Word: sicilianism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
CINEMA PARADISO. In this Oscar nominee for best foreign picture, a Sicilian boy of the 1950s sees movies as the whole world -- a panorama of laughter, drama and forbidden dreams...
Italians call the Sicilian Mafia "the Octopus," and justly so. As investigative reporter Claire Sterling shows, its tentacles have branched from Palermo over the past 30 years to get a global stranglehold on the $100 billion heroin market -- and a major stake in the new cocaine trade. With billions in profits to launder annually, the Sicilian Mafia also ranks as the world's most profitable multinational, showing a return of 1,600% on its investment...
Octopus opens with a slapstick scene in New York City's Palace restaurant. A Sicilian Mafioso is trying to pass off stolen "Tiepido" and "Van Go" paintings and "Stradinoff" violins to an undercover agent with a recorder sewn into the crotch of his shorts. It was 1977, and the detective didn't know that he was talking to a key player in a drug network newly launched by the Sicilians...
Alone in the theater, Father Adelfio (Leopoldo Trieste), the little Sicilian town's ex officio movie censor, rings a bell whenever anything on the screen strikes him as salacious. Up in the booth, Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret, who is becoming Spencer Tracy to our age), slaps a piece of paper into the reel marking the spot the priest has X-rated. The walls of Alfredo's aerie are festooned with ribbons of film he has cut from movies before showing them to the public, for the good father sees in even the most chaste movie kiss an occasion...
Nine years have passed since an Italian-owned McDonnell Douglas DC-9 mysteriously crashed into the sea off the Sicilian island of Ustica, killing 81 people. But the tragedy continues to haunt. For years, theories about the cause have centered on poor airline maintenance or bombs...