Cosa Nostra News

Felix (Skinny Razor) DiTullio  played a crucial role in the lives of many young Philadelphia wiseguys. Friendly Lounge was Skinny Razor's joint... DiTullio 's lounge was a veritable mob college, the place where Wiseguy 101 was taught by the consummate professional. (An awful lot of gangland hits allegedly occurred there, too.) The Friendly Lounge's most famous graduate likely was mob boss Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, who surprisingly wasn't portrayed in The Irishman, and the second, mob boss Ralph Natale. Skinny Razor also is considered one of the Mafia's foremost assassins. And now, the new Martin Scorsese film The Irishman, which debuted on Netflix nationwide last week, has given Skinny Razor a much higher profile than he ever had (or would've wanted). The film is based on the book  I Heard You Paint Houses , which purports to tell the story of Philadelphia union heavy Frank Sheeran, who claimed to have killed both James R. Hoff...

Netflix has expanded beyond its original business model as a rental service of prerecorded entertainment. In addition to offering DVDs and streaming services for rent, it also has crossed over to the production side of the entertainment industry, producing and distributing its own television shows, documentaries and feature films, in addition to acquiring such programs from production companies. The Irishman: director, left, and  some of the best actors working in films today. Late last month, IndieWire broke the news that Netflix had nabbed the rights to Martin Scorsese ’s long-gestating gangster epic, The Irishman , the acclaimed director's ninth outing with Robert DeNiro. Also starring: Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Bobby Cannavale (who turned out a stellar performance as Boardwalk Empire's desperately needed villian, Gyp Rosetti .)

"Nobody here can take a joke." "What's that? A gun? I got a gun. He got a gun. He got a gun... Everybody got guns!" "Nothing's personal? What the fck is life, if it's not personal?!" "You smug kike midget, creeping around like a fcking dentist with the ether." -- Gyp Rosetti, Boardwalk Empire's villainous savior. You talkin to me? Boardwalk Empire was getting pretty boring. Fortunately, the show creators seemingly realized this -- and adjusted course accordingly, killing off a major character at the end of season two and introducing a new one in the current season. This effectively administered a jolt of much-needed vitality into the HBO series, based (loosely, very loosely) on a true crime story about fortune, power, and greed centered on 1920s Atlantic City, but also in Chicago, New York, and tertiary locals. Somewhere in the second season, it seemed increasingly apparent that despite all the great character actors, s...