I know this is the same shit as the woody allen one...but which do you think is de niro's most underrated performance...
I think by far is Louis Gara in Jackie Brown...he's perfect in it...he's just perfect on every sound, every movement, every little gesture about this ex con who's half of the time asleep and the other stoned and who just got out of jail and is rediscovering how things are...
Rupert Pupkin
Quote from: SoNowThenRupert Pupkin
Amen brother. And I think
King of Comedy is greatly underrated.
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The silent power he envokes in Neil McCauley is a great contrast to Pacino's loud authority. De Niro shows a timid tenderness when being with Eady that shows the softer side of his criminal life. Great stuff.
he was robbed of an oscar nomination in 96---ROBBED
he ha dboth Casino and Heat and he didn't get one...he was ROBBED
Yeah, definetly Heat. He was the best in that.
Nick
the mission
Analyse This...no sorry I meant Analyse That
meet the parents
hi mom! (if u can get ur hands on it, do so, its fucking great)
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Every time I watch 'Casino' I always think how damn under-rated he is in it. He was just soooo fucking good despite the fact that his character wasn't memorable in that Travis Bickle/Jake La Motta way.
Come to think of it, he's done shitloads a under-rated stuff.....
I liked him in 'The Fan' (despite what the world says)
I liked his bit in 'CopLand'
Though I liked him in 'Jackie Browm', I'm still kinda dissapointed that QT didnt write a more exciting role for him.
It's shocking how damn energetic he is in 'Rocky & Bullwinkle'
Quote from: oakmanc234I liked him in 'The Fan' (despite what the world says)
You're not alone in this. He was good there. Also in "Heat" and "The King Of Comedy" and "Analize..."... uh... (you know...the first one) is work was vastly underrated. He's great. He's fucking great.
if you think dinero is UNDER rated, you're a fucking idiot. is argueably the most respected living actor.
De Niro Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer
LOS ANGELES - Actor Robert De Niro has been diagnosed with prostate cancer but is expected to recover fully, a spokesman said Monday.
Doctors for De Niro, 60, a two-time Academy Award winner, caught the cancer at an early stage during a regular health checkup within the past week, De Niro publicist Stan Rosenfield said.
De Niro is in otherwise excellent physical condition and doctors expect a full recovery, Rosenfield said. The publicist said De Niro did not want to disclose if he would be undergoing surgery or some other treatment.
"He's a private person and doesn't care to have his treatment out for public consumption," Rosenfield said.
Thank God for a quick recovery.
If Robert De Niro dies, I can't be resposible for what I do.
no sweat. he'll beat it. lets hope him a fast recovery and that he finally realizes how short life is and does some good movies (with PTA, Pacino and Nicholson)
i can dream
get well soon
warmly,
Duck Sauce
Now I got fucking scred when I read that title... "De Niro Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer"!!!
Long live Bobby D. 8)
Quote from: RoyalTenenbaumNow I got fucking scred when I read that title... "De Niro Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer"!!!
Long live Bobby D. 8)
That's from getting f***ed in the ass so many times by the Hollywood studios over the years...
In a perfect world, Marty would be standing over Bobby's bed right now, going "see Bobby, that's what happens when you turn down my films to do a bunch of crap pictures", then Bobby would sign a contract to work in the rest of Scorsese's pictures 'til heaven take them both.
Anyway, whatever happens,
Get Well Soon RD.
Quote from: TheVoiceOfNickQuote from: RoyalTenenbaumNow I got fucking scred when I read that title... "De Niro Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer"!!!
Long live Bobby D. 8)
That's from getting f***ed in the ass so many times by the Hollywood studios over the years...
No no.... prostate cancer is from getting his prostate infected by cancer...
He probably was all like: "Hey prostate cancer! You infectin' me? I'm the only prostate here. Who the fuck do you think you're infectin'?"
Quote from: ShanghaiOrangeHe probably was all like: "Hey prostate cancer! You infectin' me? I'm the only prostate here. Who the fuck do you think you're infectin'?"
I was going to say something along those lines yesterday but decided not to. But doesn't it sound funny?
