Latest news with #Kojak
Metro
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
The Precinct review - Hill Streets Blues meets GTA
An interesting new indie title is a homage to both old school, top-down GTA games and 80s cop shows like Kojak and Cagney & Lacey. Nostalgia is very much to the fore in The Precinct. Not just for video games but for TV. While its appearance, with an isometric style camera mounted high in its virtual sky, brings to mind memories of early, top-down Grand Theft Auto games, its content is a clear and unabashed homage to much-loved cop shows and films of the 1970s and 80s – from Kojak and The French Connection to Hill Street Blues, and Cagney & Lacey. That's an unusual setting for a game, made more interesting because it tries to turn the GTA blueprint on its head, by playing as a police officer instead of a criminal. To be precise, you play as rookie Nick Cordell Jr., fresh out of the Police Academy and eager to make his mark on the mean streets of Averno City (a thinly disguised New York, without the skyscrapers but with lots of neon and forbiddingly rundown dark alleys). This is basically a police procedural in video game form – and if you think about it, there have been precious few of those over the years (weirdly, RoboCop: Rogue City is about as close as it's come recently). So, if you've ever had a secret hankering to pound a beat, you should find plenty to interest you here. It splits its gameplay into working day chunks, so you can be sent out with a brief to do everything from issuing parking tickets to keeping a lid on rowdiness in the nightclub district on a Friday night. While Cordell's days on Averno City's streets might start off as mundane, they rarely finish that way. There are two very active gangs (The Jawheads, centred on a punk band, and Crimson Serpent, which is based in Chinatown) and as you perform your duties, you frequently encounter their members performing crimes, which yields evidence enabling you to work up the food chain from captains to underbosses to bosses. There are also other activities to pursue, such as very GTA style illegal street races (the story being that Cordell has been placed undercover to gather evidence about who's running them) and murders that the homicide cops get you to perform the grunt work for. Whenever you amass enough evidence to arrest a key gang member, you're given the honour of leading the charge in what inevitably becomes a big shoot-out. The Precinct also has a role-playing element, in that as you level up you acquire upgrade tokens which improve Cordell's key stats (including stamina – in true 80s cop show style, there's an awful lot of running after criminals, weaponry (acquiring the automatic rifle is a game changer) and general privileges, such as the clearance to commandeer random cars and pilot the police chopper. Despite all this, The Precinct's upgrade tree is commendably compact, in keeping with the game's general size: the main story takes about six hours to work through and then there's probably another six hours' worth of general sandbox style police work to pursue after that. That will, undoubtedly, be added to via DLC, but The Precinct is not a game designed to occupy your every waking hour. Developer Fallen Tree Games, although full of industry veterans, is a small outfit and most of The Precinct was created by a team of just five people. In practice, the action is fun: the cars are wallow-y and tail-happy – much like those of GTA – and the third person shooting uses a line-of-sight indicator, makes use of cover, and is heavy on the snap aim. But the odd thing is that perhaps the most enjoyable tasks to perform in The Precinct are the most mundane ones. This includes the thrill of finding a car parked on a pavement, to which you can issue a ticket, and the satisfaction of finding something illegal on a random suspect who has committed a minor misdemeanour – which enables you to arrest them rather than merely issuing a fine. More Trending Even when you're driving, you can run random cars' plates, and occasionally uncover wanted criminals, inevitably leading to some classic car chase action. Despite its obvious homages to early era GTA, The Precinct looks pretty decent, too; whatever its viewpoint, it is fully 3D and properly textured, with some modern visual effects in evidence. It also nails the 80s