Director, producer and Academy Award-winning actor ROBERT DE NIRO has chosen to receive The Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s seventh annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film in Santa Barbara on Saturday, December 8, 2012.
De Niro is being honored both for his great work this year in Silver Linings Playbook, as well as for the exceptional work he’s done throughout his lifetime.
“I am a great fan, not only for what he does on screen, but also for establishing the Tribeca Film Festival…it
brought joy back to lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11,” Kirk Douglas said. Past recipients of the award include Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, Ed Harris, John Travolta and Kirk Douglas himself.
My top 10 Deniro performances:
1. Taxi Driver
2. Casino
3. Raging Bull
4. Godfather Part II
5. Cape Fear
6. Goodfellas
7. New York New York
8. The King of Comedy
9. Mean Streets
10. Wag the Dog
One of our greatest actors
I urge people to revisit some of De Niro’s work from the past 15 years that has gone relatively unnoticed.
He gave brilliant performances in Stone, Everybody’s Fine, What Just Happened, The Good Shepherd and even earlier this year in Being Flynn. Additionally, he directed The Good Shepherd, which is an extraordinary film. Unfortunately, these pictures were not as widely seen as some of his other films.
Either way, the fact that he wasn’t nominated for The King of Comedy, Once Upon A Time in America, Mean Streets, Heat, Casino, The Mission, The Untouchables, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale or Wag the Dog is frustrating. He should have at least as many nominations as Jack Nicholson.
I will say this: I will consider him the greatest actor ever if he stopped working after Heat. Let’s put it in another way, no actor in the history of cinema has given so many truly great performances in absolute classics. However, the last 15 years have been a great let down.
For me, DeNiro has given so many great performances in his career, that the last decade or so of shit roles is kinda a wash. When you’re the best ever(and he is, in my book), you get infinite free passes from me. It’s kinda like how I don’t mind Michael Jackson spending the last, IDK, 15 years of his life being as weird and alienating as possible. He’s Michael fuckin’ Jackson, ok!? He made Thriller.
THRILLER.
(I hope Robert DeNiro shows up in the Silver Linings Playbook)
ok… i’m going to get crushed for this… but i feel like someone has to say it. Ok- so de niro is easily one of the top 5-10 actors of all-time. easily. i think “raging bull” is the best screen performance of all-time (i also love brando in “on the waterfront” and emily watson in “breaking the waves”). but i have a hard time getting over how terrible de niro has been since 1997. since “jackie brown” its like he has intentionally tried to make terrible movie after terrible movie…. the average metactritic score of his movies since 1998 is 48.71… this is absolutely terrible. i don’t think this changes the narrative of de niro’s career, but its hard for me to just forget such a long period of terribleness. I really hope “silver linings” is the start of a bit of a renaissance.
What can I say?
He is the greatest screen actor that ever lived IMO.
Congratulations to Robert De Niro, cinema’s finest actor and hopefully a three-time Academy Award winner with Silver Linings Playbook.