Word: gangsterisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Saturday-matinee serials, gangster dramas with hearts of fudge, airhead romantic comedies. Think they don't make movies like these anymore? Look around, think again and weep a little for the art of cinema. The first reel of a picture will tantalize with originality of story or tone. Then genre anxiety sets in--the filmmakers' compulsion to return to the formats that have worked, and been worked to death, for decades. Can't take the risk of challenging those people out there in the dark; it might frighten them. Movies have to be like TV now: a medium...
...their subject with lots of sweat, foul patter, fat ladies and idiot giggling. This lurid and intermittently seductive melodrama (based on a true story) just observes Brad Sr. and his mob dispassionately, like slime mold under a microscope. They execute their robberies, and their victims, with soulless professionalism; their gangster grimaces register starkness without sexiness. Brad Jr. and his pals are hardly more exemplary. Talking tough, swigging beer, waiting for something bad to happen, they could be the Whitewood Gang in embryo...
...reporter asked him to explain the finances that support his organization and his heavily guarded 170-acre estate near Leesburg, LaRouche shot back, "I can't talk to a drug pusher like you." What about his reputation for anti-Semitism? That, he explained, resulted from his linking of Jewish Gangster Meyer Lansky to Banker David Rockefeller, which in turn led to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, to fugitive Financier Robert Vesco and to a cocaine connection that involved, among others, assorted Bulgarians and a former President of Colombia who was a close friend of former President...
...instances of criminal behavior. Thus the law applies to those involved in an interstate "enterprise" that engages more than once in ten years in criminal activities ranging from mail, wire and stock fraud to extortion and murder. While many smiled over the acronym's reference to Rico, the archetypal gangster played by Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, federal prosecutors were slow to use the new legislation. But "since 1980 it's been used aggressively," says the delighted principal drafter, G. Robert Blakey, a Notre Dame law professor...
...states have their own little RICOs. Meanwhile, prosecutors have begun to take advantage of the elasticity of the federal statute to pursue politicians and other government figures who do not fit the typical gangster mold. Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, whose first trial ended in a hung jury, is back in federal court again facing RICO charges involving an influence-peddling scheme. Two weeks ago, federal prosecutors obtained...