Luciano was born in 1913 in a New York tenement, the first American descendant of Sicilian immigrants who’d settled in New York’s Lower East Side, an area that would eventually, once the early-century wave of Italian newcomers had pretty much completely taken the place over, be known as Little Italy. As a freshly minted U.S. native, he went by his middle name, Charles, but everyone just called him Charlie. He grew up in a four room apartment that he shared with eight other people, his parents, his siblings, and two borders they rented the kitchen out to as a bedroom.Read More
Read More
ACT ONE
Once upon a time, back before we could search for movie trailers on YouTube, or shatter our expectations with Rotten Tomatoes, or stumble over some mad spoiler at BirthMoviesDeath.com, the easiest way to find out what films were coming around was the poster box in front of the theater. As a free-range ragamuffin, rattling around the streets of Portsmouth, making mischief after school, I would always take time to swing up Chestnut street to see what the old Civic had in store.Read More
Read More
People like to say that movies are timeless. But they’re not. Every one of them is a statement about the time they were made, the state of the world, the state of technology, the issues that were resonating with people at the time. As popular and as prevalent as some movies have become through the years, by shear volume of global film production, it can be all too easy for even great works by known masters to sink into obscurity, and disappear from popular consciousness.Read More
Read More
