Our 5 Most Famous Las Vegas Casino Robberies - Online

most successful las vegas casino robberies

most successful las vegas casino robberies - win

TIL that in 1993 a man named William Brennan walked out of the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas with $500K in cash and chips and vanished, along with his cat. He has never been heard from since, making it one of the most successful casino robberies in history.

TIL that in 1993 a man named William Brennan walked out of the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas with $500K in cash and chips and vanished, along with his cat. He has never been heard from since, making it one of the most successful casino robberies in history. submitted by corey_m_snow to todayilearned [link] [comments]

TIL that in 1993 a man named William Brennan walked out of the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas with $500K in cash and chips and vanished, along with his cat. He has never been heard from since, making it one of the most successful casino robberies in history. - todayilearned

TIL that in 1993 a man named William Brennan walked out of the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas with $500K in cash and chips and vanished, along with his cat. He has never been heard from since, making it one of the most successful casino robberies in history. - todayilearned submitted by Know_Your_Shit to knowyourshit [link] [comments]

TIL that in 1993 a man named William Brennan walked out of the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas with $500K in cash and chips and vanished, along with his cat. He has never been heard from since, making it one of the most successful casino robberies in history.

TIL that in 1993 a man named William Brennan walked out of the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas with $500K in cash and chips and vanished, along with his cat. He has never been heard from since, making it one of the most successful casino robberies in history. submitted by unremovable to unremovable [link] [comments]

Who killed notorious 1940s gangster Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, the father of modern Las Vegas? Was it another mob boss? The lover of his best friend's wife? One of the men he was embezzling money from? His Mafia spy girlfriend? His own bosses? The possibilities are endless—and puzzling.

(Note: be warned, kind of long background info here, but I think it’s needed)
As far as interesting lives, few can beat Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel. Born February 28, 1906 in Brooklyn, New York, Siegel came from a poor Jewish family. Before he was even twenty, he’d established a profitable protection racket and a lengthy rap sheet, including armed robbery, rape, and murder. Siegel had connections—he was childhood friends with Al Capone and familiar with many of the well known New York City mobsters of the day—and he also had a taste for violence. Soon, he’d established a small mob specializing in hits for the numerous bootleg gangs of the time with Meyer Lansky, a fellow mobster. His violence and short temper led some to say he was “crazy as a bedbug,” giving him his famous nickname ‘Bugsy,’ which he even more famously despised.
Siegel was making money, which he was happy to flaunt, but he wanted more. He carried out several hits for Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and eventually formed Murder Inc. with his associates, establishing himself as a skilled hitman for the National Crime Syndicate, an organization of mob families. But Siegel was already making enemies, and several assassination attempts were made on his life, some of which came very close to being successful. So, it was time to move out west.
In California, Siegel helped establish gambling rackets, drug trade routes, and prostitution rings. His star was rising outside of the Underworld too, and in addition to the numerous politicians and police on his payroll, he befriended stars like Cary Grant and Clark Gable. Incredibly, while in Italy with a socialite in 1938, he met Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, whom he immediately disliked and offered to kill. The offer was declined by his lady friend. Yet Siegel was not always looked upon fondly by the upper echelons of Hollywood; he borrowed exorbitantly from celebrities, knowing he would never be asked to pay it back, and began to develop extensive plans to extort movie studios. After several trials and acquittals for failed and successful hits, it was time to leave California.
Siegel’s next stop was Las Vegas where, in 1945, he purchased and developed the Flamingo Hotel & Casino, the first luxury hotel on the Vegas strip. As you might imagine, that was expensive, and over the course of its construction, costs were equivalent to over $61 million in today’s money each year. Siegel’s checks were bouncing, and many of the locals felt threatened by him. Mob bosses were beginning to lose patience with Siegel too, and he was refusing to report on business, claiming he was running the California Syndicate himself. For now, they left him alone—he'd been valuable in the past, after all.
The Flamingo Hotel was a dismal failure, and people—very powerful people—were starting to get tired of waiting for the promised money to materialize. By 1947, it was gradually turning around—with the help of Meyer Lansky, now in Vegas—but for most, it was too little too late.
Death:
On June 20, 1947, Siegel was gunned down in the Beverly Hills home of his sometimes-girlfriend Virginia Hill. He was 41. Somewhat suspiciously, Hill had taken an unscheduled flight to Paris the day (or by some sources, week) before. As Siegel sat reading the newspaper with associate Allen Smiley, an unknown assailant fired with a .30 caliber military M1 carbine through the window, striking Siegel many times (NSFW). Two shots hit his head, with one passing through his right cheek and the other his nose. Though he was not hit directly through the eye (NSFW), a bullet-in-the-eye death became a popular trope in Mafia media, including in the Godfather, where a character based on Siegel is murdered in the same manner.
The death was covered extensively in the media, which portrayed Vegas as a bastion of sin and mafia activity. As early as the day after Siegel’s death (or, as some sources have it, during Siegel’s death), however, more personal things were changing: Lansky walked into the Flamingo and took over operations.
Theories:
The mob is famously tight-lipped, and Siegel’s death was no exception. Despite the extensive speculation, no precise motive has ever been confirmed. There was a massive police investigation, but in a case like this, that doesn’t mean much, nor does the media coverage. The media in particular salivated over the potential for splashy crime stories, and the circumstances of this case have been complicated by contemporary coverage. Several days after Siegel’s death, for example, one newspaper ran the headline “BUGSY'S BLONDE EX-WIFE GIVES CLUES TO HIS KILLERS,” while another read “BUGSY'S EX NO AID IN HUNT.” As far as the most popular theories:
A Mob hit: A mob hit seems like the most obvious cause, and it's a theory that’s been popularized by several novels and the 1991 movie Bugsy. It would certainly make sense; it was the mob’s money Siegel had been spending wildly on his unsuccessful hotel after all, and he’d been growing uncooperative. Of the proposed hitmen, the most often mentioned are Frankie Carbo (Ralph Natale, former Philadelphia boss and Mob squealer, claimed Carbo as the true killer) and Eddie Cannizarro, both Syndicate hitmen. But even here, there are several proposed reasons for the hit. As some have it, mob money from the Flamingo’s funding was going missing and Siegel was skimming off the already meager profits. Skimming could have been forgiven, if the Flamingo was a success. It was not. After a meeting of the Syndicate’s “Board of Directors,” it was allegedly decided that Siegel would die, with Lansky reluctantly agreeing. Others believe that a hit might have been ordered whether Siegel was skimming or not; the Flamingo was simply too expensive. As one historian put it, “Bugsy was a dreamer. And he was dreaming with other people’s money.”
Yet many have also argued against this theory. According to one of Siegel’s emissaries in Vegas, for example, no one would have dared to order a hit on Siegel. He and Lansky were close until the end of their lives, and Lansky would never have agreed to it. And if Lansky would not agree, then Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who was “the head of everything,” would never have agreed either. And as others have argued, the method of execution (NSFW) didn’t match with typical mob methods; firing a weapon from outside a house increased the risk of missing as well as the risk of being seen. The preferred method was a clean shot to the back of the head. According to some, the oft-referenced money problems of the Flamingo also wasn’t an issue. At the time, Lansky was paying back any investor who wanted out, and the gradual uptick in its profits was quickening by the day. Personally, I don’t think the financial uptick invalidates the theory. If the hotel was starting to make more money, then that might be all the more reason to get rid of the difficult-to-manage Siegel and take over.
Wire Business: At the time of his death, Siegel was embroiled in a dispute with Jack Dragna, dubbed the Capone of Los Angeles. Siegel and Dragna had had an uneasy partnership in previous years, but Dragna, far less powerful than Siegel and the New York gangs, resented the income and respect Siegel commanded. This came to a head when a racing wire service (a way of cheating on bets) between the two of them soured. Siegel wanted control for himself, and ordered Dragna to turn it over or be killed, to which Dragna agreed. After Siegel’s death, control was returned to Dragna. He had a motive, but his story would only have been one among many for a man as ruthless as Siegel, which, in a way, complicates things further—there’s a real possibility that the culprit in Siegel’s murder was someone never even considered. His list of enemies was long, varied, and probably mostly unknown. Yet another man who had reason to want Siegel dead, for example, was his bodyguard and muscle Mickey Cohen. A Cleveland gangster, Cohen was given control of the Syndicate’s West Coast gambling operations. If Siegel still lived, he would never have gotten it. Interestingly, he, like Al Capone before him, was eventually felled by tax evasion.
Virginia and/or brother: The same emissary of Siegel who shot down the mob hit theory believed that Virginia Hill’s brother had carried out the murder. The brother, a marine stationed at Camp Pendleton named Bob or Bill, had seen Siegel and Virginia fighting outside the Flamingo as well as the bruises Siegel had left on her and threatened to kill him. Another of Virginia’s brothers, Chuck, was also at the Beverly Hills house when Siegel was murdered.
Virginia herself has also been the subject of suspicion. Nicknamed the “Queen of the Mob,” Hill worked, among other powerful jobs, as a cash courier, laundering money and stolen goods as well as blackmailing high-ranking men through sexual liaisons. Her relationship with Siegel was tempestuous at best, and she may have been embezzling from the Flamingo. She’s also been accused of two-timing with rival mob operations, though this is unconfirmed. Eventually fleeing to Europe permanently, Hill died of an overdose in 1966, though some have alleged that she was actually murdered after she, completely broke, attempted to leverage her intimate knowledge of the Mob.
Rival Mobs: Unfortunately, I can’t find much concrete information about this theory (note: story of my life researching these posts haha), but some believe that rival mob operatives wanted Siegel gone. He was a powerful—and very public—figure, which made him something of an obvious target in the cut-throat world of Mafia politics.
Moe Sedway: This is a relatively new theory, emerging after Robbie Sedway was interviewed for LA Magazine after his mother’s death. Here, he alleged that Siegel’s murder was ordered by his mother Bee, the wife of powerful mobster—and childhood friend of Siegel’s—Moe Sedway. According to Bee, who wrote and scrapped a book proposal called Bugsy's Little Lunatic (Siegel’s nickname for her), Siegel had threatened her husband, who was the Flamingo’s numbers man, and therefore watching Siegel—who, remember, had been accused of skimming—closely. So Bee contacted Mathew “Moose” Pandza, a truck driver whom Bee married after Moe’s death. Moose, the perfect killer, since he had no connection to the Mob, then shot Siegel to death. The problem with this theory, however, is that Bee is the only source; as she herself said, anyone who could contradict her was dead. She also squandered most of the fortune left to her by Moe over the course of her life, and died almost penniless.
All of the above: Some believe that almost all the suspects were involved. Usually, it goes something like this: “Virginia supplied the location and received some reward. Cohen knew Bugsy's schedule for the evening, but happened to not be watching him that night…Dragna ordered the hit, with the approval of Lansky and Luciano.” It’s unlikely, but it certainly has its believers, if only for the convenience of it.
Final Thoughts & Questions:
This case is interesting to me because of the sheer number of suspects. In the end, a mob hit seems the simplest and most likely explanation. But there were so many people with means, motive, and opportunity. So:
Sources:
https://www.lamag.com/longform/mobster-murder-moll-secret/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lasvegas-bugsy/
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/killed-benjamin-bugsy-siegel/
https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Bugsy_Siegel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Siegel
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/virginia-hill-queen-of-the-mob-was-no-ones-pushove
To many, Siegel’s legacy exceeds his mob connections, and in some ways, even his death; without him, many believe, there would be no Vegas. So if you take anything away from this write-up, let it be this: The Blue Man group’s Vegas residency is Bugsy Siegel’s fault.
submitted by LiviasFigs to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]

Review of Martin Scorsese’s 1995 Casino [A mob movie that has many actors that will go on to be in the Sopranos].