atmosphere, with some very good music and hard-boiled dialogue – although not as problematically hard-boiled as many of those old cop shows are now deemed to be. The Precinct is something of an antidote to games that are over-the-top and in your face: it has an understated, matter-of-fact air that somehow serves to make it more compelling. The fact that it is clearly a labour of love helps, as does its simple but effective structure. Anyone with a secret urge to live the vicarious life of an 80s cop should find it satisfyingly authentic. In Short: A fine attempt at turning 80s cop shows into a video game, that wisely uses PS1 era GTA games as its gameplay template. Pros: Well structured and with plenty of varied mission types. Decent action sequence and surprisingly good graphics and music. Nails the 80s tone. Cons: The AI for criminals sometimes acts very oddly, and the driving can be a bit too reminiscent of GTA at times. Relatively expensive for the short length. Score: 7/10 Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed), PlayStation 5, and PCPrice: £24.99Publisher: KwaleeDeveloper: Fallen Tree GamesRelease Date: 13th March 2025 Age Rating: 18 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Games Inbox: Is there going to be a PS5 State of Play this summer? MORE: Over 75% of all PlayStation game sales are digital as physical sales plummet MORE: Capcom Fighting Collection 2 review – Power Stone revival
Forbes
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Patrick Adiarte Dies: ‘The Brady Bunch,' ‘M*A*S*H' And ‘The King And I' Actor Was 82
LOS ANGELES - SEPTEMBER 29: Patrick Adiarte as David in THE BRADY BUNCH episode, "Pass The Tabu." ... More Original air date September 29, 1972. Image is a screen grab. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images) Patrick Adiarte, the Philippines-born dancer and actor who is remembered for his early recurring role as cabin boy Ho-Jon on M*A*S*H and his guest appearance on The Brady Bunch, died on April 15 of complications from pneumonia. He was 82. Born August 2, 1943 in Manila, Patrick Adiarte overcame early adversity after his sister and their mother were imprisoned by the Japanese on the island of Cebu in February 1945 during World War II. One month later, their father, who was working as a captain for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was killed. After emigrating to the United States, Adiarte eventually appeared on stage as Prince Chulalongkorn in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King And I, Wang San in the stage and film version of musical Flower Drum Song, and college student T.J. Padmanagham in the Blake Edwards comedy High Time. He was also one of the regular dancers on the television series Hullabaloo, which aired in the 1965 to 1966 TV season. And, in 1961, Adiarte portrayed the Prince in a TV version of The Enchanted Nutcracker with Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence. NEW YORK - MARCH 1965: The Hullabaloo dancers perform on the NBC TV music show 'Hullabaloo' in ... More March 1965 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Hullabaloo Archive/Michael) His other guest roles on television included episodes of dramas It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Bonanza, and Kojak. But it was M*A*S*H, which Adiarte exited after the second season to attend college, and the one episode of The Brady Bunch as David, who served as a tour guide to the Bradys in Honolulu when the clan had a series of bad luck, that he was instantly recognized for. LOS ANGELES - APRIL 13: Wayne Rogers as Captain John McIntyre, Alan Alda as Captain Benjamin ... More Franklin Pierce and Patrick Adiarte as Ho-Jon in the pilot episode of M*A*S*H (MASH). Image dated April 13, 1972. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images) UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 20: THE BRADY BUNCH - "Hawaii" 9/22/72 Mike Lookinland, Patrick Adiarte, ... More Christopher Knight (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images) Adiarte also had a brief singing career with the single "Five Different Girls"," among other tracks, in 1965. After retiring from screen work following his episode on Kojak in 1974, Adiarte worked as a dance instructor. Adiarte was married to actress Loni Ackerman from 1975 to 1992. He is survived by his niece and his nephew.