I bet he did do it too..
Quote from: RoyalTenenbaumQuote from: TheVoiceOfNickQuote from: RoyalTenenbaumNow I got fucking scred when I read that title... "De Niro Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer"!!!
Long live Bobby D. 8)
That's from getting f***ed in the ass so many times by the Hollywood studios over the years...
No no.... prostate cancer is from getting his prostate infected by cancer...
It sounded funny though... :shock:
When Will De Niro's Hide and Seek Start Filming?
Source: FilmJerk
On Monday, October 20, Robert De Niro announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was scheduled to begin shooting 20th Century Fox's Hide and Seek, with Famke Janssen and Dakota Fanning, around that same time. Filming was of course postponed, but it now appears for not that long. FilmJerk writes:
Twelve days after Robert De Niro announced that he had been diagnosed with a treatable form of prostate cancer, and one week after producers announced that his next feature, "Hide and Seek," would be pushed back from its original October 27 filming start date, FilmJerk.com has confirmed that the 20th Century Fox production will now begin January in New York.
The thriller, written by Ari Schlossberg and to be directed by John Polson, centers on a young girl who loses her mother at an early age. Her father soon discovers that she's coping with the death in an unusual and ultimately terrifying way.
"Once Upon a Time in America" might very well be my favorite performance by Bobby D.
Quote from: ShanghaiOrangeHe probably was all like: "Hey prostate cancer! You infectin' me? I'm the only prostate here. Who the fuck do you think you're infectin'?"
Lol! "You infected me a little bit, just a little bit. You were a little out of line."
De Niro will never die. Best actor ever. I gotta mention Awakenings cause I don't think anybody else has yet. That's an underrated role for both him and Robin Williams. Great movie.
No it wasn't mentioned yet but yes, that is a great movie. Another one worth mentioning is his performance in Mean Streets. One of my favourites for sure.. I love really early De Niro.
his early work with depalma is funny.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3562792.stm
US Italians attack De Niro prize
Italian Americans have objected to plans to give actor Robert De Niro honorary Italian citizenship, saying his Mafia roles give them a bad name.
Italy's culture ministry plans to make De Niro an Italian citizen during the Venice Film Festival in September.
But the Order Sons of Italy in America asked Italy's government to reconsider.
It said: "[We] hold him and his movies responsible for considerably damaging the collective reputations of both Italians and Italian Americans."
'Unbalanced portrayal'
The Washington-based group said that since starring in The Godfather II in 1974, De Niro has "made a career of playing gangsters of Italian descent".
This has given a "distorted and unbalanced portrayal of people of Italian heritage", the group said.
It added: "He has done nothing to promote Italian culture in the United States."
De Niro was born in New York after his great-grandparents emigrated to the US from Ferrazzano, in Italy's central Molise region, at the end of the 19th Century.
He will be at the Venice Film Festival to promote Shark Tale, an animated film produced by DreamWorks about a shark mob boss and featuring characters with Italian names.
The Order Sons of Italy in America (Osia), which has more than 600,000 members, objected to the animated shark character voiced by De Niro in the new film.
"From our conversations with DreamWorks and from what we have seen to date from the studio's own website, promotional material and trailer, this movie will perpetuate the image of Italian Americans as Mafia gangsters," Osia said.
"We are especially concerned since this movie is directed at children who are particularly susceptible to absorbing negative stereotyping."
Italy's culture ministry and DreamWorks were unavailable for comment on Friday.
