5) ... Placed eighth at the Pre-Conference Meet in the long jump as well as seventh in the triple jump (4/28) ... Jumped the best distance in the triple jump at the Holy Cross Invitational (4/21) ... Finished fifth in the triple jump at the AIC Invitational (4/7). Indoor: Placed sixth in the high jump at the Sorlein Invitational and fifth in the triple jump (1/14). Before UMass: A 2011 graduate of Western Wayne High School ... Was a four year letter winner under coach Justin Collins ... Holds a school record in the triple jump, set as a freshman ... As a sophomore and junior, won silver medals in the long and triple jump at the District Championships ... Was a District gold medal winner in the triple jump and silver medal winner in the long jump as a senior ... Was a four year All-Star as a varsity soccer athlete ... Also a three year member of the National Honor Society. Personal: Courtney Christine Kromko ... Born on July 18, 1993 in Scranton, Pa. ... Daughter of Robert and Christine ... Sister to Scott ... Majoring in Psychology. |
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You're watching...
Obama to meet with CEOs about jobs
Are business leaders in mood to talk?
Mar 6, 2012
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Are business leaders in mood to talk?
Mar 6, 2012
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-- it's -- about jobs voters keep saying get in exit polls the president hearing it loud and clear.
He's spending Super Tuesday night with some business leaders lots of factors not this business leader TJ Rogers is CEO of Cypress Semiconductor -- -- a feeling you do that a viewer there.
It might not be such a genteel discussion but what would you tell and if you were there.
If you want more jobs in the US simply make the US more hospitable place to employ people.
In companies will follow suit by doing what's best for their shareholders in the hiring employees here it's it's very simple really.
So when you -- more hospitable what does he have to do.
Well we have the third highest corporate tax rate.
In the world and you can go virtually any place in the world and put up a plant and -- Get a lower tax rate -- at the very same time American companies suffer high tech straight.
We keep listening to the rhetoric about how were under tax -- not paying their fair share and blah blah blah and it's it is.
-- you know it's just counterproductive.
Meanwhile I have to run the company and every six months to year I have to make a decision to put a plant here shut down something there.
And I always make that decision as I'm bound to do you in the best interest of our shareholders.
Now the president will argue that when guys like you.
Hire a broader open plants abroad at the expense of American jobs here you're not doing anyone any good would Woody's.
Well you know you can make a lot of obviously it arguments that -- right.
We have about 3500 employees and about half of -- in the US that I can tell you for a fact.
That if we did not have our offshore employees who yes -- you're tired because there.
I'm more economical we did not ever -- employees.
Are our.
17100 Americans wouldn't have a job companies are our international now and then a mixture of people.
And you can't just bring stuff back and forth because you're competing against other companies and if you're not competitive relative to them.
Including the Korean -- in the Japanese -- in the Chinese ones.
He'll go out of business and there won't be any jobs.
You know we just got news today speaking of which seated -- China might be slowing down now.
We would dream of of them of the GDP like what what what they're talking about now but nevertheless it is coming off its -- I think.
Earlier talk of a 9% growth more like high six is 7% growth still enviable but not what it -- what do you think happens if China.
Really slows down markedly them.
Well first of all I think -- high growth rate because they're the greatest customer in the world that's us and we buy their stuff and then the good it's a good deal for us because the stuff they make for us.
It's very economically price and all Americans are better off -- had it.
They don't want us to slow down for sure how we viewing them as the enemy that's wrong they make stuff for us.
What happens if they slow down.
The -- right he raises all boats in the fact is when the United States sneezes the whole world gets a cold.
China is -- the second largest aggregate economy in the world.
And -- they started having problems it's gonna hurt us so.
We we want all the economies and all the countries in the world to do well including Greece.
All right TJ it's always a pleasure thank you very much -- EO of Cypress Semiconductor in San Jose TJ Rogers.
And if you just call -- as it -- what.
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Summary (Magill's Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald's first novel, made him an enormously successful popular author when he was only twenty-three years old. The combination of romanticism and realism, mingled with a fresh and—for the time—sometimes startling depiction of college life, caught the attention of the reading public and made the novel representative of an entire generation.
This Side of Paradise is loose and episodic, a collection of vivid scenes which do not fuse into a well-structured novel. It is divided into two sections: "The Romantic Egotist" (the title of the novel's first draft) and "The Education of a Personage."
The first takes Amory Blame from his childhood through his years at Princeton University and concerns his intellectual and moral development.
Convinced that he has a great, if obscure, destiny, Amory is greatly influenced by a Catholic priest, Father Darcy, who awakens him to the reality and power of evil. Darcy is based upon Father Sigourney Fay, who exerted a comparable influence on Fitzgerald. In the novel, this moral and spiritual education is dramatized by incidents that appear supernatural, as when Amory is pursued by a diabolic figure through the streets of New York. Perhaps a remnant of Father Fay's moralism, the sense of sin and the power of sex are mixed in Amory's mind in an inextricable, if often confusing fashion.
The second section is restricted to one year,...
(The entire section is 741 words.)
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Summary (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
The son of Stephen Blaine and Beatrice O'Hara Blaine, Amory grows up with money. He spends his early years traveling around the United States and Mexico in his father's private railroad car. At fifteen, he leaves his Midwestern home to attend St. Regis, a preparatory school in New Jersey, where he concentrates on football and popularity. Shortly after enrolling, he meets Monsignor Darcy, with whom he has a number of intellectual conversations and with whom he corresponds on important issues. Darcy serves as both confidant and mentor to the maturing youth, who is thirty years his junior.
From St. Regis, Amory goes on to Princeton; his first two years there, like those at St. Regis, are devoted to making friends rather than to studying. Amory is successful in his effort, which culminates in his election to the prestigious Cottage Club. He does, however, begin to write for the Daily Princetonian. In his sophomore year, he easily wins a competition in the newspaper, and he is the most likely candidate for the editorship until his poor grades make him ineligible.
Among the friends he makes at Princeton is Thomas Parke D'Invilliers, whom Amory admires for his poetry in the Nassau Lit. D'Invilliers introduces Amory to many modern writers, among them William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Under D'Invilliers's influence, Amory begins writing poetry. Thus, at Princeton he begins his love affair...
(The entire section is 498 words.)
Summary (Masterplots, Fourth Edition)
Amory Blaine is the only child of an alcoholic mother and an absent father. As his mother's companion, he spends his early childhood traveling and living in hotels. When Beatrice's alcoholism results in a breakdown, Amory goes to live with an aunt and uncle in Minneapolis, where he resides for nearly two years. These years are encapsulated in the description of a party and first kiss shared with Myra St. Claire, and the pattern of Amory's subsequent life is established as one of anticipation and disappointment. His fledgling character also emerges, as Amory assumes an aristocratic posture.
Amory is reunited with Beatrice at the family estate in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, before traveling east to attend prep school at St. Regis's. After taking his entrance examinations, Amory visits his mother's friend Monsignor Darcy in New York City. Darcy becomes a mentor and confidant of Amory. At St. Regis's, where he spends two years from ages fifteen to seventeen, Amory begins badly but eventually distinguishes himself as a star quarterback, actor, and editor of the school paper, though when later he recalls his prep school years he remembers his failures more than his successes.
In 1913 at age seventeen, Amory enters Princeton University. In his freshman year, he lives with Kerry Holiday and Tom D'Invilliers and he begins a friendship with Alec Connage. Amory begins to write poetry and vows to make more of his abilities in his sophomore year....
(The entire section is 756 words.)