New York Times
04-03-2025
- New York Times
Selwyn Raab, Tenacious Reporter Who Covered the Mob, Dies at 90
Selwyn Raab, an investigative reporter for The New York Times and other news organizations who in exacting detail explored the Mafia's many tentacles, and whose doggedness helped lead to the exoneration of men wrongly convicted of notorious 1960s killings, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 90. His son-in-law, Matthew Goldstein, a Times reporter, said the cause of his death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was intestinal complications. Though the phrase surely fit him, Mr. Raab didn't much care to be described as an investigative journalist. Rather, he said, 'I believe in enterprise and patience.' He had both qualities in abundance across a long career, whether looking into fraudulent methadone clinics, or the life sentence given to a boy who was only 14 when convicted of murder, or the Mafia's grip on New York City school construction. He was also the author of a number of books about the mob, including one that became the basis of the 1970s television police drama 'Kojak.' The mob had his enduring attention as far back as the 1960s, and it led to his definitive 765-page book on New York wiseguys, 'Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires,' published in 2005. The New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik described him in a 2020 article as 'the Gibbon of the New York mob.' His prose tended to stray from elegance. But Bryan Burrough, reviewing 'Five Families' for The New York Times Book Review, said that 'what makes Raab so wonderful is that he eschews legend and suspect anecdotage in favor of a Joe Friday-style just-the-facts-ma'am approach.' Mr. Raab posited that it was Charles (Lucky) Luciano who invented the modern Mafia nearly a century ago, organizing Italian criminal operations into distinct families, with a 'commission' created to resolve territorial disputes and policy matters. In addition to tried and true enterprises — drug trafficking, gambling, prostitution — Cosa Nostra control extended to much of municipal life, Mr. Raab wrote, be it garbage removal, the garment industry, unions, construction, or fish and meat markets. Despite a popular tendency to look upon gangsters as 'amiable rogues,' he said, they were murderous predators and 'the invisible government of New York.' As a boy on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where he lived almost his entire life, Mr. Raab saw the mob up close. There, he told Time magazine in 1974, he was 'surrounded by the kind of legendary criminals you read about — bookmakers, con artists, Jewish and Italian gangsters.' 'I grew up with guys I later covered,' he said. A former Times colleague, Ralph Blumenthal, said that Mr. Raab tended to be humorless but was 'a demon for the facts.' He added, 'When you think of the causes he adopted, they were groundbreaking.' That was true even before Mr. Raab joined The Times, his digging having helped free men wrongly convicted of some of the New York region's more shocking murders. One was George Whitmore Jr., who had been imprisoned for the 1963 murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, roommates in an Upper East Side apartment — 'career girls,' as the tabloids called them. Mr. Raab, working first for the merged newspaper The New York World-Telegram and The Sun and then for NBC News and the New York public television station WNET-TV, uncovered evidence showing that Mr. Whitmore was elsewhere on the day of those murders and had no part in an unrelated attempted rape with which he was also charged. Mr. Whitmore said that the police had beaten him, and that he had no lawyer during the interrogation. In 1996, his case was cited by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, the landmark ruling that upheld a suspect's right to counsel. Mr. Raab wrote a book about the case, 'Justice in the Back Room,' which became the basis for 'Kojak,' the CBS series about a police detective, played by Telly Savalas, which ran for five years in the 1970s. 'I'm not a detective,' Mr. Raab said. 