Osia has previously criticised the portrayal of Italian Americans in TV programmes such as The Sopranos.
people must get really fucking bored sometimes
Quote from: Stephanie Zacharek of the New York ObserverWhere Is De Niro?
by Stephanie Zacharek
The worst role any performer can be saddled with is that of Greatest Actor of his Generation. It may look easy to play from the outside—it is, after all, the role of a lifetime—but in reality it requires that a strict set of rules be followed to the letter. Growing older is allowed, if necessary, but looking older is frowned upon. Get Marlon Brando–fat if you must, but you must never, under any circumstances, get Marlon Brando–weird. Do not make movies with poo-poo jokes in them. And last, but perhaps most important, always pretend to value quality over quantity, appearing in only one or two big prestige pictures every five years or so. To be on the truly safe side, don't take any roles at all. Because if there's one lesson to be learned from Robert De Niro's squinty, tin-canned performance in Jay Roach's tone-deaf comedy Meet the Fockers—and, by extension, from the numerous unmemorable or outright bad De Niro performances of the past 10 years—it's this: Everyone loves a brilliant, out-of-work actor. But no one loves a brilliant actor who works all the time.
It's been about five years now since critics and audiences started sounding the alarm bells over Mr. De Niro, who, as he rounded the curve toward age 60, began taking more comedy and light character roles. Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000) were big hits—big enough to spawn sequels, albeit lousy ones. (And dopey or not, Meet the Fockers is turning out to be a big moneymaker as well.) While critics and audiences alike have enjoyed those movies, there has also been plenty of audible grumbling that Mr. De Niro, by appearing in such trifles, is squandering the great promise of his youth.
This is, after all, an actor so great he's been mimicked at dinner parties across the land ("You talkin' to me?"). How could he stoop to making Showtime with the likes of Eddie Murphy? Supplying the voice of a mob-boss shark in Shark Tale and playing Fearless Leader in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle may have been fun, but enough is enough. Isn't it time for Mr. De Niro to get down to the real business of acting?
And that line of thinking leads to a dangerous question: Just what is the business of acting?
Mr. De Niro's résumé is hefty: He's made more than 25 movies in the past 10 years alone. There's no way for anyone but a mind reader to know, with absolute certainty, which movies Mr. De Niro has made for love, which for money and which he has made for both. Although we often assume, wrongly, that successful or much-lauded movie actors are rich, Mr. De Niro is involved with enough other projects, from directing to running his own production company (Tribeca Films), that desperation for money isn't a factor in what roles he takes.
At the same time, work is work: Any actor, at any level of stardom, should have the right to take on work that he might enjoy doing and make some money at the same time. (And as far as Fockers goes, ascribing Mr. De Niro's motivations to sheer greed is presumptuous: If he had a good time working on Meet the Parents, he'd have good enough reason right there to take on the sequel.) Whatever we presuppose about Mr. De Niro's motivations, this is the résumé of a man who, for whatever reason (and money isn't necessarily a bad one), likes to work. It's a journeyman actor's résumé, not the kind that, in our fantasies, we'd fashion for one of the greatest actors of a generation. And for anyone who loves, or claims to love, actors, it's a cautionary tale about the dangers of reading a performer's career movie by movie instead of moment by moment.
But first, let's get back to the obvious: Mr. De Niro is lousy in Meet the Fockers. The performance feels gnarled and stiff and mechanized; it lacks the jovial menace of the one he gave in Meet the Parents. In both movies, Mr. De Niro plays a parody of the unnerving, almost-ready-to-blow characters he built his early career on—the gag is that he's a suburban dad who both loves his family and clings to the idea of order. In the first picture, Mr. De Niro is clearly relishing the joke—even in the context of his character's obsessive fastidiousness, he's loose and relaxed. But in Fockers, the central gag of the character feels too internalized; it's as if Mr. De Niro, having already developed the character as far as he could, realized there was nowhere further to go with him and simply decided to coast. (The cloddishly desperate jokes written for him didn't help.)
Fockers should have been better, and Mr. De Niro better in it, but it's not the blight on Mr. De Niro's career that some longtime fans seem to think. Toting up the performances he has given in the past 15 years or so, a number of them seem vague and indistinct. You may barely be able to picture the types of characters he played in Cop Land, The Score or Marvin's Room. Those performances may have been perfectly serviceable, but they just haven't stuck.
