April 2020 is Al-preciation month (Pacino's 80th)

Hell yeah. 

Last thing I watched him in was my upteenth rewatch of Heat. I was showing it to my friend who had never seen it and he loved it (thank God) -- and we were quoting Vincent Hanna for weeks afterwards. 

Lowkey one of his best performances, certainly the best thing I've seen of Al in his most OTT glory and the number of hilarious moments is incomparable to anything else I can think of in a non-"comedy" but this scene stands out as one of my favorite things by any one ever. I can't even highlight a specific line because absolutely everything he says in these two minutes is fucking gold, by the time he starts singing I burst out laughing every time and while it's so ridiculous it's also somehow such an inevitability for the character's energy: 

That was sexy.
Only thing missing here is..Elvira Hancock!

"Pacino’s performance transcends performance because he doesn’t act in the normal way of acting."                   
- New York Post theater critic Clive Barnes   

...........and that quote is exactly why he can be the champ and the underdog at the exact same time. More to follow later this month

Heavy is the head that wears the crown:

A couple of weeks ago I was watching Hunters, and loving his grandstanding in the finale thought to myself "Damn, you know what I haven't watched in a while? Godpappy 2" so I did. It was glorious.

I love, love, love him in that "Where's my brother" scene sipping his water, dabbing his eyes, quietly, intensely brooding. You're just waiting for him to pop. Poor Tom.

Reminder to watch:

Serpico
The Panic in Needle Park
The Godfather: Part II
Scarecrow
...And Justice For All
Cruising
The Insider

It's an incredibly acted and staged scene. Still Russell Crowe's finest hour. 

"I'm runnin outta heroes man!"

The first performance I'd recommend and I'd start it with a question that no one ever thinks to ask:

What actor ever starred in a film of a play first -  to great acclaim and THEN did the play?
How about also did the play almost entirely differently from how he did the film.......... AND was maybe even better the 2nd time in the play?

Merchant of Venice (2004) wouldn't maybe make my personal top 20 for Pacino film roles - that's how deep he goes - and yet for almost any other actor it would be the highlight of their entire career - and he's done it twice with this role at ages 64 (film) and 71 (play).

Starting at 3:07 - note how he holds on to his medallion of faith while his faith is being stripped away - and for most of it you can't even see his face at all because he isn't acting for the camera, acclaim, or for his "brand" - he's just acting.

8 PM tonight on TCM:



(un-Pacino-related... but Keitel's tour de force in Fingers is on later on at 2:15 am)

Al Pacino and the Academy Awards have a strange history - he got 8 Oscar nominations in just his first 18 roles - no one ever matched that - even Day-Lewis was on a pace to maybe get there at 20+.

Nicholson and Newman took 30++ roles, heck Denzel Washington needed nearly 50 films to get to 8 nominations.

....but in 1990 he had what happened to his GOAT friend/rival Robert De Niro this year in The Irishman happen to him - he conspicuously missed in a film that also got a lot of nominations - 7 total including Best Picture/Director.

The Godfather Part 3 - was just his 15th film - and it's a top 25 maybe for him in film/TV (again he runs insanely deep in performances) and as this scene progresses note how he seems smaller and diminishes and how is the last thing he says .........because his father would have never understood and what else is their to say?

I'm a huge fan. The last performance of his I saw was Hunters which I bailed on 2.5 episodes in -- but that was nothing against him. Film wise I guess was The Irishman. I should fit some more Pacino into my schedule.

No one ever elevated losing or playing losers quite like Al Pacino - other actors maybe play anti-heroes but it's hard to see the "anti" at all - you just know their characters will end up perfectly fine, they're movie stars after all.

Not Al's characters - as Michelle Pfeiffer memorably says to him in Scarface (1983) - "We're not winners, we're losers!" summing up the truth, his Oscar stats (1 win, 9 nominations, um) and also his own personal method for choosing scripts.

........and when he really loses he really breaks your heart and there is no more heartbreaking performance in his filmography than his sad-clown, comic/harrowing turn in Scarecrow. 

Not just an all-time top 10 Pacino performance but one that suggests that if he had never starred in any crime film he'd still have had an entirely different, yet equally spectacular career. 

Today's recommendation: Scarecrow (1973):