Coolio, best known for his 1995 hit song “Gangsta’s Paradise,” died at age 59 earlier this week. Following the news, many in the music industry posted tributes to the late rapper. However, one post caught fans’ attention, from none other than “Weird Al” Yankovic — who Coolio had a documented beef with in the ’90s.
The tension between the two started after Yankovic wanted to parody Coolio’s song, which eventually was released as 1996’s “Amish Paradise.” Coolio originally denied Yankovic’s request for the song, but given fair use laws, he couldn’t stop a parody from happening. Thus, the beef began. Coolio even threw in a line about Yankovic in his song “Throwdown 2000,” which appeared to be a diss.
By some point around the 2000s, Coolio and Yankovic had hung out and eventually put their drama aside. Yankovic even wanted the rapper to appear in his 2006 movie, Al’s Brain, but Coolio declined due to the financial aspect of the deal. Prior to his passing, he even noted that he found Yankovic (and the parody of his song) hilarious.
“Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong,” Coolio told Vicein 2014. “Y’all remember that, everybody out there who reads this sh*t. Real men and real people should be able to admit when they’re wrong and I was wrong, bro. Come on, who the f*ck am I, bro?”
“He did parodies of Michael Jackson, he did parodies of all kinds of people and I took offense to it because I was being cocky and sh*t and being stupid and I was wrong and I should’ve embraced that sh*t and went with it,” he continued. “I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny as sh*t. It’s one of those things where I made a wrong call and nobody stopped me. That’s one thing I’m still upset about — my management at the time. Somebody should’ve stopped me from making that statement because it was dumb. And I think it hurt me a little bit. It made me seem stupid.”
Despite their beef history, Coolio and Yankovic still maintained a clear respect for one another.
Bruce Willis has become the first actor to sell the rights to his likeness to a deepfake company. After testing out the technology for a Russian TV commercial last year, the Armageddon star has reportedly granted the digital firm Deepcake the exclusive rights to create a “digital twin” for future projects.
After 40 years of making films, Willis announced in March of this year that he would be retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, which has reportedly affected his cognition. With this unprecedented collaboration, Willis can now appear in films for years to come (according to The Telegraph), and the actor said in a statement that he was pleased how the Russian test run turned out. Via Collider:
“I liked the precision with which my character turned out. It’s a mini-movie in my usual action-comedy genre. For me, it is a great opportunity to go back in time.
With the advent of modern technology, even when I was on another continent, I was able to communicate, work and participate in the filming. It’s a very new and interesting experience, and I thank our entire team.”
Willis isn’t the only Hollywood legend experimenting with technology that can recreate performances. James Earl Jones recently announced signed over the rights to his voice to Lucasfilm. The VFX company is now authorized to use Respeecher AI technology to recreate Jones’ iconic Darth Vader voice in perpetuity. Lucasfilm has been experimenting with the tech on The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Darth Vader is set to appear in the upcoming Ahsoka series and will presumably use Respeecher to create the Dark Lord’s dialog.
Shawn Mendes voices the titular character in the forthcoming film Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, which is based on the children’s book series and arrives next month. Today, he released the song “Heartbeat” as the first single from the movie soundtrack.
“Heartbeat” is a jovial track with an infectious chorus: “Heartbeat, it speeds up whenever you / Want me, what you got, I want it like / All week, I need that, I wanna be / Wherever you are, wherever you are,” he sings against a flamboyant rhythm.
Earlier this year, the pop star had to cancel his Wonder tour. “As you guys know, I had to postpone the past few weeks of shows, since I wasn’t totally prepared for the toll that being back on the road would take me,” Mendes said in Twitter and Instagram posts. “I started this tour excited to finally get back to playing live after a long break due to the pandemic, but the reality is, I was not at all ready for how difficult touring would be after this time away. After speaking more with my team and working with an incredible group of mental health professionals, it has become more clear that I need to take the time I’ve never taken personally, to ground myself and come back stronger.”