Book 1: The Romantic Egotist
The novel opens with a description of Amory Blaine's mother Beatrice and her exciting life of travel with her son Amory until his appendix bursts on a ship to Europe, and he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While in private school there, Armory kisses Myra St. Claire on the cheek and takes on various elitist values before Beatrice gives in to his request to go to a boarding school. After enrolling at the school, where he is unpopular because of his arrogance, Amory meets his friend and mentor Monsignor Darcy. Amory is more popular during his second year because he succeeds at football and as a writer for the school paper, and he decides to enroll at Princeton University.
At Princeton, Amory once again gradually becomes a social success by acting in plays and writing for the college newspaper, and he meets some of his most important friends, such as Kerry and Burne Holiday, and Tom D'Invilliers. He travels back to Minneapolis to meet his first love, Isabelle Borgé, at a "petting party" for upper class daughters, and they exchange long letters while Amory is at Princeton with his elitist group of friends. Then, coming back from a night out in New York, Amory is shocked and dismayed to see his friend Dick Humbird die in a car accident.
When he next sees Isabelle at the prom, they quarrel and Amory leaves her, and this is followed by Amory's discovery that he...
(The entire section is 825 words.)
Chapter Summaries
Book 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Amory Blaine is the son of the "ineffectual" Stephen Blaine and the beautiful and intriguing Beatrice Blaine. Beatrice was born in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to a well-to-do family. She went to school in Rome, where she learned to love the culture of Europe. When she returned to America, she married Stephen and bore her only son, Amory. From the beginning, Amory and Beatrice were good companions. Traveling around the world, mother and son became inseparable. Beatrice introduced Amory to a former lover and now good friend, Monsignor Darcy. After his mother had a nervous breakdown, Amory was left with his aunt and uncle in Minneapolis for two years.
Amory's experiences in Minneapolis are mixed. Though superior to the other boys in his class, Amory is seen as artificial and self-absorbed. He is disliked for the most part. His first kiss is with Myra St. Claire on the way to a bobbing party. He had been trying to impress her and arrived fashionably late, but it was too late to go with the rest of the children to the party. Myra had stayed behind to wait a bit. They went to the party together then, but Amory pulled Myra to one side and surreptitiously kissed her. Immediately he is disgusted with the whole incident. He wanted to go away and never see Myra again. She asks him to kiss her again, but he tells her that he does not want to. She becomes angry and threatens to tell her mother that he kissed her. When Myra's mother appears, however, she does not say anything.
In Minneapolis, Amory becomes quite an outdoorsman, hunting with his dog. His schooling ruins his French, and his reading habits change for the worse, he feels. He tries to be a lady's man and collects locks of hair from several different girls. He dreams of becoming something great—but never of being great.
When Beatrice returns after two years, she takes over the remaking of her son back into the gentleman she wants him to be. She tells Amory of her breakdown. Amory is struck with shame at her appearance of weakness. Amory tells Beatrice he wants to be sent away to a prep school, St. Regis, in Connecticut. After Amory takes his admissions exam, he goes to visit Monsignor Darcy. Their relationship becomes that of a father and son.
At St. Regis, Amory is considered arrogant and conceited. He is also unhappy. He comes up with a classification of boys: the Slicker is clean and intelligent, popular and accommodating; the Big Man is a...
(The entire section is 462 words.)
Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary
At Princeton, Amory meets his roommates, Burne and Kerry Holiday. The three live off campus because there is not much for freshmen to do on the campus. While Amory enjoys himself in college, he realizes the social distinctions are created by the strong to protect the weak who cater to the strong as well as to keep out the "almost strong." Intent on becoming a big man on campus, Amory joins the football team but eventually must drop out after a rather severe injury. Instead he joins the board of the Daily Princetonian newspaper, thinking this will give him some popularity. It does not, but he vows that he will make his mark during his sophomore year.
Amory befriends Tom d'Invilliers, an intellectual who shares Amory's love of books. They enjoy intellectual, literary conversations. He envies some of the other boys, especially Dick Humbird, whom he sees as the epitome of sophistication.
During the summer following Amory's freshman year, the First World War breaks out. Amory pays little attention to it. He sees it only as an "amusing melodrama," nothing more. During his sophomore year, Amory joins the Triangle Club, the musical theatre group at Princeton. On tour over Christmas vacation, Amory meets Isabelle Borge in Minneapolis. He remembered her as a little girl from his childhood. Isabelle has come to be what was known as a "Popular Daughter," someone who smoked and drank and kissed. Amory is entranced, and the two go off to a quiet room to talk. Though Amory knows it is not likely that they will meet again, he decides he wants to kiss her. On his attempt, however, they hear the others coming into the room. They separate, but their relationship is far from over.
According to his plan, Amory becomes a big man on campus during his sophomore year, mainly due to his position on the newspaper. He joins the Cottage Club, one of the more prestigious college organizations. He and a group of other boys take a weekend trip to the coast to return a car. Amory thinks this kind of life is glorious, even though they are drunk most of the time.
Since Christmas and all through spring, Amory has a heated and passionate correspondence with Isabelle. He convinces her to come to Princeton for prom. With Tom, Amory considers leaving college to get married, though only Tom considers it seriously. Amory identifies himself as a "cynical idealist." When a group of the boys go to New York for a...
(The entire section is 493 words.)
Book 1, Chapter 3 Summary
While petting with Isabelle, Amory hurts her neck with his shirt stud. They begin to argue, and Amory realizes that he really has no affection for her at all. Isabelle claims that Amory is too conceited. He breaks off his relationship with her. He returns to Princeton the next morning.
Having failed a math class the previous year, Amory arrives at Princeton early in September to take a tutoring class and a make-up exam. He knows that, should he fail the exam, he will forfeit his position on the Princetonian board as well as jeopardize much of his chance for success. However, he does not study and therefore fails. Rather than blame his own laziness, Amory feels that it was his destiny to fail. This failure has brought him back to the "fundamental" Amory that he once was.
At Thanksgiving, Amory's father dies. Amory attends the funeral without emotion. He is more interested in hearing the conditions of the will and the state of his father's finances. It seems that the late Mr. Blaine made several bad investments, and the family finances have been severely depleted. Beatrice has her own income, but much of this went to pay for medical expenses during her nervous breakdown. Beatrice speaks of investing heavily in railroad and street car stocks because she believes that people will not long stay in one place.
Before returning to Princeton, Amory spends part of the Christmas vacation with Monsignor Darcy in New York. Monsignor explains to Amory that he is more of a personage than a personality. A personality is active, always overriding whatever comes next. A personage collects experiences like medals. Amory has considered leaving college and joining the Lafayette Esquadrilles, an aviation company fighting in France, but Monsignor tells him that he has not given up enough on life to take that step. Amory has been given a clean start, and it is up to him to make the most of it. Monsignor Darcy continues to write advice to Amory after he returns to Princeton.
Amory and Fred Sloan meet two girls during a night on the town. Amory goes back with them to the girls' apartment, where he hallucinates that a man, whom he believes is the devil, is watching him. He leaves the apartment but feels that the devil is still chasing him, or perhaps he is chasing the devil. When he returns to Princeton, Tom tells him that the previous night he had a dream that Amory is in trouble. Later, Tom looks at the...
(The entire section is 458 words.)
Book 1, Chapter 4 Summary
During Amory's last year at Princeton, Burne Holiday leads a campaign to rid the college of all clubs because they are too reminiscent of the class system. His reading of Tolstoy and Whitman has led him to embrace a more socialistic point of view. Although Amory admires Burne, he cannot bring himself to support this viewpoint. Like his feelings for Humbird, Amory's admiration of Burne is centered on his earnestness. Sitting up and talking with Burne about the clubs, he learns to agree with him, but he does not feel as strongly about it as he did as a younger student. Burne loses prestige among the student body, but this does not bother him. Burne withdraws more and more from the college social life. While Amory disapproves of this self-imposed hermitage, he is equally opposed to the disdain that the other students feel for Burne.
