The first time I really remember being outraged at The Academy was 1991.  That was the year that Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas for Best Picture.  I was talking to a friend about The Departed the other day.  That movie seemed too convoluted, too soupy, for my taste.  They gave Scorcese his Best Picture award, but it wasn’t the right Scorcese movie.  Goodfellas was right Scorcese movie.

Of course everybody knows this.  I watched the movie again this week, and it is clear and focused in a way that The Departed utterly fails to achieve.  The only question I had during the movie was the post-Lufthansa robbery killing spree.  How did that make sense?  Wouldn’t somebody notice that everyone else was getting knocked off?  Why have a criminal organization if it’s going to eat itself like that?  I thought that the mafia served to bring stability to crime.  To give a sense of rules and responsibilities to the lawless.  That way you can plan much more complicated capers, and place some element of trust in your partners.  Though the movie seemed very true the character, I wondered if they had perhaps over-dramatized this portion.  So I looked it up on Wikipedia.   Turns out the truth was even crazier.  This is the list from Wikipedia:

The following were all murdered after the heist: ^{[2] [3]}

• Parnell Steven Edwards, African-American blues musician and credit card theft expert whose music career was managed by Dino Barzotinni
• Louis Cafora and wife Joanna, Downtown Brooklyn parking lot owner
• Joe Manri, night-shift Air France cargo supervisor
• Robert McMahon, Air France night shift supervisor
• Paolo LiCastri, illegal immigrant Sicilian-born Pizza Connection drug trafficker and Gambino crime family associate and “Man of Honor” mobster from Sicily
• Theresa Ferrara, the daughter of short-lived one time Milwaukee mob boss Joseph Ferrara and beauty salon owner and manager.
• Tom Monteleone, Fort Lauderdale, Florida restaurateur and mobster,
• Richard Eaton, Fort Lauderdale, Florida associate of Tom Monteleone, Burke front man and con-artist
• Angelo Sepe, Lucchese crime family nephew of Ralph and Thomas Spero, cellmate of Tommy DeSimone and contract killer
• Joanna Lombardo, veteranarian girlfriend of Sepe
• Martin Krugman, hairdresser and wig store proprietor, loan shark and bookmaker

• Thomas DeSimone was later murdered due to having carried out the unrelated murder of William Devino, and Brooklyn parking lot owner Angelo John Sepe was killed after murdering two Lucchese crime family drug traffickers “Joanne Lombardo” and the son of Jimmy Burke, military school graduate, Frank James Burke who was murdered by his drug dealer over heroin.

I also learned a lot about Italian cooking from this movie.