Russia’s war on Ukraine isn’t going terribly well, as an endless stream of leaked phone calls from Russian soldiers has confirmed to the world. Nor does video footage of soldiers being told to use tampons to treat their own bullet wounds look great. Yet Putin still decided to roll out an annexation event, in which he proclaimed that four regions of Ukraine are now part of Russia. That amounts to 15% of Ukrainian territory (mostly villages), but it’s grown increasingly clear (over the course of seven months) that Putin’s army won’t be able to take Kyiv. That didn’t stop Putin from telling Kyiv to stand down and negotiate with him during his Friday speech.
Will he have the manpower to even attempt to do so? Last week, the Russian president grew desperate and drafted 300,000 reservists, and in the midst of the chaos, his regime decided to draft protesters and ship them to Hell, too. Following public pressure, Putin has admitted (to his Security Council) that mistakes were made with the draft. Via the New York Times::
President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged “mistakes” on Thursday in how the Russian government has been carrying out his draft, a sign of the Kremlin’s scramble to keep public discontent in check over Mr. Putin’s effort to escalate the war in Ukraine.
In televised remarks to top security officials, Mr. Putin said that the draft had raised “many questions,” and that “all mistakes must be corrected and prevented from happening in the future.” He described cases of people entitled to deferments being wrongly drafted, such as fathers of three or more children, men with chronic diseases or those above military age.
As well, Putin’s Friday speech (according to Washington Post reporter Mary Ilyushina) featured a rant about gender identity including, “The West’s suppression of moral values acquires the features of Satanism.” The Telegraph notes that he ranted for quite some time about Western countries, including the United States, and he warned Russians to save their “future generations” from the West: “We have to protect them from enslavement and experiments that can crippled their bodies and souls.”
This bizarre tangent appears to be how Putin’s justifying his war, although it’s truly a mystery how he believes that his distaste for the West has anything to do with turning the Ukrainian people’s world upside town. And still, he insisted that the newly annexed Ukrainian regions are due to “the will of millions of people” in Ukraine.
Here’s a fun question: How much money is a Snoop Dogg blunt worth? On one hand, the rapper is perhaps the most iconic marijuana-associated celebrity, so a joint once owned by him is a special thing for fellow enthusiasts. On the other hand, thousands and thousands of Snoop Dogg blunts have found their way into existence over the years: In a 2012 Reddit AMA, Snoop noted he smokes about 81 blunts a day. If he kept that up daily for ten years, that’s over 295,000 blunts, and Snoop’s been smoking for much longer than just a decade.
So, how much is a Snoop blunt worth? It appears the answer is $10,000.
In a recent Variety interview, Seth Rogen and wife Lauren Miller Rogen spoke about Hilarity For Charity, their nonprofit and annual event focused on Alzheimer’s disease, for its tenth anniversary. During the conversation, they were asked if there was “one performance or moment through the years that you think really captures what Hilarity For Charity is all about,” and Seth said, “Snoop Dogg once auctioned off a blunt on stage for Alzheimer’s.” Lauren chimed in, “I think it went for $10,000.”
Seth continued, “I think that encapsulates how we are approaching the space differently. If you’re lucky enough to be able to get Snoop Dogg to come perform at your show and auction off a blunt for Alzheimer’s care and research, then I think that speaks very well to an unexpected but effective kind of melding of matters and sensibilities.”
Earlier this year, a major pop culture prediction was made: 2022 is the year indie sleaze returns. Think smudged makeup, disco pants, an odd obsession with cheap beer, and, of course, Meet Me In The Bathroom-era indie rock. So, it’s only right that the period’s most respectable band, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, are also making their comeback. On this week’s Indiecast episode, hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen review the band’s comeback album Cool It Down. Plus, they share their thoughts on Wilco’s absolutely massive box set and plug Steven’s just-released book, Long Road: Pearl Jam And The Soundtrack Of A Generation.
The most talked-about music news story this week was fueled by Pitchfork’s massive listicle where they rounded up the 250 best songs of the ’90s. Like any major retrospective music list, the choices outraged some, particularly those who noted that Céline Dion made an appearance over Neutral Milk Hotel.
