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David Burnham, a former New York Times investigative reporter whose work uncovering corruption in the New York Police Department circa the 1970s inspired the twice Oscar-nominated Serpico, died earlier this week at 91.

Per the Times, he died after a choking incident at dinner, at his home in Spruce Head, Maine, which caused his heart to stop.

Detective Frank Serpico, an undercover officer who had been trying to get the police department to crack down on the graft, worked as Burnham’s chief source, becoming the eventual subject of the 1973 crime thriller in which Al Pacino played him.

Frank Serpico, Frank Serpico, 2017. ©Sundance Selects/courtesy Everett Collection

Commemorating the reporter, Serpico wrote on social media, “Couldn’t have done it without you David,” alongside a thumbs up and praying emoji.

Burnham was hired by the Times in 1967 after telling the late metropolitan editor Arthur Gelb that the news organization’s coverage...

If the influx of plot spoon-feeding, cookie-cutter excuses for action movies on streaming platforms in recent years have left a bad taste in your mouth, then Netflix’s Rebel Ridge will work as a perfect palate cleanser and more. Aside from the fact that it is rare to have an action flick these days that builds suspense and tension so well, balances it with sleek combat choreography, and goes quite a length to delineate on the central crisis with a proper methodical approach, Rebel Ridge brings an unexpected narrative twist that adds depth to the movie’s commentary on morality. The identity of “Serpico,” a codename Terry Richmond uses for a whistleblower among the corrupt cops of the Shelby Springs police force, turns out to be thematically much more important than viewers might have initially assumed.

Spoilers Ahead

Significance of Serpico

Ex-marine Terry Richmond gets entangled in a devious ploy...

This article contains spoilers for Get Gotti.

Netflix’s Get Gotti puts the spotlight on a New York gangster icon, whose camera-ready presence signaled his downfall. The prosecutorial team sees John Gotti as an affront to decency. The capos, soldiers, and neighborhood acquaintances see only a larger-than-life street savior, with the balls and brains to make something of the communities he oversees.

The FBI and New York’s Organized Crime Task Force (Octf) couldn’t get their heads around it. Everyone on Carmine Street had no doubt the feds were itching to nail John Gott to a high-voltage crucifix so they could display him like a Christmas tree ornament. But the real sins committed are those against the organization Gotti headed. The Teflon Don broke more mafia edicts than federal crimes. That put him in the spotlight, a place where it’s easy to mistake exposure for protection.

For as thorough as Get Gotti is,...

Powerful story of disguise and alienation is led by the moral passion of Pacino’s countercultural whistleblower

Film-making guts and glory are on display from director Sidney Lumet, star Al Pacino and many others in this compelling New York crime drama from 1973. It is based on the true story of whistleblowing police officer Frank Serpico who, outraged by the top-to-bottom corruption in the NYPD, finally went to the New York Times with his evidence. In revenge, dirty cops knowingly led Serpico into a dangerous standoff with armed criminals in an apartment building and left him undefended to be shot in the face. Screenwriters Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler adapted the bestseller from journalist Peter Maas’s book about the police officer’s remarkable life, on which Serpico collaborated almost immediately on being invalided out of the department.

Serpico is a classic movie of 1970s New York: it has Tony Roberts,...

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By Matt Davey

Released in 1972, The Valachi Papers depicts the rise and fall of Mafia informant Joseph Valachi, who became the first member of the Mafia (otherwise known as Cosa Nostra) to acknowledge its existence in public. Directed by Terence Young and produced by legendary Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis The Valachi Papers stars Charles Bronson in the lead role, alongside his real-life wife Jill Ireland as well as Lino Ventura, Walter Chiari and Joseph Wiseman.

The film covers five decades of Valachi’s involvement in organised crime – from his burglaries with the Minutemen to working under mob boss Vito Genovese from the 1930s – as the film unceremoniously portrays life in the criminal underworld. Told from the perspective of Valachi, the film begins with the ageing gangster in prison fearing for his life after a contract for his killing is ordered...