'I just look for the most reasonable approach to a story.' He joined The Times in 1974 and worked there for 26 years. Reporting for the paper, he uncovered evidence that helped free Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, the middleweight boxer who was imprisoned for 19 years in the 1966 shooting deaths of three people in a bar in Paterson, N.J. The Carter case was another instance of police coercion and prosecutorial overreach, one that also led to the conviction of another man, John Artis. Mr. Carter, who died in 2014, became something of a folk hero, his cause championed in a 1976 Bob Dylan song, 'Hurricane,' and in a 1999 film, 'The Hurricane,' in which Mr. Carter was played by Denzel Washington. Mr. Raab received many honors across the years, including the Heywood Broun Award from the New York Newspaper Guild and an Emmy for his work on 'The 51st State,' a WNET program that dealt with New York City issues and on which he was a reporter and an executive producer for three years before moving to The Times. Selwyn Norman Raab was born on June 26, 1934, in Manhattan, one of two sons of immigrant parents: William Raab, a New York bus driver born in Austria, and Berdie (Glantz) Raab, a homemaker born in Poland. As a boy, Mr. Raab boxed in a program run by the city's parks department. He graduated from Seward Park High School in Lower Manhattan in 1951 and from the City College of New York in 1956, with a bachelor's degree in English. After college, he worked for The Bridgeport Sunday Herald in Connecticut (now defunct) and The Newark Star-Ledger before joining the World-Telegram staff. On a blind date in 1962, he met a social worker named Helene Lurie. They were married on Dec. 25, 1963. Mrs. Raab, who helped her husband with his research, died in 2019. Mr. Raab is survived by his daughter, Marian, a freelance writer and editor, and two grandsons. At City College, he was an editor on Observation Post, a student newspaper. He was twice suspended from classes for brief periods because of what he wrote — first for strongly resisting student government and faculty attempts to kill the newspaper, later for criticizing college administrators who had fired several professors under attack in the McCarthy era. He recalled those days in 2009, when he received a Townsend Harris Medal, an award given by City College in memory of its founder. His suspensions taught him a couple of things, Mr. Raab said. One was 'Never seek safe harbors to avoid contentious but important issues.' The other: 'Never sacrifice integrity on fundamental principles, especially if there is a clear distinction between right and wrong on vital issues.'
The Guardian
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jeannot Szwarc obituary
Jeannot Szwarc, who has died aged 85, directed Jaws 2 (1978), Supergirl (1984) and Santa Claus: The Movie (1985). This could be described as a hat-trick, but only if one were talking about own goals. Though Szwarc was a successful television director of more than 50 years' standing, with multiple episodes under his belt of series such as Kojak and The Rockford Files in the 1970s and Ally McBeal and Grey's Anatomy in this century, his film career was another matter. He did sensitive work on smaller-scale pictures such as the time-travel romance Somewhere in Time (1980), starring Christopher Reeve as a 70s playwright who is so beguiled by a painting of a woman from the turn of the century (played by Jane Seymour) that he transports himself back to her era using hypnosis. Szwarc also directed Martin Sheen and Sam Neill in the spy thriller Enigma (1982). His blockbusters, though, were among the most maligned films of their age. When asked about Jaws 2, Szwarc said: 'I do believe I deserve some credit for just pulling it off.' The odds were not in his favour. He had less than a month to prepare when the picture's original director, John Hancock, quit three weeks into production. Only 90 seconds of what Hancock had shot proved usable. At that point, Szwarc said, 'It was the biggest disaster in the history of Universal. They had spent $10m, and they had nothing.' An unfinished script, bad weather and a malfunctioning mechanical shark only added to Szwarc's woes as an immovable release date loomed. He was under no illusions about the task at hand. 'I knew it wasn't going to be a cinematic masterpiece. All I went in with was knowing I had to make it scary, and that I had to finish it.' The film, which features a scene in which a shark chomps on a sea rescue helicopter as it attempts to take off from water, was met with dismay by critics. Riding the wave of Steven Spielberg's 1975 predecessor, however, it was still a hit, grossing $187m. Even as Szwarc was making it, he knew that Hollywood's business model was unsustainable. 'In the long run, it's dangerous if we only keep turning out these big mothers,' he said. 'Jaws or Star Wars makes industry leaders greedy.' Nor did he have any truck with pretension: 'I don't like films where you're always being made aware of how brilliant the director is.' Ultimately, he rejected the auteur theory that originated among his compatriots. 