looking for richard Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Are you ready to see Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as partners in Righteous Kill? Is it the casting pair-up you've been waiting 35 years for? Or does it feel too strange to watch a whole movie in which they're all buddy buddy? Perhaps you were fully satisfied with their showdown as enemies in Heat, even though the esteemed veteran actors had much less screen time together. Personally, I like the idea of them going head to head better, but that's mainly because they're both such huge figures that having them team up seems a bit unfair to the other side. As enemies they're like the Incredible Hulk and the Abomination or Iron Man and Iron Monger, to compare them with recent superpowered showdowns in cinema.

It's difficult to choose the better actor of the two, or even decide who's been the more successful Hollywood player. De Niro's been in a lot more films, but his ratio of bad films to good might have suffered as a result. Meanwhile, they've both arguably become too much of caricatures of themselves, to the point where it's sometimes hard to tell which performances are intentional self-parodies and which are accidental. However, despite the difficulty of pitting De Niro against Pacino for a general comparative showdown, there are a number of easily corresponding roles among them. So, just for fun, I've come up with seven specific character showdowns, chosen my pick for which is the better performance, and invite you all to vote on your favorite, whether you agree or disagree with my own.

After the jump ... De Niro vs. Pacino -- it's on!

Ye olde odds and ends:

• Remember a few months ago, when Anne Hathaway got pregnant the lead in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up? Well, that relationship is totally over -- there was no baby and Hathaway bailed for unspecified reasons. Apatow is probably OK with her departure, though, since her replacement, Katherine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy fame, is much hotter (plus, she can act a little bit).
• The cast of Superman Returns has generously agreed (read: had no choice) to lend their voices to EA's and Warner Brothers' video game tie-in. And Brandon Routh is not only talking, but he's letting the main character look like him -- I bet they're even sticking those weird motion sensor things all over his body, so that the game's version of Superman actual moves like the great Brandon. Mmm ... compulsory promotional tie-ins.
• Ian McShane has joined Matthews Fox and McConaughey in the cast of We Are... Marshall, Warner Brothers' based-on-a-true-story drama about the aftermath of a plane crash that took the lives of much of the Marshall University football team in 1970. McShane will play "a steel mill exec who ... loses a son in the crash," and also happens to be a member of the University's board. Needless to say, those c*cksuckers have no idea what they're up against.
• In the style of Looking for Richard, his documentary about a stage production of Richard III (in which he starred), Al Pacino has announced plans for Salomaybe?, a mostly-documentary look at the production of Salome that is currently running in LA. Pacino plays King Herod in the play, and will direct the movie; he hopes to have it done and ready for festivals by the end of the year. (Meanwhile, the search begins for another pun-worthy play in which he can appear. The Pacino of the Opera, anyone?)