While attending a play in New York, Amory is struck with a vague remembrance. He suddenly realizes he is thinking of Isabelle. On his program, he writes a poem about the experience. As the year winds down, Amory's friend Alec warns him that he is getting a reputation as being eccentric. Amory does not care, and eventually Alec accepts him the way he has now chosen to be.
Amory visits Monsignor several times during the late winter and early spring, and he takes Burne with him. As he had thought, the two hit it off. Monsignor writes Amory about a young widow, Clara Page, who is near his age and living in poverty in Philadelphia. He urges Amory to visit her. Amory does so and is surprised she is not the impoverished widow he had imaged but is really a beautiful young woman living in an old family home with her two small children and a maid. There are many men who visit Clara, each one hoping to win her hand. Amory soon becomes one of them. He has fallen in love with her and contemplates marriage. Clara, however, informs him that she has never been in love and is not now. She also tells him that she would never marry him because he lacks self-confidence and he masks it with bravado. He always brags how much of a genius he is, but Clara sees it as a cover for his insecurity. He lives his life by his imagination. Amory realizes that Clara is the first woman whom he could see as preferring another man over himself.
America finally becomes involved in the Great War. Amory decides he wants to be either in the infantry or in aviation. Burne, however, is resisting the draft. He is taking off...
(The entire section is 476 words.)
Interlude Summary
In January 1919, Monsignor Darcy writes a letter to Amory, who is now a second lieutenant in the 171st Infantry on Long Island. Monsignor asks Amory only to let him know that he is alive. He also needs to write him to rail against the stupidity of people in wartime. He tells Amory that this war is the end of the world as he knew it. Amory and his generation are growing up much harder than the older generations did. Monsignor confesses to Amory that he has long imagined that Amory is his son. There is so much resemblance between the two of them that Monsignor imagines they are distantly related. Like Amory's shipping out to Europe, Monsignor is off to Rome. He has written a "keen" for Amory, a lament for the youth that has passed.
On deck of his transport ship, Amory writes a reflection of all the past that is dying. Later, at Brest, he writes to Tom D'Invilliers to arrange a meeting at the end of March 1919 in Manhattan. He plans on getting an apartment with Tom and Alec in New York. He does not know what his plans are, but he is thinking about politics. He muses that in England it is the upper-class men of Oxford and Cambridge who go into politics; in America is the middle classes from the streets. Amory confesses that he sometimes wishes he had been an Englishman. He refers to Beatrice, his mother, as having died. Before her death, she had become more in touch with her religious faith and left half of her money to the Church. The remainder of her fortune is in street railways, which are not faring well.
Amory mentions that Kerry and Jesse were killed in the war, which came as a shock to him. He does not know what has happened to Burne, but he imagines that he might be in some prison under an assumed name. His religious faith has taken a hit, and he has become something of an agnostic. He does not think many men came out of the Great War with their faith in God completely intact.
Amory tells Tom that they and Alec will live the high life in New York. He hopes that something significant happens because he is as restless as the devil and fears getting fat or falling in love or growing domestic in peacetime. He says that he is planning on checking out the family homestead in Lake Geneva to get more details about his inheritance.
(The entire section is 423 words.)
Book 2, Chapter 1 Summary
It is the February after the end of the war. In a townhouse in New York, the sister of Alec Connage (Amory's friend and now roommate) is preparing for her debut. Written in the style of a play, the action describes the spoiled Rosalind as she makes herself the center of everyone's lives. Amory is arriving at the home this night, and Mrs. Connage warns Alec that there will be precious little time to make him welcome because all the attention must be on Rosalind. Alec describes Amory as temperamental, which peaks Rosalind's interest. Rosalind's sixteen-year-old sister, Cecelia, is cynical about the whole "coming out" business but secretly admires all the drama surrounding it.
Amory unwittingly stumbles into Rosalind's dressing room. She invites him in and begins to display her personality. She tells him that she has kissed many men and plans on kissing many more. Amory falls instantly in love and they kiss. Amory explains to Rosalind that he is not sentimental but romantic. Sentimental people think things will last; a romantic person hopes that they don't. Amory leaves after kissing her again, and Mrs. Connage enters. She warns Rosalind that this is her chance to acquire a rich husband. She has several prospects lined up and tells Rosalind to keep on the dance floor and not run off to a corner with some young, inappropriate college boy. Rosalind speaks of Amory, but Mrs. Connage is not optimistic about his prospects. Amory and Rosalind dance and profess their love for one another.
Mrs. Connage does not encourage Amory and Rosalind's love affair. Amory finds a job working in an advertising agency, which does not pay much. He spends as much time with Rosalind as possible. Rosalind tells Amory she will marry him whenever he wants. They talk of a June or July wedding, but Amory warns Rosalind that they will not have much money at first. Rosalind says they can survive.
Five weeks later, Rosalind is speaking with her mother before Amory arrives. Mrs. Connage tells Rosalind that Dawson Ryder is a more appropriate pick as a husband than is Amory. She points out that Amory will not make enough money even to pay for Rosalind's expensive taste in clothing. When Amory arrives, he can tell that something is bothering Rosalind. He asks if it has anything to do with Dawson Ryder, whom he has heard has been with Rosalind every afternoon for a week. Rosalind confesses that she is thinking about marrying Dawson....
(The entire section is 473 words.)
Book 2, Chapter 2 Summary
For three weeks following his breakup with Rosalind, Amory descends into a drunken debauchery. He drifts from bar to bar and avoids sobriety. He meets several of his old classmates but refuses to talk of the end of his engagement. He stays in rooms at the different bars and does not go back to the apartment. He considers suicide but not seriously enough to stop drinking and do it. A woman begs him to take her home, but the man she came with interferes; the conversation almost ends in a fight.
After three weeks, Amory goes to the advertising agency at which he works. He confronts his employer and quits. He hated the work and did not feel that he was paid enough or would he ever make any headway in business there. Four days later he returns to the apartment, where Tom is writing book reviews for his weekly magazine. Amory is a physical wreck, suffering cuts and bruises from his many encounters with people during his drunken spree. Tom breaks the news to him that Alec has left and returned home at the request of his family. Amory is pained at the remembrance of the Connages. The rent is going up at the apartment, so Tom says they will have to find someone else to replace Alec.
Amory packs up remembrances of Rosalind in a cardboard box and hides it in the bottom of his trunk. He then goes out once again to a bar to get drunk. Soon Prohibition begins, cutting off his supply of alcohol, so he must face sobriety. He comes to face the end of his love affair, what he feels is the one true love he will ever have. He is confronted by the fact that at the end, there was nothing but dramatic tragedy followed by three weeks of drunkenness. He decides life, but not love, must go on.
Amory writes a short story about his father's funeral. He sells it to a magazine for sixty dollars and receives a request for more of his writing along the same cynical line. He is flattered, but he writes no more. Instead, he reads as much modern literature as he can. He comes to see the works of the previous generation as totally worthless in this new world after the war. He remembers Mrs. Lawrence, a friend of Monsignor Darcy's. He calls her up to learn that Monsignor has gone to Boston. Mrs. Lawrence reminds Amory of his mother, and he enjoys her conversation. Amory learns that his family home in Lake Geneva is difficult to rent because of its size. He decides not to sell it yet, however. In the meantime, both he and Tom become cynical...