Charles Bronson plays a real-life Mafiosi in a period picture with a fine script, some good performances and a production so sloppy that the whole thing could be called The Anachronism Papers. Joseph Wiseman and Lino Ventura bring additional tough-guy star-power, and Bronson actually commits himself to the role — quite a change of pace for one of his later pictures.

The Valachi Papers

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 125 min. / Street Date June 13, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Charles Bronson, Lino Ventura, Jill Ireland, Walter Chiari, Joseph Wiseman, Gerald S. O’Loughlin, Amedeo Nazzari, Fausto Tozzi, Pupella Maggio, Angelo Infanti, Guido Leontini.

Cinematography: Aldo Tonti

Film Editor: Johnny Dwyre, Monica Finzi

Original Music: Riz Ortolani, Armando Trovajoli

Written by Stephen Geller from the novel by Peter Maas

Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, Roger Duchet

Directed by Terence Young

In 2001 I received the plum assignment of editing a...

By Fred Blosser

When Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” emerged as a surprise box-office smash in the early months of 1972, studios and distributors hustled to meet popular demand for more movies about life in the Mob. In New York, a dubbed print of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film “Le Samourai” was hurriedly retitled and screened as “The Godson” in a masterful example of bait-and-switch marketing. Melville’s chilly, claustrophobic picture about a hit man portrayed by Alain Delon is a fine crime drama, but it had no connection to Coppola’s picture or, for that matter, to any aspect of American Mafia lore at all. “The Valachi Papers,” based on Peter Maas’ bestselling nonfiction book, followed as a more legitimate successor. Rushed through production by Dino De Laurentiis in spring and summer 1972, the film was scripted by Stephen Geller and directed by Terence Young. Shooting largely took place at De Laurentiis’ Rome studio.

A forgotten gem of the late 1970s comes to Blu-ray for the first time, Frank Pierson’s adaptation of the novel King of the Gypsies. Notable for several reasons, namely as the credited debut for actor Eric Roberts and a star studded cast packed to distraction, this is the kind of pulp oddity often whisked off the shelves of the bestseller list for glossy cinematic reinterpretation. This gypsy saga was based on a novel by Peter Maas, better known as the biographer of Serpico, which resulted in the novel inspiring Sidney Lumet’s classic 1973 film starring Al Pacino. Eventually, Maas’ works, often revolving around sensational true crime treatments, would be adapted mainly for television (including the 1991 Valerie Bertinelli Lifetime film, In a Child’s Name), and this sometimes outlandish antique feels like an exaggerated heirloom in the Harold Robbins’ vein (The Carpetbaggers; The Betsy; The Adventurers), a frumpy comparison...

By Alex Simon

“Trumpet in a herd of elephants; / Crow in the company of cocks; / Bleat in a flock of goats.”—Mayan proverb.

“Frank, let's face it: who can trust a cop that won't take money?” –A fellow cop to Frank Serpico (Al Pacino)

In 1973, between the first two Godfather films, Al Pacino hung his hat on another iconic film and character of ‘70s cinema. Based on the true story of New York City Police Detective Frank Serpico, who in 1971 broke the code of silence unofficially understood by every cop to be sacrosanct and testified before the Knapp Commission, a government inquiry into NYPD police corruption. Serpico’s story quickly become big news, and a best-selling non-fiction book by Peter Maas. Sidney Lumet’s film of Serpico, written by celebrated screenwriters Norman Wexler and Waldo Salt, took the policier further into gritty new territory that had been forged two years...

I think everyone remembers where they were August 31st, 2003 when they heard that Charles Bronson had died. I was visiting my brother in Atlanta when my nephew knocked on my door and informed me that CNN had announced his death. I collapsed into a sobbing heap. Bronson was my hero, my muse, my role model. Hollywood’s brightest star would shine no more. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone ten years.

Charles Bronson was the unlikeliest of movie stars. Of all the leading men in the history of Hollywood, Charles Bronson had the least range as an actor. He rarely emoted or even changed his expression, and when he did speak, his voice was a reedy whisper. But Charles Bronson could coast on presence, charisma, and silent brooding menace like no one’s business and he wound up the world’s most bankable movie star throughout most of the 1970’s.

