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Las Vegas lives by its slogan, “What happens here, only happens here,” which rings true for many experiences up for grabs on and around the Strip.

With 40 million visitors a year to satisfy, the “entertainment capital of the world” attracts visitors who want to indulge in excess and decadence, seek exclusivity and do things they usually wouldn’t. In turn, Vegas provides a playground where the average person and the hedonist can engage in the sublime, the superb and the spectacularly over-the-top. The iconic city raises the stakes on “only here” with its unique cultural institutions, once-in-a-lifetime moments, A-list headliners, prestigious spirits and other rare recreational pursuits. If you are looking for something to do that you’ll brag about later on, here are seven singularly Vegas experiences.

Bright lights, Big city

Las Vegas has an oddball history: a railroad town that became a gaming mecca thanks to a famous...

Stuart Ford’s AGC Television has boarded the series adaptation of F.G. Haghenbeck’s novel, ‘Primavera del Mal’ (‘The Spring of Evil’) alongside Mexican-American filmmaker Fernando Lebrija of Cielo Content and Irreversible Pictures.

To be retitled “Amapola,” the upcoming historical drama series is set in the early 20th century when the Chinese held sway over the drug trade along the Mexican-u.S. border.

In the world of illicit trade, adopted siblings Raul Duval and Miguel Ying have successfully grown their family’s opium enterprise. Their ambitions now extend beyond mere cultivation as they seek to broaden their reach and increase their political influence. However, their aspirations take an unexpected turn when American mobster Bugsy Siegel arrives in Mexico City, offering them a golden opportunity.

Situated strategically between Nogales, Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona, the Ying family steers their course through the treacherous waters of the drug trade bridging Mexico and the U.

Everyone’s gone to the festivals. But here on the home front, one thing still leads to another.

Last Saturday, I picked up a slightly tattered copy of an old crime biography, Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld, at one of those sidewalk libraries.

Published in 1974, the year after mob boss Costello died at the age of 82, the book was written by his long-time lawyer George Wolf with co-writer Joseph Dimona.

As lawyer books go, it wasn’t bad. Lots of first-hand anecdotes. Not too much ax-grinding. And a reasonably clear re-telling of an oft-told saga about what they used to call “The Syndicate,” from tawdry roots in New York’s Italian ghettos, through the Italo-Jewish alliance of bootlegging gangs, to political machinations, over-throw of the old Sicilian crime lords, Murder Inc., Bugsy Siegel, Las Vegas, the Kefauver hearings and beyond.

You’ve been there many times in many movies,...

It's hard to believe it's been 70 years since Fred Zinneman's "From Here to Eternity" came out. Not that we were all there of course, but time has been really kind to the all-star, Best Picture-winning drama. Unlike many of the rah-rah war films emerging from America during and post-World War II, "From Here to Eternity" argues not that war is hell — since most of the movie takes place during peace time — but that men, even in the army, are subconsciously determined to make life hell whether there's a war on or not.

Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, and Frank Sinatra star as soldiers stationed in Hawaii immediately prior to World War II, whose stubborn pride and barely contained insecurities lead directly to many avoidable tragedies. Clift plays Private Prewitt, a formerly promising boxer who refuses to box again after accidentally blinding a fellow soldier, and endures criminal abuse just because...

Los Angeles, March 17 (Ians) Michael Zegen, James Madio, and Scott Cohen will be starring in ‘The Penguin’ series in recurring roles.

The three join a cast that includes series lead Colin Farrell, who will reprise the role of Oswald ‘The Penguin’, Cobblepot from ‘The Batman’, as well as Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, and Clancy Brown, reports Variety.

According to sources Zegen is set to play Alberto Falcone.

Alberto is the son of Gotham City crime boss Carmine Falcone, who was played by John Turturro in ‘The Batman’, and the brother of Sofia Falcone, who will be played by Milioti in ‘The Penguin’.

