-
Dumb Crooks Star in the Tragicomic Rob the Mob
Rob the Mob is a tragicomic take on two of the dumbest real-life stick-up artists in American history, the sort of dopes you might see loudly caricatured in a five-minute segment on Spike TV. Director Raymond De Felitta and writer Jonathan Fernandez attempt to flesh out this microscopic blip of mafia history, and they half-succeed, […]
-
Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story
Racism, rebellion, and filmmaking ethics intertwine in Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story, a documentary by Raymond De Felitta that focuses on a 1965 NBC News piece by De Felitta’s father, Frank, about Booker Wright, a waiter and shop owner in Greenwood, Mississippi. In that 47-year-old film, the good-natured Wright admitted to his—and, by extension, all […]
-
‘Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris
“Jackie Paris” is a name long relegated to the memories of record collectors and jazz columnists; ‘Tis Autumn modestly attempts to correct this fact. Paris was a Jersey-bred Italian- American bebop vocalist who spent the ’50s at the gates of full-blown superstardom without ever passing through, though he relentlessly gigged 52nd Street, recorded with Mingus […]