Why has Mr. De Niro taken so many roles, instead of choosing just a few juicy ones? The answer, whatever it is, suggests that when you're an actor with a reputation to withhold, there's a danger in liking your work so much that you actually want to keep doing it. Mr. De Niro's career is peppered with superrefined, overcooked performances that have been universally accepted as great (as in Raging Bull), and great, fairly recent performances that have been almost completely overlooked (as in Alfonso Cuarón's viciously and unfairly maligned Great Expectations). Scattered across the vast plain of Mr. De Niro's career are performances that fold under their own weight (as the evil stepdad in This Boy's Life, his singsong thuggishness feels cartoonish), and performances so ardently delicate and complex that no actor since has been able to touch them (most notably, his turn as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II).
You can dislike some or even many of Mr. De Niro's wide-ranging performances, and even feel that many of the choices are beneath an actor with his capabilities. But particularly considering that many actors work less as they get older (and actresses, of course, have it even harder), the arc of Mr. De Niro's résumé suggests not a lack of discrimination, but a total devotion to his craft—and, maybe even more significantly, an ingrained sense that in order to be a working actor, an actor has to, well, work.
Few would ever accuse Mr. De Niro of being lazy, and the first piece of evidence that's generally served up is the more than 50 pounds he gained to play Jake La Motta. But although the performance is often cited as a great Method performance, it is, as the critic Steve Vineberg pointed out in his fine survey Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style, a betrayal of Method technique: "When ... Robert De Niro put on fifty pounds to play boxer Jake La Motta in Scorsese's Raging Bull, literally making himself into what earlier actors had simulated by the use of creative imagination, he was confusing actual physical transformation with acting."
You can see Mr. De Niro working every second in Raging Bull, which is precisely the problem: It's not just a textbook performance but a performance textbook. His Jake La Motta is a slab of living beef with two holes for eyes—there's humanity in there somewhere, submerged beneath all that festering, muted rage and crippling paranoia, but it's impossible to tell how either Mr. De Niro, as the creator of the performance, or Martin Scorsese, as the director of the work, feel about the character of Jake La Motta. Mr. De Niro's gears are working at full-tilt, but the overall effect is one of overactive blankness.
It's heresy to say that I prefer Mr. De Niro in some of the lighter performances he started giving in the late '90s, in pictures like Analyze This and Meet the Parents. But I'll say it anyway. Those performances shook something loose in Mr. De Niro, both as an actor and as, simply, an onscreen presence. He was able to unleash his mischievousness without ever dissolving into unadulterated, sickening cuddliness. These are performances that don't negate the terrifying and agonizingly vulnerable, unreachable specter of Travis Bickle, but flicker around it. There's no direct link between the characters of Bickle and of Paul Vitti (the tough-guy mobster who, in Analyze This, seeks the help of analyst Billy Crystal to quell his panic attacks), other than some spark of ignition in Mr. De Niro—something expressively alive and unique to him. But then, that's enough. You wouldn't view Mr. De Niro's turn in Analyze This as strictly Method. But in some ways, the performance suggests the full range of what it means to be a Method actor, if only in that modest performances can contain the glimmers of great ones (and vice versa), stretching across a range of performances decades apart.
Bad performances are as essential to a great actor's résumé as good ones, because with inconsistency comes surprise—the ace up an actor's sleeve. I feel no heat coming off Mr. De Niro in Goodfellas, and I howl when, in This Boy's Life, I hear him clatter through a line like "I know a thingger two about a thingger two." But two movies later, or 10, he'll redeem himself in an instant, as in the otherwise tiresome 15 Minutes, when he proposes to Melina Kanakaredes by blurting out, "I want to have some shoes next to my shoes"—the words are inelegant, but the rhythm is like music, John Donne reinvented by Howlin' Wolf.
Line readings are part of the actor's technique, and they're what we cling to most tenaciously when we recall a performance. But Mr. De Niro's career is more aptly defined by what he says when he's not talking. Collectively, when we think of Mr. De Niro, we picture him as Travis Bickle in front of the mirror, or as Jake La Motta beating the dickens out of his brother, and the words that accompanied those moments appear before us as if encased in thought balloons. But there are no words, and no convenient thought balloons, to go along with what may be Mr. De Niro's single greatest moment (if there has to be only one). If it's the small moments that define true greatness in an actor, let's choose the one where, in The Godfather, Part II, Mr. De Niro's young Vito Corleone returns home to his wife and young son after losing his job. He hangs up his jacket and unwraps a pear he's drawn from his pocket, which he places on the table. His wife will exclaim over it when she sees it there.
