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The ostensible premise of The Godfather, the film version of which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is that American society is so prejudiced against Italians that extraordinary men such as Vito and Michael Corleone have no choice but to turn to crime. In a way, then, author Mario Puzo was a kind of goombah Ibram X. Kendi, director Francis Ford Coppola the dago Ava DuVernay, and The Godfather the guinea 12 Years a Slave. If you doubt my claim, consider two scenes. In the first, Michael, back from hiding in Sicily, finally decides to get married (again) and so...

The rerelease of Francis Ford Coppola's mob pic boasted the top location average of the Feb. 25-27 weekend. Over the Feb. 25-27 weekend, Paramount booked The Godfather in 156 theaters across North America in honor of the movie’s 50th anniversary. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic Mafia pic earned $970,000 for a per-location average of $6,218, the best of any film for the weekend. (The next closest was Uncharted’s $5,438 average from 4,275 theaters and The Automat’s $5,004 from three locations.) The Godfather 50 Years was No. 1 or No. 2 in 50 percent of the theaters where it played, and...

Once, it was thought of as the gangster movie to end all gangster movies. Before he played Don Corleone, Marlon Brando had been all but written off after several flops. But of course that's exactly what "The Godfather," which opened in New Jersey 40 years ago this Saturday, was not. Instead, it was the gangster movie that began all gangster movies, at least as we know them now: not just its own sequels, "The Godfather: Part II" and "The Godfather: Part III," but also "Goodfellas," "Donnie Brasco," "Analyze This," "Scarface," "The Freshman," "Prizzi's Honor" and "Married to the Mob," not...

One reason for the longevity of "The Godfather" over the past 40 years is that, behind its gangster plot, is a classic story of an American family, tracing its journey from immigration and poverty toward assimilation and success. In fact, it's not just the story of the Corleone family, but of the Coppola family as well. The movie feels like a personal glimpse into a family album, but it's director/co-screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola's family album as much as it is the fictional Michael Corleone's. True, the characters came from Mario Puzo's novel. But, on screen, Coppola not only invested them...

The reason I wrote The Godfather was to make money. My first novel, The Dark Arena (1955), received very good reviews and netted me $3,500, so I thought I was going to be rich and famous. But when my second novel, The Fortunate Pilgrim, came out ten years later and netted me just $3,000, I was going downhill fast. While the book received some extraordinarily fine reviews, my publisher was not impressed. I asked them for an advance to start on my next book (which would be a big classic), and the editors were cool. They were courteous. They were...

If life is often a matter of split seconds -- the train door that closes in your face, the chance encounter with the love of your life, the near-collision with an oncoming car -- then the universe is about to bestow upon us a generous gift: the leap second. Saturday, at exactly 6 p.m. Chicago time, one second will be added to our official record of time -- Coordinated Universal Time, kept by a series of atomic clocks, housed in environmentally sealed vaults in about 80 timekeeping labs around the world and certified by the International Bureau of Weights and...

LOS ANGELES - James Caan and Robert Duvall have joined the late Marlon Brando in providing voice acting and likenesses for Electronic Arts' "The Godfather" video game. Caan and Duvall, who reprise their respective roles as Sonny Corleone and consigliere Tom Hagen from the film, also were involved in the development of the game and are scheduled to attend its premiere unveiling of the game in New York's Little Italy on Feb. 10. The video game, which draws inspiration from both Mario Puzo's book and Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 movie, is scheduled for release in the fall. Before his death...