Godfather

Series America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back: : John Walsh updates viewers on the capture of Sarah Pender, who was on the Top Ten Fugitives of 2008 list. (9 p.m., WBFF-Channel 45) Specials Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown: : Charlie Brown wants to be remembered on Valentine's Day and would really like a greeting from the Little Red-Haired Girl. (8 p.m., WMAR-Channel 2) Movies Divorce American Style: : When bickering about alimony reaches a fevered pitch, well-to-do suburbanites (Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds)

Introducing "The Godfather," at the first annual Maryland Film Festival yesterday at the Charles Theatre, was an offer Mayor Kurt Schmoke couldn't refuse.In 1982, when he ran for state's attorney of Baltimore, Schmoke watched "The Godfather" instead of the election coverage on television. He won. Since then, it's become an election night ritual. Not "Godfather II," not "Godfather III." The original."If it worked once, it might work again," Schmoke explained.As for the festival itself, the question was, would it work the first time.

Mario Puzo, godfather of the Godfathers, died yesterday at home in Bay Shore, Long Island. His 78-year-old heart failed, those close to him said.You might say it was business: He had suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1991 in Las Vegas, a city he loved for its gaming and its richer associated cultures. Quadruple-bypass surgery then sent him back to the keyboard. He soon began work on "The Last Don" (1996) his eighth novel. Shortly before he died, his agent and editors said, he completed a ninth, "Omerta," scheduled for publication in July 2000.

HOLLYWOOD -- In the 1972 film "Play It Again, Sam," Woody Allen's nebbish hero was so obsessed with Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" that he enlisted the ghost of the legendary '40s tough guy to coach him on how to impress girls."

John Franklin Kiser Jr., a Baltimore native and retired cinematographer whose film career included work on "The Godfather," died Oct. 2 of cancer at his Accomac, Va. farm. He was 64.Reared in Roland Park, Mr. Kiser attended St. Paul's School for Boys and West Nottingham Academy in Rising Sun. He later attended the Maryland Institute, College of Art.His career as a cameraman began with the 1966 Joanne Woodward and Sean Connery film, "A Fine Madness." He later worked on "Paint Your Wagon," "Camelot," "Ice Station Zebra" and "The Fisher King," as well as "The Godfather."

HOLLYWOOD -- In the 1972 film ``Play It Again, Sam,'' Woody Allen's nebbish hero was so obsessed with Humphrey Bogart in ``Casablanca'' that he enlisted the ghost of the legendary '40s tough guy to coach him on how to impress girls.``Casablanca'' and Bogey may have been the role models for Allen's generation, but as director Nora Ephron cleverly illustrates in her latest film, ``You've Got Mail,'' which stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, it's Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning 1972 classic ``The Godfather'' that's become the ultimate guy's movie.

One of the greatest films of all time gets an airing tonight and tomorrow night in two parts on USA.Francis Ford Coppola was pretty much an unknown when he was chosen to direct "The Godfather" (9 p.m.-11 p.m. both nights). So were stars Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall. And Marlon Brando, chosen to play Don Corleone, was a has-been. All that changed when the film became not only a critical favorite, but a box-office smash.Coppola's film presents the saga as not just the story of an American family, but of an American myth: Don Corleone as a Lear surrounded by men with guns.

Avoiding the temptation for cheap puns that a title like "Two Bits" coughs up, I can only say the movie isn't worth a whole lot in real dollars and cents.The physical production is the handsomest thing about the film, a loving work-up of a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood in the 1930s, where, in one of the trim houses, what remains of the Spirito family struggles glumly to survive the Depression.Except that the glumness hasn't set with the boy, Gennaro (Jerry Barone), who, far from noticing the economic chaos about him, instead is focused entirely on raising the necessary lucre (two bits, you're surprised?

BAY SHORE, N.Y. -- Even without guarantee of immunity, Mario Puzo admits he's a con man. What he knows about the Mafia comes from books. What he knows about the dagger, the pistol, the garrote is mostly that they can kill you. What he knows about criminal conspiracies is limited to the time he kited checks against his credit cards, which turned out OK because he got rich before the banks started prosecuting."

WASHINGTON -- Let's be clear about this. Mario Puzo's sentimental Mafia novels are about as accurate in portraying that barony of organized crime as Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" is accurate in portraying the Middle Ages.However, much of the irresistible charm of both Scott's supposedly historical and Mr. Puzo's supposedly documentary novels is their exuberant emancipation from the deadening ballast of fact.Well, if America's cultural alchemy can turn "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" into a musical cartoon with a happy ending, why be surprised when Mr. Puzo turns Chianti-stained thugs of the Mafia into men both noble and clever?