One extraordinary passage among many in Peter Maas’s New York Times Sunday Magazine cover article on Laura Poitras and her role in the Edward Snowden story details the symbolic meanings of the documentarian’s most basic act: turning on the camera. By this point in the story, Poitras has been contacted by Snowden, has had a series of encrypted exchanges with him, but doesn’t know who he is. She, along with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill of The Guardian, travel to Hong Kong to meet the source for what will be the most explosive national security tale of modern times. […]...

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat is a monthly newspaper run by Steve DeBellis, a well know St. Louis historian, and it.s the largest one-man newspaper in the world. The concept of The Globe is that there is an old historic headline, then all the articles in that issue are written as though it.s the year that the headline is from. It.s an unusual concept but the paper is now in its 25th successful year! Steve and I collaborated last year on an all-Vincent Price issue of The Globe and I.ve been writing a regular movie-related column since. Since there is no on-line version of The Globe, I post all of my articles here at We Are Movie Geeks as well. In honor of the 40th anniversary of Blueberry Hill, the landmark St. Louis restaurant and music club that.s filled with pop culture memorabilia, this month.s St.

'It's par for the course' – actor defends directing debut against claims of copyright infringement from Croatian author

Angelina Jolie has dismissed a lawsuit filed against her directing debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which claims it borrows liberally from a 2007 book by a Croatian journalist about the Balkan conflict of the early 1990s.

James Braddock, also known as Josip Knežević, is suing Jolie and the producers of her film in the northern district court of Illinois claiming they infringed the copyright on his book The Soul Shattering. Both works, he alleges, are set in wartorn Bosnia and Herzegovina and feature a main female character who is captured, imprisoned and raped by soldiers, as well as a Serbian camp commander who falls in love with her and helps her escape.

In an interview with the La Times published yesterday, Jolie denied ever having read Braddock's book. "It's par for the course.

Prolific film director with a reputation for exploring social and moral issues

Sidney Lumet, who has died aged 86, achieved critical and commercial success with his first film, 12 Angry Men (1957), which established his credentials as a liberal director who was sympathetic to actors, loved words and worked quickly. For the bulk of his career, he averaged a film a year, earning four Oscar nominations along the way for best director, for 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982).

It is arguable that, had he not been so prolific, Lumet's critical reputation would have been greater. Certainly, for every worthwhile film there was a dud, and occasionally a disaster, to match it. But Lumet loved to direct and he was greatly esteemed by the many actors – notably Al Pacino and Sean Connery – with whom he established a lasting rapport.

The majority of his films were shot not in Hollywood, but in and around New York.

Charles Bronson was the unlikeliest of movie stars. Of all the leading men in the history of Hollywood, Charles Bronson had the least range as an actor. He rarely emoted or even changed his expression, and when he did speak, his voice was a reedy whisper. But Charles Bronson could coast on presence, charisma, and silent brooding menace like no one.s business and he wound up the world’s most bankable movie star throughout most of the 1970’s. Bronson did not rise quickly in the Hollywood ranks. His film debut was in 1951 and he spent the next two decades as a solid character actor with a rugged face, muscular physique and everyman ethnicity that kept him busy in supporting roles as indians, convicts, cowboys, boxers, and gangsters. It wasn’t until he was in his late 40’s, after the international success of Once Upon A Time In The West...

Sam Cohn, the legendary talent agent who joined Icm at its inception, died Wednesday following a brief illness in New York, five days shy of his 80th birthday.

Cohn was with Icm from 1975 until February. A tried and true New Yorker, he chose to remain on the East Coast during his career, heading the agency's Big Apple office for almost 25 years.

Cohn's clients included Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Marshall Brickman, E.L. Doctorow, Nora Ephron, Bob Fosse, Jackie Gleason, John Guare, Kander & Ebb, Peter Maas, Arthur Miller, Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Peter Stone, Meryl Streep, Steve Tesich, Lily Tomlin, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver and Dianne Wiest, among many others.

Cohn was often referred to as "the most difficult man in the business to get on the phone."

In 1982, the New Yorker observed that in the previous year, there were "10 feature films and nine Broadway or...