mods please lmk if this violates the rules. i’m posting here because I write about the mob/casino and many relevant themes that are important elements of the Sopranos, in my opinion. I think they’re of the same medium and genre so wanted to post here. Hope that’s alright. Cheers! (11 min read) ————————————————————————
EDIT 2: TL;DR -
Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.
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Every good filmmaker makes the same movie over and over again—Martin Scorsese is no different
Scorsese's Casino is a phenomenal story of the condoned chaos and "legalized robbery" that happens on a daily basis to gamblers who bett away thousands of dollars and return each day for more “FinDom,” but without any of the sexual sadism. The whole scam only persists because the house always wins: the odds are stacked 3 million to one on the slot machines, but the same shmucks return wide-eyed each day hoping for a different outcome, devoid of any rational re-evaluation required to maintain their grasp on reality, and the liquidity of their bank accounts.
Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.
Robert De Niro plays Sam "Ace" Rothstein, recruited by his childhood friend Nick "Nicky" Santorno to help run the Tangiers casino, which is funded by an investment made with the Teamsters’ pension fund. Ace’s job is to keep the bottom line flowing so that the Mafia's skimming operation can continue seamlessly. De Niro's character felt like half-way between Travis from Taxi Driver (of course, nowhere as mentally disturbed) and half of the addictive excess, greed, and eccentric business-mind of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Ace’s attention to detail gives him a rain-man-esque sensibility; his ability to see every scam, trick, hand signal, and maneuver happening on the casino floor make him the perfect manager of the casino, and take his managerial style to authoritarian heights in his pursuit of order and control over what is an inherently unstable and dynamic scheme; betting, hedging outcomes, and walking the line to keep the money flowing and the gamblers coming back. I’m not claiming Ace is autistic, I'm no clinician, but his managerial sensibilities over the daily operations of the casino, from the dealers to the pit bosses, to the shift managers, are to the point of disturbing precision, he has eyes everywhere, and knows how to remove belligerent customers with class and professionalism, but ultimately is short sighted in “reading” the human beings he is in relationship with. Ace is frustratingly naive and gullible in his partnership with Nicky and the threat he poses to him, and in his marriage with Ginger.
Ace has no personal aspirations to extract millions of dollars for himself out of the casino corruption venture. Ace simply wants the casino to operate as efficiently as possible, and he has no qualms about being a pawn of the bosses. While Sam, “the Golden Jew”—as he is called—is the real CEO of the whole enterprise, directing things at Tangiers for the benefit of the bosses “back home.” Ace’s compliance is juxtaposed with Nicky’s outrage upon feeling used: he gripes about how he is in “the trenches” while the bosses sit back and do nothing. Note that none of the activity Nicky engages in outside of the casino—doing the work of “taking Las Vegas over”—is authorized by the bosses. Ultimately Nicky’s inability to exert control over his crew and the street lead to his demise.
In the end, capitalism, and all that happens in the confines of the casino, is nothing but “organized violence.” Sound familiar? The mob has a capitalist structure in its organization and hierarchy: muscle men collect and send money back to the bosses who do not labor tirelessly “in the trenches.” The labor of the collectors is exploited to create the profits of their bosses. The entire business-model of the Mafia is predicated on usury and debtors defaulting on loans for which the repayment is only guaranteed by the threat of violence. But this dynamic is not without its internal contradictions and tensions, as seen in Casino.
In a comedic turn, the skimmers get skimmed! The bosses begin to notice the thinning of the envelopes and lighter and lighter suitcases being brought from the casino to Kansas City, “back home”. The situation continues to spin out of control, but a mid-tier mafioso articulates the careful balance required for the skimming operation to carry on: to keep the skimming operation functioning, the skimmers need to be kept loyal and happy. It’s a price the bosses have to pay to maintain the operation, “leakage” in their terms. Ace’s efficient management and precision in maintaining order within Tangiers is crucial for the money to keep flowing. But Ace’s control over the casino slips more and more as the movie progresses. We see this as the direct result of Nicky’s ascendance as mob kingpin in Vegas, the chaos he creates cannot be contained and disrupts the profits and delicate dynamics that keep the scam running.
Of course I can’t help myself here! We should view Scorsese’s discography, and the many portrayals of capitalist excess not as celebratory fetishization, but a critique of the greed and violence he so masterfully captures on film. See the Wolf of Wall Street for its tale of money as the most dangerous drug of them all, and the alienation—social and political—showcased in Taxi Driver. Scorsese uses the mob as a foil to the casino to attack the supposed monopoly the casino holds on legitimate, legal economic activity that rests on institutionalized theft. When juxtaposed with the logic of organized crime, we begin to see that the two—Ace and Nick—are not so different after all.
The only dividing line between the casino and organized crime is the law. Vegas is a lawless town yes, “the Wild West” as Nicky puts it, but there are laws in Vegas. The corruption of the political establishment and ruling elites is demonstrated when they pressure Ace to re-hire an incompetent employee who he fired for his complicity in a cheating scam or his stupidity in letting the slot machines get rigged; nepotism breeds mediocrity. In the end, Ace’s fall is the result of the rent-seeking behavior that the Vegas ruling class wields to influence the gaming board to not even permit Ace a fair hearing for his gaming license, which would’ve given him the lawful authority to officially run Tangiers. The elites use the political apparatus of the State to resist the new gang in town, the warring faction of mob-affiliated casino capitalists. While the mob’s only weapon to employ is that of violence. The mafia is still subservient to the powers that be within the political and economic establishment of Vegas, and they’re told “this is not your town.”
I’d like to make the most salient claim of this entire review now. Casino is a western film. The frontier of the Wild West is Vegas in this case, where the disorder of the mob wreaks havoc on, an until then, an “untapped market.” The investment scheme that the Teamsters pension fund is exploited for as seed capital, is an attempt to remain in the confines of the law while extracting as much value as possible through illegal and corrupt means for the capitalist class of the mob (and the ultimately dispensable union president). Tangiers exists in the liminal space of condoned economic activity as a legal and otherwise standard casino. While the violence required to maintain the operation, corrupts the legal legitimacy it never fully enjoyed from the beginning. This mirrors the bounty economy of the West and the out-sourcing of the law and the execution of the law, to bounty hunters. There is no real authority out in the frontier, the killer outlaw on the run is not so different from the bounty hunter who enjoys his livelihood by hunting down the killers. Yet, he himself is not the State. The wide-lens frame of Ace and Nicky meeting in the desert felt like a direct homage to the iconic image of the Western standoff. The conflict between Ace and Nick, the enforcer and the mastermind, is an approximation of the conflicts we might see in John Wayne’s films. The casino venture itself could be seen as an analogy of the frontier-venturism of railroad pioneers going to lay track to develop the West into a more industrial region.
I would have believed that this was a documentary about how the mob took over control of the Vegas casinos in the 1970-80s … if it were not for the viewer being expected to believe that Robert De Niro could play a Jew; it's hard to believe a man with that accent and the roles he’s played his entire career could be a “CRAZY JEW FUCK!!” I kid! But alas, De Niro is a class act and the last of the many greats of a bygone era. At times, it felt like Joe Pesci lacked talent as an actor, but his portrayal of the scummy, backstabbing bastard in Nicky was genuinely remarkable, but I might consider his performance the weak point of the movie. It’s weird to see a man that short, be that much of physical menace. There are a number of Sopranos actors in Casino. I’m sure Vincent Chase watched the movie and said to himself, “bet, i’ll cast half of these guys.”The set design and costumes were gorgeous. The styles and fashion of the time were spectacular. Scorsese’s signature gratuitous violence featured prominently, but tastefully. The camera work, tracking shots through the casino and spatial movement was incredible and I thought the cinematography was outstanding, the Western-esque wide lens in the desert was worthy of being a framed still.
The Nicky//Ace dynamic is excellent and the two play off of each other well. The conflict between the two of them escalates gradually, and then Nicky’s betrayal of Ace by cheating with Ginger marks the final break between the two of them. Nicky’s mob faculties represent a brutal, violent theft that is illegal and requires the enforcement of violence by organized crime. Despite the illegal embezzlement and corruption at play with the “skimming” operation at work at the casino, the general business model of the casino stands in contrast to the obscene violence of the loan sharks. Ace operates an intelligent operation of theft through the casino, and his hands-on management approach is instrumental to the success of the casino. Nicky’s chaos pervades the casino, and the life and activities of “the street” begin to bleed into Ace’s ability to maintain order in the casino. “Connected” types begin frequenting the casino, and Ace unknowingly forces one particularly rude gambler to leave the casino, who happens to have mob ties with Nicky. The “organized violence” of the casino cannot stay intact perfectly, because the very thing holding it together is the presence of the mob. Nicky is in Vegas as the enforcer and tasked with protecting Ace but his independent, entrepreneurial (shall we call them?) aspirations lead him to attempt to overtake what he realizes is a frontier for organized crime to brutalize and exploit the characters of “the street” (pimps, players, addicts, dealers, and prostitutes) and the owners of small private businesses.
Nicky is reckless, “when i plant my flag out here you won’t need your [casino/gaming] license” Nicky thinks he, and Ace, can bypass the regulations and bureaucratic legal measures by sheer force of violence alone. But ultimately Nicky is shortsighted and doesn’t have a real attachment to the success of the casino. After all, he isn’t getting profits from it (or much anyway) and isn’t permitted to play a real, active role in its daily functions because of his belligerent, untamed personality. Nicky has no buy-in that would motivate him to follow the rules or to work within the legal parts of the economy, it’s not the game he knows how to play, and win. All that he is loyal to, or deferent too, is the bosses back home; for whom he maintains absolute, uncompromising loyalty to, but still holds intense spite for.
And now to the more compelling element of the narrative. Sam “Ace” Rothstein is positioned as remarkably intelligent, he makes informed decisions that aid in his skill as a gambler, he can read people to determine whether he’s being conned, he has an attention to detail—aided by the casino’s surveillance apparatus which monitors cheating—that is almost unbelievable. Ace knows when he’s being cheated, he knows how to rig the game so that the house always wins, enacting psychological warfare to break down the confidence of would be proficient gamblers, who could threaten Tangiers’ bottom line. But in the end, the greatest gamble Ace makes is his marriage to Ginger. Ginger is the seductive, charismatic, and flirtatious madame who makes her money with tricks and her sexual power. Ginger works as a prostitute, seducing men, and extracting everything she can, almost as a sort of sexual-financial vampirism.
Ginger is the bad bet Ace can’t stop making even when she destroys his life, her own, and puts their daughter Amy in harm’s way. Ginger is the gamble Ace made wrong, but he keeps going back to her every time, trying to rationalize how she might change and be different the next time. Ace is not a victim to Ginger’s antics. Ginger makes it clear who she is: an addict, alcoholic, manic shopaholic who will use all of her powers to extract everything she can from everyone around her. She uses everyone to her advantage and manipulates men with her sexual power in exchange for their money and protection. Ginger had a price for her hand in marriage: $1 million in cash and $1 million worth of jewelry that are left to her and her alone as a sort of emergency fund.
Ace’s numerous attempts to buy Ginger’s love—and the clear fact that no matter how expensive the fur coat and how grand the mansion, none of it would ever be enough to satisfy her—mirrored Jordan Belfort’s relationship with Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street. Both relationships carried the same manic volatility and conflict over child custody was found in both films, with the roles reversed in the respective films. Ginger may be irredeemable and a pathological liar, but Ace can’t claim that she wasn’t clear with him; when he asked her to marry him, Ginger said she didn’t love Ace. Ace replied that love could be “developed” but required a foundation of trust to develop. That trust was never there to begin with. The love was doomed from the start to destroy the two of them; two addicts, two gamblers, lying on a daily basis to one another and themselves about reality to justify their respective existences, the marriage, and Ace’s livelihood. And as Ginger pointed out, “I should have never married him. He’s a gemini, a triple gemini … a snake” Maybe astrology has some truth to it after all.
Now I’m not licensed (but hey neither was Ace, and he ran a casino empire!), but Ginger has the inklings of a borderline personality: her manic depression, narcissism, drug and alcohol abuse, and constant begging for forgiveness all seem indications of a larger psychological disorder at play. In the end, Ginger runs away with all the money Ace left her and finds her people in Los Angeles, the pimps, whores, and addicts she fits in with, in turn exploit and kill her for 3 grand in mint coins by giving her a ‘hot’ dose.
Overall, Casino is an incredible cinematic experience. I highly recommend watching this and seeing it as part of Scorsese's anthology of commentary on our economic system and its human victims. I’d argue that Casino, Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman all fit together nicely into a trilogy of the Scorsesean history of finance and corruption from the 70s to the 90s.
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EDIT 2: TL;DR —
Casino is a story of sexual and financial intrigue, mob violence, union pension fund embezzlement, a “love” story, and the protagonist's masochist addiction to the pain and chaos his lover inflicts on him. It turns out that the sharp-minded genius who meticulously runs the casino, is no more rational than the gamblers who routinely frequent the casino, coming back to lose their money and hoping that the odds will magically shift in their favor.
submitted by chaaarliee201 to thesopranos [link] [comments]

[US Promotion] I would like to celebrate Thanksgiving by gifting you all books!