'I don't consider myself an artist. I consider myself a craftsman.' His preference for brisk storytelling ('I always loved American films because there's an energy to them') did not preclude beauty. Researching the look of Somewhere in Time, he covered his walls with so many reproductions of great artworks that colleagues on the Universal lot nicknamed his office 'the Louvre West'. He was born in Paris, to Henry and Dora, who fled with him in 1940 after the Nazis invaded. Smuggled out and into Spain and Portugal, they eventually reached Argentina after eight weeks at sea. His family's history, which included hiding in a cellar from the Gestapo for nine months, made him 'aware that no matter how hard things get on a picture, nothing could be that bad'. Once they returned to France in 1947, Szwarc was educated in Paris at the Lycée Claude-Bernard and the Lycée Saint-Louis de Gonzague, then at HEC business school, from which he graduated with a master's degree. At HEC, he founded and ran the film society. He consumed films voraciously, as did his friends and fellow future directors Bertrand Tavernier and Yves Boisset, and directed plays. All of this steered him away from his intended career as a diplomat. Szwarc began directing commercials and documentaries, and worked as a production assistant on Stanley Donen's comic thriller Charade (1963), which was shot in Paris. 'Just breathing the same air as Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn was a big thrill,' he said. Feeling limited by his opportunities in France, he moved to Los Angeles in 1963. 'I came cold, totally cold,' he said. 'I did odd jobs. I did some writing. I wrote some textbooks, potato chip commercials.' He got his foot in the door at Universal, and was soon assisting a producer there. He became an associate producer on the crime series Ironside, graduated to directing episodes of the show and never looked back. His TV credits in the early 70s included Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man and more than a fifth of the episodes of the long-running macabre suspense series Night Gallery. Among his television films was The Small Miracle (1973), which starred one of his heroes, the Italian neo-realist director Vittorio De Sica. 'I told him I felt like an art student who had to instruct Michelangelo,' he said. Szwarc made his big-screen debut in the same year with the Michael Crichton-scripted thriller Extreme Close-Up. He followed this with Bug (1975), a horror film about pyromaniac cockroaches, which became the swansong of the ingenious horror producer William Castle. In one scene guaranteed to make the skin crawl, Madagascar cockroaches cluster together to spell out the words 'We Live'. The effect was achieved by anaesthetising them, placing them in the correct positions and filming them as they twitched back to life; the footage was then played in reverse. Bug opened in the US in the same week as Jaws and was promptly squashed at the box office. But it later convinced the Jaws editor and Universal executive Verna Fields that Szwarc could save that franchise from jumping the shark. Though Supergirl was unappreciated at the time, it looks now like a scrappy but charming attempt to widen the scope of the superhero movie. It is also full of eccentric casting: Faye Dunaway as the villain, Peter Cook and Brenda Vaccaro as her sidekicks, and Peter O'Toole as a mentor to Supergirl, who was winningly played by the newcomer Helen Slater. As with Jaws 2, Szwarc was saddled with script issues from the start. He signed on to direct a version featuring Supergirl teaming up with Superman, but this was scuppered when Reeve backed out. Drastic script changes were followed by post-production meddling from the studio. Santa Claus: The Movie, which starred Dudley Moore as an elf who falls in with a dastardly toy manufacturer (John Lithgow), was close to an embarrassment. Vincent Canby in the New York Times said the film 'manages to look both elaborate and tacky', and observed that 'the appearance of the toys that the elves turn out [suggest] Santa's workshop must be the world's largest purchaser of low-grade plywood'. Szwarc made a handful of other movies but most of his subsequent career was spent in TV. Between 2003 and 2011, he returned to the Supergirl/DC Comics milieu by directing 14 episodes of Smallville, the television series about Superman's younger years. 'Television is really the art of walking away,' he said. 'You're never going to get a scene perfect; it's impossible. But you can do good work.' Hart Hanson, showrunner on the police procedural drama Bones, hired Szwarc to direct 15 episodes between 2007 and 2016, and admitted that 'we scheduled him at times when cast and crew were most likely to be exhausted and down because he was a spirit-raiser and energy-infuser.' Szwarc is survived by his wife Cara de Menaul, and their sons, Sacha and Stefan. An earlier marriage, to the actor Maud Strand, ended in divorce. Jeannot Szwarc, film and television director, born 21 November 1939; died 14 January 2025
