CUT AND REEL: STAY IN WITH A REEL CLASSIC – A Bronx Tale
by Adrienne Hoff
Cut and Reel, besides bringing you their recommendations (REEL!) and non-recommendations (CUT!) for what to see in the theaters will also bring you their picks for older flicks that are worth staying home to watch, like this week’s Reel Classic, A Bronx Tale.
Directed by: Robert De Niro
Written by: Chazz Palminteri
“He’s wrong. It don’t take much strength to pull a trigger. But try and get up every morning,day after day, and work for a living. Let’s see him try that. Then we’ll see who the real tough is. The working man’s the tough guy. Your father’s the tough guy. ”
Based on Chazz Palminteri’s real-life experiences of growing up in the Bronx, A Bronx Tale is an incredibly humbling coming-of-age story in which the lines are blurred between good versus evil and right versus wrong. Robert De Niro co-stars in his directorial debut as Lorenzo Anello, a proud blue-collar man who is rich with integrity and teaches these virtues to his son by being a living example. His young son, Calogero, admires his father, but can’t shake his fascination with neighborhood gangster Sonny LoSpecchio. Much against his father’s will, Calogero, or ‘C,’ is taken under Sonny’s wing after C is the witness of murder and doesn’t rat on Sonny. Sonny, played by writer Chazz Palminteri, teaches C more than how to survive on the streets. He gives C an education on women, acceptance, and most notably, the powerful difference between respect and fear. (more…)
Deltron 3030 Recommended: Raphael Saadiq “The Way I See It.”
I can say with zero doubt in my mind that if it weren’t for someone sending me this album I would NEVER have downloaded it. A CD from a former member of Tony! Toni! Tone!?( I think he was the middle one.)
Really? That kind of closed minded thinking would have robbed me of a jewel of an album that apparently was nominated for 3 Grammys. Who knew? The album is a throwback to some old school Motown soul. It is very much out of my wheel house but I’m really loving it. It makes me want to smoke cigarettes and be in a Tarantino film or grow up in the South Bronx in the early 60’s w/ Bobby De Niro as my no nonsense pops. Maybe I’d have a knucklehead mook friend named Ace or Johnny who was always getting me in pickles and frowning upon my desire to get out of “da neigh-ba-hood” and make something of myself. Damn him.
I’m sure its partly due to having less than zero expectations but I can’t say enough positive things about this disc. Go out and buy it now. God bless the power of the Internet, our generations’ all encompassing radio station.
For those who need more selling: Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, and Jay Z guest on some tracks.