In the comics, Alberto takes credit for being the serial killer known as The Holiday Killer, who targets Gotham gangsters on a holiday each month.

Zegen is best known for his role in the hit Amazon series ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’, which...

“The Penguin” series at HBO Max has added Michael Zegen, James Madio, and Scott Cohen to its cast in recurring roles, Variety has learned exclusively.

The three join a cast that includes series lead Colin Farrell, who will reprise the role of Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot from “The Batman, as well as Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, and Clancy Brown.

HBO Max is not releasing character details for three new additions, but sources say that Zegen is set to play Alberto Falcone.

Alberto is the son of Gotham City crime boss Carmine Falcone, who was played by John Turturro in “The Batman,” and the brother of Sofia Falcone, who will be played by Milioti in “The Penguin.” In the comics, Alberto takes credit for being the serial killer known as The Holiday Killer, who targets Gotham gangsters on a holiday each month.

Zegen is best...

The Prime Video series Daisy Jones & The Six referenced several of the 1970s most infamous bars and clubs of the Sunset Strip. One club with a colorful name was an actual bar that named celebrities, including Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger, as patrons. Here’s the history of Filthy McNasty’s.

Sam Claflin (Billy), Suki Waterhouse (Karen), Josh Whitehouse (Eddie), Will Harrison (Graham), Sebastian Chacon (Warren) before becoming Daisy Jones & The Six | Lacey Terrell/Prime Video ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ is set in the LA rock clubs of the 1970s

To keep the feel of the Prime Video film authentic, Daisy Jones & The Six did a lot of location shooting in Los Angeles. This allowed the series to appear grounded in the era.

But, the production designer, Jessica Kender, told Variety it was essential to use as many of the existing vintage locations that remained from that era. She claimed...

Click here to read the full article.

What the Chateau Marmont has been to the Sunset Strip — a hotel-slash-playground of the famous and frisky — the Georgian hotel once was to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Known for its handsome turquoise blue Art Deco exterior, it’s been a local landmark since it opened in 1933 and was a favorite haunt of Hollywood stars including Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle and Clark Gable, who, while married, is said to have met up with Carole Lombard there. Mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone also frequented The Georgian, which was home to a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Now, The Georgian, located at 1415 Ocean Avenue, is set to relaunch after a chic renovation that promises to restore much of its Art Deco grandeur. Purchased in 2020 by Blvd Hospitality (the developer behind downtown Los Angeles’ Ace Hotel) in partnership with Esi Ventures, the 84-room, eight-story hotel...

Over the course of five seasons, HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" interwove the fictional plot lines of a Prohibition-set crime drama with figures and events from real American history. Though it was based on a non-fiction book, "Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City," series creator Terence Winter took a page from the show's premium channel cousin "Deadwood" about what not to do in that he wanted to keep it from being easily spoiled by reading up on the history behind it. Steve Buscemi's antihero, Nucky Thompson, is only loosely based on politician and gangster Enoch L. Johnson, while other characters such as Nucky's protégé, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), were invented out of whole cloth or, at best, nominally inspired by real people.

Winter enlisted the aid of researchers like Edward McGinty to keep "Boardwalk Empire" historically accurate, even as it went about dramatizing situations that never happened.

Dakota Johnson walks into the Tower Bar in West Hollywood, a location she picked and one that offers a juxtaposition of old Hollywood provenance (it was once Bugsy Siegel’s apartment) and new millennial chic. The same could be said for Johnson, who hails from Hollywood royalty as the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, but who has a style and career approach all her own.

On this chilly October afternoon, Johnson has just come from her house in the Hollywood Hills that she bought in 2016 (she and her partner of four years, Coldplay ...

“People see the same thing from different perspectives. And that fascinates me,” Harvey Keitel notes in an early scene while playing the title role in “Lansky,” writer-director Eytan Rockaway’s ambitious but uneven biopic about the notorious mobster Meyer Lansky.