UPDATE: More books added by siffis and West1234567890 further down
If are late coming across this post then do not worry you can still message me your email for a book.
To celebrate my day off today and Thanksgiving tomorrow I would like to gift my audiobooks.
In order to recieve a free audiobook gift just message me any title (below) along with your email address. If you have not recieved a gift before then you will get the audiobook for free. More details here and here. I am in the US market (but I hear from Canada and UK that it still works).
Books crossed out are not available.
TITLE - AUTHOR (Ordered by author)
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siffis has generously offered to include his collection. If you like any of the books below then message directly.
​
West1234567890 [Also added additional books below](https://www.reddit.com/audible/comments/k0s76n/us_promotion_i_would_like_to_celebrate/gdlwylu?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
submitted by BooksAreBelongToUs to audible [link] [comments]

[S] King's Survivor Atlantis: The Final Reckoning

Right after Winners at War, we are kicking off the endgame with our last newbie season, which takes place in Greece, just like the first season. 18 new castaways will face off, and there will be a returning twist, the Edge of Extinction, but this time, there will be no returnees. It will be just 18 castaways forced to battle the elements and each other, with minimal twists other than the EOE, and the fire making challenge. Without further ado, we will see who will be competing on this season!
Fotia (Greek for Fire) Tribe:
Ava Vasquez, 59, Kindergarten Teacher, u/TDSwaggyBoy
Mother of two, grandmother of seven, Ava is a very kind individual. She made it her goal to help her children in any way, shape or form she could, wanting to give those she loves the best life possible. Even to the point of prioritizing their well being over her own. She always wanted to make a difference, and eventually became a kindergarten teacher in order to help make the years of said toddlers the best she could. Ava still remembers her kindergarten teacher, a kind and warm individual, and she hopes to be seen the same way as her.
Darleen Rojas, 38, Retail Manager, u/Ripecornball60
Darleen was the popular girl in school when she was young. She was a pageant queen, and planned to be a model when she was older. She got through the rigorous casting process to become a model, but sadly fell short at the final call, where she found out she had breast cancer. Going through Chemotherapy was a life changing experience. She lost her hair, her passion, and her job opportunity. She worked at a Retail store for 3 years, until she had a flirt with the manager. He promised her the store in exchange for her "assets". She accepted the offer, and Darleen became the store manager. The previous manager and her dated for 3 more months, until the worst happened. She found him cheating on her. This caused her to break up with him, and kick him out of working for her. Trying to fill his hole in her heart, Darleen used an abandoned break room in her store, and transformed it into a nightclub club she calls the "Hidey Hole". There, she has 1 night stands with women and men alike. She is out here due to one of her "clients" saying someone as manipulative as her could win.
Ellie Ruchkin, 24, Bowling Alley Worker, u/Jckboy100
Ellie is a super nice girl, to almost everyone... however, if you do anything to cross her, she won't forget it. Growing up as an only child made her learn how to entertain herself, and learn how to take care of herself when her parents weren't around. She wants to play this game to see if she has what it takes to win the title and check that comes along with it.
Erik LeFort, 34, Writer, u/Gemini_B
Erik grew up in a typical family. At a fairly young age he realized he was gay, but was luck that his family supported him. That, alongside with supportive friends helping him overcome the few bullies he faced, he wants to be a beacon of hope for gay people everywhere and want's to show what a loving family can do. Despite his want to help others though, he's not afraid to play dirty if it get's him further in the game.
Ethan "EJ" James, 20, College Student, u/JTsidol
Ethan was always struggling In life, that never allowed him to do anything, his dad was extremely angry at him, after his mother died at birth, blaming the death on him, when he was 7 he began abusing him, until at 17 he ran away, now he‘s studying hard to finish college, and he hopes he can get the money to help him study and have a better life.
Kim Juri, 35, Poker Dealer, u/Gemini_B
Kim Juri grew up with a fairly poor family and at a young age secretly turned to gambling to support her family. She got very good and became a poker dealer at a casino. She wants to destroy this game because she knows how to lie, cheat and play dirty. She's here to win, and nothing will stop her.
Krista Ayers, 34, Unemployed, u/breadon17
Krista is a single mom of four, so life isn't very easy for her. She can't find a job and she has an abusive boyfriend who is trying to take everything she knows and loves. She applied for Survivor so that she could get the money she needs to survive and feed her kids.
Kyle Simmonds, 26, Poker Player, u/asiansurvivorfan
Kyle was raised in a very divided home with his parents constantly fighting, and his Dad being an alcoholic. This caused him to start taking part in things he shouldn’t be taking part in like gangs, drug, theft, etc. When he was 20, everything changed for him when his friend signed him up for a local poker tournament. He was reluctant at first, but decided to give it a shot. He surprised everyone including himself at that tournament, as he completely dominated and won. This really gave him the boost he needed in life as he proceeded to continue his success by winning more tournaments and at a higher level too. He plans on handling the game like a poker match and wants to bring all his cards to the table.
Vaso Dragovic, 45, Journalist/Former Yugoslav Soldier, u/Twig7665
Vaso was born in Serbia, which was in the once prosperous country of Yugoslavia in the mid 1970s. He lived a normal life up until his teen years, where he watched the country he once knew as a dream turn into a nightmare. The country became a war-torn hellscape, and he was forced to join the military at the young age of 16. He witnessed countless atrocities, and to escape the war, he had to smuggle himself onto a boat bound for the United States in 1996. With no food, no money, and no shelter, he joined a gang to get himself what he needed to survive. After over a year of selling drugs and being in a gang, he left it and went to go live in a rehab facility until he was was 29, in 2004. He then began work to try and fit back into society. He now works as a journalist for a news company. He signed up for the show to see if he has the skills to win it.
Pouli (Greek for Bird) Tribe:
Alfred "Void" Vallentino, 28, Magician, u/swoldow
Alfred grew up on the streets of Las Vegas in poverty, with both of his parents as struggling actors. To make a few extra dimes, he started to teach himself basic magic to perform on the streets and sometimes skipped school to make more money. He was extremely bullied at school for his passion and lack of money, which led him to be socially isolated from everyone else. He grew more attached to his magic, as he kept working harder and harder until a famous magician with a Vegas show caught wind of his act, and let Alfred open for him. Since then, Alfred has rose to the top of the food chain, and began to experiment with his suspenseful acts to make the audience feel all sorts of emotion.
Katrina MacQuoid, 58, Prosthodontist, u/Gemini_B
Katrina’s parents we’re performers in Kentucky. They lived and breathed theater and expected their daughter to be the same. Though Katrina loved being the center of attention, and still does, she never loved the stage the way her parents did. Her parents wanted her to continue to pursue something arts related, and she became an advertising adjective, but never felt satisfied. When she learned that Kentucky was looking for jobs in the dental field, she felt it would be a perfect field to enter. She always found teeth interesting, I mean, are they bones? But they fall out? So weird. She returned to school at age 35 and became a Prosthodontist at age 43. She’s worked as a Prosthodontist since then and (While not at the level of Peter) has a firm understanding of the most important hole in the human body, the mouth. While she’s liked by many people because of her fun personality, she has trouble forming 1 on 1 bonds and has never found the special one. As a child she often got in trouble for anger issues with her parents, so she began to hold in her anger and let it out in huge, uncontrollable fits when her parents weren't around. This holding in of anger until she can’t contain it is a habit she continues to have, blaming her rages on “Hurricane Katrina” as a sort of justification of her actions. She’s never left Kentucky and while she’s very book smart, she can often be very ignorant on other subjects.
Lila Herring, 21, Secretary, u/AngolanDesert
Lila is a very competitive spirit. She always wants to challenge herself and see how far can she can make it. When she saw that survivor auditions were going out, she knew she could win and provide for her poor family.
Lukas Reed, 24, College Student, u/Jck100
Lukas Reed is a shy, humble young man. Coming from a devastating childhood with the loss of his young sister, him and his dad suffered hard. This shaped him into the man he is today, coasting through college, now he wanted something to step out of his comfort zone and try out this highly social game, and see how he can do.
Luther Dane, 32, Fisherman, u/Twig7665
No one knows much about Luther, due to his tendency to keep everything he knows a secret, and it causes people to see him as a strange loner, a title he does not mind. He was in a car accident in his teen years that killed everyone in the car but him, and he began to think of himself as an untouchable person, someone who could survive almost anything. This caused him to grow reckless when he's not fishing, and made several poor choices in his twenties, including messing with police, which caused him to be sent to jail for several months for interfering with a cop's duty. Now out of prison, he continues to be reckless, but stayed away from police this time. Will his reckless personality help or hinder his journey on Survivor? Only time will tell.
Madyson "Maddie" Anderson, 25, Nurse, u/JTsidol
She’s lived a normal life, she wants some fun, she’s single, hoping that she can get a showmance to lower her target, then strike at the right time.
Marshall Keaton, 28, Marine Biologist, u/TDSwaggyBoy
Marshall was born to a loving family of five, being the oldest of three kids. His father, Dominic, always expected Marshall to follow in the family's footsteps and become a lawyer, just like his old pops. At a young age, Marshall never seemed to agree with his father's plan - being a lawyer is so boring, bro! He went through the entire process, getting accepted to law school, only to then drop out.
Marshall and his father got into a massive argument about it, and Marshall ended up leaving his home afterwards. They are still not on speaking terms.
Marshall then studied to become a marine biologist, as he always found sea creatures to be fascinating.
Now with a girlfriend of 2 years, Marshall hopes to win the money for the both of them. He's got this, yo!
Nolan "NK" Kristoffson, 19, Drummer, u/Twig7665
Nolan was born the younger of twins to a large, fairly poor farming family. He was the youngest, and he resented most of his family. He saw his twin Matt as the antithesis of himself, and while he was able to go to college because of a football scholarship, Nolan had to drop out and help out at the farm. He finally had enough at the age of 18, and told his parents about him wanting to become a drummer, and his parents kicked him out, so he lived at his friend's house for the past year. They were able to get him a drumkit, and they formed a garage band. Inspired by his hard life being constantly outshined by his brother, he wrote angry, edgy lyrics, and they started performing gigs. He shortened his name to just his initials, and now drums for a living. He is playing King's Survivor to finally outshine his perfect twin brother.
Ximena Verez, 22, Fencer, u/asiansurvivorfan
Ximena grew up poor and therefore had to start earning money at an early age by delivering stock. On one of her trips, she was kidnapped and abducted by a group of men that worked for a wanted druglord and rapist. She along with her 3 fellow captives were beaten, abused, and raped for 4 years missing and undetected. After years of mistreatment, Ximena and the other captives were finally found and released. Although it was reliving to be free again, she was deeply traumatized by everything her captor did to her and had an extremely tough time trying to adapt to the real world again. She decided to seek help and was sent to a rehab facility where she got help relieve her trauma. One of the things she picked up was the martial arts which eventually developed into an interest in fencing. Despite it being a male dominated sport, Ximena was adamant on showing young girls they can accomplish anything no matter the hardships they’ve gone through. After her time in rehab, she managed to recover and now spends her time competing in championships all around the world. She came to be a voice for domestic abuse victims.
Link to Season
Episode 1: The eighteen new contestants are shipped into Greece, where they learn of the return of the Edge of Extinction, from the season of the same name. They are then split into their two tribes: the green Fotia tribe, which means "Fire" in Greek, and the orange Pouli tribe, which means "Bird". Ava, Darleen, Ellie, Erik, EJ, Kim, Krista, Kyle, and Vaso draw green buffs, and Void, Katrina, Lila, Lukas, Luther, Maddie, Marshall, NK, and Ximena's buffs are orange. They are then instructed to get as much stuff off the boat as they can, and Krista finds the advantage menu, which can give the user either a reward steal, an extra vote, or an idol. At Fotia, EJ tries to be a mafioso, so he bonds with Ava, and forms an alliance with Darleen and Kim. At Pouli, NK and Void bond very well over being outcasts, and they pull in Lila, Luther, Maddie, Marshall, and Ximena to form "The Outcast Alliance". The Fotia tribe wins the first immunity challenge of the season, forcing the Pouli tribe to vote someone off. Wanting to cut off the weak links as quickly as possible, NK suggests to get rid of Katrina, but Ximena gets the idea to split the votes in case one of them had the idol, and Void individually talks to both Katrina and Lukas to get them to vote each other, and also try to get one of them to play their idol, but neither of them have the idol, so at tribal council, Katrina becomes the first person sent to the Edge in a 5-4 vote.
