Arts Express: Paul Sorvino Talks The Last Poker Game

Paul Sorvino Talks The Last Poker Game. And the last movie release for co-star Martin Landau who just passed away.

** "They called me and then the question was, who is going to be the other fellow. And when they said Marty Landau, I said that's it, go no further - that's the guy."

Actor Paul Sorvino phones in from LA to talk about his unusual elder bromance with Martin Landau as feisty residents in an old age home not ready to give up on life, in The Last Poker Game. Sorvino, fond of switching up screen personas on both sides of the law, also shares details about his new cookbook  - and the mystery recipe for a drink he calls The Goodfella. And a conversation peppered with menus and movies, pine nuts, raisins, garlic versus onions, and sharing memories of working with Landau on this film.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "He's a fascinating character with an incredibly strange life, he fought for the Union Army and he was a spy for the Confederates, apparently - and I guess the challenge is to humanize that person and not make him this crazed, hardened killer."
 
Hickok: A Conversation With Actor Luke Hemsworth. And a less conventional look at the conflicted man behind the western legend, co-starring Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Dern as the Australian actor's ambivalent father figures in the movie. While probing connections to PTSD psychologically afflicted post-Civil War vets turned outlaws roaming the Wild West;  and actually little known about Hickok as the son of an Illinois farmer whose home served as a stopover for escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad.

** "We're meant to read the lives of important people as if they never bothered with breakfast, lunch or dinner, took a coffee break, or stopped for a hot dog on the street."

Book Corner: What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women And The Food That Tells Their Stories. Food historian Laura Shapiro is on the line to Arts Express to explain exactly what a food historian is; how food defined the disparate lives of these women across the centuries, from poet William Wordsworth's sister Dorothy who cooked and cared for him, to Hitler's lover, Eva Braun. And what any of this may have to do with poetry and food; how you 'can easily see the food flowing through Wordsworth's poetry, even when he doesn't write about it'; Nazis, war, paper trails and Ivanka's champagne popsicles; gooseberries and post WW II cardigans and sensible shoes: and casseroles and the packaged plastic food version of 1950's womanhood.

**Arts Express Best Of The New Hotspot This Week: What does the CIA and Pentagon have to do with the creation and censorship of Hollywood movies? Apparently plenty, according to this investigative report probing just released documents obtained under The freedom Of Information Act. And the Deep State's major influence over approximately 800 films and more than 1,000 television productions - and not all of them war movies where disseminating propaganda and script control acts as a bargaining chip by providing military props and paraphernalia in exchange - but comedies like Meet The Parents too.

Arts Express: Airing on the WBAI/Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations.