The Godfather III diet!

If you are looking to lose weight quickly, and don't mind leaving your movie-watching cohorts gilded in egesta, watch The Godfather, Part III.

Watched all of Part II on Friday, like, all of part II in one sitting. So, still on a roll, and feeling charitable, Part III was slid into the player, despite memory and common sense crying out "No! Don't! You will trample on all that has gone before! Those first two? YOU WILL RENOUNCE THEM!," etc.

Let's see, let's go "live" and see how many things I can think of instantly, without trying, that I hated about this...

1. Poor Sofia's miscasting has been covered everywhere, but Christ [of whom more below] almighty. It's cruel.

2. It's supposed to be 1979, but everyone involved looks much more Armani than Robert Hall leisure suit/safari jacket-wear as was the norm and surely would have been among the crimeratti - expect, Coppola is probably trying to underscore how classy his creations are, being all hermetic about it, a la JD and la famille Glass.

3. who gives a shit about Anthony's OPERA career, for God's sake? And the climactic OPERA itself! Such an orgy of Catholic mumbo-jumbo I've scarcely seen outside my mother-in-law's house. Act 1: upstart has a beef with a landowner type, ends in knifeplay. Okay, opera-y so far. Act 2: the entire cast of Amadeus rolls in and stages a crucifixion and for about two seconds Jesus His Own Self appears coming semi-nude down some stairs!

WHAT?

Someone told FFC that he was "real good [sic] at doing those big climaxes with a bunch of stuff going on!" as evinced by Part 1, Part 2, Apocalypse Now, etc. Problem is you have to make the audience CARE ("the twins are dead!" NO!!!).

4. That George Lucas copped his idea for The Phantom Menace from this here epic: "Wait! Coppola came back from a million years off and made Part III about high finance and the Vatican and I can make a Star Wars movie about TARIFFS ON INTERGALACTIC TRADE ROUTES!" Interesting side note: the two times I've tried to watch Phantom Menace, I was foiled by a) extreme drunkenness abetted by watching a bootleg copy bought off the street in New York by a friend there, one of those pre-net things where someone smuggled a fucking camcorder into the theatre [a la that Seinfeld episode] and b.) extreme apathy (and partial drunkenness) wherein I couldn't sit still to watch it, even when I had only paid 1.50 to see it! But I digress.

5. Okay, then, I could go on and on with how this movie is a heartless, soulless exploitation on (the filmmaker's) greed, but it's getting late and my blood pressure will skyrocket if I don't stop thinking about this soon...but the whole ROMANTIC COMEDY PORTION OF OUR STORY WHERE MICHAEL GIVES KAY A TOUR AROUND SICILY AFTER PRETENDING TO BE A CHAUFFEUR AND TURNING AROUND AND, DOFFING DRIVER'S CAP, SAYING "BUON GIORNO!" ALL CHIPPER-LIKE, IS A TRAVESTY!!!

Gotta stop - wait! The last little tacked-on scene of Michael dying alone in Italy somewhere, after making the shift from brush-cut smoothie to a clone of his father, complete with longish hair and sullen "workman" clothes left over from the costume boxes of Reds...THAT sucked. Anthony's heart-felt "Why is this beautiful country so violent??" Yeah, I mean, why?? Oh, and sending Al Neri to kill the crooked, chainsmoking John Hurt-a-like bishop at the Vatican, so he just does, cos, y'know, there's no security or anything. Plus, they wouldn't cough up 5M for Duvall to show up as Tom Hagan, so FUCK THEM!

More tomorrow on this, probably. Still feel sick!