Che Part One and Che Part Two are being presented together these days as a four-and-a-quarter-hour presentation about the rise and fall of the godfather of exportable revolution in the mid-20th century. The title and length suggest a biographical epic, but it's neither biographical nor epic. It's as if the director, Steven Soderbergh, wanted to take tissue samples of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's political life. Part One focuses on the Argentinian doctor joining Fidel Castro's Cuban revolutionary brigade in 1955 and rising to become Castro's right-hand man. Part Two centers on 1967, when he waged a futile and fatal attempt to stage a Marxist rebellion in Bolivia that would fan outward to all of Latin America.

Series America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back: : John Walsh updates viewers on the capture of Sarah Pender, who was on the Top Ten Fugitives of 2008 list. (9 p.m., WBFF-Channel 45) Specials Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown: : Charlie Brown wants to be remembered on Valentine's Day and would really like a greeting from the Little Red-Haired Girl. (8 p.m., WMAR-Channel 2) Movies Divorce American Style: : When bickering about alimony reaches a fevered pitch, well-to-do suburbanites (Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds)

It's rare, indeed, that a Hollywood sequel is as good, or better than, the original film - rarer still when the original is one of the greatest American films ever. All the more reason to cherish The Godfather: Part II, which airs tonight, immediately after The Godfather, on AMC. About 1972's The Godfather (8 p.m.), there are few superlatives left to throw around. Suffice it to say that it's one of those films that demands to be seen, lest one be accused of cultural ignorance. A culmination of the 1960s-era trend of turning bad guys into heroes, Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece fires on every cylinder: great acting (Marlon Brando is every bit as good as his reputation suggests)

To explain what he loves about The Godfather: Part II, which plays every day at the Senator for a week (between screenings of The Godfather), the man who restored the entire Godfather trilogy, Robert A. Harris, uses an analogy from a more frivolous pop phenomenon: the Indiana Jones series. "I had a great time at Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," he says, "but what I liked most about it was that moment in the warehouse in the opening sequence, when Indy knocks into this big box and it partially rips open and you see it contains the Ark of the Covenant."

For anyone in America's fabled "movie generation" - men and women who were in college or just out of it when The Godfather came out in 1972 - Francis Ford Coppola's Mafia epic had the impact that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had in music or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test had in prose. I spent half my lunchtime in my junior and senior years listening to budding actor Jack Gilpin (Something Wild, 21) do his impeccable imitation of Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen advising the Corleone crime family, "Right now we have the unions, we have the gambling; and they're the best things to have.

Starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall / Directed by Francis Ford Coppola / Paramount / $69.99 (blu-ray, $124.99) dvds One of the greatest, most influential and most popular movies of all time, as well as its equally audacious sequel, get the red-carpet treatment, thanks to a couple years of hard work from film restoration expert Robert Harris. The result is stunning, with a depth of colors that hasn't been seen in more than 30 years. Fans of The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II will revel in the films' newfound glory.

Francis Ford Coppola doesn't just absorb the identities of his movies; he carries pieces of them with him as he goes on. He still resembles the Godfather of American moviemaking that he was after The Godfather (1972), except now he's executive-producing for his daughter Sofia or his son Roman, rather than George Lucas or Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion). He has modulated the madness that he showed during the making of his runaway Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now (1979) into a fascination with extremes of consciousness and feeling.

The Baltimore Museum of Art's First Thursday Night film series kicks off the new year with Basic Training, Frederick Wiseman's 1971 documentary that follows a group of raw Army recruits as they wind their way through Fort Knox. Sun critic Michael Sragow, writing in The New Yorker, called the film one of Wiseman's "most dramatically cohesive and visually arresting documentaries." Showtime is 8 p.m. Thursday at the BMA, 10 Art Museum Drive. Admission is free. Information: 443-573-1832 or artbma.

He was known as the "godfather of soul," among other titles, but James Brown, the legendary singer and showman who died Christmas day at the age of 73, was more than a soul or rhythm and blues artist. He was an edgy, flashy performer with crossover appeal and extensive musical influence. Mr. Brown's start was in gospel, after a stint in reform school. His music was defined by pulsing beats and high-powered rhythms. Some of his hits offered timely messages, such as "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud"; others, like "I Got You (I Feel Good)

An Offer We Can't Refuse - The Mafia in the Mind of America George De Stefano Farrar, Straus and Giroux / 438 pages / $26 Years ago, writing about the legacy of Mario Puzo, I said, "If there is a God and he is indeed Catholic, then Puzo is burning in hell." Before The Godfather was published in 1969, historians of organized crime in the 20th century told us that some major stars of the modern mob had names like Arnold Rothstein, Owney Madden, and Logan and Fred Billingsley. After The Godfather, the only major crime figures who got any attention were the ones whose names ended in vowels.