Cosa Nostra News

Every once in a while we come across a Lillo Brancato story that updates us on his latest doings. Tony and Pussy shooting the gunman who shot Chris... Last we heard he was trying to relaunch his film career, a long-term, ongoing effort that draws a heated, angry reaction from time to time. In fact, it's somewhat similar to the reaction the Union City Board of Education is currently getting for inviting the former actor/convict to speak at an anti-drug event at one of its high schools. District Superintendent Silvia Abbato issued an apology last Wednesday night, hours after students at Union City High School got to hear Brancato talk about drug addiction. (Anyone out there attend that event? We'd like to hear from you.) Brancato got his big break as a teenager alongside Robert De Niro in the 1993 film A Bronx Tale, later landing roles in films like Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State before playing the role of Matt Bevilaqua in six episodes of The Sopranos. Then...

“I would say, ‘I warned you about drugs years ago’ — and told him something would happen and something did happen. I would see him and say, ‘I hear you’re doing drugs and you should stay away from that stuff.’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, sure, right.’ “You were there. You caused it. “Here’s a guy who was in the quintessential movie about not wasting your life and that’s exactly what he did,” — Chazz Palminteri when asked what he'd say to Lillo Brancato, an actor he has no plans to get in touch with. Lillo Branchato was led astray by drugs. It should have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- what is known in common parlance as "the big break." But for Lillo Brancato, Jr. (born March 30, 1976), the success of playing the lead role (Calogero Anello) in the film "A Bronx Tale" (1993), which marked the directorial debut of Robert De Niro, was so very fleeting in the end.

If you are going to do something, you might as well learn how to do it from the best. Keeping that thought it mind, the news that a News Corp. unit used Mafia films to motivate employees and crush rivals is quite revealing. This represents "the latest arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to be swept up in a probe that began with hacking and bribery allegations," reports The Washington Post . "Already the subject of inquiries in America and the U.K. of police payoffs and illegal voicemail access by its British newspapers, News Corp. has been asked by U.S. investigators for documents relating to its News America Marketing Group, which places in-store ads in supermarkets and retailers worldwide, according to a person familiar with the matter," the Post writes. The marketing unit, "rivals claimed in court papers, has expanded by flouting antitrust laws, and in one case, computer hacking. News America’s CEO, also publisher of the New York Post, testified in ...