Robert De Niro, whose acting career has been on hiatus for years, appears once more in mufti in the incomprehensible sci-fi bore Red Lights, playing the kind of role he could exchange with Al Pacino without the audience ever knowing the difference. With the same kind of sullen, bug-eyed somnambulism both actors have become famous for, he appears as a leaden psychic named Simon Silver, who retired from the hugga-mugga business in 1975. Read More
Call it the Tri-Be-Can’t effect: As New Yorkers, we loathe letting go of our venerable institutions. It’s hard to even admit that they’ve changed enough to warrant a new name. The Lincoln Center is referred to as “the tents” during Fashion Week, as if anyone is still fooled into thinking the shows take place in Bryant Park. The most recent egregious case of celebratory misnomers has to be the Tribeca Film Festival, which was founded in 2002 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. The purpose of hosting the event in Tribeca was to show the world that the neighborhood devastated by the attacks of Sept. 11 still had enough spirit to be snooty about its cinema. With its Cannes-do attitude, the festival premiered international indies in an attempt to show that New Yorkers were still as culturally polyamorous as their European brethren.
But for its 10th-year anniversary, something feels a little … different. Read More
Paul Weitz is a writer-director (About a Boy) with talent and imagination. I can’t imagine what lured him to Being Flynn, a depressing and downbeat rendering of a book called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, the offbeat, commercially challenging 2004 memoir by writer Nick Flynn about his fractured relationship with his creepy father, Jonathan, a failed writer himself, but mostly a Bowery bum and bona fide loser, played by Robert De Niro. Too small and dark to appeal to a large audience, it’s not a movie to cherish. Read More
The Observer arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last night as the first guests were arriving for the Multicultural Gala. A small protest had gathered outside, but guests braved their way past the blaring whistles, careful not to tread on the hems of their evening gowns as they ascended up the front staircase. The Read More
The gallery director of the now defunct Salander-O’Reilly gallery will spend weekends in prison for the next four months, a judge ruled earlier today.
Ms. Morse was convicted on one count of scheming to defraud, but Judge Michael Obus — who, on a completely unrelated note is also presiding over the now-derailed trial of Read More
Want to know how the 64th Cannes Film Festival gets gritty to honor Robert De Niro? Imagine gnomish Brit crooner Jamie Cullum delivering a painfully jazzy version of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” on his grand piano while New York’s native son squirms helplessly onstage at the cavernous, VIP-filled Grand Théâtre de Lumière. Nothing like watching 2,000 black-tie film fanatics Read More
In what must have been a fit of fanboy indiscretion, Brian Williams signed up to interview the famously cagey Robert De Niro on the actor’s home turf, the Tribeca Film Festival.
Some typical responses from Mr. De Niro: “I’m O.K.” “I am and I’m not.” “No.” “Yeah.” “What?”
Closing the conversation, Mr. Williams Read More
To see the changes the Landmarks Preservation Commission required of Robert De Niro and his team at the Greenwich Hotel is rather surprising. To the untrained eye, the copper mansard roof the commissioners insisted be stripped away looks pretty harmless. But, as with so many things, the devil is in the details of this Read More
Celebrities–they’re just like us, even when it comes to the city’s interminable buildings bureaucracy. Even a local legend like Robert De Niro can’t escape the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s grasp, though in the end he got what he wanted. Then again, when doesn’t the Godfather of Tribeca?
In 2004, the commission approved designs for De Niro’s Greenwich Read More
Nicole Kidman is here, trying to smile up some new interest in both a career that has turned anemic and a movie version of the Broadway play Rabbit Hole, which underscores her rarely tapped depths as a dramatic actress. As movies lose luster and star wattage dims, you wouldn’t guess it this week in Toronto. Read More
