Gangster

Gangster movies are back and so are sideburns. Could there be a connection? Kathy Weaver thinks so."It's gangster chic," said Weaver, director of education for the Supercuts chain of hairstyling salons.She predicts that fashion-conscious young men will be sporting the look that's big in the latest spate of gangster movies, including "Goodfellas," "Godfather III" and Dustin Hoffman's "Billy Bathgate."Essentially, the hair is long and slicked back on top, but fairly short at the back and sides except for those sideburns on the cheeks.

"Every day in every way I am getting better and better. " - Nelson Van Alden What's that, "Boardwalk Empire" without its tragic hero, Jimmy Darmody? What's next, an aviatrix (or "lady flyer" if you prefer) navigating across the continent? As the third season of "Boardwalk" soldiers on sans Jimmy, everyone else in Atlantic City and beyond seems to be aspiring to be a better "them" in 1923. Well, almost everyone (looking at you, Al Capone). For as long as Jimmy was around, he always reminded Nucky Thompson that he couldn't be "half a gangster.

You might think people would be reluctant to chance an Italian restaurant decorated in Roaring '20s gangster motif and run by a Sicilian who trades on his nickname -- Lucky Luciano. But you'd be wrong.For 15 years, Lucky Luciano's Ristorante in Crofton has been packing them in, serving up Funghi Ripieni, Scampi Con Salsa D'Aragosta and cappuccino that is personally brewed and served by the owner, "Lucky" Luciano DiSalvo.When he sets the steaming cup of froth on the table, he calls out his trademark line, "Is everybody happy here?"

A gang leader who ordered a hit on a member of his own gang whom he suspected of being gay was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole. Timothy E. Rawlings Jr., 24, a former quarterback at Parkville High School and the father of a 3-year-old boy, showed no emotion as Baltimore County Circuit Judge Robert N. Dugan told him that the killing of Steven Parrish, for the sole reason that the victim showed signs of being homosexual, was "senseless, brutal, unprovoked, cold-blooded, premeditated murder.

ONE wonders what the snootiest of the Hamptons people think about the recent shooting that took place at Club New York when Sean "Puffy" Combs' entourage scraped up against some other knuckleheads, and three bystanders were wounded. Society has changed. Wealthy people spent many years trying to keep minorities at a distance. Now they fret over whether they'll be invited to Mr. Combs' East Hampton summer party. During Prohibition, such people used to invite immigrant gangsters up to their Park Avenue parties.

TOKYO -- The former head of the world's biggest securities firm testified yesterday that his company lent a top gangster $117 million that helped him corner a big rail line's stock, then "excessively" pushed the shares to other clients.The firm's actions helped push the stock to a record high and enabled the gangland boss to reap an unknown but admittedly huge profit on an accumulation of 2.6 million shares, said Setsuya Tabuchi, who resigned as chairman of Nomura Securities last month.However, he insisted that "there was absolutely no manipulation" of the railway stock.

From the silver screen, some fashion wisdom to live by: Don't dress "like a schmuck."In the new testosterone-in-tweeds epic "Mobsters," gangster rookie Christian Slater, already quite rakish in tab-collared shirts and baggy pants, learns this valuable lesson from shadowy mobster F. Murray Abraham.Mr. Abraham tells Mr. Slater what America is really all about -- money -- and says Mr. Slater will never make it big.Why?"Because you dress like a schmuck," Mr. Abraham says, playing Mr. Blackwell to Mr. Slater's Princess Anne.

Think of Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby, a romantic egotist to the end. Think of his wonderful shirts. Think of his clothes, his charm, his charisma, his American yearning to be better, to climb in society, to hang out with the swells.Now think of him pulling a snub nose and blowing a sucking chest wound into somebody, and you have "Bugsy."Warren Beatty's best film since "Bonnie and Clyde" and possibly Barry Levinson's best film, period, "Bugsy" is set squarely in the increasingly hard-to-find Neverland of adult moviemaking.

THOSE WHO didn't make it to see the restored print of Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (in English, "Don't touch the loot!") at the AFI Silver last fall should seize the chance to see it this week at the Charles. This seminal 1954 gangster picture is a great choice to kick off the theater's latest revival calendar. Telling the story of two criminals pushing past their prime - a master thief named Max (Jean Gabin) and his unreliable right-hand man, Riton (Rene Dary) - legendary filmmaker Jacques Becker set the mark high for directors of later Gallic heist films.

