The de-aging Olympics of 2019

by Cláudio Alves

The cinema of 2019 has been rich with technological wonders. Septuagenarian actors are now able to have virtual facelifts and look like middle-aged men again. Movie stars can be returned to their youthful selves of the 1990s and there's even the possibility of CGI cloning. This trend is so weirdly generalized that it can be found in a wide variety of projects: MCU tentpoles, auteur's forays into the land of action cinema, and three-and-a-half-hour-long meditations on mortality.

Not surprisingly, these various achievements might be in contention for the Best Visual Effects Oscar, but it's unlikely all of them will be honored...

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You talkin' about De Niro? You talkin' about De Niro?

It's a performance episode of "Contrarian Corner". Here's Ben Miller...

The narrative has been pushed.  Robert De Niro is back! Al Pacino is back! Scorsese and Netflix are a match made in heaven! The Irishman is the Best Picture frontrunner.  I'm not here to disagre with the critical acclaim.  But, we need to have a talk about what is going on with Robert De Niro.  

There are three main problems...

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Musings from SAG screenings (Pt 1): The Farewell, The Irishman, Marriage Story

Special Secret Guest Post!

This New-York-based performer (and Emmy-nominated writer) has been a SAG member for 19 years, though this is his first time on the SAG Awards Nominating Committee.  He works primarily in television -- most famously, playing a role on a series that has been seen in over 100 countries. We've invited him to share impressions from SAG Nominating Committee screenings which are happening left and right of late. Here we go...

THE FAREWELL:  For what it’s worth, this is the only screening I’ve been to where the movie itself—not the panelist, but the movie itself—got a standing ovation.  I, frankly, wasn’t bowled over by it (I thought, for such a dramatic subject, the emotions were curiously muted—I didn’t feel much during the movie, but maybe that’s me)…But anyway, the crowd loved it.  When Awkwafina came out for the Q&A, the comments were positively effusive. One guy called it a “perfect” movie.  Everything was perfect, he said: the acting, the writing, the directing, the editing. (The editing?) With a celebrity in the room, it’s hard to know when people are really being honest with themselves.  But Awkwafina seemed super cool.

Side note: SAG members ask the dumbest questions.  One person asked Awkwafina how she got her start in the business—which is fine, but I’m thinking, really?  You’re in a room full of peers, you’ve just spent two hours watching something that’s ripe for discussion, and this is what you ask?  Look it up online. At least it gave her an entree to talk about her youtube video “My Vag,” which, amusingly, caught a few people off-guard. 

The Irishman and Marriage Story after the jump...

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NYFF: "The Irishman"

Jason Adams  reporting on the opening night of the New York Film Festival

A camera stalks through the hallways of what we typically call an Old Folks Home. Old Folks. Ever think about that phrase? Disarming in its literal folksiness -- it's in truth a place where the day breaks are taken to pick out caskets. So the camera tracks through the Old Folks Home like so many cameras have tracked through Martin Scorsese's so many movies -- through the nightclubs in Goodfellas and the trading rooms and offices in The Wolf of Wall Street, the muddy mountain sides of Silence. We have walked with this man's camera through space and time together and now here we are, all of us Old Folks, stalking one another down antiseptic corridors on shaky wheels.

The camera comes to rest on Robert De Niro, as it must. De Niro looks old -- older than the actor looks right now in real life, and older than his character Frank Sheeran will look for the majority of The Irishman thanks to the (occasionally spotty) state of the art technology that will pinken his cheeks and taut up his neck flesh as the tale he starts to tell us winds us back, way back in time...

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Yes No Maybe So: Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" and NYFF Trivia

by Nathaniel R

As you've undoubtedly heard, The Irishman will be finished in time for a 2019 rollout after all. (We had previously assumed it might not be ready due to the time-consuming visual effects to de-age DeNiro and Pacino for some sequences). The Martin Scorsese mob epic will have its world premiere as the opening night selection* of the New York Film Festival on September 27th. After that premiere it hits some theaters and Netflix streaming though we don't have dates for either one quite yet. It'd be nice if they didn't save it until Christmas for an actual release but awards contenders gonna awards contend, y'know. That said it does say "this fall" at the end so perhaps they'll be merciful to audiences and release it in October?

The drama is based on Charles Brandt's non-fiction book "I Heard You Paint Houses," a line that's included in the trailer and would have made a much less generic title! But generic film titles gonna generic film title, y' know. After the jump, the trailer and a brief Yes No Maybe So breakdown...

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