It’s tempting to read this snippet of dialogue as Rockaway’s way of acknowledging, right from the start, that his indie drama is yet another interpretation of real-life events previously recounted, with varying degrees of accuracy, in features and TV movies as diverse as “Virginia Hill,” a half-forgotten 1974 TV-movie that marked Joel Schumacher’s debut as writer-director; the 1999 HBO production “Lansky,” starring Richard Dreyfuss and directed by John McNaughton from a script by David Mamet; and Barry Levinson’s “Bugsy” (1991), featuring Ben Kingsley well cast as Meyer Lansky opposite Warren Beatty’s Bugsy Siegel. Truth to tell, however, comparisons to those predecessors don’t always work in Rockaway’s favor.

“Since studios keep making remakes, why don’t they at least remake them better?” Billy Wilder had a right to ask me that question 20 years ago, since the many remakes of his movies never matched the originals.

The Wilder conundrum seems relevant today when the studios and streamers are announcing more and more remakes. Paramount says it’s developing Love Story, Flashdance and The Parallax View, among others. It is not remaking The Godfather, which went into production 50 years ago. But there are two projects in the works about the making of the movie, and there also is Francis Coppola’s refreshed Godfather III, made in 1990 and re-edited by Coppola now out under his preferred title Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.

While I share Wilder’s skepticism about the remake business, a case could be made that the entire gangster genre deserves a revisit.

When Oliver Stone interviewed for a Deadline The Film That Lit My Fuse timed with the release of his memoir Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador and the Movie Game, the three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker gave Deadline permission to provide our readers with a few passages from the book that was recently published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

A dishy coming of age of a filmmaker tale, Chasing the Light is a lively read that describes how the idyllic childhood of a boy raised in privilege was fractured by the divorce of his beloved parents. It sends him on a mission of self discovery that leads him to the jungles of Vietnam, from which he brought back an intensity that served him in the classrooms of NYU Film School, learning from formative influences like Martin Scorsese. The book is rich in anecdotes about a period when...

Bob Dylan’s Q&a with the New York Times on Friday marks his first major interview in three years, following a conversation with Bill Flanagan on his own website in 2017. In it, he tells historian Douglas Brinkley about his upcoming album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, including the sprawling, 17-minute closer “Murder Most Foul” and the controversial “I Contain Multitudes.“

He also shares his favorite Eagles songs, his thoughts on the pandemic and the recent death of George Floyd that shook the nation. “It sickened me no end to see...

Notorious mobster Al Capone was a larger than life bootlegger, racketeer, killer and organized crime boss in the first half of the 20th century, who has been portrayed on big-screen and small for seven decades. Here is a look at the actors who took on the challenge. And, if you’re curious, here is archival footage of Scarface himself.

Rod Steiger – “Al Capone” (1959) • Rod Steiger played Capone with deliberate showiness, from the roar of his voice to the tilt of hid fedora. Although he won a Laurel Award for his performance, Capone’s sister wasn’t crazy about the film – she sued the filmmakers for $10 million for invasion of privacy because they failed to get permission from the Capone estate to make it. The suit was eventually dismissed. Check out Steiger as Capone in a clip here.

Neville Brand – “The George Raft Story” (1961) • Although Neville Brand had an extensive resume...

Ryan Murphy’s latest exploration of race and sexuality, set during the Golden Age of Hollywood, is currently streaming on Netflix. While the series is fictional, many of the characters are in fact based on real people who lived in and around the film industry during the late 1940s. Want to know more about the true stories behind “Hollywood?” Check out our photos of the 23 true life players who pop up throughout the show.

See ‘Hollywood’: Will Ryan Murphy’s revisionist history get a happy ending at the Emmys?