(The entire section is 535 words.)
Book 2, Chapter 3 Summary
Amory afterward judges his affair with Eleanor as the last time that evil crept close to him under the mask of beauty. Her wildness fed his imagination along the paths of adventure, and this is the last time he viewed romance as an adventure.
Amory meets Eleanor one day when he is bored at his uncle's home in Maryland and goes walking in the country, reciting poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. He finds himself lost because of poor directions he was given. A storm begins and he heads for shelter. He hears a voice singing a poem by the French poet Verlaine and calls out. On being asked his identity, Amory says he is Don Juan. The voice is thrilled and invites him up on top of the haystack where she is taking shelter. Clambering to the top, Amory cannot tell what the girl looks like, just that her thumbs bend back like his. Lightning flashes and he sees that she is slim with beautiful green eyes. He is not sure if she is wonderful or just mad. As though she can read his mind, she tells him that she is not mad. In retrospect, Amory reflects that he and Eleanor could always match thoughts like that.
The girl introduces herself as Eleanor Savage. She lives with her grandfather nearby and has seen Amory before. Amory asks where she saw him. She chides him for trying to direct the conversation back to himself then says she overheard him reciting poetry one day and looked to see only the back of his head. She announces that she no longer believes in God. Amory thinks this is nothing unusual in this day and age and so is not shocked. But he disagrees with her; he feels he must have a soul. Eleanor calls him sentimental, but he repeats to her his epigram:
The sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.
Eleanor and Amory walk home and begin their relationship. They discuss and argue over poetry and ride often in the countryside. Eleanor tells him she was born in France but came to Maryland when her mother died. Amory decides that their two minds think along parallel lines, just as their pasts seem to. On the night before Amory leaves for New York, Eleanor takes him horseback riding in the country. Eleanor again states that she is an atheist, but Amory says she is the kind of person who will turn to God on her deathbed. She denies this, and to prove it runs her horse straight toward the cliff. At the last minute she...
(The entire section is 493 words.)
Book 2, Chapter 4 Summary
Upon his return to New York, Amory goes to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to stroll along the boardwalk. He is hailed from someone in a racing car—it is Alec Connage. Alec is with another man and two young women. Amory is invited to go along to find a place to drink (despite Prohibition). He climbs in beside Jill, who calls him Doug Fairbanks (the swashbuckling movie actor). Alec and Amory start to reminisce about their classmates who were killed, but Alec decides he does not want to talk about them.
Alec asks Amory to do him a favor. He and the others have booked hotel rooms, but the other man has to leave. Alec asks if Amory would take his room. Amory agrees as long as he can have it immediately. Amory goes to the hotel room, where he becomes absorbed once again in self-pity over his loss of Rosalind. He goes to bed but is awakened by Alec. Alec and Jill have been caught sleeping in the same room; this is against the Mann Act, which prohibits the crossing of state lines for immoral persons (in this case, sex between unmarried persons). Alec does not know what to do, and Jill is crying hysterically in the bathroom. The house detectives are pounding on the door, demanding to be let in.
Amory contemplates sacrificing himself and saying that it was he who was with Jill. He remembers an incident in college when a student was caught cheating and his roommate took the blame, eventually committing suicide because this sacrifice ruined his future. Knowing that Alec has a family to think of and he does not, Amory decides to sacrifice himself anyway. He opens door and lets the detectives in. They question him and Jill. The detectives will not prosecute them, but a notice will be put in the paper with their names, addresses, and the fact that they were "in trouble" in Atlantic City. Amory agrees, and he and Jill are escorted off the premises.
Two days later, Amory sees the notice in the newspaper. Above it is the announcement of Rosalind and Dawson's engagement. Amory realizes that Rosalind is as good as dead to him. The next day he receives a letter from his attorney telling him that the stocks in the streetcar companies is worthless and Amory will be receiving no more money from that investment. Later he also receives a telegram informing him that Monsignor Darcy passed away five days previously.
(The entire section is 416 words.)
Book 2, Chapter 5 Summary
Amory stands under the glass portcullis of a theater, too poor to go inside to get out of the rain. He hears the sounds of the people exiting the matinee. The rain makes him think of the people who, like himself, have no money to give themselves an adequate life. He realizes that he detests poor people. Although poverty might have once had some romantic appeal, now it is just rotten. He believes it is better to be rich and corrupt than poor and innocent.
Amory begins an internal conversation analyzing his situation. He has only twenty-four dollars plus the property at Lake Geneva, which he plans to keep. He is confident that he will be able to live somehow, because people always do in books, and he always manages to do things that are done in books. He does not want a lot of money but he is afraid of being poor. He thinks that a good man going bad gives off some type of energy off which other people feed. He does not want to go back to his innocence, but he wants the pleasure of losing it again. Amory drifts along until he finds himself at a private club. He asks to be let in but is turned away. He walks along, thinking of letting himself go completely, of giving up on a life of comfort. He thinks of the friends he has lost, of Burne Holiday and Monsignor Darcy. He regrets no longer having someone to depend on.
Amory goes to Monsignor Darcy's funeral and is struck by the sincere grief of his fellow mourners. He realizes that this is because, at some level, Monsignor Darcy gave all these people a sense of security. Now that he was gone, that security has dissolved as well. Amory realizes that his selfishness has not helped him at all. What he really wants is to provide people with some sense of security: he wants to be needed.
Amory decides to walk to Princeton because he has no money for a train. A large man and his secretary give him a ride in a limousine. Amory ignores the secretary and begins to expound his beliefs on socialism. He tells the large man that life would be more secure with government ownership of business, with each person starting out in life with an equal chance. Both the large man and his secretary point out to Amory that all this has been tried before and proved a failure. Amory confesses that this is the first time he has thought along socialist lines, and he has yet to think it out completely. He learns that the large man is the father of Jesse Ferrenby, who was killed in the war. Amory...
(The entire section is 522 words.)
Source: eNotes Publishing, ©2013 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
Source: Novels for Students, ©2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
Source: Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition, ©2000 Salem Press, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
Source: Masterplots, Fourth Edition, ©2010 Salem Press, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
Source: Magill's Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition, ©2006 Salem Press, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.


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Francis Ford Coppola Movies
One of the most acclaimed directors of the 1970s,
Francis Ford Coppola
spearheaded a renaissance in American filmmaking, heralding a golden age which he defined through masterpieces ranging from
The Conversation
Apocalypse Now
to his crowning achievement,
The Godfather
. One of his era's most impassioned talents, Coppola was also one of its most erratic; in both his career and his personal life, he experienced euphoric triumph and shattering tragedy, pushing the limits of the cinematic form with a daring and fervor which became the hallmarks of not only his greatest successes but also his most notorious failures.
The son of composer
Carmine Coppola
, he was born April 7, 1939, in Detroit, MI. Raised in New York, he began making amateur films while still a child and later enrolled in the famed U.C.L.A. Film School in 1960. Upon entering the film industry by helming a number of softcore porn flicks, Coppola was approached by B-movie mogul
Roger Corman
to direct his first feature,
Dementia 13
, in 1963. While his Samuel Goldwyn Award-winning student screenplay Pilma, Pilma went unproduced, Coppola's 1966 U.C.L.A. thesis project, a freewheeling comedy titled
You're a Big Boy Now
, was distributed theatrically by Warner Bros., and that same year he collaborated on the screenplays of the features
Is Paris Burning?