Episode 2: Lukas tries to figure out who voted for him, so he tries to ask around his tribe, but does not get an answer and likely only angers his tribe. Void finds the hidden immunity idol so Lukas wouldn't, and he shows it to Maddie to make sure she's loyal to him. At Fotia, Ava and Ellie get into a bit of an argument, and EJ tries to get Ellie onto his side by talking to her. Vaso tries doing the same thing with Ava. Ava and Darleen form an alliance, as Darleen wanted to get her own numbers so she could topple EJ sooner rather than later. Once again, the Fotia tribe wins immunity, and the whole Pouli tribe is ready to vote out Lukas, since he's the only outsider and he has already proven himself to want to play way too hard, so Lukas is voted out 7-1.
Episode 3: After Lukas' vote out, the Outcasts must turn on one another, and the lowest in the pecking order was Maddie. At Fotia, people start to see Krista as an easy target, so both Erik and Ellie form fake alliances with her. Kim also leaves her alliance with Darleen and EJ after having a fight with the latter. Vaso, not trusting anyone, looks for and finds the idol. Pouli wins their first challenge of the season, winning the reward, but their winning streak is cut short before it even began, as the Fotia tribe wins immunity for the third time in a row. Maddie tries to manipulate Marshall into flipping from his side, to hopefully bring a few others with him, but Marshall stays loyal to the majority. Maddie becomes the third person voted out in a 6-1 vote, getting sent to the Edge.
Episode 4: When the tribes meet up again, a tribe swap is announced, and the purple Telikos tribe, which means "final" in Greek, is introduced. The Fotia tribe consists of four former Fotias- Ava, Ellie, Erik, and Kyle, and one Pouli- Marshall. On Pouli is three Fotias- EJ, Krista, and Vaso, and two Poulis- Lila and Luther. Finally, on Telikos is two Fotias- Darleen and Kim, and three Poulis- Void, NK, and Ximena. At Fotia, both Ellie and Kyle bond, and the two of them decide to form an alliance and pull in Erik. At Pouli, Krista makes it clear to Lila that she's going to flip, given how EJ had been controlling the Fotia tribe since the start of the game. This causes Lila to see Krista as a bit of a loose cannon, so she keeps an eye on her. At Telikos, Darleen finds the idol, and she keeps down about it, knowing that she's in the minority. NK impresses his team with his leadership, and he also bonds with Ximena. Pouli loses the immunity challenge again, which lowers morale significantly for them. When they get back to camp, Vaso decides on a whim to flip from his old alliance, seeing as he's not gonna vote in the majority if he doesn't. The new target is the mafioso himself, EJ. He tries talking to each of the tribe members individually to try and get them to vote Lila out, who has kind of became the punching bag of the season, but it doesn't succeed, and EJ becomes the fourth person voted out in a 4-1 vote.
Episode 5: Knowing that they are unified, the Pouli tribe are at peace-for now. At the Edge, Lukas finds a way to practice for the Edge challenge, which he finds very useful. Maddie also finds an extra vote that she could give to someone, but they won't be able to use it because reasons. At Telikos, Void and Kim bond over being from Vegas, and a new alliance is formed, with Darleen and Ximena, leaving NK on the outs of the tribe. At Fotia, Erik and Kyle bond strongly, and Ellie tries to get Marshall on her side to take out Ava if they were to lose, since she was the weakest in the tribe. Pouli loses the reward challenge, but Fotia loses the immunity challenge for the first time in the season. Marshall becomes torn between going with the majority and putting himself on the bottom or voting against the majority and still being on the bottom. Ultimately, he decides to go with the majority, thinking Ava didn't have the idol, which is true, she didn't. She becomes the fifth person voted out in a 4-1 vote. Back at camp, Ellie and Erik solidify their alliance by forming a final two deal. They think that since the last season they saw before they left was Blood Vs Water 3, which had a final two. On the Edge, Katrina finds an advantage to penalize who she thinks has the best chance at returning to the game. At Pouli, Vaso and Krista decide they need to stick together because they two Poulis were gonna get them one after the other if they didn't stick together. Lila becomes seen as an even bigger threat than she used to be, and Krista and Vaso try to pull Luther aside to try to convince him to flip on his alliance. He refuses to in secret. Fotia continues their losing streak by losing the reward challenge, but since the host announced that two tribes will be going to tribal council in a joint tribal council, Fotia fights tooth and nail to win the challenge, and they are able to succeed. The whole Telikos tribe decides that Krista is too much of a loose cannon to make it to the merge. Vaso and Krista target Lila, and Luther and Lila target Krista for being weaker than Vaso, as they don't know when the merge will occur. At tribal council, Krista is blindsided 7-2 and is sent to the edge.
Episode 6: The merge is announced. The 12 remaining contestants watch the first six castaways to be voted out compete in a challenge to return to the game, which Maddie wins despite being penalized by Katrina. Krista then raises her flag to leave the game, leaving the game first. The people who formed the Thymamai tribe, which means "remember" in Greek, are Void, Darleen, Ellie, Erik, Kim, Kyle, Lila, Luther, Maddie, Marshall, NK, Vaso, and Ximena. Luther decides to go rogue from his six person alliance, leaving them in a severe minority. Maddie tries to get a good relationship with Marshall again, and it works, but it causes most of the tribe to turn on her again. Lila finds the merge tribe idol, and like many before her, she keeps quiet because she does not want to attract more attention. Erik wins the immunity challenge, and when talking to others about the vote, he finds most people are content with just sending Maddie right back to the Edge. Maddie tries to target Kim, but does not succeed as she is voted out 12-1 and is sent back to the Edge.
Episode 7: After Maddie's blindside, cracks begin to form in the final twelve. While Erik tries to remain humble after his immunity win, which he succeeds in doing, soon people start to throw out names like there's no tomorrow. NK throws out Kim's name, Ximena throws out Kyle's, Darleen does the same with NK, and Kyle throws Marshall under the bus. At the first post-merge reward challenge of the season, a group of Void, Erik, Kim, Luther, Marshall, and Ximena win, and they get Chinese takeout. Darleen wins immunity, saving her from going to the edge for one more vote. The two biggest threats at the moment for the people still in the game were Kim and Kyle, because most people believed there was some sort of poker alliance going on between the two. As it turns out, there was a sort of alliance going on there, so the ten people who weren't in it decided to split the votes between Kyle and Kim, with seven votes on Kyle, who was much more physically strong than Kim, and three votes on Kim. Kim figures out this plan, and tells Kyle to play his idol if he has one, which he does not. Kyle votes for Marshall, and Kim votes for NK, leading to Kyle getting voted out 7-3-1-1. He chooses to stick around at the Edge.
Episode 8:Erik and Ellie get into a fight for whatever reason, and their alliance becomes no more. Ximena and Vaso both decide to help out with the tribe, causing their standing within the tribe to get better. Darleen tries making her relationship closer with Luther, wanting to have a good social game so she doesn't end up as a goat. Erik wins immunity for a second time, cementing his status as a challenge threat (which is really odd, since his challenge stats are on the lower side). People finally begin to catch on to how physically strong Vaso is, so a group of four, led by Void, consisting of him, Darleen, Kim, and Ximena, while another group of four, Vaso, Erik, Ellie, and Luther, vote for Lila, seeing her as an easy target. The rest, deciding that Kim would be better off on the Edge, vote for her. Both Vaso and Lila play their idols, and Kim is the ninth person sent packing in a 3-0-0 vote.
Episode 9: After Kim's vote out, Void, Ximena, and Darleen strengthen their trio to try and have a better shot at making it to the end. Void and Darleen also form a new alliance with Ellie, Erik, and Luther to give themselves the majority of the tribe. Marshall and NK start to form a bromance, and Darleen wins immunity again. Erik and his alliance plot to get rid of Lila, due to her status as an all-around threat and the fact that she could easily win with her story in the game. Void also tries unsuccessfully to get Vaso on board, he instead gets into a fight with Ximena and really hurts his standing in the tribe, causing him to gain enemies in Ximena, Lila, Marshall, and NK. He is saved when the majority, thinking that Lila happened to be the bigger threat, vote her out instead in a 5-4-1 vote. Back at camp, Darleen bonds with Ximena, and it causes Ximena to make the reckless decision to flip from her alliance and try to join Void and Darleen's. Still, she had a dislike for Luther that she could not shake. When Vaso wins immunity, she becomes the main target. Still not giving up, she talks to her rival Vaso to try and get him to help her vote out Marshall, which he agrees to do. Still, it is not enough, and Ximena becomes the eleventh person voted out in a 7-2 vote.
Episode 10: After Ximena's vote out, only eight remain in the game. They compete in a reward challenge, which Void, Darleen, Erik, and NK win. Seeing as Vaso and Marshall were more physically threatening than NK was, despite NK winning a reward challenge. After Erik wins immunity for the third time, he tries to get everyone to vote Marshall out. When Luther later bonds with Marshall, he feels remorse for doing so, but knows it must be done. Void is not told about the plan to blindside Marshall, and he thinks that Vaso is the person being voted out, as does NK. Nk also finds the idol. At tribal council, Marshall is voted out in a 5-3 vote, and for the first time in the season, Void was on the wrong side of the vote.
Episode 11: Luther shows everyone he can win challenges and wins the reward challenge. Then, Luther brings along Void and Darleen as to show that he is playing a loyal game and he can be trusted. When they get back, Luther does some damage control with Erik for not picking him, and they get back on good terms, and also have a stronger bond than before. Vaso tries to get people on his side to blindside someone that he didn't like, so he talks to NK first, and when it didn't work, he starts targeting him, but also talks to Erik. This conversation goes down a lot better, and it helps him convince Erik to go after NK. Erik then talks to Luther and Darleen about the plan to similar success. Void, Ellie, and NK himself decide that Vaso needs to go, and NK reveals to Void his idol. Erik wins immunity for the fourth time. At tribal council, NK plays his idol, and Vaso is sent to the Edge in a 3-0 vote.
Episode 12: After Vaso arrives at the Edge of Extinction, they receive letters they wrote to themselves before the game. Back in the actual game, NK wins a reward challenge, and he chooses too bring along Void and Erik, to try and get some allies, since he was almost voted out at the last tribal council. Unfortunately, only Void is willing to help NK, as Erik was closer to Ellie and Darleen. The Ellie/NK alliance dissolves after NK gets into an argument with her, and he loses another ally. Things get dire when he loses the immunity challenge to Void, leaving his only option, to find an idol. He does not find one, and he knows that he's most likely going at that point. NK tries to vote for Darleen, and Void throws a vote onto Ellie due to being too close to Darleen. In the end, NK becomes the final person sent to the Edge of Extinction in a 4-1-1 vote.
Finale: Void, Darleen, Ellie, Erik, and Luther await the return of the player from the Edge. Lila wins, and she becomes a target the instant she arrives back into the game. Luckily for her, she wins immunity, and she shares the reward with Void and Erik, intending to do what NK did in the previous episode. This time, it succeeds, and she gets both Void and Erik on her side. Luther joins their side as well. Darleen and Ellie vote for Void and Luther, respectively. The other people still in the game voted for Ellie, but Darleen plays her idol for Ellie, and a tie between Void and Luther occurs. Erik decides Void is the bigger target of the two, while Lila votes for Luther. It results in another tie, causing Darleen and Erik to draw rocks, and ultimately, Darleen becomes the twelfth member of the jury. After Darleen's shocking rock draw, the four of Void, Ellie, Erik, and Luther decide to stick together to take out Lila if she loses immunity, which she does, to Void. At tribal council, not wanting anyone to flip on his closest ally in Erik, Void plays his idol for him, causing no votes to be negated, and for Lila to be voted out in a 4-1 vote over Ellie. In the final immunity challenge, Erik makes a desperate deal to Void to take him to the final two, trying to downplay his great all-around gameplay as similar to Bao's from Cook Islands- someone who has a great physical and strategic game, but their social game has a lot to be desired, and Void agrees to the plan. Void then is able to beat out Erik in the final immunity challenge, and he keeps his word, sending Luther and Ellie to fire. Luther's survival skills aided him immensely in this final challenge, and he wins the fire making challenge with a handy lead. Ellie becomes the 14th and final member of the jury. Our third all male final three consists of Void, Erik, and Luther. Void is called out for trying to be seen as trustworthy, while being caught in multiple lies during the game. Luther's game is seen as weak all-around, since he followed Void and Erik and didn't really do much in the game. He does get some votes due to how bitter the jury is towards Void and Erik, and he gets Ava, EJ, Maddie, and Marshall's votes. Kim, NK, and Vaso all respected Void's game, so they voted him to win. Ultimately, Erik is voted the winner of the final newbie season of King's Survivor due to having a great social and physical game, and never receiving a vote throughout the entire game. He may not have had the best strategic game, but he didn't need it to win the game. Void wins the Fan Favorite for being the biggest personality of the season and for his robbery.
Winner: Erik LeFort, u/Gemini_B Fan Favorite: Alfred "Void" Vallentino, u/swoldow
For King's Survivor's last season, we will be going out with a bang. 20 memorable contestants who never won before will compete for one last chance at the million, and one will win. Who will be on this season? We will find out soon enough.
submitted by KingTyson27 to BrantSteele [link] [comments]