But in the moment before she does, a moment in which we see only Mr. De Niro's back, we know everything he's thinking—his feelings aren't safely encased in thought balloons; they're a wild, mournful current running down his spine.
It's a small moment, a marvel of economy, and one that dissolves the space between actor and audience until there's nothing left between us but empathy. It's as great as anything I've ever seen an actor do. It is defiantly not a line that can be mimicked at dinner parties, and it stands as a slippery symbol of the difference between everything Mr. De Niro the great actor stands for, and everything we may wish he would stand for, if only he'd stay put on the pedestal we've built for him. Confounding us, frustrating us, and sometimes even enraging us with his choices may be the only way he can command and maintain our respect.
Mr. De Niro, at this point in his career, is technically more than an actor, but none of us can pretend that it's as a businessman and entrepreneur that we care about him. Those sidelines belong to him solely, but his performances are a gift to us, and it's stingy to suggest that the lackluster ones are enough to constitute a betrayal of his original promise. The only role worse than Greatest Actor of His Generation may be National Treasure, and subconsciously or otherwise, it's one Mr. De Niro has managed to avoid. When it comes to his performances, maybe he only ever wanted to be thought of as an actor.
You may reach Stephanie Zacharek via email at: szacharek@observer.com.
From http://observer.com/pages/frontpage5.asp
Does De Niro have a script for his career?
The great actor's recent credits may seem beneath him, but maybe there's something deeper going on here.
Source: Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
Robert De Niro has been written about a lot lately, and not in a good way.
Here is perhaps the most celebrated actor of his generation, nominated for six Academy Awards and winner of two, and where can you see him now? The De Niro of "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "The Godfather Part II" is starring in the raunchy comedy "Meet the Fockers," the "Poltergeist" knockoff "Hide and Seek" and, most troubling to purists, a 30-second spot (albeit a classy one directed by Martin Scorsese and scored by Philip Glass) for American Express.
The frustration at not seeing a great talent working on material worthy of him is understandable. And it's natural to speculate why. The easiest explanation is the money De Niro undoubtedly will collect from these highly commercial ventures. Even actors need to earn a living, and it is axiomatic in Hollywood that as they age there are fewer opportunities to get substantial paychecks.
Also, while his current slate is hardly a trifecta that will enrich a distinguished body of work, the kinds of films De Niro made his mark in are not exactly thick on the ground in today's American film landscape. Just what was he passing up to make "Hide and Seek"?
But on another level, to see De Niro's choices in these starkly pragmatic terms, and to question his choices in a purely reductivist way is to misunderstand the nature of what he does.
The seemingly strange path of De Niro's career feels connected with the very nature of acting and the actor's life — and on much more important levels than the practical one. For acting of De Niro's caliber is not a profession so much as a calling — a gift, if you will.
In primitive cultures that did without theaters, people with similar abilities likely became mediums or the tribal shaman. Truly exceptional actors like De Niro should be seen as more than craftsmen with finely honed techniques for delivering lines well. They are, in effect, individuals with intuitive second sight, people who can make you believe they are in touch with other worlds, like the one Travis Bickle occupies when he confronts himself in the mirror in "Taxi Driver."
Actors, at least those in a league with De Niro, have a need to work, a passion to express themselves as only they can do in front of a camera or on a stage. This ability to take on the appearance of strange and different lives without having to actually live them is one of the things that actors cherish most about their work and why they often gravitate toward outlandish roles in the first place.
Roman Polanski, who acted before he was a director, told me at Cannes in 1976 that he'd made "The Tenant" because it enabled him to play the lead part of a man in a dress who, in a surreal series of failed suicide attempts, repeatedly crawls up multiple flights of stairs to throw himself out of a top floor window. "It's a great role for me, don't you think?" he said, surprised that anyone might not understand. What sounds like a nightmarish situation in real world terms is a gift from the gods for performers.