This Property Is Condemned
. In 1968 he completed his first studio film, the box-office bomb
Finian's Rainbow
, followed the next year by
The Rain People
When he was just 31, Coppola won his first Academy Award for his work on the screenplay of 1970's
. Despite his recent success, however, he was on the edge of financial ruin after sinking his money into an ill-fated venture called Scopitone, a device which enabled short movies to be run on a jukebox. On the verge of bankruptcy, he was approached by Paramount to adapt the
Mario Puzo
best-seller The Godfather. The film was released in 1972 to unprecedented critical and commercial success, emerging as one of the highest-grossing films in Hollywood history and netting a total of four Oscars, including awards for Best Actor (
Marlon Brando
) and Best Picture. A majestic Mafia epic starring Brando as well as
Al Pacino
James Caan
, and
Robert Duvall
The Godfather
was declared an instant classic, and its stature only grew in the years following its initial appearance.
Coppola's next move was to write the screenplay for the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby. He then turned to the masterful
The Conversation
, a taut political thriller which mirrored the events of Watergate and earned the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. At the peak of his powers, Coppola closed out 1974 by premiering The Godfather, Pt. 2, a powerful and ambitious follow-up built around a complex parallel narrative structure spanning a period of 30 years. The second film's success was perhaps even more staggering than the first: The Godfather, Pt. 2 garnered six more Oscars, including a win for Coppola in the Best Director category;
Robert DeNiro
won his first Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actor field; and the movie itself became the first and only sequel ever to win Best Picture honors.
Next, Coppola began adapting the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness, transferring its story to the heart of the Cambodian jungle at the height of the conflict in Vietnam. The result was
Apocalypse Now
, a grandiose work of flawed genius which nearly destroyed the lives and careers of all involved. Beginning with the heart attack of star
Martin Sheen
, the film suffered catastrophe after catastrophe, quickly going over budget and over schedule; as Coppola himself later noted, "little by little we went crazy." Begun in 1976,
Apocalypse Now
was not completed until three years and 30 million dollars later, where it premiered at Cannes as the winner of the Palm d'Or. It was subsequently released to wildly mixed reviews, despite garnering a pair of Oscars.
Whatever its artistic merits,
Apocalypse Now
marked the beginning of a long downward spiral, as Coppola's brand of filmmaking grew more and more out of control; its follow-up, 1982's
One From the Heart
, was an extravagant commercial and critical bust which left him some 30 million dollars in debt. He also agreed to finance film adaptations of the
S.E. Hinton
novels The Outsiders and Rumble Fish; neither picture found favor with audiences or reviewers, but together they launched a new generation of movie stars, offering early screen appearances by the likes of
Tom Cruise
Matt Dillon
Mickey Rourke
Nicolas Cage
(Coppola's nephew),
Patrick Swayze
Rob Lowe
, and
Emilio Estevez
Coppola next mounted
The Cotton Club
, an ambitious musical centered around the legendary Harlem jazz venue of the 1920s. After nearly 40 script rewrites, production finally began, but the director's passions again got the best of him and the project spun out of control, resulting in a 48-million-dollar box-office disaster. With his back against the wall, Coppola became a work-for-hire filmmaker for the first time in over a decade, agreeing to helm the frothy 1986 time-travel comedy
Peggy Sue Got Married
. The film was a popular success, and he soon accepted an offer to direct the Vietnam War-era drama
Gardens of Stone
, which failed to find an audience, a disappointment which barely registered in light of the 1986 death of his son, Gio, in a boating accident.
Ultimately, the poor showing of 1988's
Tucker: The Man and His Dream
-- a long-planned biography of another maverick, a real-life automotive visionary who had dared to take on the Big Three during the 1940s -- proved a fatal blow, and two years later Coppola's American Zoetrope studio was forced to declare bankruptcy. In desperate need of a hit, he agreed to direct The Godfather, Pt. 3, the long-awaited concluding chapter to the trilogy begun nearly 20 years prior. Despite garnering a Best Picture nomination, the 1990 film was widely considered a failure, barely recouping Paramount's 50-million-dollar investment. However, 1992's lavish adaptation
Bram Stoker's Dracula
was a hit, restoring much of Coppola's box-office lustre; in a similar vein, he agreed to co-produce
Kenneth Branagh
's 1994 effort
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
. His next directorial effort was The Rainmaker, based on the courtroom drama by novelist
John Grisham
. The 1998 film drew a number of positive reviews, further helping to restore the director to good standing. The following year, he concentrated his efforts on producing, serving in this capacity on a number of projects, including
Nick Stagliano
's The Florentine.
Coppola would remain in the role of producer for years to come, overseeing films like Pumpkin and Kinsey. Finally, in 2007, he emerged from directorial retirement for the drama Youth Without Youth. Critics were disappointed with the film, but Coppola was undeterred, going on to direct Tetro, a drama about the struggles of an immigrant family starring Oscar winner Javier Bardem, and Txist (2012), a horror picture co-starring Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin and Bruce Dern. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
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Just as many American studio-era directors found acclaim abroad that was denied them in their home country, by 1980 Akira Kurosawa's reputation outside Japan exceeded his esteem at home. As uncompromising as ever, he found considerable difficulty securing backing for his ambitious projects. Unsure he would be able to film it, the director, an aspiring artist before he entered filmmaking, converted Kagemusha into a series of paintings, and it was partly on the basis of these that he won the financial support of longtime admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Set in the 16th century, when powerful warlords competed for control of Japan, it offers an examination of the nature of political power and the slipperiness of identity. For some time, Shingen Takeda Tatsuya Nakadai has been able to stay removed from the heat of battle by using his brother Nobukado Tsutomu Yamazaki as a double. As the film opens, Nobukado offers another option, having discovered a condemned thief (also played by Tatsuya Nakadai) bearing an uncanny resemblance to the warlord. After he insists on witnessing the fall of an enemy in person, Shingen falls victim to a sniper's bullet, forcing his advisers to present the thief as the fallen warrior. At first awkward in his new position and plagued by dreams in which the spirit of his double confronts him, he slowly grows into the role even as his enemies begin to advance on his kingdom. The winner of the Palm D'Or at Cannes, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior has also been released as The Double. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi
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The Black Stallion
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This beautifully mounted adaptation of Walter Farley's story for children tells the tale of Alec (Kelly Reno), a young boy touring the world with his adventurous salesman father (Hoyt Axton). While travelling back to the United States by ship, Alec discovers a wild, beautiful Arabian stallion being brought along in the cargo hold. When disaster strikes at sea, the ship sinks, and Alec and the stallion are the only survivors. Alone together on a nearby island, the boy and the horse develop a relationship; wary of each other at first, they learn to trust each other, and they become close friends. When a rescue party finally finds Alec, he refuses to leave the island without the stallion, and the horse goes with Alec to the small town that is his home. Alec's mother (Teri Garr) is at a loss about what to do with this remarkable but difficult animal. Henry Dailey (Mickey Rooney), an elderly horse trainer who lives in the neighborhood, senses a special connection between the boy and his horse; he's soon convinced that with the right training, and the boy as his jockey, the horse could be a champion on the race course. First-time director Carroll Ballard captures the mysterious relationship between humans and animals, treating the stallion with the same intelligence and respect as the rest of his cast; he also draws fine, understated performances from Kelly Reno and Mickey Rooney, and Caleb Deschanel's photography makes this a feast for the eyes. The Black Stallion is that rare contemporary family film that will fascinate adults as much as their kids, if not more so. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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Mickey Rooney
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Apocalypse Now