Aerophobia – Patient Record LSA6041778-W

Patient Name: Lucan-Smith, Autumn
Age: 37
Sex: Female
Diagnosis: Aerophobia; fear of flying.
The following is a speech to text transcript spanning multiple sessions between Patient LSA6041778-W and Dr. H. Phineas Denton, who has annotated it with his own notes. The passenger manifest of Patient LSA6041778-W’s ill-fated flight suggests another candidate of interest may have been present. This, however, is likely a coincidence, as neither case has an obvious link.
Agent 11 recovered these from a locked desk drawer in Denton’s home office in Boulder City, NV. Denton reported a robbery when he returned home from running errands. Recommend retraining or reassignment for Agent 11.
Ms. Lucan-Smith was removed from Southwest Airlines flight 712 in a sorry state. My patient was hyperventilating to the point of losing consciousness, reawakening, and beginning the process again. I hesitate to call the period between passing out a "lucid" state because her extreme phobia had rendered her unable to respond to any stimulus. She whispered "no" to herself repeatedly, shaking and crying, until her body went limp for a few moments. I wasn't present for this, myself, but I have watched footage sent over from McCarran Airport. By the time Ms. Lucan-Smith arrived at my office, she was no longer panicking but the extreme fear had exhausted her. She fell asleep several times while we talked before I decided to end the session.
Denton: Hi, Ms. Smith. I’m Dr. Denton. Before we get started, can I get you a water or a soda?
Lucan-Smith has her arms wrapped around her even though, in typical Vegas fashion, it is decidedly warm outside. Her eyes are red and she has a tissue clutched in one fist.
Lucan-Smith: It’s Lucan-Smith, actually. Hyphenated. I wanted to keep my maiden name for my work. And nothing, thank you. I’m fine.
Denton: I’m going to grab a cherry Pepsi for myself. What line of work are you in?
Lucan-Smith sits in the large, plush chair I keep in the corner of the room. Patients with anxiety – though not claustrophobic patients – usually choose that chair.
Lucan-Smith: Physics. Well, physics with a little geology, actually. I investigate light diffraction in different types of crystals. Lately, I’ve been looking at ambient light data from NOAA satellites and how it relates to crystalline structures in local geologic features.
Denton: Well, that’s… pretty fascinating, actually. What is the NOAA?
Lucan-Smith slowly releases herself from her own embrace as she talks. I hand her a bottle of water as I return from my mini-fridge and she leans forward to accept it.
Lucan-Smith: The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. They own the National Weather Service and all the… network of satellites up there collecting terabytes of data every day. It’s a really valuable resource.
Denton: It sounds that way. I might ask you to tell me more about your work off the clock. I bet you’ve got some findings you’re dying to tell someone who will listen.
She smiles.
Lucan-Smith: I do.
Denton: So. You had an eventful flight.
Lucan-Smith: You could say that.
Denton: What I got from the EMTs says another passenger – man, I really shouldn’t say this since I’m a mental health professional – another passenger went nuts and tried to open the door of your plane. My god. And then he was restrained by three flight attendants.
Lucan-Smith: He got free at one point and went for the emergency release handle again.
Denton: Jesus. Sorry, excuse my language. That’s just-
Lucan-Smith: Oh, it’s fine. I said a lot worse on the plane.
I nod, trying to convey approval and acceptance at that. I can’t say I would have done different.
Denton: And then what happened?
Her bottle of water slips out of her hands and falls to floor as her eyes shut briefly.
Lecan-Smith: Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just so tired. You wanted to know about after he, uh, after they got him. I… Well, I’ve never been good at flying. My dad flew a lot when I was a kid and I remember being creeped out by the whole thing. I have to pop a Xanax or two every time I fly and, I know this is bad, but I chase it with a beer when I’m really shaky. When that guy tried to open the door, though, I couldn’t keep my mind off all the horrible things that could happen. They just kept fucking popping in there. Everyone getting sucked out the door, heads slamming against the frame and exploding in a mess of blood and brains. The plane depressurizing and freezing everyone to death. A body going through the engine and fucking it like those geese in that Sully Sullenberger plane, then the whole plane falling. What it would feel like in my stomach. What I would see out the window, all those green and tan squares growing like a bad acid trip. Wanting desperately to die so I didn’t have to watch my fate race up at me. And then fire. If I survived the crash, burning to death in jet fuel.
Lucan-Smith: It just kept playing on repeat like a DVD menu from hell. And when it stopped, I was in an ambulance on my way to the psych ward at Desert Springs. Then I called up my insurance and ended up here.
I need to note here that my patient is describing psychosis. While commonly associated with severe mental illnesses, use of some controlled substances, and even types of meditation, it can be a symptom of an extremely stressful episode. In short, Autumn’s consciousness was not present in the physical world. She was elsewhere, in nightmare land. Prior to Autumn, I have never come across a patient with a phobia so severe it brought on a fully psychotic episode. This is a profound case of aerophobia.
Denton: You said flying’s always been tough for you. Do you remember a time when it was ever easier? What I mean is, did it become less scary for a time and then become scarier after, say, really bad turbulence? Or maybe it gets scarier every time?
Lucan-Smith: I think it’s gotten worse…
Her eyes fall shut again for about half a second before she jerks herself awake.
Lucan-Smith: Whoa. Oh my gosh, I’m sorry! I think it’s gotten worse each time I set foot on an airplane. Maybe I think my time is closer to being at hand after each successful landing. How many do I get?
Her eyes flutter.
Denton: Ms. Lucan-Smith – Autumn – you’ve had a rough day. I have a free appointment tomorrow at 11. Why don’t you come back then? No charge for today’s visit.
Autumn leaves and I have my secretary call to book her a cheap room for the night. It’s at a casino and probably stinks of cigarettes and buffet farts, but it’s cheap. The next session is fairly uneventful; Autumn tells me about her past history with flying which is, predictably, troubled. In phobia cases, I usually try to use either exposure therapy (gradually easing the patient into their discomfort zone) or implosion therapy (exposing the patient to the most extreme version of their discomfort). These are both behaviorist methods and the best tool for the job depends on both the patient’s personality and the nature of the fear. For Autumn, however, I don’t think either will work. She just experienced the most extreme aerophobic implosion therapy I can imagine and came out much worse than she went in.
I’m not a Freudian psychologist, and I often think hypnotherapy has a lot in common with good fertilizer: they’re both bullshit. Autumn did, however, mention that her father flew a lot for work and that she used to go with him. She wasn’t scared of flying as a very young child, but started to associate negative emotions with it around age 7 or 8. I have to wonder if one of those early flights ran into a problem she’s either forgotten or doesn’t want to remember.
Autumn is effectively stuck in Nevada while her husband and son are in Tallahassee, FL with Autumn’s mother-in-law. She desperately wants to be with them, and I can understand that. I want to help her be able to board a flight and find comfort with her family. With that in mind, I call Derek Proschutz, a friend from graduate school who practices more new-agey remedies like meditation. And hypnosis. I drive Autumn to Derek’s office – one corner of which is so crowded with incense sticks it looks like the Tunguska forest, post-explosion – and watch over the procedure.
Proschutz: She’s under now. It’s not like you see on TV, Phin. You can still talk and interact like normal, she’s just very relaxed. Very… ‘reflective’ is the appropriate word, I think. Don’t bring the energy up too much; if she gets frightened or finds something funny, we’ll have to put her under again.
Denton: Autumn, I want you to consider those plane flights-
Proschutz: I’m going to bring in some lavender essential oils to create a nice atmosphere.
Denton: Uh, sure. Good idea. Autumn, think about the flights with your dad when you were very young. Remember the clothes you wore, the games you took with you, what you wanted to watch on-
Proschutz: Phin, would you like some rooibos tea for your session?
Denton: Uh… No, man. We’re… I’m good.
Proschutz: Remember, keep the energy low. You seem like you’re getting worked up.
Collaboration is hard sometimes.
Denton: What was your father like, Autumn?
Lucan-Smith: Did you ever read The Great Gatsby?
Denton: The green light over the bay. Yes.
Lucan-Smith: Do you remember the billboard? The oculist?
Denton: Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.
Lucan-Smith: I knew I liked you for a reason. Yeah, him. The description of the billboard always reminded me of my father. Good old Guy Lucan. He was bald with two intelligent, judgmental eyes behind round wire frames.
Denton: The two of you didn’t get along?
Lucan-Smith: We did when I was young. I think he joked around a lot more back then. Or maybe I just didn’t know what normal human behavior was like and I felt comfortable around him because he was my dad. When I got older, though, nothing was good enough for him. My math grades weren’t high enough, I didn’t run fast enough in track. He wanted me to go into anthropology because the “real mysteries of humanity lay there.” To almost everyone else, physics is the hard science and anthro the soft. To Guy Lucan, it was the opposite. And his taste in friends ran contrary to typical common sense, too. Anyone you saw on the street or tucked away in, like, a strange voodoo shop that you might think looked creepy, or molester-ish, or unibomber-esque, they were my dad’s best buds. And not just weirdos, but criminals. Dangerous people. He’s dead now, and I’m sure that’s why.
Is this falling out with her father the real story here? Did that sour her to flying and magnify every negative aspect about it? If so, could that even help in rehabilitating her?
Denton: Think about the last time you had fun on a trip with him. Where were you going?
Lucan-Smith: We… I think we were coming back from Mexico. I remember him teaching me how to say “Jalisco”. So I guess we were in Guadalajara. That makes sense because I remember seeing a picture of Felix Gallardo, the leader of the fucking Guadalajara Cartel, on America’s Most Wanted or something and feeling like I knew him. “Mom,” I said, “that’s Don Felix, dad’s friend!” She turned the TV off. I think she already knew, though. They were separated about 6 months after that.
Lucan-Smith: Anyway, we had just met with Don Felix. He and my dad drank tequila from the bottle with the worm and joked through the night. Then Don Felix waved over two jacked dudes who set a big army duffel bag on the table. My dad unzipped it to find dozens of carved figurines. You know those Olmec heads? Small versions of those, some freaky-faced suns, Mayan 2012 death calendars, these striated ovals that looked like they were made out of obsidian. They made me feel bad when I looked at them, like I had walked in on someone changing. My dad’s pilot brought a case of money to the table and then there was more drinking and laughing.
Denton: Then you went to the plane?
Lucan-Smith: Yeah, then we got back in the plane and took off from a dirt strip in a cotton field. It was bumpy. Then…
Autumn is quiet for a long time. I don’t want to interrupt her thought process but I begin to wonder if she’s fallen asleep again.
Lucan-Smith: Lightning! There’s lightning but I can see stars. The plane starts to shake. I get out of my seat and lay on the floor on top of one of dad’s bags. I have my cheek pushed against the blue notebook he tapped against his thigh when he was on the phone. It smells like – ugh – mildew and wet dirt. Or creosote mixed with rotting fruit?
Lucan-Smith: The pilot, he sees me. He turns around and says, “Honey, I need you to get back in your seat and buckle the belt, ok? We’ll be fine but you could fall and get a scrape on your knee. How about you come up here with me and read one of your story books?” His name was George, I think.
Lucan-Smith: I go up to the front with George and then I can see the clouds. Weird, sulfurous clouds swirling around us. They looked like cartoon pollution clouds from Captain Planet. The plane shook harder in the storm and-
Autumn goes silent again. I try to ask a question but she holds up a hand like she’s on the phone. Then she opens her eyes.
Lucan-Smith: I think I’m fully awake now. I remember what happened to George, though. He hit his head against the glass when the plane jerked. I could see a smear of blood when he slumped in his seat. My dad pulled George out of the seat and took the wheel. I know you’re supposed to call it a stick in a plane, but this one actually looked like a wheel. The storm cleared up and we landed. George was dead.
Denton: One of the vivid thoughts you pictured on the Southwest flight was people banging their heads against the door frame. I wonder if it came from this?
Lucan-Smith: The way the lightning flashed through the blood, like red cello paper… Some of the blood I imagined did flow far enough to cover the windows. Yeah; it looked just like that. I remember dreaming about this, about George, but I thought… I thought I made it up. Just a nightmare.
Proschutz: Would you like to go back under?
Lucan-Smith: No, I think I want to go back to my hotel room. I don’t feel very well.
I drove Autumn back to the Circus Circus. It was a quiet ride, Autumn’s eyes stared out the windshield, unfocused and unseeing. Presumably, she was reliving her childhood memories.
The next morning, I had missed a call from Autumn. Her husband and son were flying back from Florida to their new home in Oregon. It was the first time any of them would actually see the house – they had moved to accommodate Autumn’s new job at OSU – and she wanted to be there with them. She did say there was a silver lining to being stranded in Las Vegas; she didn’t have to go on her son’s first airplane ride with him where he could pick up all her anxieties and phobias. I had to agree.
Autumn wanted to try implosion therapy and recreate the conditions of that last flight she took with her father. I had mentioned in our second session that I knew a Cessna pilot who helped me treat fear of flying. When I told her I would have to ask about the pilot’s schedule, Autumn told me money was no object; if the pilot could be free today with a five thousand dollar bonus, that was best. I didn’t peg Autumn as someone with a lot of extra money, so I knew her desire to see her family was strong. She wanted to conquer her fears so she could go home. It was brave and noble. I told her I’d see what I could do.
As luck would have it, Elisa Maldonado was free. She had been fine tuning her plane’s engine – a task she seemed to be in the middle of every time I called her – and stopped for a quick breakfast at the airport café. We had a delay of about an hour while Elisa filed our flight manifest, but we were in the air before lunch.
Lucan-Smith: You know, I remembered some weird things but I think playing with my Teddy Ruxpin while my dad partied with a drug kingpin is probably the weirdest one. Maybe not the most mentally scarring. But definitely weird.
Denton: Maybe your dad was more Meyer Wolfsheim than T. J. Eckleburg?
Autumn laughs and leans back in her seat. We’re ascending through minor turbulence and she doesn’t seem phased. I’m proud of her but also astounded. From psychosis to complete serenity after one hypnotherapy treatment? If anything, Autumn seemed impatient.
Maldonado: Phineas, get up here.
Denton: Something wrong?
Maldonado: Look at that shit. Fucking thunderstorm erupted out of nothing as soon as we hit 7,000 feet. Looks like it’s blowing right toward us.
Denton: Can we go around it or land?
Maldonado: I’m going to try to go around it. Landing might be hard because it’s a congested time. Especially with that bitch of a storm rolling in.
Denton: Autumn, I have some bad news. There’s a storm heading our way.
Lucan-Smith: I know. Very yellow, right? Cartoon pollution?
I looked out the cockpit window again. She was right.
Denton: Yes.
Lucan-Smith: Look, Dr. Denton, I think I should come clean about yesterday. When I said my dad partying with Don Felix was the weirdest thing I remembered, you didn’t know that there was a lot of competition for that top spot.
Lucan-Smith: George died, yeah, but… The artifacts my dad got from the drug dealers. The ones that made me feel weird, the black eggs? They started shaking before the plane. Before the lightning. Obviously I was too young to make a connection at the time, but I think they were calling to something. It’s simple physics; the more altitude you give a transmitter, the farther it can reach. There are fewer obstacles in the way to impede the signal.
Lucan-Smith: That’s what happened with those eggs. And the feeling changed. At the villa, I felt like I was watching it. As the plane shook, I felt like they were watching me. And what they were thinking… it wasn’t good.
Maldonado: What the fuck did you get me into, Phineas? I’ve never seen a storm move like this. It’s like it’s got goddamn fingers reaching out at us!
Lucan-Smith: When my dad realized what was happening, he had me lay down on the bag of trinkets to keep them still. He pulled out a little walkie-talkie and started screaming into it. “Camelot! Camelot! Come in, damn you! I have Items 26 and 27 but we’re under attack. I think it might be some kind of sonic weapon. Was there any chatter stateside about my mission? Camelot?” It was like he was playing soldier.
Denton: Autumn, why didn’t you tell me this? Was he part of a DEA operation or something?
The turbulence in our own plane was considerable. The midday light that had been streaming through the windows had faded to a sickly mustard color and I could hear Elisa cursing as she fought with the controls in the cockpit.
Lucan-Smith: I didn’t go to the cockpit with George to read then; he was too busy fighting to keep the plane stable. I stayed in the back with Dad, who told me to put the black eggs in my dress pockets. When the yellow clouds swirling around our plane started to seep in under the doors and seams in the bolted hull, I was right there laying on top of the army duffel bag. The fog streamed past my face – fast enough to sound like a Coke can opening in slow motion – and coalesced into a misty, malformed body, like a hologram projected onto dry ice smoke.
Lucan-Smith: It touched my father’s hand, almost like a handshake, and he writhed in pain. When he finally extricated himself from it, his hand dripped with blood. The nails were gone. And then it spoke.
Lucan-Smith: “Guy Lucan. You owe me life. You took my body from me and now,” the cloud raised one tendril that was polka-dotted with gory fingernails, “I take yours.”
Lucan-Smith: My dad looked in my direction. “Go, Autumn. Give those to George.” I left but, behind me, I could hear him say, “I have the vessels. You need them to walk the earth again. Isn’t that right, Safir? Kill me and you get nothing.”
Lucan-Smith: “Where?” it asked.
Lucan-Smith: My dad called for George to set the autopilot and join him in the back. I was crouched on the floor, peeking around the corner. George put on a brave face and puffed out his chest as he strode toward whatever cotton candy demon he was going to face down with my father. My father put a hand on George’s shoulder. One single pat. Then he threw open the airplane door and kicked George out. His head cracked against the bulkhead and blood splattered across the window. I rushed to the cockpit window to see him. I had just handed George the two black eggs and I could see one spiral out of his coat pocket as he fell, shrinking into the yellow void. The mist itself chased down after George, save for the ghoul wearing my father’s hastily removed fingernails. “This will be the last time you trick me, Lucan,” it said. “I will have Lucan blood. I will wear Lucan flesh. If not yours, then someone you love. Your bloodline will end, Guy Lucan.”
Lucan-Smith: “You’d better not let the vessels fall so low you can’t catch them,” was all my father said in return. He flew the rest of the way back, talking on his radio and reading out of the blue book that stank like a grave.
Denton: Autumn, I think this might be your psychosis manifesting itself again. We’re in a plane, it’s a stressful event, you’re distracting yourself from real life.
Lucan-Smith: No, Dr. Denton, I’m not. Something happened on that Southwest flight. I heard a voice, something whispering ‘Safir’ to me. It was important. It felt like something was coming and… and all I could see were plane crashes clouding the inside of my brain. I think it was a message. Safir is back and he’s going to follow through on his threat. Lucan blood will be spilled.
I shook my head and stood up. Maybe I was wrong about Autumn. Maybe she wasn’t a mentally healthy woman with a severe phobia capable of producing psychoses. Maybe the psychoses and the phobia were driven by some deeper, insidious disorder I had missed.
Lucan-Smith: And my son goes on his first flight today. In two and a half hours. He and I are the only Lucans left. If I didn’t convince you to get me up here, Safir would be coming for him. But, instead, he’s here.
As she says this, Autumn points at the seam of the Cessna door where thick yellow smoke pours into the cabin.
Lucan-Smith: You helped me realize what was actually going on. Thank you.
Golden strands of cloudy haze wrapped themselves around Autumn’s torso, enveloping her.
Lucan-Smith: Hey, now you’re Nick. You’re the outsider who gets to peek in. See you ‘round, Old Sport.
Autumn was entirely obscured from my sight, then the mist filled the cabin entirely. It was so dense I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then, as if a switch flipped, it was gone. The sky outside the plane was clear and there was no turbulence.
Maldonado: What in the actual shit was that? Phineas, how long do you think we've been up here?
Denton: I don’t… Autumn?
Maldonado: Feels like about a half hour to me. Maybe forty-five minutes. Right, Phineas?
Denton: Yeah. I'd say so. Autumn, where are you? Did you fall out of your seat?
Maldonado: All my clocks show we've been up here two hours. Two hours! But we've still got a full tank of gas. How does that happen?
Denton: Interesting. Autumn? Elisa, where the hell is Autumn?
Maldonado: Your patient is gone? Did- Holy shit, did she fall out? What the fuck?
When Elisa and I finally landed, Elisa’s Cessna was seized for a ‘quarantine watch’. Whatever that is. I don’t know how they knew where to find us, or how they even knew they should. ‘They’ didn’t even tell us who they were. I didn’t report Autumn missing until we were on the ground and the police didn’t know anything about it. So whoever showed up in black SUVs certainly was not LVPD.
The police questioned Elisa and me intensively, but ultimately decided we didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance. No one had fallen onto the Strip from eight thousand feet. Autumn just vanished.
Additional note: Several patient files are missing from my filing cabinet at the Las Vegas office. I’ve moved this file to my home office for safety. I’m probably being paranoid, but I can’t shake the feeling there’s a connection between the missing files and the seizure of Elisa’s plane.
submitted by EtTuTortilla to nosleep [link] [comments]

