Word: las
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Niro plays Ace Rothstein, a Jewish odds maker so successful in Brooklyn that he is sent to run the massive Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas. Now that they are legal, his talents are even more impressive; Ace's stoic and calculated methods are a thrill to watch...
When the most charismatic aspects of both Ace and Las Vegas are on display the effect is hypnotic. Ace really believes that he sells dreams, and his naivete is contagious. The shots of the Las Vegas Strip are are as seductive as have ever appeared in film. Whereas Mike Figgis presents a gloomier view in his exceptional "Leaving Las Vegas" and Paul Verhoeven fails to leave a lasting impression with "Showgirls," Scorsese chooses to focus on the intertwining glamour and power in this fickle town...
...group of loyal supporters: those legions of customers who continue to report their satisfaction with SoftRAM 95. And the indomitable Poertner remains unbowed. He can be seen regularly on the Internet fiercely debating his critics. He also turned up last week at the giant Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas to announce new versions of SoftRAM, including one for the Macintosh...
...less-than-subtle pastels. These he color-coordinates with silky haberdashery and alligator loafers dyed to match. But underneath his sight-gag plumage lives a gray, watchful, calculating spirit. He's a professional gambler, always looking for an edge. Or, once the Mob makes him manager of a Las Vegas casino in the 1970s, the preternaturally alert defender of its edge over the assembled suckers...
...film is based on material Nicholas Pileggi gathered for a nonfiction book that has just been published, and the screenplay he wrote with director Martin Scorsese is at its best in its reportorial passages. If you want to know just how the Mafia skimmed the profits from its Las Vegas operation, or how not-so-wise-guys tried to scam it, Casino is instructive in an almost documentary way. But Scorsese, one of the cinema's great stylists, has evolved a manner for his film--a compound of mini-dissolves, jump cuts, freeze frames and optical effects--that is anything...