Like any gift, the ability to truly and deeply be someone else can be as much a burden as a blessing. Going outside of yourself and into someone else's psyche can be enormously draining, as terrifying and exhausting as putting yourself into a trance. You don't have to look any further than De Niro's "Godfather" brethren Marlon Brando to see someone whose great gift, in a sense, wore him out.
For an actor with De Niro's reclusive personality, that must be especially so. I once worked with Joseph Papp on an oral history of the New York Shakespeare Festival and he arranged for a rare extended interview with De Niro, who had just appeared in a festival production.
What I discovered was not an actor who was press-shy, as I had assumed, but something more fundamental — someone uneasy with language when he is not acting. This tendency still holds true: In introducing a 25th anniversary screening of "Raging Bull" two weeks ago in New York, De Niro reportedly said all of 10 words: "Glad everyone could come to this reunion. That's it. Thanks."
In the real world
Acting, I felt quite strongly after my time with De Niro, is how he communicates, how he interacts with the world. He is so effective becoming other people because, in addition to his tremendous talent, he has so few mannerisms of his own to get in the way. Half-measures are not possible for him.
We can speculate about De Niro's choices, we can point to possible real-world reasons for them, but finally, like the sources of his talent, this is unknowable, perhaps even to De Niro himself. When someone is so deeply an actor, when the link to being other people is so primal, it is impossible for us to fully understand why he makes the choices he does.
It's likely, finally, that De Niro wouldn't be able to articulate the philosophical reasons for his recent decisions any more than Brando would have for his. The mystery has to be respected as part and parcel of the gift, as one mask that even our congenitally prying 21st century eyes can't successfully look behind.
Linson pic 'Happened' for De Niro
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Robert De Niro is gearing up to channel the life of writer-producer Art Linson in the Barry Levinson-directed "What Just Happened" for 2929 Prods.
The actor will play a desperate movie producer hanging on to the tattered threads of his career as he tries to maintain his dignity while surviving the mounting humiliations of Hollywood.
Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 will fully finance the film -- in the $25 million budget range -- with Tribeca Prods.' Jane Rosenthal, De Niro and Linson producing. The film does not yet have domestic distribution, but 2929 International's Shebnem Askin will be selling it to international distributors at this year's American Film Market, where 2929 also plans to introduce it to the studios.
"The movie will capture Hollywood just as 'Wag the Dog' captured Washington," said Rosenthal, who produced the 1997 Levinson-directed "Dog."
Sean Penn and other Hollywood stars are expected to make cameos in the film, slated to shoot next summer.
De Niro Faces Harsh WINTER
Making a return to his Mafia roots, Robert De Niro is attached to star in an adaptation of Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine.
Source: FilmStew.com
Although he's said he'd never play another Mafia character, Robert De Niro - because of Don Winslow - may now have to eat his words. The two-time Oscar winner is currently attached to star in an adaptation of Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine, which Paramount Pictures has just picked up for distribution. De Niro is also aboard to produce with Jane Rosenthal through their Tribeca Films banner.
In the adaptation, De Niro would star as a former Mafia hit man who has retired and is now the owner of a bait shop. When he finds out that there is a hit taken out on him, he decides that he has to get back in the game. No writer is yet attached to adapt the novel, which will likely hit bookstores in 2006 through the Knopf banner.
According to Daily Variety, De Niro and Rosenthal initially sparked to the material and, with the help of CAA, packaged a deal with Paramount. Brad Weston and Marc Evans will now oversee the project for the studio.
Repped by CAA, De Niro just signed to star for helmer Barry Levinson in the dramedy What Just Happened?. He is now directing and starring in The Good Shepherd for Universal Pictures.
Though I'm unsure if it counts as under-rated since it was an Oscar nominated performance, no one talks nearly enough about how good DeNiro is as Max Cady in "Cape Fear."
Just a great over the top performance, and one of the great villains of all time. One of the few remakes that may be better than the original.
