Cosa Nostra News

Unless you've been lost on a deserted island the past week, you probably know that Netflix dropped a trailer for Fear City , the streaming platform's three-part docu-series on the New York Mafia that will premiere in a couple of days on July 22 ( SEE TRAILER BELOW ). Paul Castellano, Carmine (Junior) Persico, Phil (Rusty) Rastelli, Anthony (Tony Ducks) Corallo, Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno. Fear City (a riff on New York's "Fun City" nickname—though Fun City itself was meant to be sarcastic ) focuses on the Mafia Commission Case (aka, United States v. Anthony Salerno, et al, a 22-count Manhattan-based indictment that was handed down in February 1985), which was the Feds attempt to destroy the New York Mafia by taking out its "brain trust," in one fell swoop. (They were successful to an extent.)  Fear City is produced by RAW, the company behind Don’t F**K With Cats (an excellent documentary on Netlix right now: watch it immediately),  and Brillste...

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...

Revised Considering the success of  Gomorra h,  the critically praised and immensely popular television show about the Neapolitan Cammora , which last year reported ly "doubled" the audience figures of other foreign-language series on the Sundance channel, it's no surprise that Netflix would seek a similar property. (Is Hulu next?) Netflix has managed to take an admirable shot at doing just that with Suburra , Netflix's first original series from Italy. It's been in the pipeline for years, actually. The 10-part series, which debuts worldwide on Netflix on October 6, is named for a real 2,000-year-old ancient Roman seaside town where a Mafia group erects a gambling, prostitution, and drug trafficking empire.

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 .)