Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Jay Coyle and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Aoife Martin, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.
This time, continuing our Summer of Scorsese season, Martin Scorsese’s Casino.
Martin Scorsese is one of the defining directors in American cinema, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that have shaped and defined cinema across generations: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman. The Summer of Scorsese season offers a trip through his filmography via the IMDb‘s 250.
Against the backdrop of the seventies, the mob pushes westward. Hustler and gambler Sam “Ace” Rothstein is sent to Las Vegas to oversee the mob’s holdings in the Tangiers, and he discovers an unspoiled paradise just waiting for exploitation. However, Sam doesn’t count on the inevitable complications that will bring that house of cards crashing down.
At time of recording, it was ranked 141st on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.
Show Notes:
- Recorded 21st July 2020.
- Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
- Casino at The Internet Movie Database.
- The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
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- Martin Scorsese talks to The New York Times about making Casino and comparisons to Goodfellas, November 1995.
- Peter Travers reviews Casino for Rolling Stone, November 1995.
- Brian Raftery at The Ringer discusses Martin Scorsese’s undervalued eighties output, November 2019.
- Darren Mooney at the m0vie blog on The Colour of Money as a film about Scorsese learning to play the game, September 2020.
- Darren Mooney at the m0vie blog argues for Cape Fear as an undervalued Scorsese film, September 2020.
- Geoffrey O’Brien at The Criterion Collection argues for The Age of Innocence as a sorely underappreciated Scorsese film, March 2018.
- Carl Douglas performs “Dance the Kung-Fu”, 1975.
- Martin Scorsese talks to The Los Angeles Times about returning to the gangster genre with Casino, November 1995.
- Darren Mooney at the m0vie blog on Casino as a religious parable and a frontier western, October 2020.
- Nathan Rabin argues that Casino cannot escape the shadow of earlier gangster movies at The Dissolve, January 2015.
- Michael Glover Smith at White City Cinema looks back on how he came to reappraise Casino, May 2013.
- Natasha Vargas-Cooper at GQ looks at the gradual and eventual reappraisal of Casino in the years since its original release, November 2011.
- Michael Dwyer reviews Casino for The Irish Times, October 1996.
- Cameron Beyl at The Directors Series looks at Martin Scorsese’s direction of Casino, May 2016.
- Robert Richardson talks to American Cinematographer about shooting Casino, December 2016.
- Ben Kenigsberg discusses Scorsese’s frame of reference in The New York Times, December 2019.
- Owen Harvey offers a supercut of Martin Scorsese’s use of “Take Shelter”, February 2014.
- Thelma Schoonmacher talks to Collider about the editting of Casino, December 2013.
- Simon Brew at Den of Geek celebrates the smarmy sleaze of James Woods’ screen persona, March 2013.
- Elaine Dutka at The Los Angeles Times on the costuming of Casino, November 1995.
- Thessaly La Force at Vice celebrates the decadent fashion of Casino, June 2014.
- Ibraheem Youssef created an infograph featuring every suit worn by Robert DeNiro in Casino, March 2013.
- Robert Richardson talks to American Cinematographer about his professional relationship with Martin Scorsese, February 2019.
- Geoff Schumacher at KNPR looks back on Las Vegas’ relationship with Casino, and with its own sordid history, October 2015.
- Nancy Trejos at The Washington Post on how Las Vegas came to embrace its mob past, August 2011.
- Tony Sokol at Den of Geek offers a snapshot of the true history of Las Vegas that informed so much of Casino, December 2019.
- Sharon Stone talks to The Guardian about working on Casino with Martin Scorsese, January 1996.
- Anthony Morris at SBS argues that Ginger from Casino remains Scorsese’s most compelling female character and Stone’s best performance, June 2017.
- Ignatiy Vishnevetsky discusses the emptiness of Sam “Ace” Rothstein in Casino at The A.V. Club,July 2018.
- PJ Grisar at Forward on Jewishness as a recurring fascination for Martin Scorsese, November 2019.
- Steve Daly at Entertainment Weekly on the push towards violence in mid-nineties crime films, August 1995.
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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: ace rothstein, aoife martin, casino, Gambling, jay coyle, las vegas, martin scorsese, podcast, religion, robert deniro, summer of scorsese, The 250, violence |
the m0vie blog 
I love watching the masculinity of his films.