“Hollywood” follows several young men and women trying to achieve “the dream” of making it in Tinseltown. Jack Castello (David Corenswet) is a white serviceman just returning from the war struggling to get even a bit part. Raymond Ainsley (Daren Criss) is a half-Asian filmmaker desperate to produce more diverse films, especially if they star his African-American girlfriend Camille (Laura Harrier...

Ryan Murphy’s latest exploration of race and sexuality, set during the Golden Age of Hollywood, is currently streaming on Netflix. While the series is fictional, many of the characters are in fact based on real people who lived in and around the film industry during the late 1940s. Want to know more about the true stories behind “Hollywood?” Check out our photo gallery of the true life players who pop up throughout the show.

“Hollywood” follows several young men and women trying to achieve “the dream” of making it in Tinseltown. Jack Castello (David Corenswet) is a white serviceman just returning from the war struggling to get even a bit part. Raymond Ainsley (Daren Criss) is a half-Asian filmmaker desperate to produce more diverse films, especially if they star his African-American girlfriend Camille (Laura Harrier). Archie Coleman (Jeremy Pope) is a gay African-American screenwriter who feels pressured to write...

This episode includes Hollywood spoilers. You can find our easter egg guide for the first episode here.

Ah, the episode of Hollywood introduces us to Anna May Wong and the 1940s studio caste system. There’s a lot to unpack in this hour, which may give you nightmares about how a studio cafeteria is apparently not that different from a high school… except, you know, with racism.

Hollywood Episode 2

-When Ernie bails Jack out of prison, Jack laments he cannot have a record. “Yeah you can,” Ernie answers, “Ever heard of Frank Sinatra?” Ol’ Blue Eyes was arrested in 1938 in New Jersey after being charged by an ex-girlfriend with “adultery and seduction.” That is to say, he could be and was charged back then with promising marriage and then ghosting her the morning after.

-We then hear Johnny Mercer and Paul Eston’s rendition of “Button Up Your Overcoat.”

-Avis...

Exclusive: Minka Kelly has joined Harvey Keitel, Sam Worthington and AnnaSophia Robb in the cast of Eytan Rockaway’s (The Abandoned) upcoming biopic Lansky, about the infamous gangster Meyer Lansky, a contemporary of Bugsy Siegel. As previously announced, Keitel plays the notorious Lansky.

Also rounding out the cast are Orange Is the New Black‘s Jackie Cruz, John Magaro (The Big Short) who plays the younger Lansky, David Cade (upcoming Michael Shannon movie Swing) as Siegel, David James Elliot and Alon Aboutboul.

Shooting is currently underway in Alabama, with Voltage Pictures handling international sales at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin.

Rockaway wrote the script depicting Lansky in various stages of his life. It’s partially based on his father Robert Rockaway’s interviews with the real-life Lansky, which were part of his extensive research into America’s key crime figures.

Legends of Tomorrow follows its best episode ever with a good table setter for the rest of the season.

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This Legends of Tomorrow review contains spoilers.

Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Episode 2

Under normal circumstances, “Miss Me, Kiss Me, Love Me” would be everything I want out of an episode of Legends of Tomorrow. It moves the characters around and gives them new partners to play off of, has a clever story that’s equal parts genre commentary and season long meta-narrative, revels in its own continuity without wallowing in it, and has the cast generally having a great time. In fact, the only thing I can find wrong with it is that it immediately follows “Meet the Legends,” the best episode in the show’s entire run, so it suffers a tiny bit by comparison. Unfair? Sure, but that’s what you get for putting out my...

This week’s Legends of Tomorrow time quake sends the Waverider team to 1947 Los Angeles, where infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel has risen from the dead, thanks to Astra’s handiwork.

Astra’s lust for power has zapped the humanity out of her, which creates quite a dilemma for Constantine, who finds himself taking on the role of a gumshoe P.I. when he, Sara and Ray are caught inside the offices of Webb & Moore Private Investigators. Sporting an American accent, Constantine introduces Sara as his secretary. Ray, meanwhile, has “a cop face,” damsel-in-distress Jeanie Hill (guest star Haley Strode) interjects,...