Five join cast of 'Stardust' for Paramount
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller and Charlie Cox have signed on to star in Paramount Pictures' "Stardust," the Matthew Vaughn-directed adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fantasy novel.
With a screenplay penned by Vaughn and writing partner Jane Goldman, "Stardust" centers on Tristian (Cox), who, in order to win the heart of his beloved (Miller), promises to fetch a falling star named Yvaine (Danes). This sets in motion an adventure in which Tristian and Yvaine must face off against a pirate named Captain Shakespeare (De Niro) and an evil witch (Pfeiffer).
Vaughn and Gaiman are longtime friends, and Vaughn had been slowly developing "Stardust" as something he would do in the far-off future. When he exited "X-Men 3" in June, he decided to tackle "Stardust." Vaughn quietly put together the cast, with particular focus on the role of Yvaine, for which many actresses screen-tested.
Vaughn is producing alongside Lorenzo di Bonaventura via his Paramount-based di Bonaventura Pictures. Michael Dreyer and Gaiman also are attached as producers. Stephen Marks and Peter Morton are executive producing.
De Niro, 50 Cent explore 'New Orleans'
Robert De Niro and 50 Cent are in final negotiations to co-star in "New Orleans," a police thriller set to be directed by Tim Hunter.
The film (previously titled "Microwave Park") centers on a cop who thinks his partner has died in Hurricane Katrina, only to discover that he was shot to death. When he gets a new partner, the pair investigates the murder, taking them on a journey into a world of police corruption.
De Niro is attached to play the lead with 50 Cent in the role of his new partner.
The project was originally set in Los Angeles but changed to New Orleans after the Katrina disaster. Production is tentatively scheduled to begin filming in the city in February.
rappers, actors.. when you're facing a loaded paycheck, what's the difference?
De Niro, Pacino reunite for 'Kill'
Duo to reteam in independent film
Source: Variety
CANNES -- Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team onscreen for just the second time in "Righteous Kill," a $60 million indie production put together by Nu Image's Millennium Films and Emmett/Furla Films.
Shooting will begin Aug. 6 in Connecticut, with some work in Gotham to follow. The two stars play cops chasing a serial killer. Jon Avnet will direct and produce and the script is by "Inside Man" scribe Russell Gewirtz.
Nu Image topper Avi Lerner and Randall Emmett, two of the pic's six producers, did not disclose additional plot details or the source material during a short press briefing Thursday. Rights to all world territories are being shopped in Cannes.
Emmett said the idea for the film originated from the two actors' desire to co-star. "They're friends, and this really all got started from that," he said.
With typical showmanship, seated in the Nu Image Noga Hilton suite overlooking the beach, Lerner went a step farther.
"This is an event in world history," he said. "They were in two scenes in 'Heat.' In this movie, they are in the whole thing together."
CAA, which reps the two stars plus the helmer and scripter, played a key role in the final negotiations, which wrapped in the wee hours Thursday. More casting is under way, but Lerner said CAA clients were not necessarily in line for additional roles.
The existence of such a high-octane indie project testifies to the health of the well-funded new players that have emerged in the past couple of years, Lerner said. While Nu Image is hardly a newbie at 15 years and counting, it is among the companies capable of steering a full-scale, studioesque production.
"We believe the independent world will do it more effectively, more cost-effectively and with more of the heart," Lerner said. "When we make something, we allow filmmakers to be filmmakers."
He cited "John Rambo," "16 Blocks" and "Black Dahlia," some recent and upcoming pics nurtured by Nu Image and eventually marketed and distributed by a studio.
Lonnie Romati negotiated on behalf of Millennium.
Aside from Lerner, Emmett and Avnet, the producers are Boaz Davidson, Georg Furla and Alexandra Milchan (daughter of New Regency's Arnon). Exec producers are Danny Dimbort and Trevor Short.
De Niro, Rosenthal team on 'Dragon'
Universal, Tribeca bow to Mao
Source: Variety
Universal and Tribeca partners Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal will make a film about the rise of Mao Zedong and communism in China, using as a resource one of the only Western journalists on the ground to watch the events unfold.