Despite the gaudy title, Zhang Yimou's "Shanghai Triad," which opens today at the Charles, is a muted, even contemplative movie that is less about the gangster trade in the most dangerous city of the '30s than it is about the small epiphanies of humanity that occasionally come in the most unlikely of circumstances to the most unlikely of people.Imagine "The Godfather" through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy just in from the hinterlands of rural Jersey and his dad's pepper farm, and you have an idea of the originality, and the oddity, of the film.

Public Enemies provides a welcome shock to the system. This tough-minded, visually electric movie about Great Depression bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) takes audiences into the center of the action in its opening minutes. It keeps them there as it expands into a bristling chronicle of a country in flux. Without ever telling viewers what to think or how to feel, it raises more questions about the corruption of crime and crime fighting than any expose or thesis. And if it sometimes registers too coolly, by the end it rouses more bruised feelings than any four-hankie weepie.

Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly's editor-at-large and music critic for NPR's Fresh Air With Terry Gross, wasn't sure he had picked the right subject when he set out to chronicle Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America (St. Martin's Press). "Scarface wasn't my favorite Brian De Palma movie," he says on the phone from his home in suburban Philadelphia. "I liked Blow Out a lot better." With Al Pacino acquiring a deep tan and adopting a Desi Arnaz accent as the Cuban-American drug lord Tony Montana, who believes that if you have guts in America "the World is Yours," the movie was treated, for my money with good reason, as a bloated, over-hyped event when it premiered in 1983.

American Gangster, the story of real-life 1960s Harlem super-criminal Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), wants to be The Godfather, Serpico and that blaxploitation cult classic, Across 110th Street, wrapped into one Superfly chinchilla coat. It plays like a deluxe network-TV miniseries edited to be seen in a single sitting, but with all the nudity, profanity and gore the networks would cut out. The human drama takes a back seat to rise-and-fall criminal milestones that occur every 15 minutes.

You Kill Me kills you softly with its smiles. This scruffy gangster comedy about Frank (Ben Kingsley), an alcoholic hit man for the Polish mob in Buffalo, N.Y., proves that craftiness and hip performances can make a tasty pig-in-a-blanket out of an old and tattered sow's ear. You Kill Me (IFC Films) Starring Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson, Bill Pullman. Directed by John Dahl. Rated R. Time 92 minutes.

WASHINGTON -- Critics of vulgar, violent, gangster-style rap music make a mistake when they write off rap stars as stupid, immoral and self-destructive. They may be immoral and self-destructive, but they're not stupid. As one of my readers observed in a thoughtful e-mail, they're making a rational economic choice. The reader wrote: "I had to stop and ask this question to myself: `Would I call my mother a `ho' or my sister a `bitch' if I could make a couple of million dollars and get out of poverty and live a pretty good life?"

On one of its last great albums, 1998's Aquemini, OutKast declared in the title track: Nothing is for sure, nothing is for certain, nothing lasts forever/But until they close the curtain/It's him and I, Aquemini. At that point in their career, Big Boi and Andre 3000 were so tight, so in sync that they blended their zodiac signs (Aquarius and Gemini, respectively) for the album title. And the music then glowed with their eccentric, electric synthesis of rap, funk, trip-hop, '70s soul and techno.

Val Kilmer throws his head back and laughs at the question. Then he narrows his eyes and furrows his brow. He looks skyward to ponder the question for a few moments. "Hmmm, there must have been one," he says. "Oh, what about Top Gun? I suppose that was one. "And Batman Forever. That was definitely one. And I really thought Red Planet was one, although it didn't turn out to be one." He shakes his head. "That might be it. I can't think of any more." The question was: "Have you ever picked a role because it might actually help your career?

"Every day in every way I am getting better and better. " - Nelson Van Alden What's that, "Boardwalk Empire" without its tragic hero, Jimmy Darmody? What's next, an aviatrix (or "lady flyer" if you prefer) navigating across the continent? As the third season of "Boardwalk" soldiers on sans Jimmy, everyone else in Atlantic City and beyond seems to be aspiring to be a better "them" in 1923. Well, almost everyone (looking at you, Al Capone). For as long as Jimmy was around, he always reminded Nucky Thompson that he couldn't be "half a gangster.

COMPTON, Calif. -- The mayor steers his sport utility vehicle into the parking lot of a shopping center and heads for one of this depressed city's crown jewels, something that has stirred the masses and fired hope about better days to come, a herald of economic vitality: a Starbucks. Yes, Mayor Eric J. Perrodin would like the world to know that Compton, birthplace of gangsta rap and one of the most violent cities in America, has a Starbucks. And another, complete with a drive-through, is on the way. "To most people, it might seem like nothing," Perrodin said, "But to us, it is major."