This is a week you need to examine in some detail because there are a lot of premieres you will want to watch.

USA Network gets back into the swing of things with The Sinner and Briarpatch, HBO has an entertaining documentary series in McMillions, and Katy Keene airs on The CW after special visit to Riverdale.

Get the full scoop on those additions and so much more with our rundown below!

Monday, February 3

Manhunt: Deadly Games (Spectrum)

Those of you lucky enough to have Spectrum cable get to see the second season of Manhunt that began on Discovery with the look at Ted Kaczynski.

This time around, they're looking at the Richard Jewell situation in a series that stars Connie Britton.

I love more scripted television as much as the next guy, but it's hard to get behind content that is available to so few, right?

8/7c 9-1-...

October has arrived faster than we could say “trick or treat,” and with that comes the spooky holiday Halloween — and thankfully, Los Angeles has got you covered with plenty of events that will give you the chills.

From watching a movie among graves at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, to partying it up on the streets of West Hollywood, there’s a lot going on this year.

Check out TheWrap’s list of L.A. events happening this October.

Also Read: New 'Halloween' Movies Dated for 2020, 2021

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

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Cinespia has partnered with Amazon Studios this year to screen Hollywood classics and all-time favorite films among the graves of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which includes the resting places of Judy Garland, Rudolph Valentino and gangster Bugsy Siegel. John Wyatt founded Cinespia in 2002 because he wanted to get people together to watch classic films in a fun experience.

“At the...

Musso & Frank Grill has catered to Hollywood players for 100 years and the venerable establishment is celebrating its centennial anniversary on Sept. 27. A book about the restaurant will be released. The Hollywood Award of Excellence, the first of its kind for a restaurant, will be presented by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Musso’s is also expanding, with three new private dining rooms set to open in early 2020.

“Our family and the Hollywood community can’t even measure the historic importance of the restaurant reaching its 100th anniversary,” says COO-cfo-proprietor and fourth-generation owner Mark Echeverria. “We’re so proud of the entire team and what the generations before us did. It’s an unbelievable milestone.

“We grew up with Hollywood. In 1919, Hollywood Boulevard was a dirt road and the industry was just starting to take off.”

When Musso & Frank opened its doors on the now iconic boulevard in 1919, it was in...

Harvey Keitel will star as notorious gangster Meyer Lansky, a contemporary of Bugsy Siegel, in a biopic directed by Eytan Rockaway. Sam Worthington, Emory Cohen and Austin Stowell are also set to star in the picture, with Alexandra Daddario and Tony Danza in talks to join.

Voltage Pictures has boarded the project and hopes to spark international sales at Cannes. Rockaway wrote the script from a story by Ido Fluk and Sharon Mashihi, partially based on interviews with the real-life Lansky conducted by Rockaway’s father, history professor Robert Rockaway.

The film centers on an aging Lansky living in anonymity in Miami Beach after being investigated and pursued for decades by the FBI. When he enlists a young journalist named David Stone (Worthington) to tell his story, the Feds use him as a pawn to track down the hundreds of millions of dollars that the mobster has been suspected of stashing.

What does an abundantly talented woman have to do to get an Oscar around here? Annette Bening is 0-4 when it comes to winning an Academy Award in the acting categories. If it were up to her fans, there would a law in place that would put an end to this insanity. She might not always choose well when it comes to picking projects – if you haven’t seen 2000’s “What Planet Are You From?,” consider yourself lucky. Of course, it was probably criminal that her performance in 2016’s “20th Century Women” didn’t make more of an impact.

This week, Bening pops up as part of a large ensemble cast in “Life Itself,” a romantic comedy written and directed by Dan Fogelman (TV’s “This Is Us”). And because it seems every actor these days is obligated to be part of at least one superhero franchise, Warren Beatty’s...

