The Playlist

Terrifying First Look Set Pic Of 'Grudge Match' Is A Chilling Reminder Of Where De Niro's Career Can Go

By Edward Davis
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February 24, 2013 6:36 PM
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7 Comments

News

Will all of Robert De Niro's great "Silver Linings Playbook" work be undone in a blink of an eye? The actor has a solid shot at winning Best Supporting Actor tonight despite the fact that Tommy Lee Jones won the SAG award for "Lincoln" earlier this year (the best Oscar augur there is). But his work in David O. Russell's film will go down as one of his finest whether or not he wins. It was an incredibly authentic and charged performance imbued with the anger, frustration and heartache of being a parent struggling with a problem child, on top of the the realization he may have failed said offspring.

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Tommy Lee Jones Joins Luc Besson's Darkly Comedic Actioner 'Malavita'

By Benjamin Wright
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June 29, 2012 12:36 PM
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0 Comments

News

We’ve given a lot of credit to Tommy Lee Jones recently for his willingness to step out so late in his career and try on different hats, like writing, directing, and starring in the pioneer-era tale “The Homesman,” as well as going a little more comedic (and raunchy) than he’s used to in the Meryl Streep co-starring “Hope Springs.” And now he’s set to star in a dark comedy/action mish-mash for Luc Besson. While other aging talent remains comfortable turning in repetitive or forgetable performances, Jones just keeps on rolling.

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Robert De Niro Replaces Nicolas Cage In 'Killing Season' (aka 'Shrapnel') With John Travolta

By Kevin Jagernauth
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October 30, 2011 4:32 AM
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0 Comments

Mark Steven Johnson Now Directing Instead Of John McTiernanIt's not the "Face/Off" reunion we were hoping nor will it be the John McTiernan comeback vehicle. Instead, it will be the next film from the guy who directed "Simon Birch," "Daredevil," and "When In Rome." Good grief.

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Kristen Wiig Joins 'The Comedian' Starring Robert De Niro & Directed By Sean Penn

By Kevin Jagernauth
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October 27, 2011 5:05 AM
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4 Comments

"The Comedian" with Robert De Niro has been knocking around for most of the year, with updates coming in fits and starts but nothing ever seeming quite official. But with the American Film Market launching next week, a plethora of projects are beginning to be put together to shill to producers, investors and other industry folks, and this is easily the most tantalizing.

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HBO Movie With Robert De Niro Playing Bernie Madoff Moves Forward As Writer Comes Aboard

By Benjamin Wright
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October 24, 2011 6:04 AM
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6 Comments

Looks as if fellow legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino must have had lunch together recently, because De Niro could follow in Pacino’s footsteps by playing a notorious real-life individual for an HBO movie. Perhaps hearing good things from Pacino about his work on “You Don’t Know Jack,” where he walked away with a Best Actor Golden Globe for playing assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, it was announced back in May (something we missed due to the crush of Cannes) that De Niro was in negotiations to play Ponzi scheme enthusiast Bernie Madoff in HBO’s adaptation of the bestselling “The Wizard Of Lies: Bernie Madoff And The Death Of Trust.”

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Teaser Trailer For Rodrigo Cortes' 'Red Lights' Features Robert De Niro Turning Around Slowly

By Benjamin Wright
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September 14, 2011 4:30 AM
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4 Comments

While many of our writers didn’t exactly love Rodrigo Cortes’ “Hitchcock in a box” thriller “Buried,” it’s hard to deny that Cortes took some inventive turns with the film’s high concept premise. Next up for the director is “Red Lights,” which MTV has the trailer for, and it’s about as minimalist as you would imagine from a director who stuck one of Hollywood’s most rapidly rising stars (at the time) in a box for two hours.

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TIFF '11 Review: 'Killer Elite' Offers Some Cheap Thrills But Not Much Else

By Drew Taylor
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September 9, 2011 7:21 AM
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4 Comments

"Killer Elite," the new Jason Statham/Clive Owen/Robert De Niro testosterone tsunami, claims to have been inspired by a true story, and goes about setting the action in the early 1980s as a way of justifying its supposed historical validity. The problem, of course, is that the movie is so silly, so two-dimensionally cartoonish, that you don't buy, for a second, that anything depicted actually took place (the 1991 book on which the film is based, originally sold as a "true adventure," has been debunked and similarly derided). As a junky action movie, it passes muster, but for the historical thriller it pretends to be, it fails miserably.

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Mark Wahlberg Out, Bradley Cooper & Robert De Niro Looking In For 'The Silver Linings Playbook'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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August 2, 2011 3:40 AM
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6 Comments

Are BFFs Mark Wahlberg and David O. Russell having trouble? Are there problems in the house that "Three Kings," "I Heart Huckabees" and "The Fighter" built? Nah, it's nothing more than routine scheduling issues but it looks like the two best bros and frequent collaborators won't be reteaming for "The Silver Linings Playbook" -- but one of the earliest names attached the film has returned.

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David O. Russell Working On Action-Drama With Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura Called 'The Mission'

By Edward Davis
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June 14, 2011 12:16 PM
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2 Comments

Also Circling Disney's 'Maleficient'; Director Confirms He's Been Talking To Angelina Jolie, Plus Robert De Niro For 'The Silver Linings Playbook'Update: Ahh, so this is the one of the "several projects" that David O. Russell was talking to Angelina Jolie about. According to THR, now that Tim Burton has dropped the project, "The Fighter" filmmaker is one of the director's "circling" the Sleeping Beauty project "Maleficient." Russell never met a meeting he didn't like, so we're sure he's interested, but knowing his creative differences with studios, we would bet this one is not going to stick.

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