Wrestling Observer Rewind • Nov. 7, 1994

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE: 1991 • 1992 • 1993
1-3-1994 1-10-1994 1-17-1994 1-24-1994
1-31-1994 2-7-1994 2-14-1994 2-21-1994
2-28-1994 3-7-1994 3-21-1994 3-28-1994
4-4-1994 4-11-1994 4-18-1994 4-25-1994
5-2-1994 5-9-1994 5-16-1994 5-26-1994
5-30-1994 6-6-1994 6-10-1994 6-20-1994
6-27-1994 7-4-1994 7-11-1994 7-18-1994
8-1-1994 8-8-1994 8-14-1994 8-22-1994
8-29-1994 9-5-1994 9-12-1994 9-19-1994
9-26-1994 10-3-1994 10-10-1994 10-17-1994
10-24-1994 10-31-1994
Just want to brag for a second if that's okay. My favorite part about doing all these Observer posts is how much I've learned from reading them. Last night, it paid off as I participated in a Royal Rumble-style wrestling trivia competition at a bar here in Memphis and ended up beating 34 other people to win. And I owe it all to His Holiness, Lord Meltzer, praise be to the most high. Thanks Dave! (Also, shouts out to the guy at trivia who chose "Hepatitis O'Neil" as his gimmick name. Oh, how I laughed...)
  • Preliminary numbers for Halloween Havoc show the PPV buyrate to be around 0.95 which is absolutely disastrous. WCW had been openly predicting that the show would do nearly double of what Bash at the Beach did and instead, it actually did less. Considering all the money they put into promoting this show, plus retiring Ric Flair, it's bad news all around.
  • Hogan is currently negotiating extending his WCW contract but it's thought that he's angling for full, complete control of the company to stay, and at the very least, he won't settle for anything less than what he already has, which is complete creative control over his and his friends characters and storylines. The booking committee was also recently restructured, with Hogan and Jimmy Hart added so he has a say in everything in the company already. Hogan is obviously still a draw but he's not as big a draw as they hoped and now that the dream match storyline with Flair is done, the real test of how well Hogan can draw begins. Dave wonders if he's worth the money. They've built so much of the company around him and they're paying him truckloads of money, but he rarely works house shows and many of WCW's core fans resent him (as evidenced by him regularly getting booed). On the same hand, if WCW lets Hogan go, the company likely deflates like a balloon without him. Sting is the only other possible candidate and he's repeatedly proven to not be a significant draw, yet he's the best they've got. WCW doesn't have a star that can carry the company without Hogan but it might end up hurting them more to try to keep him.
  • The AAA When Worlds Collide PPV next week is by far the most important Lucha Libre event ever in the U.S. and the success or failure of it will likely determine whether AAA can truly cross the border and become a legitimate promotion in America. Dave gives a long history of Lucha Libre's successes in America, dating back to the 60s and 70s with guys like El Santo, Mil Mascaras, Gory Guerrero and others and how it died off in the 80s and wasn't revived until AAA shocked the wrestling world in 1992 when they sold out several huge shows in California. Including selling out the same Los Angeles Sports Arena that WWF failed to sell out for 2 different Wrestlemanias. But crowds have fallen since then every time after. Now, WCW has financed this upcoming PPV, with English and Spanish commentary to try and cross it over to American audiences, but in typical WCW fashion, they totally dropped the ball by not promoting it at all. Dave spends over a page describing how WCW has screwed this up to the point of nearly sabotage and thinks it will likely flop on PPV because both sides failed to promote it properly.
  • From here, Dave spends several pages explaining the differences in Mexican wrestling and then gives the background and storylines behind each match at the PPV. Dave seems to really want this PPV to succeed while resigning himself to the fact that it probably won't. He calls Rey Mistero Jr. the heart and soul of AAA and says he's the most incredible and creative high flyer in the world aside from maybe Great Sasuke. He notes that La Parka "wears a Skeletor costume" so it might be hard to take him as a serious worker at first glance, but don't make that mistake, he's awesome. Love Machine and Eddie Guerrero "are probably the best tag team in the world right now."
  • New details on Missy Hyatt's lawsuit against WCW. During her employment, Missy alleges she was the victim of sexual harassment, discrimination, or retaliation by a number of people. The names included are Ric Flair, Jim Ross, Eric Bischoff, Mike Graham, Greg Gagne, Ole Anderson, Gene Okerlund and several backstage and office employees and range from people grabbing her breasts, continually asking her out for dates or sexual favors, making unwanted sexual advances, and threatening or intimidating her for reporting harassment. She also claims a full color photo of her, with her breast exposed when it popped out at Starrcade 93 was printed out and displayed around the office. Hyatt says she complained to Eric Bischoff, who did nothing, so she went above his head to Bob Dhue to report it. When Bischoff learned she went to Dhue, he fired her and Bob Dhue upheld her termination. She also alleges wage discrimination, saying she was paid less than men who did the same jobs and that WCW hasn't paid her for merchandising income. And finally, she claims that after breaking up with Eric Bischoff's friend Jason Hervey, he sent Missy's belongings to Bischoff. However, Bischoff refused to return the items to her until she signed over to Hervey the titles to 3 expensive cars she had in her name.
  • UWA and AAA have restarted their working relationship, at least for now, which led to a couple of AAA stars working a UWA show last week and another joint show scheduled next week. Might be a little too late for UWA though.
  • NJPW came close to getting a TV deal here in the U.S. but it fell through. They were negotiating with TNT to air a weekly show because TNT wants to break into the Asian market. However, TV-Asahi in Japan, which owns 50% of NJPW, is also trying to expand into Asia and they saw TNT as competition for that, so they refused to sign off on the deal.
  • Atsushi Onita held a major party to celebrate passing the 1,000 stitches mark on his body. He's trying to get into the Guinness World Records book for person who has had the most stitches. Everyone needs to have a goal, I guess.
  • Terry Funk recently cut ties with Onita's FMW and is planning to work for IWA, which is a smaller but similar deathmatch promotion in Japan. Funk challenged Onita to a winner-take-all $1 million dollar match. Onita responded saying that he has no animosity towards Funk for jumping ship and that he'd love to come over to Funk's house and eat a steak with him. Funk responded by making the challenge again and saying Onita lied to him because he promised Funk a rematch after Funk put him over in 1993 but never gave him one. Funk then said if Onita came over for steak, he'd make sure he poisoned the steak.
  • Vince McMahon filmed another promo as a heel for USWA this week, but it was mostly just to hype a benefit softball game that Lawler is involved in. Vince strongly hinted that he would be in Memphis for the game, but never outright said it. Although Vince was great as a heel in promos he filmed last year, Dave says he was really over-acting in this one (can't find this one).
  • Dave has finally seen enough SMW footage to declare that The Gangstas gimmick isn't working. Most times when a company tries to cross a line and be controversial, it usually turns off more fans than it turns on and that seems to be the case here. The crowds have dwindled and the Gangstas matches are mostly greeted with silence from the fans. New Jack cuts good promos, but nothing that sells tickets and in the ring, the team is awful, with Mustafa in particular not even being ready to work opening matches, much less main events.
  • WCW settled the "When Worlds Collide" PPV name issue with ECW and as a result of the settlement, a couple of WCW wrestlers will work on an upcoming ECW show. No word on who it will be yet, although ECW has been desperately trying to get a Brian Pillman vs. Sabu match, but WCW has repeatedly refused to let them use Pillman. After this agreement is done, WCW has made it clear that they will no longer have any relationship with ECW.
  • In a recent issue of Sports Illustrated, they listed "Muhammad Ali handing Hulk Hogan the belt at Halloween Havoc" as that week's Sign of the Apocalypse (a weekly feature in the magazine). In the same issue, someone wrote in to the letters section about SI's recent article about the 40 most annoying people in sports and wrote, "No list would be complete without including all pro wrestlers who dare to call their chosen profession a sport."
  • Jim Crockett ran his first NWA show at the Dallas Sportatorium, with mixed results. Some people said it was better than the GWF shows ("what praise, huh?") but others said it was worse. It's expected that former GWF star Moadib (Ahmed Johnson) is going to be pushed as the promotion's top star.
  • Cactus Jack and Sabu had a crazy match at a casino in Las Vegas, including a spot where they did a piledriver on a blackjack table in the casino in the middle of an ongoing game (this appears to be the match and at about the 8:50 mark, you see them heading into the casino, but then the video cuts back to the ring, so whatever happened on the floor of the casino apparently wasn't filmed).
WATCH: Cactus Jack vs. Sabu - Las Vegas, 1994
  • Indie wrestling promoter Cliff Bartz was arrested by the FBI in Florida this week where he was living under a fake name. Bartz had a reputation as a snake indie promoter and was on the run from charges that he masterminded armed robberies and intimidated witnesses.
  • Movie director Steven Spielberg is refusing to allow his new movie Schindler's List to air on PPV because he says he doesn't want it to be associated with things like pro wrestling.
  • Vader was scheduled to face Hogan at Starrcade, but Hogan nixed the idea. Vader then filmed promos teasing challenging Hogan down the road at some later date, but somehow, those interviews got scrubbed from TV also and never aired.
  • Speaking of Hogan politics, after Steve Austin lost the U.S. title to Jim Duggan in 28 seconds, Austin was reportedly promised that he would get the belt back at Halloween Havoc. But Hogan overruled the booking committee, so his friend Jim Duggan is still champion.
  • On TV this weekend, Eric Bischoff was doing commentary and claimed the last PPV proves WCW is the #1 company. He then told fans to "check out the competition and when you're done laughing at the clowns, come back, we'll still be here." Dave mentions the rocks and glass houses saying.
  • Brian Blair and Warlord, two more of Hogan's friends, may be headed in to WCW soon.
  • Dave is hearing that Bob Backlund will be winning the title from Bret Hart at Survivor Series, "for better or worse," he says.
  • Bull Nakano is expected to win the WWF women's title from Alundra Blayze at the All Japan Women's Tokyo Dome show later this month.
  • Dave gives 4.5 stars to a Diesel/Shawn Michaels vs. 1-2-3 Kid/Razor Ramon match that aired on Action Zone and says it's the best WWF TV match in more than a year (yeah I think this match is kind of famous for being the first time the Kliq all got to work together on TV and they tore the house down on a throwaway Saturday morning show).
WATCH: Diesel/Shawn Michaels vs. 1-2-3 Kid/Razor Ramon
MONDAY: Randy Savage leaves WWF, Chris Benoit breaks Sabu's neck, AAA PPV fallout, and more...
submitted by daprice82 to SquaredCircle [link] [comments]