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One of a cluster of late-1970s films about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now adapts the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to depict the war as a descent into primal madness. Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen), already on the edge, is assigned to find and deal with AWOL Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), rumored to have set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a local, lethal godhead. Along the way Willard encounters napalm and Wagner fan Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), draftees who prefer to surf and do drugs, a USO Playboy Bunny show turned into a riot by the raucous soldiers, and a jumpy photographer (Dennis Hopper) telling wild, reverent tales about Kurtz. By the time Willard sees the heads mounted on stakes near Kurtz's compound, he knows Kurtz has gone over the deep end, but it is uncertain whether Willard himself now agrees with Kurtz's insane dictum to "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all." Coppola himself was not certain either, and he tried several different endings between the film's early rough-cut screenings for the press, the Palme d'Or-winning "work-in-progress" shown at Cannes, and the final 35 mm U.S. release (also the ending on the video cassette). The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Despite the studio's fears and mixed reviews of the film's ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Duvall's psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound and for Vittorio Storaro's cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor; it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions and confusions of the Vietnam era. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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Martin Sheen
Marlon Brando
, (
The Godfather Saga
Originally screened as a mini-series on the NBC television network, this epic-length feature combines the entirety of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II with 15 minutes of outtakes from the two films, recutting the material into chronological order (clarifying the complex structure of The Godfather Part II, which jumped back and forth between events that occurred before and after the narrative of the first film). The Godfather 1902-1959: The Complete Epic tells the tale of the Corleone Family, from the arrival of Vito Corleone in the U.S. as a boy and his rise to criminal power as a young man (played by Robert DeNiro) to the decline of his empire decades later. While some of the original material was censored for television broadcast, when The Godfather 1902-1959: The Complete Epic was later released on home video, the altered footage was restored to its original content. However, this proved not to be the final and complete document of the Corleone saga, as Francis Ford Coppola added another chapter to the story nine years later with the release of The Godfather Part III. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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Al Pacino
Marlon Brando
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The Godfather Part II
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Francis Ford Coppola's legendary continuation and sequel to his landmark 1972 film, The Godfather, parallels the young Vito Corleone's rise with his son Michael's spiritual fall, deepening The Godfather's depiction of the dark side of the American dream. In the early 1900s, the child Vito flees his Sicilian village for America after the local Mafia kills his family. Vito (Robert De Niro) struggles to make a living, legally or illegally, for his wife and growing brood in Little Italy, killing the local Black Hand Fanucci (Gastone Moschin) after he demands his customary cut of the tyro's business. With Fanucci gone, Vito's communal stature grows, but it is his family (past and present) who matters most to him -- a familial legacy then upended by Michael's (Al Pacino) business expansion in the 1950s. Now based in Lake Tahoe, Michael conspires to make inroads in Las Vegas and Havana pleasure industries by any means necessary. As he realizes that allies like Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) are trying to kill him, the increasingly paranoid Michael also discovers that his ambition has crippled his marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) and turned his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), against him. Barely escaping a federal indictment, Michael turns his attention to dealing with his enemies, completing his own corruption. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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Al Pacino
Robert Duvall
, (
The Great Gatsby
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This third film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel was one of the most hyped movies of the summer of 1974. Robert Redford stars as self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby, who uses his vast (and implicitly ill-gotten) fortune to buy his way into Long Island society. Most of all, Gatsby wants to win back the love of socialite Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow), now married to "old money" Tom Buchanan (Bruce Dern). Calmly observing the passing parade is Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston), Gatsby's best friend, who narrates the film. Francis Ford Coppola's screenplay is meticulously faithful to the original novel, but Theoni V. Aldredge's costume design and Nelson Riddle's nostalgic musical score won the film its only Oscars. The huge supporting cast includes Howard Da Silva, who played Wilson in the 1949 Great Gatsby, and a very young Patsy Kensit as Daisy's daughter. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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Robert Redford
Mia Farrow
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The Conversation
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Made between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and in part an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni's art-movie classic Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation was a return to small-scale art films for Francis Ford Coppola. Sound surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired to track a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), taping their conversation as they walk through San Francisco's crowded Union Square. Knowing full well how technology can invade privacy, Harry obsessively keeps to himself, separating business from his personal life, even refusing to discuss what he does or where he lives with his girlfriend, Amy (Teri Garr). Harry's work starts to trouble him, however, as he comes to believe that the conversation he pieced together reveals a plot by the mysterious corporate "Director" who hired him to murder the couple. After he allows himself to be seduced by a call girl, who then steals the tapes, Harry is all the more convinced that a killing will occur, and he can no longer separate his job from his conscience. Coppola, cinematographer Bill Butler, and Oscar-nominated sound editor Walter Murch convey the narrative through Harry's aural and visual experience, beginning with the slow opening zoom of Union Square accompanied by the alternately muddled and clear sound of the couple's conversation caught by Harry's microphones. The Godfather Part II and The Conversation earned Coppola a rare pair of Oscar nominations for Best Picture, as well as two nominations for Best Screenplay (The Godfather Part II won both). Praised by critics, The Conversation was not a popular hit, but it has since come to be seen as one of the artistic high points of the decade, as well as of Coppola's career. Its atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, combined with its obsessive loner antihero, made it prototypical of the darker "American art movies" of the early '70s, as its audiotape storyline also made it seem eerily appropriate for the era of the Watergate scandal. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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Gene Hackman
John Cazale
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American Graffiti
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It's the last night of summer 1962, and the teenagers of Modesto, California, want to have some fun before adult responsibilities close in. Among them are Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), college-bound with mixed feelings about leaving home; nerdy Terry "The Toad" (Charles Martin Smith), who scores a dream date with blonde Debbie (Candy Clark); and John (Paul Le Mat ), a 22-year-old drag racer who wonders how much longer he can stay champion and how he got stuck with 13-year-old Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) in his deuce coupe. As D. J. Wolfman Jack spins 41 vintage tunes on the radio throughout the night, Steve ponders a future with girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams), Curt chases a mystery blonde, Terry tries to act cool, and Paul prepares for a race against Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford), but nothing can stop the next day from coming, and with it the vastly different future ushered in by the 1960s. Fresh off The Godfather (1972), producer Francis Ford Coppola had the clout to get his friend George Lucas's project made, but only for $750,000 on a 28-day shooting schedule. Despite technical obstacles, and having to shoot at night, cinematographer Haskell Wexler gave the film the neon-lit aura that Lucas wanted, evoking the authentic look of a suburban strip to go with the authentic sound of rock-n-roll. Universal, which wanted to call the film
Another Slow Night in Modesto
, thought it was unreleasable. But Lucas' period detail, co-writers Willard Huyck's and Gloria Katz's realistic dialogue, and the film's nostalgia for the pre-Vietnam years apparently appealed to a 1973 audience embroiled in cultural chaos: American Graffiti became the third most popular movie of 1973 (after The Exorcist and The Sting), establishing the reputations of Lucas (whose next film would be Star Wars) and his young cast, and furthering the onset of soundtrack-driven, youth-oriented movies. Although the film helped spark 1970s nostalgia for the 1950s, nothing else would capture the flavor of the era with the same humorous candor and latent sense of foreboding. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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Richard Dreyfuss
Ron Howard
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The Godfather
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Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that
should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible.