In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian notes the return of screamo legends City Of Caterpillar. Meanwhile, Steven tells listeners to check out 2nd Grade’s new album, Easy Listening.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 107 here or below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.
Countless moments had to go right, or at least not disastrously wrong, for 5 Seconds Of Summer to make it past the 10-year mark as a band. There were instances in which the band members themselves — made up of guitarists Luke Hemmings and Michael Clifford, bassist Calum Hood, and drummer Ashton Irwin — were uncertain about whether they would emerge from creative droughts and burnout long enough to even reach the milestone. But as they release 5SOS5, their fifth studio album in twice as many years, the pop-rock outfit has embraced the feeling of falling upwards.
The tagline has appeared sporadically throughout the current album era with no explicit meaning or definition. However, glancing back over the trajectory of their career, it’s clear that from the very beginning 5SOS possessed deeply ambitious, if at times misguided, long-term goals that shifted as they began to find their place in the pop arena. The Australian band has since built a catalog scattered with searing ruminations on toxic relationships that have reached their breaking point, others that simply weren’t meant to be in the first place, and more recently have embraced the thematic thread of self-reflection in their songwriting to metamorphic results.
When 5SOS released themselves from the restrictive influence of both internal and external expectations to allow themselves to fall freely, they didn’t find that they were plummeting towards the ground, but rather floating completely untether in the opposite direction towards boundless opportunity. Revisiting 20 of the band’s greatest songs, it seems they’re only getting better along the way.
20. “Castaway” (Sounds Good, Feels Good, 2015)
5SOS tried out a dozen combinations of sounds across their second album to help prove they were a tried-and-true rock band, each with varying degrees of success — but none as intriguing as “Castaway.” Left with the ashes of a past relationship, Hemmings and Clifford delivered a venomous performance trying to figure out where it all went wrong, backed by sweltering instrumentals from Hood and Irwin. The band took the glossy pop band narrative that had begun forming around them from the release of their self-titled debut album and melted it down with the heat of an unrestrained and fervently industrial rock anthem.
19. “Unpredictable” (Somewhere New EP, 2012)
5SOS has released dozens of songs across multiple albums and smaller projects since the release of their debut EP Somewhere New in 2012. Now, the band may look back and recoil from their earliest releases — they’ve grown immensely as artists in the time since and won’t even entertain the idea of playing most of them live — but still, there’s something special about the youthful optimism of “Unpredictable.” Even the cliché “get out of town” trope they learned from their pop-punk forefathers isn’t cringe-worthy. How could it be? They sounded like they were having the time of their lives.
18. “End Up Here” (5 Seconds Of Summer, 2014)
After years of studying the work of All Time Low, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and more, 5SOS boiled down the most essential lessons they learned from each of their early career influences and crafted their notes into “End Up Here.” They checked all of the boxes: slight self-deprecation, impassioned storytelling, and — most importantly — a killer, chant-ready chorus that kicked off with a Nirvana reference and lead into an even more satisfying hook: “Now we’re walking back to your place / You’re telling me how you love that song about living on a prayer / I’m pretty sure that we’re halfway there.”
17. “TEARS!” (5SOS5, 2022)
Closing out 5SOS5 as the last of five bonus tracks, “TEARS!” is an atmospheric departure from the 18 songs that preceded it. Beyond its pulsating, boundary-pushing production — one of the band’s most unique structural arrangements to date — the track unsuspectingly called back to the cadence and melodies wielded by R&B singers in the late ’90s and early 2000s, the beat dropping out at times to spotlight crystal-clear vocal performances from Hood and Irwin. One of the few led vocally in the band’s discography, let alone on this particular album, “TEARS!” unleashes a vividly cathartic performance about a precarious search for release.
16. “Moving Along” (Youngblood, 2018)
On their third album Youngblood, 5SOS set the stage for their most ambitious and cohesive live show yet. With that in mind, the band brought the energy of thousands of fans into the studio to create “Moving Along,” a pulsing deep cut that erupts from the moment it begins. The funk-meets-rock track only slows down as Hood and Hemmings take turns riding out the bassline, wondering if an ex is as stuck on even the most trivial “what-ifs” of the past as they are. “Thinking ’bout you lots lately,” they admit. “Have you been eating breakfast alone like me?”
