Al Pacino

You know that feeling when you rewatch The Godfather I and II and you think, “Damn, Pacino and De Niro were such babes! Just look at how young they were!” Well, you might experience that again with The Irishman; emphasis on might...

In an interview with the British Film Institute, Jodie Foster dropped a few tasty behind-the-scenes morsels about the production process of 1991’s ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ — like the fact that Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman were all considered for the role of Hannibal Lecter.

In honor of ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’s 25th anniversary, let's celebrate its staggeringly talented cast by pitting them against each other to see who comes out on top, much as the characters they play do for an hour and forty minutes onscreen.

As it turns out, rumors of Joe Pesci’s involvement in The Irishman have not been greatly exaggerated. Although Pesci’s name has been attached to reports about Martin Scorsese’s mob drama since its inception several years back, recent updates cast some serious doubt on the actor’s involvement. That changed today, as Pesci — along with Bobby Cannavale and Harvey Keitel — has officially joined the cast of The Irishman, which marks his fourth collaboration with Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

I now invite you to take a break from staring out the window and wondering what the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Daniel Day-Lewis is going to be like, and rotate in your chair to stare out of a different window and wonder what the new Martin Scorsese movie with Robert De Niro is going to be like. It’s been just about a year since we learned that Scorsese’s new mob drama (featuring the all-star team of De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, and Bobby Cannavale) was for sure happening, and as if in commemoration of that anniversary, today brings the news that production will soon get up and running.

Despite its prime location in the heart of New York City, the Tribeca Film Festival has always been regarded more as a regional film festival than a destination for big world premieres. That being said, Tribeca does have one thing that other festivals lack: unfettered access to Robert De Niro, the festival’s co-founder and cinematic advocate for all things New York. This has made Tribeca a prime destination for anniversary screenings of some of the actor’s biggest films; in 2015, for example, Tribeca hosted a 25th anniversary celebration of Goodfellas with the cast and crew in attendance. And this year, De Niro has topped himself, bringing together the men and women behind The Godfather for a frank discussion about the film.

Francis Ford Coppola was a pretty intense dude during the ’70s. He damn near lost his mind while shooting Apocalypse Now in the jungles of Southeast Asia, a quagmire duly chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness. While shooting The Godfather Part II on location in Trieste, Coppola told Italian journalists, “To some extent, I have become Michael.” He’s a larger-than-life character, and it’s only fitting that he’ll now be dramatized himself.

Martin Scorsese has been talking about making The Irishman for so long that we were starting to think that the crime drama would never happen — much like his Frank Sinatra movie. And while we still have no clue if Silence is hitting theaters later this year, it looks like the iconic director is getting ready to defy our skepticism as The Irishman does indeed appear to be his next film.

It was reported last week that foreign distribution rights were being shopped around Cannes for Martin Scorsese’s long-developing mob drama The Irishman — a project that’s been gestating for so long that we started to think it might not ever happen. But STX Entertainment has snatched up the rights to distribute the film overseas, which means that The Irishman is finally happening after all.

HBO Now is good for many things: for catching up on those shows you’ve been missing, for watching films exclusively airing on the premium network (including pretty much all the Police Academy movies, if that’s your thing, sure), for using your parents’ password to take advantage of their disposable income… But there’s something else the streaming service has that you won’t find anywhere else: a seven-hour cut of the first two Godfather films, edited in chronological order. If you have the day off, now might be a good time to indulge in such a thing.