After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
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Marlon Brando
Al Pacino
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The People
Writer Zenna Henderson's science-fiction stories were the basis for this made-for-TV movie. A young teacher goes to a remote area to work with secluded and backwards inhabitants. She accidentally discovers, though, that the residents are actually aliens with psychic-powers who escaped their own now-destroyed planet and are hiding here on Earth, hoping to blend in. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi
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Based on his award-winning student short, George Lucas's debut feature cerebrally celebrates the possibility for individual freedom against all odds. In a 1984-esque white-washed future underground dystopia where sexuality is banned, all humans sport shaved heads and the same shapeless outfits as they go about their work in a mandated state of sedation, listening to exhortations to "Buy and Be Happy." Black-clad robot cops chant a mantra to their victims that "everything will be all right" and automated confessional booths emit soothing therapeutic bromides. But unbeknownst to THX 1138 (Robert Duvall), his roommate LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) has been reducing their meds, resulting in their mutual discovery of love and THX's subsequent imprisonment for drug evasion and sexual misconduct. Determined to find the pregnant LUH, THX breaks out of prison with the help of his cellmate SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasence) and an escaped TV hologram (Don Pedro Colley). With fugitive pursuits strictly budgeted, THX only has to evade the robocops until the funds run out, but surveillance is omnipresent and THX's vehicle keeps overheating. Making the only film produced through the first incarnation of Francis Ford Coppola's independent studio American Zoetrope, Lucas and his small crew, including co-writer and sound editor Walter Murch, shot THX 1138 in northern California with no interference from distributor Warner Bros. When Warners saw the austere result, however, they recut the film before its release. Neither the studio's nor Lucas's cut was a popular success, but THX 1138's coolly minimalist style and story-telling gained fans on the college screening circuit, just as Stanley Kubrick's poetic 2001: A Space Odyssey had attracted a large youth audience in 1968. When Lucas returned to sci-fi after American Graffiti, he traded restraint for nostalgic fun in the film that guaranteed his creative freedom in Hollywood: Star Wars. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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Robert Duvall
Donald Pleasence
, (
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In 1943 North Africa, George Patton (George C. Scott) assumes command of (and instills some much-needed discipline in) the American forces. Engaged in battle against Germany's Field Marshal Rommel (Karl Michael Vogler), Patton drives back "The Desert Fox" by using the German's own tactics. Promoted to Lieutenant General, Patton is sent to Sicily, where he engages in a personal war of egos with British Field Marshal Montgomery (Michael Bates). Performing brilliantly in Italy, Patton seriously jeopardizes his future with a single slap. While touring an Army hospital, the General comes across a GI (Tim Considine) suffering from nervous fatigue. Incensed by what he considers a slacker, Patton smacks the poor soldier and orders him to get well in a hurry. This incident results in his losing his command-and, by extension, missing out on D-Day. In his final campaign, Patton leads the US 3rd Army through Europe. Unabashedly flamboyant, Patton remains a valuable resource, but ultimately proves too much of a "loose cannon" in comparison to the more level-headed tactics of his old friend Omar Bradley (Karl Malden). Patton won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Scott, an award that he refused. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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George C. Scott
Karl Malden
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The Rain People
Despite an effort by the Warner Bros. publicity mills to turn The Rain People into an instant cult film upon its first release (the ad campaign stressed the intimacy and humanity of the story), this early Francis Ford Coppola effort would have to wait several years to find its audience. Shirley Knight stars as Natalie, a housewife who, unable to cope with being "trapped" by impending pregnancy, deserts her husband and takes to the road. Eager to start life over, Natalie attaches herself to hitchhiker Kilgannon (James Caan). She is fully aware that Kilgannon, a former football pro, has incurred so much brain damage that he's practically a child but insists upon sticking with him. Along the way, she has a variety of offbeat experiences with such eccentrics as a snake-farmer (Tom Aldredge) and a widowed traffic-cop (Robert Duvall). An unexpectedly violent turn of events, triggered by the traffic cop's troubled daughter (Marya Zimmet), leaves Natalie virtually back where she started. Director Coppola was still laboring under the influence of the French New Wave in The Rain People; there are so many flashbacks and flashforwards that soon even the actors don't know where they stand. Yes, it's an example of youthful cinematic excess, but there's a streak of genius in The Rain People that is impossible to miss. Coppola based his screenplay on his own short story "Echoes." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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James Caan
Shirley Knight
, (
Finian's Rainbow
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Nearly 20 years after it opened on Broadway, the E.Y. Harburg/Fred Saidy musical Finian's Rainbow was committed to film. Set in the mythical southern state of Missitucky, the story involves the whimsical Irishman Finian (Fred Astaire) and his daughter Sharon (Petula Clark) arriving in the community carrying a crock of gold, which they've stolen in the Auld Sod from Ogg the Leprechaun (Tommy Steele). Finian believes that if he buries the crock on American soil, it will grow into an even larger treasure--just as Fort Knox did (or so he thinks). Sharon falls in love with sharecropper Woody Mahoney (Don Francks), who like everyone else in the community is being threatened by the perfidy of Senator Rawkins (Keenan Wynn). While Finian haggles over three wishes with the tricky Ogg, Sharon runs afoul of the racially bigoted Rawkins. She wishes that Rawkins would turn black so that he could walk in someone else's shoes for a change--and this, thanks to Ogg, is exactly what happens. To rescue Sharon and Woody from being burned as witches, Ogg grants a last wish, which turns him into a human being; this is not an altogether bad thing, for Ogg has fallen in love with mysterious mountain gal Susan the Silent (Barbara Hancock). The racial tolerance subtext of Finian's Rainbow, considered radical in 1948, seemed rather antiquated in 1969, though it did allow for a hilarious scene in which a white associate of Judge Rawkins attempts to instruct young black botanist Al Freeman Jr. on the proper way to "act Negro". As Finian, Fred Astaire requested that the role be expanded to allow him to dance a little (as written, the character barely even sings). Most of the original score remains intact, including the hit song "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" Francis Ford Coppola seemed a curious choice to direct a musical, and indeed the production was a troubled one due to Coppola's inexperience in the genre. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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Fred Astaire
Petula Clark
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This Property Is Condemned
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Sydney Pollack's tawdry potboiler, adapted from a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, was rife with production problems, culminating in Williams' failed attempt to have his name removed from the credits. The story is set by a framing device as thirteen-year-old Willie Starr (Mary Badham) sits on an abandoned railroad track with her friend Tom (Jon Provost) and relates the tale of her deceased older sister Alva (Natalie Wood). Alva is a beautiful woman living in a small Mississippi town in the 1930s with her manipulative mother Hazel (Kate Reid), the owner of a boarding house. Hazel wants Alva to marry the well to do Mr. Johnson (John Harding), but Alva has fallen in love with a good-looking stranger from New Orleans, Owen Legate (Robert Redford), who is in Mississippi to lay off railroad workers. Hazel is opposed to their love affair and when Owen is beaten to a pulp by a gang of workers, he decides to leave town and take Alva with him. But Hazel fools Owen into thinking Alva is engaged to Mr. Johnson. In retaliation, Alva marries Hazel's loutish lover J.J. (Charles Bronson). The next day, she abandons J.J. to meet Owen in New Orleans. Her mother, incensed at Alva's betrayal, sets out to ruin her daughter's reputation by exposing her marriage to J.J. to the world. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
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Natalie Wood
Robert Redford
, (
You're a Big Boy Now
This cult favorite began as Francis Ford Coppola's UCLA thesis, ending up with a professional cast and nationwide release. Teen Peter Kastner undergoes his coming-of-age rites when, urged on by dad Rip Torn, he strikes out on own and moves to NYC. Every person Kastner meets is an eccentric's eccentric, from landlady Julie Harris to cop Dolph Sweet. Kastner's new friend Tony Bill, who works at the New York Public Library and accumulates pornography on side, introduces the boy to sex and drugs. Our hero truly matriculates to manhood after his heart is broken by disco dancer Elizabeth Hartman; he settles instead for Karen Black, still enough of an unknown quantity in 1966 to play against type as "the right girl". Adapted from a novel by David Benedictus, Big Boy is afflicted with usual youthful film-class fervor, crammed full of showoffish cinematic tricks that Coppola would eventually outgrow. But one can't deny that this seminal production is both heartfelt and energetic. To improve the film's saleability, distributors Seven Arts tacked on a music score by the Lovin' Spoonful, hardly necessary but very enjoyable appendange. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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Elizabeth Hartman
Geraldine Page
, (
Is Paris Burning?
