Scorsese and De Niro Reunite

[MovieWes]

I just watched the film Hoffa the other night (which largely covers the same territory as this film), and I was completely blown away at how awful it was. About 45 minutes in, I was convinced that it was directed by Rob Reiner, so I looked it up in the video guide sitting next to the couch and found out that it was directed by (Surprise! Surprise!) Danny DeVito. Such a bland, sanitized movie (which is about 85% fiction).

Needless to say, I am glad that Scorsese is taking a crack at Jimmy Hoffa's story. Frank Sheeran wasn't even a character in the Hoffa movie (although I suspect that Danny DeVito's fictional character was a composite of Sheeran and others).

[MovieWes]

Oh, wait, sorry. I just realized I misread that. I read "I also wish that De Niro would return to form, like Pacino, but i fear that it's difficult to happen." I retract that last statement.

[MovieWes]

I also wish that De Niro would return to form, but like Pacino, i fear that it's difficult to happen.

What, like Pacino's one-two punch of 88 Minutes and Righteous Kill (which, ironically, co-starred De Niro)? Or his turns in Ocean's 13, Two for the Money, Gigli, The Recruit, People I Know, and S1m0ne? Sorry, but Pacino's resume from the past 6 years is about as interesting as anything on De Niro's, but with less box-office clout. Then again, I guess it is true that Pacino did win an Emmy for Angels in America, but that was for TV so it doesn't really count.

[Johnny Guitar]

Penelope, I think it would go against the grain of the auteur theory if said grain meant that (alleged) auteur were to be fixed to one single genre, and non-auteurs weren't. But this isn't really the case. Hawks bounced from genre to genre as much as any of the "craftsmen" you mentioned, and a lot of craftsmen focused on just one or a few genres. What auteurism as a practice suggests is that there is a unifying set of principles or continuities across a body of films.

In contrast to Scorsese, look at Soderbergh--a true commercial "auteur" who straddles a lot of lines, dabbles in a new genre and with new almost every time he makes a film. We may quibble over how "personal" a particular project is for Soderbergh (or Scorsese!) but no one denies that Soderbergh and Scorsese both have a body of work that can be sensibly explicated through some analysis of their role as authors/primary contributors. But Soderbergh, and I'm not saying he's a bad or mindless or opportunistic filmmaker, has really internalized the of post-classical Hollywood. Pre-television, Hollywood studios made money back on most of their films. Nowadays, rare is the commercial blockbuster that helps keep investors happy and companies in business. A film has to be special enough to get people to go see it (since moviegoing as a general, quotidian social habit has eroded greatly)--people need to be lured away from free domestic a/v diversions--and it's been this way for a few decades, and will continue to be this way for a few more years at least. So this EVENT status has to underline so much, especially the really visible cinema, the stuff with big actors, big directors (not that many exist), big budgets. This doesn't mean formulas don't exist. But for filmmakers to do what people can regard as "the same old thing" for a period of many years is ... I don't say it produces anything good, that all depends on the case, but as a gesture I think it's admirable because it defies trends in the industry.

I'm not saying Martin Scorsese is making great films over and over, or that he's somehow a better artist for doing what he's doing. Damien's "yawn" doesn't rub me the wrong way--if you don't like these Scorsese mob films a yawn is justified! (I'm only moderately interested in them myself.) I just find it somewhat charming that Scorsese's willing to go ahead and make "yet another De Niro mob movie." I think we can all imagine in our heads what this new one will look, feel, and sound like. And we'll probably be proven correct on more than a few counts.

(I also kind of like the idea of M. Night Shyamalan just gutting the connections & goodwill he made with The Sixth Sense. I haven't seen a Shyamalan film since Unbreakable, but from the sounds of it he just keeps doing the same thing. In fact I've read some commentators who don't even focus on whether his movies are good or bad on their own terms, so much as they're tired since we've seen it before--build-up, slow burn, vaguely spiritual revelation. This is one reason why he's failing, he's used up all the mana, he can't just put out a familiar string of stuff he likes to make & sell, a la Roger Corman or Val Lewton. It's hard to do.)

[MovieWes]

Just watch. In the coming days or weeks, Leonardo DiCaprio will be attached to this project as well. Mark my words. :p

Still, can't wait. Scorsese is my favorite living filmmaker.

[Penelope]

That's very interesting, Johnny. I don't follow serious film discussion much--I'm more movie buff than amateur scholar--but given that so many modern filmmakers bounce around from genre to genre, trying to create their next "event," doesn't that sort of go against the grain of the auteur theory--where genre specialists such as Ford, Hawks, Mann, Minnelli, Sirk, etc., are raised to the pantheon while the craftsmen who DID bounce from genre to genre, Curtiz, Wise, Robson, etc., are dismissed...I mean, wouldn't it seem that many modern filmmakers, while professing adoration for the former, are actually more closely following the latter?



Edited By Penelope on 1222970800

[OscarGuy]

There's a difference between making the same movies over and over again and making the same movie with different interpretations. I haven't seen enough Scorsese's mob picks to say he's doing that, but, I have seen enough Spielberg films to see that he's not interpreting much new these days and most of his films, even when event pictures, are becoming redundant.

[Johnny Guitar]

I wouldn't say I'm Scorsese's biggest fan. (I'd rather listen to him talk about other people's movies, something he's fantastic at, than watch a random film of his own, though they tend to be enjoyable.) But I actually kind of like how every other movie he makes deals with the mob, and what's more, casts the same actors, goes over the same territory. It absolutely goes against a certain mindset of post-classical Hollywood filmmaking where every film must be a distinct event (which is why only the powerful or the very particular and hard-headed--e.g., James Gray I presume--can do it in commercial cinema today). De Niro has given up on acting, too, but I hope he and Scorsese make a few more mob movies yet.

(Best one line dismissal of Scorsese?: "In general, I really do think Scorsese has long overestimated the artistic value of representations of spousal abuse." Courtesy of Andrew Grossman.)

[Damien]

Yawn . . .

[Zahveed]

Scorsese's career has become such a bore. Again a film about the mob. Totally predictable. I wish he would do an unpredictable move, like when he directed 'The Age of Innocence'.

I was anticipating the biopic on Teddy Roosevelt, but I haven't heard any news on that in quite some time.

[Cinemanolis]

Scorsese's career has become such a bore. Again a film about the mob. Totally predictable. I wish he would do an unpredictable move, like when he directed 'The Age of Innocence'. I also wish that De Niro would return to form, but like Pacino, i fear that it's difficult to happen.



Edited By Cinemanolis on 1222953621

[Zahveed]

Could this be De Niro's return to form?


Scorsese and De Niro to Paint Houses
Source: Variety October 2, 2008


Paramount Pictures has set Steve Zaillian to adapt "I Heard You Paint Houses," the book about the mob assassin who many believe was involved in the death of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Martin Scorsese is attached to direct. Robert De Niro will play Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran, who is reputed to have carried out more than 25 mob murders. The film will be produced by Scorsese and Tribeca partners De Niro and Jane Rosenthal.

The film's title refers to mob slang for contract killings, and the resulting blood splatter on walls and floors. Variety says the book was written by Charles Brandt, who befriended Sheeran shortly before the latter's death in 2003.

Among the crimes Sheeran confessed to Brandt, according to the 2004 book, was the killing and dismemberment of Hoffa, carried out on orders from mob boss Russell Bufalino.