Do we really need another Martin Scorsese gangster movie?

Hi everyone
The Irishman will mark the fourth time director Martin Scorsese has made an Italian Mafia movie starring Robert De Niro in a major role. I wanted to take this opportunity to have a look at Scorsese’s gangster pictures through the years, and explore The Irishman’s relationship with the previous films. Do we really need another mafia film? What can the upcoming crime film add to Scorsese’s résumé that hasn’t already been done?
My personal hope is that The Irishman is more thought provoking than the previous 3 films. The most interesting thing for me is the 'old man/aging gangster' aspect about Frank Sheeran looking back on his life. It ties nicely with mean Streets being about lowlife degenerates, Goodfellas about middle-of-the-pack hoods, and Casino about made men. This whole thing comes full circle with the aged men looking back on their lives.
I made the below video briefly looking at the relationship between the 3 main gangster movies that Scorsese has done, and what potentially The Irishman could bring to the table, validating its existence:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2qnx_S0MTQ
I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and criticisms.
If you prefer to read instead of watching the video, I wrote it up here:
It must say something about how good Martin Scorsese’s mafia movies are when this director of over 25 feature length films is often only remembered by some as a director of mob flicks. In reality he has only made 3, with one more on the way – The Irishman. I wanted to have a look at the upcoming picture, and see how it could relate to Scorsese’s crime resume, and what, if anything, it could add to a group of movies that already have said so much.
In 1973, up and coming director Scorsese cemented himself as someone to watch with the visceral and fierce crime film Mean Streets, about a duo of hoodlums growing up in Little Italy, where Scorsese himself lived his youth in. What we saw on screen had an improvisational feel to it, like all the mundane conversations, date nights and bar fights were really happening, and we just happened to be there. But the chaos was being puppeteer by a future master, suggested by the way this film was shot and edited. Rock n Roll, long takes, ultraviolence and whip pans were just some of the few elements, in addition to themes of machismo and catholic guilt, that would go on to be staple Scorsese trademarks. The film dealt with degenerates and scumbags, and yet they were human. In some cases they were even charismatic, their lifestyle inviting, but ultimately Scorsese would pull the plug on this romantic fantasy that was the mob way of life, and unleash chaos in the final third of the movie.
The film had a dirty feel…gritty and rough around the edges. It had a feel of something trying to burst out and move away from the piss-stained and littered sidewalks, trying to be something different and to stand out, much like the main character and the man behind the camera. Scorsese had poured personal dilemmas and his own internal conflicts into this movie, and it been suggested that we could see the main character as Scorsese himself in his earlier days. Something interesting to note was the movie’s lack of plot. If you had to explain what happens in the movie in a couple of sentences, what would you say? It’s difficult. Scorsese has said that he does not pay a great deal of attention to plot, in fact he claims The Departed made in 2006 is the first movie he ever made with a plot. Rather his attention is fixated on character. And Mean Streets, despite being directed by a no name starring no names on a shoe string budget, has great characters. Characters that feel real. Characters who don’t move or act for the sake of the plot or sequences of events, but rather their emotions and interactions are the centrepiece of the film, a core element without which Mean Streets doesn’t exist. With this movie, it isn’t ‘such and such happens’, then ‘such and such happens’ and because ‘such and such happens’ ‘such and such happens’. Cause and effect is thrown out the window, replaced with an emphasis on what is said, what isn’t said, what is meant, what is this character feeling, how is this character changing, if you put these two characters in a room together and lock the door, what will happen? When the characters are strong enough as they are in Mean Streets, who needs a plot? Let the characters take it away.
The style in which Scorsese directed Mean Streets, the beautiful marriage of music and images, coarse and jagged though admirable, was perfected by the time he revisited that world with the incredible Goodfellas. Again, the mob life feels entrancing and inviting, and again it is shown to be ruthless and ultimately not rewarding. A generation who had grown up on gangster films showcasing mobsters as operatic and tragic figures, almost samurai like, were given a slap to the face and a gun to the head with the captivating but punishing 1990 picture. Nowhere is the essence of this best summarised than Henry Hill’s chuffed explanation as to why the gangster Tommy DeVito being ‘made’ was such a great thing. The movie lures you in through a combination of great acting, a blissful soundtrack and a genuine sense of happiness for these crooks – no matter what they are, and the things they’ve done, in this moment in time we feel their joy. And then – bang. Out of nowhere Tommy is 'whacked'. There’s your gangster life. See yourself out.
Despite the obvious dangerous nature of the mob world, we can’t help but feel seduced at the lifestyle, reconstructed so brilliantly by Scorsese. When Henry Hill peers down from his windows at these mobsters, as an asthma-stricken and bedroom confined Scorsese must have once done atop the streets of Little Italy, we are right there with him, hopping along with him on this doomed fairy-tale. Henry represents us, the ever outsider, looking in on this world but never really fitting in. He’s unable, given his bloodline, but disregarding that Henry is closer to us than we are to any of the rest of the characters. He shares our bemusement when Tommy, after beating a man almost to death, is worried that he spilled blood on floor of the club owned by Henry, or when the crew of gangsters show more concern about digging a hole to throw a murdered bartender in, as opposed to actually murdering him in the first place.
Goodfellas is easier to be immersed into than Mean Streets, not just because of the improvement of the craft, but because of this character of Henry, who acts as our window into this world where bloodshed is an everyday occurrence. And like Mean Streets, though things seems to not be so bad on the whole, the veil is lifted towards the end of the film. Paranoid, tense, and anxious are just a few of the ways to describe Henry in the last half an hour of the film, and the kinetic and coked-up style the film goes in, accelerating to his inevitable downfall, and the ironic ending. Now the fairy-tale is over, he can’t stop thinking about the life, ignorant to the fact that he should be happy to be alive, not spend his time complaining about egg-noodle and ketchup.
The wiseguys in this film are of a different calibre to Mean Streets, a step up. Where those guys were merely hoodlums, street thugs with dead end prospects, the characters in Goodfellas are a step up. They are the money earners, the guys sticking their head out of the water trying to avoid jail time, a bullet to the head, in the hope of being made and officially recognised as part of a crime syndicate. What about those who are actually in a crime syndicate then?
Enter Casino. These guys were certified Mafioso. The bosses. Pretty much as high as you could go, the very people who would be in charge of the level of mobsters in Goodfellas. The income is better, the power more influential, the stakes higher…but the mistakes made by those in the film are just as prevalent as the low level thugs of the previous films, and in the end it topples an entire empire. The technique and style that was used for Casino was very similar to Scorsese’s 1990 Oscar nominated film, which drew criticism from critics at the time, claiming the film was basically Goodfellas in Las Vegas. With that in mind, I think the film was quite symbolic in the sense that some of his favorite themes, mainly greed, are elevated and bought to the forefront. Henry is touching the waters in Goodfellas, sometimes just trying to stay alive, keep his sate constant, but here the primary characters much like Scorsese himself are indulging in their wants to the fullest. Scorsese was at the height of his power here, and it’s fitting that he makes a movie about the mob at their highest peak too. If the question in goodfellas is why would someone want to join the mob, and how does one do so, then the question in Casino is what happens once you’ve made it, and how on earth do you mess something like that up?
Scorsese said about Casino that it is “essentially having no plot, it’s all about character”, another link to the previous 2 movies. Though Goodfellas is almost unanimously touted as the better film, Casino is not to be dismissed. In fact it touches on things that its predecessor does not. As stated the theme of greed is front and centre, and even arguably the greed of the film-makers and studios for entering this world again after only 5 years. There’s something about the film the screams excess, indulgence and in relation to the development of the characters’ lives, the false hope, the dangling bait that is the American dream. Yes, I always felt that Casino had a tragic element to it. It’s difficult to put the finger on what exactly gets me to feel this way – perhaps it’s the church choir the movie’s opening titles are accompanied with, perhaps its seeing these characters waste away such an amazing gift in life as effortlessly as they received it in the first place, or perhaps it’s just the fact that the mob life, on screen at least, always seems to be accompanied by a sense of tragedy full stop. Crime and cinema has always been fascinatingly linked, going back to what was one of the first narrative films ever made with The Great Train Robbery, which is homage at the end of Goodfellas. What is it about these characters, this way of live that is so inviting, attractive and appealing? I’m in no way educated enough to properly articulate just what appeals to me about these kind of films, but perhaps it is this screen, this camera, this barrier which separates us from the violence and death, giving us peace of mind and allowing us to be entertained, to enter a world of crime without consequences for ourselves, a bit like how going on a rollercoaster ride is like experiencing the thrill of a car crash without the danger, or watching a serial killer movie for the excitement without the fear of death that would accompany actually being stalked.
Either way, what is ultimately tragic, for me at least, is that Casino was the last of the great American crime movies. Yes there were some good ones that came after, like Donnie Brasco or American Gangster, but nothing quite touched the level of Casino. Scorsese never made a film as good as, De Niro or Pesci never made a film as good as. The genre came to an abrupt close, with most modern crime films like Gangster Squad coming and going without any real significance. With mainstream movies adjusting to become politically correct, it doesn’t seem the gangster genre is even welcome on the big screen anymore.
This is why The Irishman is so important to me. It’s another film, despite the cast and director, that never really got to the big screen, instead being produced by the streaming service Netflix. But this film, for me, will act as the curtain closer, the swansong of a genre that didn’t really get one before it died. It becomes even more perfect that the golden generation of De Niro, Pesci and Keitel will return, and Al Pacino and Marty will work together for the first time. The old guard will all slip back into Mafioso roles, whilst newcomer Pacino will instead play the outside Jimmy Hoffa, a fitting placement given his detachment to Scorsese compared to the rest of the cast.
It’s a movie that will hopefully be the most mature and though provoking of the four films, focusing on the days after the heyday. What happened to Charlie after the attack on him and his friend Johnny Boy at the end of Mean Streets? What happened after Henry closed the door of his cheap home off a construction site in the middle of nowhere at the end of Goodfellas. Those periods in the men’s lives were never explored, but here with the life of Frank Sheeran we will take a trip down memory lane with him through the highs and lows. But after the business successes and the flourishing mob connections, eventually everyone he would come to know such as Russell Buffalino and Angelo Bruno would die, and we’d be left with a frail old man looking back on his life, a life in which he is supposed to have murdered over 2 dozen people. This, surely, will be where the heart of Scorsese’s film will be. Sheeran’s real life confession was prompted by a wish for attornment for his sins, which harks back to our protagonist Charlie in Mean Streets, and his juggling of his religious dilemma and his criminal lifestyle. We had the lowlife thugs, we had the middle of the park hoods, we had the bosses of bosses, and now we have the film centred on aging, elderly gangsters, past their primes looking back at the glory days of their zeniths. It’s only fitting then, that a selection of actors and a director known for these kind of movies will portray these characters, all of whom which are also past their prime and thus Scorsese’s gangster resume comes full circle.
submitted by The_Social_Introvert to TrueFilm [link] [comments]

Do we really need another Martin Scorsese gangster movie?