Studio has optioned the Roy Rowan memoir "Chasing the Dragon: A Veteran Journalist's Firsthand Account of the 1949 Chinese Revolution." Jon Marans and Yuri Sivo will write the screenplay and Rowan will be a consultant. Sivo will exec produce.
Universal bought the project based on a pitch by the writers, who'll weave the story into an epic-sized drama with a love story.
Rowan landed in China and traded in a gig as a worker for United Nations Relief for a job as a correspondent for the Shanghai bureau of Time and Life.
Teamed with photographer Jack Birns, Rowan covered China's civil war and observed close up the rise of Mao and his army. Along the way, Rowan fell for a Chinese interpreter who may have been a spy.
The writers and author were repped by Preferred and Dannie Festa, along with lit agent Carol Mann.
Quote from: MacGuffin on May 17, 2007, 11:55:45 AM
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team onscreen for just the second time in "Righteous Kill," a $60 million indie production put together by Nu Image's Millennium Films and Emmett/Furla Films.
Third. Godfather 2, Heat, and now this.
Second.
Quote from: MacGuffin on May 17, 2007, 11:55:45 AM
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team onscreen for just the second time in "Righteous Kill," a $60 million indie production put together by Nu Image's Millennium Films and Emmett/Furla Films.
No scenes together in Godfather II.
A technicality. Depends how you define "together onscreen" because they're both in Godfather 2 "together", they're just not together onscreen at the same time. But yeah, you win.
I'd like to see Pacino playing a timitd, almost whispery character and De Niro some screaming mad man...for a change.
Explain to me that trailer of a ridiculous movie that has Robert De Niro playing a pirate...
Quote from: kal on July 18, 2007, 10:49:42 AM
Explain to me that trailer of a ridiculous movie that has Robert De Niro playing a pirate...
So that's what he's stopped playing psychos for...
O'Toole is in there too...and Pfeiffer still hot...
Is this guy playing a pirate with an american accent? Is this right?
OH MY GOD. If this was an adaptation of "When Pride Still Mattered" and was being directed by someone good, I would be in heaven, but it's about Kramer's old book and while that isn't as good, I'll still jump for joy over this.
Awesome Awesome news!!!
Robert De Niro to play legendary football coach Vince Lombardi
ESPN Films teaming with NFL on Green Bay Packers Championship flick
Published on Tuesday, Mar 9, 2010
By Gregory Ellwood
Source: Hit Fix
Robert De Niro has already won one Oscar playing legendary boxer Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull," can he win another as the firey Green Bay Packers icon Vince Lombardi? Is a casting coup for fledgling ESPN Films, De Niro has agreed to play the championship football coach in the new motion picture "Lombardi."
Based on the book "Instant Replay" written by Jerry Kramer and Dick Schaap, the film will center on the formative years Lombardi took the Packers from worst team in the NFL to five-time league champions. Eric Roth, who collaborated with De Niro on "The Good Shepherd" but is best known for his screenplay for "Forest Gump," is adapting. De Niro will also co-produce along with his longtime partner Jane Rosenthal and the NFL through hi Tribeca Productions company. No director has committed to the project at this time.
In a statement, Rosenthal, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival along with De Niro, said, "We've had an extraordinary relationship with ESPN for five years through the Tribeca Film Festival, and now we're able to extend that association into production."
The NFL is also very pleased about having the two-time Oscar winner on board. The leagues Charles Coplin used a number of sports analogies noting, "There are few actors who could accurately portray the fire, passion and grit of Lombardi and we're thrilled to have Robert De Niro on our team. With the addition of De Niro, Eric and Tribeca Productions, we have a deep bench to produce a film worthy of the legendary coach and American icon."
Production appears as though it won't occur until sometime in 2011. ESPN and the NFL would like the film to release the weekend between the AFC and NFC Championships and Super Bowl 2012. That would be a tenative release date of Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. It is unclear which studio would distribute the picture, but one would have to assume ESPN parent company Walt Disney Studios would be in the mix.