Barry Levinson just received his 10th and 11th Emmy nominations for producing and directing the HBO drama “Paterno” which was the true story of how the Penn State football coach handled child abuse allegations against one of his employees. Levinson has picked up Emmy nominations for producing, writing and directing in the past, winning four times in his career.

Levinson began his career as a comedy writer on various variety shows in the 1970s ultimately landing a steady job writing for 72 episodes of “The Carol Burnett Show.” When that show ended he began writing screenplays and had a remarkably successful run co-writing two Mel Brooks movies — “Silent Movie” and “High Anxiety” — as well as two acclaimed dramas “Inside Moves” and “and Justice for All.” He would receive his first Oscar nomination for the screenplay of “And Justice for All.”

That success led Levinson to a feature film directing career. His semi-autobiographical film “Diner,...

A parcel of Sunset Strip land that includes the famed Viper Room nightclub has been purchased by an Arizona developer, who claims they haven’t decided yet what to do with the property.

The sale of the land, which stretches over 38,000 square feet from San Vicente Boulevard to Larrabee Street in West Hollywood, CA., closed on June 15 for a reported $80 million. In addition to the Viper Room, the parcel includes the Aahs costume store, Bar Code barber shop, the Liquor Market and Ta-Ke Sushi and Amarone restaurants.

West Hollywood is an independent city between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It is home to several famed nightclubs, including the Roxy, the Troubadour, and the Whisky a Go Go.

The Viper Room land parcel buyer is 8850 Sunset, a limited liability company based in Scottsdale, Ariz. A company spokesperson said the firm hasn’t yet decided what to do with the property.

However, West Hollywood...

Iconic TV, stage and screen actress Rose Marie is a living legend whose star-studded career and life story are the stuff of Hollywood fairy tales.

A famous child star at age 4, Marie’s made a mark on nearly every aspect of the entertainment industry, including Vaudeville, radio, film, Broadway, and television, whose fans best know her as plucky comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

But just as fascinating as the 92-year-old performer’s impressive résumé is her slate of famous friends – she had a four decades-long friendship with Frank Sinatra and she is the last person...

Rose Marie, the actress who went toe-to-toe in a man’s world as wisecracking comedy writer Sally Rogers on the legendary 1960s CBS sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show, has died. She was 94.

Marie died at 2 p.m. Thursday at her home in Van Nuys, California, according to her website.

The comedienne-vocalist, who started her career at age 3 in some of the earliest talking films, co-headlined on the opening night of Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas in 1946 and was a regular on the game show The Hollywood Squares.

Readily identifiable by the bow in...

Got a scoop request? An anonymous tip you’re dying to share? Just want to say hi? You can send any/all of the above to [email protected]

Question: Is How I Met Your Mother going to show us the “Mother’s” face in the season finale? Or are they going to make that the cliffhanger? —Matt

Ausiello: No idea. I bet if we knew what the title of the episode was we could extract a clue or two from it. This Just In: I can exclusively reveal that the title of How I Met Your Mother‘s sixth season finale is…...

SHANGHAI -- Prevalent cigarette smoking in a current hit show about 1930s gangsters in China's commercial capital has prompted an unusual complaint to central broadcast regulators.

The remake of hit 1980s Hong Kong series "The Bund" features fictional gangster Xu Wenqiang, a Chinese chain-smoking Bugsy Siegel in overcoat and fedora.

The Think Tank Research Center for Health Development has filed a complaint regarding Xu's onscreen smoking with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), local media reported Wednesday.

The popularity of Xu and his stylized smoking in the original series helped launched the career of Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-fat.

But now it is that very smoking that is raising a stink among viewers.

"We didn't realize this would be a problem," Gao Xixi, director of the new series, told the China Daily. "There is no specific regulation in China against smoking on TV."

Founded by doctors Wang Ke-an and Wang Chen, the Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, provides research for anti-smoking legislation in China, where there are some 350 million smokers.