Hi everyone
The Irishman will mark the fourth time director Martin Scorsese has made an Italian Mafia movie starring Robert De Niro in a major role. I wanted to take this opportunity to have a look at Scorsese’s gangster pictures through the years, and explore The Irishman’s relationship with the previous films. Do we really need another mafia film? What can the upcoming crime film add to Scorsese’s résumé that hasn’t already been done?
My personal hope is that The Irishman is more thought provoking than the previous 3 films. The most interesting thing for me is the 'old man/aging gangster' aspect about Frank Sheeran looking back on his life. It ties nicely with mean Streets being about lowlife degenerates, Goodfellas about middle-of-the-pack hoods, and Casino about made men. This whole thing comes full circle with the aged men looking back on their lives.
I made the below video briefly looking at the relationship between the 3 main gangster movies that Scorsese has done, and what potentially The Irishman could bring to the table, validating its existence:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2qnx_S0MTQ
I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and criticisms.
If you prefer to read instead of watching the video, I wrote it up here:
It must say something about how good Martin Scorsese’s mafia movies are when this director of over 25 feature length films is often only remembered by some as a director of mob flicks. In reality he has only made 3, with one more on the way – The Irishman. I wanted to have a look at the upcoming picture, and see how it could relate to Scorsese’s crime resume, and what, if anything, it could add to a group of movies that already have said so much.
In 1973, up and coming director Scorsese cemented himself as someone to watch with the visceral and fierce crime film Mean Streets, about a duo of hoodlums growing up in Little Italy, where Scorsese himself lived his youth in. What we saw on screen had an improvisational feel to it, like all the mundane conversations, date nights and bar fights were really happening, and we just happened to be there. But the chaos was being puppeteer by a future master, suggested by the way this film was shot and edited. Rock n Roll, long takes, ultraviolence and whip pans were just some of the few elements, in addition to themes of machismo and catholic guilt, that would go on to be staple Scorsese trademarks. The film dealt with degenerates and scumbags, and yet they were human. In some cases they were even charismatic, their lifestyle inviting, but ultimately Scorsese would pull the plug on this romantic fantasy that was the mob way of life, and unleash chaos in the final third of the movie.
The film had a dirty feel…gritty and rough around the edges. It had a feel of something trying to burst out and move away from the piss-stained and littered sidewalks, trying to be something different and to stand out, much like the main character and the man behind the camera. Scorsese had poured personal dilemmas and his own internal conflicts into this movie, and it been suggested that we could see the main character as Scorsese himself in his earlier days. Something interesting to note was the movie’s lack of plot. If you had to explain what happens in the movie in a couple of sentences, what would you say? It’s difficult. Scorsese has said that he does not pay a great deal of attention to plot, in fact he claims The Departed made in 2006 is the first movie he ever made with a plot. Rather his attention is fixated on character. And Mean Streets, despite being directed by a no name starring no names on a shoe string budget, has great characters. Characters that feel real. Characters who don’t move or act for the sake of the plot or sequences of events, but rather their emotions and interactions are the centrepiece of the film, a core element without which Mean Streets doesn’t exist. With this movie, it isn’t ‘such and such happens’, then ‘such and such happens’ and because ‘such and such happens’ ‘such and such happens’. Cause and effect is thrown out the window, replaced with an emphasis on what is said, what isn’t said, what is meant, what is this character feeling, how is this character changing, if you put these two characters in a room together and lock the door, what will happen? When the characters are strong enough as they are in Mean Streets, who needs a plot? Let the characters take it away.
The style in which Scorsese directed Mean Streets, the beautiful marriage of music and images, coarse and jagged though admirable, was perfected by the time he revisited that world with the incredible Goodfellas. Again, the mob life feels entrancing and inviting, and again it is shown to be ruthless and ultimately not rewarding. A generation who had grown up on gangster films showcasing mobsters as operatic and tragic figures, almost samurai like, were given a slap to the face and a gun to the head with the captivating but punishing 1990 picture. Nowhere is the essence of this best summarised than Henry Hill’s chuffed explanation as to why the gangster Tommy DeVito being ‘made’ was such a great thing. The movie lures you in through a combination of great acting, a blissful soundtrack and a genuine sense of happiness for these crooks – no matter what they are, and the things they’ve done, in this moment in time we feel their joy. And then – bang. Out of nowhere Tommy is 'whacked'. There’s your gangster life. See yourself out.
Despite the obvious dangerous nature of the mob world, we can’t help but feel seduced at the lifestyle, reconstructed so brilliantly by Scorsese. When Henry Hill peers down from his windows at these mobsters, as an asthma-stricken and bedroom confined Scorsese must have once done atop the streets of Little Italy, we are right there with him, hopping along with him on this doomed fairy-tale. Henry represents us, the ever outsider, looking in on this world but never really fitting in. He’s unable, given his bloodline, but disregarding that Henry is closer to us than we are to any of the rest of the characters. He shares our bemusement when Tommy, after beating a man almost to death, is worried that he spilled blood on floor of the club owned by Henry, or when the crew of gangsters show more concern about digging a hole to throw a murdered bartender in, as opposed to actually murdering him in the first place.
Goodfellas is easier to be immersed into than Mean Streets, not just because of the improvement of the craft, but because of this character of Henry, who acts as our window into this world where bloodshed is an everyday occurrence. And like Mean Streets, though things seems to not be so bad on the whole, the veil is lifted towards the end of the film. Paranoid, tense, and anxious are just a few of the ways to describe Henry in the last half an hour of the film, and the kinetic and coked-up style the film goes in, accelerating to his inevitable downfall, and the ironic ending. Now the fairy-tale is over, he can’t stop thinking about the life, ignorant to the fact that he should be happy to be alive, not spend his time complaining about egg-noodle and ketchup.
The wiseguys in this film are of a different calibre to Mean Streets, a step up. Where those guys were merely hoodlums, street thugs with dead end prospects, the characters in Goodfellas are a step up. They are the money earners, the guys sticking their head out of the water trying to avoid jail time, a bullet to the head, in the hope of being made and officially recognised as part of a crime syndicate. What about those who are actually in a crime syndicate then?
Enter Casino. These guys were certified Mafioso. The bosses. Pretty much as high as you could go, the very people who would be in charge of the level of mobsters in Goodfellas. The income is better, the power more influential, the stakes higher…but the mistakes made by those in the film are just as prevalent as the low level thugs of the previous films, and in the end it topples an entire empire. The technique and style that was used for Casino was very similar to Scorsese’s 1990 Oscar nominated film, which drew criticism from critics at the time, claiming the film was basically Goodfellas in Las Vegas. With that in mind, I think the film was quite symbolic in the sense that some of his favorite themes, mainly greed, are elevated and bought to the forefront. Henry is touching the waters in Goodfellas, sometimes just trying to stay alive, keep his sate constant, but here the primary characters much like Scorsese himself are indulging in their wants to the fullest. Scorsese was at the height of his power here, and it’s fitting that he makes a movie about the mob at their highest peak too. If the question in goodfellas is why would someone want to join the mob, and how does one do so, then the question in Casino is what happens once you’ve made it, and how on earth do you mess something like that up?
Scorsese said about Casino that it is “essentially having no plot, it’s all about character”, another link to the previous 2 movies. Though Goodfellas is almost unanimously touted as the better film, Casino is not to be dismissed. In fact it touches on things that its predecessor does not. As stated the theme of greed is front and centre, and even arguably the greed of the film-makers and studios for entering this world again after only 5 years. There’s something about the film the screams excess, indulgence and in relation to the development of the characters’ lives, the false hope, the dangling bait that is the American dream. Yes, I always felt that Casino had a tragic element to it. It’s difficult to put the finger on what exactly gets me to feel this way – perhaps it’s the church choir the movie’s opening titles are accompanied with, perhaps its seeing these characters waste away such an amazing gift in life as effortlessly as they received it in the first place, or perhaps it’s just the fact that the mob life, on screen at least, always seems to be accompanied by a sense of tragedy full stop. Crime and cinema has always been fascinatingly linked, going back to what was one of the first narrative films ever made with The Great Train Robbery, which is homage at the end of Goodfellas. What is it about these characters, this way of live that is so inviting, attractive and appealing? I’m in no way educated enough to properly articulate just what appeals to me about these kind of films, but perhaps it is this screen, this camera, this barrier which separates us from the violence and death, giving us peace of mind and allowing us to be entertained, to enter a world of crime without consequences for ourselves, a bit like how going on a rollercoaster ride is like experiencing the thrill of a car crash without the danger, or watching a serial killer movie for the excitement without the fear of death that would accompany actually being stalked.
Either way, what is ultimately tragic, for me at least, is that Casino was the last of the great American crime movies. Yes there were some good ones that came after, like Donnie Brasco or American Gangster, but nothing quite touched the level of Casino. Scorsese never made a film as good as, De Niro or Pesci never made a film as good as. The genre came to an abrupt close, with most modern crime films like Gangster Squad coming and going without any real significance. With mainstream movies adjusting to become politically correct, it doesn’t seem the gangster genre is even welcome on the big screen anymore.
This is why The Irishman is so important to me. It’s another film, despite the cast and director, that never really got to the big screen, instead being produced by the streaming service Netflix. But this film, for me, will act as the curtain closer, the swansong of a genre that didn’t really get one before it died. It becomes even more perfect that the golden generation of De Niro, Pesci and Keitel will return, and Al Pacino and Marty will work together for the first time. The old guard will all slip back into Mafioso roles, whilst newcomer Pacino will instead play the outside Jimmy Hoffa, a fitting placement given his detachment to Scorsese compared to the rest of the cast.
It’s a movie that will hopefully be the most mature and though provoking of the four films, focusing on the days after the heyday. What happened to Charlie after the attack on him and his friend Johnny Boy at the end of Mean Streets? What happened after Henry closed the door of his cheap home off a construction site in the middle of nowhere at the end of Goodfellas. Those periods in the men’s lives were never explored, but here with the life of Frank Sheeran we will take a trip down memory lane with him through the highs and lows. But after the business successes and the flourishing mob connections, eventually everyone he would come to know such as Russell Buffalino and Angelo Bruno would die, and we’d be left with a frail old man looking back on his life, a life in which he is supposed to have murdered over 2 dozen people. This, surely, will be where the heart of Scorsese’s film will be. Sheeran’s real life confession was prompted by a wish for attornment for his sins, which harks back to our protagonist Charlie in Mean Streets, and his juggling of his religious dilemma and his criminal lifestyle. We had the lowlife thugs, we had the middle of the park hoods, we had the bosses of bosses, and now we have the film centred on aging, elderly gangsters, past their primes looking back at the glory days of their zeniths. It’s only fitting then, that a selection of actors and a director known for these kind of movies will portray these characters, all of whom which are also past their prime and thus Scorsese’s gangster resume comes full circle.
submitted by The_Social_Introvert to flicks [link] [comments]

most successful las vegas casino robberies video

The Stardust Casino heist is widely regarded as one of the smoothest heists in the history of casino robberies. The culprit remains at large and the sum of money that he made away with is most certainly large. Stardust Casino has been demolished and is no longer in operation. In 2003, Eureka Casino on East Sahara Avenue was robbed six times. This is a record-breaking number of robberies per year in Las Vegas, and subsequently, because of that, the Eureka Casino is one of the safest casinos. Given that all casinos are located on the Strip, where cameras are everywhere, robberies need very demanding planning. The Casino: Various across the world The Villains: Semyon Dukach, Mike Aponte and various students. This casino robbery (or should we say multiple robberies) have been made famous in many different books and movies. The “MIT Blackjack Team” ran one of the world’s most successful card-counting heists in history. Though card counting is often frowned upon in casinos, these math wizards employed an advanced method for counting cards and managed to rake in millions of dollars of winnings A brazen robbery of Hilton Casino (2008) Two blocks away from Las Vegas Strip one of the most brazen robberies took place. Two robbers in motorcycle helmets entered Hilton hotel casino and took out... To this day, William Brennan is still on the FBI’s most wanted list but has never been seen or heard from since the robbery. Bill’s heist is one of the most famous Las Vegas casino rip-off stories of all time. It has resulted in many casino security standards still active today. It’s highly unlikely that an employee could pull off something like this in modern casinos, especially since employees are monitored even closer than the players. Las Vegas Sun The Stardust, which was imploded in 2007, was a victim of theft in September 1992, when a sports-book cashier simply walked out the door with an estimated $500,000 worth of cash and The Most Notorious Las Vegas Casino Robberies Oct 30th, 2019 - 11:56 AM (GMT) Category - Gambling Blog 32 Views Today Of all the places in to try and pull off a successful robbery, a Las Vegas casino surely has to be one of the hardest in the world? These are some of the attempts at robbing a casino that actually resulted in success. Or at least partial success. The One That Changed It All. Perhaps one of the most famous robberies of all time is the case of William Brennan. He was a cashier that worked at the Stardust in Las Vegas in 1992, and managed to get away with around $500,000. The Read our list on the 10 most daring casino robberies in history: 10) Plundering Treasure Island. Casino: Treasure Island, Las Vegas. Year: 2000 . Score: $30,000. This Las Vegas casino was actually subject to multiple robberies at the turn of millennium, though only one was successful. However, the most prolific of these early 2000s attempts was the Bellagio Cash Cage robbery. Oscar Cisneros then 23 and Jose Manuel Vigoa then 40 entered the casino wearing Kevlar and extensive body armor. Both were carrying firearms and they proceeded to jump over the counter and rob the cashier area.

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