Reticent Man

Hung out watching TV with Jim in the morning until his flight home.  Then got a call from Bo to do 'Scotch and Skills'.  We hung out at his place making drinks for a couple hours, then went to Ice Oasis for skills class.  It was ok, being buzzed didn't hurt, but I just really don't like drills and classes.  We waited around to see about Sunday night, but it turned out they had 13v13 which is crazy.  So we went and got some burgers and went to Jeremy's place.  A pretty fun crazy day.  Watched the end of Casino at night.

Casino is definitely a great movie.  It's a mob rise and fall story centering on De Niro playing a jew handicapper come casino manager working for the mob and his boyhood friend Joe Pesci playing a mob mid level crazy guy.  All the little casino based vignettes are very enjoyable and the whole thing seems very realistic.  The rise and fall story is fantastic if obvious.  The other main character is Sharon Stone playing De Niro's bitch whore wife/leech.  It's hard to enjoy the scenes she's in as her character is completely unsympathetic, though Stone does a fairly good job.  I have to give them credit for making Stone as realistically unsympathetic as she is, and I find it interesting that two mobster movies in which the females are played as realistically as they are (the other being once upon a time in america) involve De Niro playing a jew.  Acting 9, Style 10, culture detracts nothing, Story 9.

Casino 9/10