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In 1944, with Paris on the verge of Liberation by the allies, Adolph Hitler ordered that the City of Light be blown up and burned to the ground. General Dietrich Von Choltitz, after much rumination, decided that he didn't want to go down in history as the man who destroyed Paris. His refusal to follow Hitler's orders would make him a pariah in Germany for the rest of his life; nor was his gesture ever rewarded by the Allies. From this very human story in the midst of one of the most inhuman conflicts in history grew the screenplay (by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola) of the all-star, internationally produced Is Paris Burning? Whereas the earlier The Longest Day was able to support a castful of celebrities and brief subplot vignettes, Is Paris Burning? seems more weighted down than weighty. Still, a modern audience will have fun playing "spot the star" throughout the film, especially when those spotted stars include the likes of Gert Frobe (as Choltitz), Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas (as Patton), Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Robert Stack, and even Anthony Perkins as a wide-eyed GI. Filmed on a gargantuan scale, Is Paris Burning? was based on a book by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre. The film was lensed in black and white, save for the Technicolor finale (in the original road-show prints). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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Jean-Paul Belmondo
Charles Boyer
, (
Battle Beyond the Sun
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Roger Corman and future super director Francis Ford Coppola (using the pseudonym Thomas Colchart) are behind this sci-fi adventure of two warring hemispheres competing to be the first on Mars. Instead, they end up lost and landing in a small store where monsters (suspiciously shaped like male and female genitalia) constantly battle it out. The bulk of the scenes come from the Soviet sci-fi adventure Nebo Zovyot, which Corman had purchased a few years before. He dropped the cold-war aspects and assigned young Coppola to rewrite, edit and produce the film. The Soviet cast was given "American" names like "Edd Perry" and "Andy Stewart". ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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Dementia 13
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A young Francis Coppola was given the job of directing this moody low-budget chiller after begging producer Roger Corman for the opportunity to reuse the sets for another film which Corman was shooting in Ireland. The story centers on the dysfunctional Haloran family, who live in a state of perpetual sorrow in a spooky Irish castle. Still mourning the death of her young daughter Kathleen -- who drowned in the lake seven years ago -- Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunn) tortures herself regularly by visiting the girl's grave (when she's not shrieking and collapsing in anguish every five minutes). When daughter-in-law Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) loses her husband to a heart attack, she manages to conceal the body for fear of being cut out of Lady Haloran's will. To further complicate matters, a mysterious interloper begins prowling the grounds with an axe to grind... a very big axe. This enjoyable, quirky psycho-thriller is enlivened by Coppola's inventive camera setups, atmospheric locations and Patrick Magee's over-the-top performance as the leering family doctor. Despite some ragged editing (probably not Coppola's doing), this has relatively high production values for a spare-change Corman project. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
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The Terror
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In this horror chiller, an intriguing, beautiful woman (Sandra Knight) keeps re-appearing to early 19th-century Lt. Duvalier (Jack Nicholson), and he is led to a castle where he finds an imposter of Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). He becomes trapped in the ancient castle and tries to make sense of the eerie situation. Director Roger Corman (with the help of a few other directors, including Francis Ford Coppola) shot most of this within a few days after finishing The Raven--utilizing the same set. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi
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Boris Karloff
Jack Nicholson
, (
Bellboy and the Playgirls
Originally filmed entirely in black-and-white, this German sex comedy centers on a bellhop who prepares for his dream job of becoming a detective by spying on half-naked chorines through a keyhole. Just before the film was distributed in the US, Francis Ford Coppola was hired to add additional scenes featuring nude women (shot in 3-D) to spice up the story. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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Tonight for Sure
Every filmmaker has to start somewhere, and in 1961, years before making The Godfather, The Conversation, or Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola was a UCLA film student looking to get his foot in the door. He took footage from a short nudie film he'd made called The Peeper, added material from an unfinished Western set in a nudist colony, and threw in some sequences filmed by Jack Hill. The result was Tonight For Sure, a nudie-cutie comedy about a pair of hypocritical blue-noses who want to shut down a local burlesque house, even though they're secret smut enthusiasts. Many scenes are presented as dreams or flashbacks in order to give the disparate sequences a sense of continuity. The film features a score by Carmine Coppola, Francis' father, who also wrote music for many of his later films; the cast features Playboy model Virginia Gordon. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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Don Kenney
Karl Schanzer
, (
Godfather Collection [Coppola Restoration] [WS] [4 Discs]
The Godfather
Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that
should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible.
After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola's legendary continuation and sequel to his landmark 1972 film, The Godfather, parallels the young Vito Corleone's rise with his son Michael's spiritual fall, deepening The Godfather's depiction of the dark side of the American dream. In the early 1900s, the child Vito flees his Sicilian village for America after the local Mafia kills his family. Vito (Robert De Niro) struggles to make a living, legally or illegally, for his wife and growing brood in Little Italy, killing the local Black Hand Fanucci (Gastone Moschin) after he demands his customary cut of the tyro's business. With Fanucci gone, Vito's communal stature grows, but it is his family (past and present) who matters most to him -- a familial legacy then upended by Michael's (Al Pacino) business expansion in the 1950s. Now based in Lake Tahoe, Michael conspires to make inroads in Las Vegas and Havana pleasure industries by any means necessary. As he realizes that allies like Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) are trying to kill him, the increasingly paranoid Michael also discovers that his ambition has crippled his marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) and turned his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), against him. Barely escaping a federal indictment, Michael turns his attention to dealing with his enemies, completing his own corruption. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
The Godfather Part III
After a break of more than 15 years, director Francis Ford Coppola and writer Mario Puzo returned to the well for this third and final story of the fictional Corleone crime family. Two decades have passed, and crime kingpin Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), now divorced from his wife Kay (Diane Keaton), has nearly succeeded in keeping his promise that his family would one day be "completely legitimate." A philanthropist devoted to public service, Michael is in the news as the recipient of a special award from the Pope for his good works, a controversial move given his checkered past. Determined to buy redemption, Michael and his lawyer B.J. (George Hamilton) are working on a complicated but legal deal to bail the Vatican out of looming financial troubles that will ultimately reap billions and put Michael on the world stage as a major financial player. However, trouble looms in several forms: The press is hostile to his intentions. Michael is in failing health and suffers a mild diabetic stroke. Stylish mob underling Joey Zaza (Joe Mantegna) is muscling into the Corleone turf. "The Commission" of Mafia families, represented by patriarch Altobello (Eli Wallach) doesn't want to let their cash cow Corleone out of the Mafia, though he has made a generous financial offer in exchange for his release from
la cosa nostra
. And then there's Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), the illegitimate and equally temperamental son of Michael's long-dead brother Sonny. Vincent desperately wants in to the family (both literally and figuratively), and at the urging of his sister Connie (Talia Shire), Michael welcomes the young man and allows him to adopt the Corleone name. However, a flirtatious attraction between Vincent and his cousin, Michael's naÃÂïve daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) develops, and threatens to develop into a full-fledged romance and undo the godfather's future plans. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
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