15. “Vapor” (Sounds Good, Feels Good, 2015)
“Vapor,” a deep cut from Sounds Good, Feels Good, builds itself around the elevation of deeply passionate sentiments, even in the face of emotional destruction. “I want to breathe you in like you’re vapor,” 5SOS offers on the chorus in a rare instance in which Clifford leads vocals. The intensity heightens from there, Hood and Irwin raising the bar: “I want to feel you in my veins.” There’s a haunting darkness to “Vapor” that intensifies with the addition of a complete string section that runs beneath percussion that sonically resembles the shattering of hearts in a relationship built to fail.
14. “Blender” (5SOS5, 2022)
5SOS has long conveyed an apparent discomfort with staying in one place for too long, using each project to experiment with their sound while inching closer and closer to a sonic manifestation of their core identity. On 5SOS5, they crack their own code with “Blender,” an uptempo emotional whirlwind driven by a masterfully slick bassline and vocal gymnastics. The single reflects a culmination of both the band’s development between Youngblood and CALM and their dramatic yet electrifying energy they made honest attempts at capturing on their earlier releases. “Blender” is an illustration of the heights 5SOS can reach when everything clicks.
13. “Old Me” (CALM, 2020)
One of the leading singles on CALM, the band’s fourth studio album that derived its title from each member’s first initial, “Old Me” feels like a catalyst for the recent self-reflective breakthroughs offered both on their group releases and in the solo material shared by Hemmings (2021’s When Facing The Things We Turn Away From) and Irwin (2021’s Superbloom). Over thumping production from Post Malone collaborator Louis Bell, 5SOS owns up to their past to streamline a clear path toward the future. “Shout out to the old me and everything you showed me,” Hemmings laments. “Had to f*ck it up before I let you get to know me.”
12. “Beside You” (5 Seconds Of Summer, 2014)
Two years before it landed on the band’s debut album, an earlier version of “Beside You” was the centerpiece of their debut EP. The newer recording was a more polished effort rounded out with orchestral flare and rock inclinations. The lyrics, however, remained intact, almost as a testament to foundational songwriting skills 5SOS had from the jump. Conceptually, they weren’t reinventing the wheel in their approach to detailing the yearning of a long-distance relationship, but they made it their own. It also marked one of the band’s strongest vocal performances and remains a fundamental marker of growth in their skill set.
11. “Older (featuring Sierra Deaton)” (5SOS5, 2022)
Credited collaborations are few and far between within 5SOS’ catalog. With the arrival of “Older,” songwriter Sierra Deaton becomes the first featured artist on one of the band’s album tracks. The one-time X Factor winner co-wrote the song with Hemmings (her fiancé) and has vocals on the final recording. The soothing ballad pays homage to classic, piano-based love songs while verbalizing the inevitable pain promised by falling in love and running out of time. There’s a maturity to the notion, taking the band’s frequent ruminations on the passage of time and pairing it with their ever-evolving understanding of the complexity of love.
10. “Waste The Night” (Sounds Good, Feels Good, 2015)
5SOS knew they needed their second album to explore areas of their artistry they hadn’t on the first. When they started working on what would become “Waste The Night,” they laid down a mid-tempo foundation built around synths with Irwin’s drumming leading them forward. Clifford and Hood tackle the refrain that follows the instrumental break at the song’s conclusion, returning from a seamless fade-out to harmonize with alluring vocals. Drawing inspiration from somewhere in the space between The Police and The 1975, 5SOS unearthed something that felt grandiose, ethereal, and unexpected.
9. “Teeth — Live From The Vault” (CALM, 2019)
During the early stages of introducing CALM, 5SOS conceptualized the vault, a live performance space where they would deliver alternate recordings of the album’s singles. Before the vault shuttered indefinitely at the start of the pandemic, 5SOS recorded an elevated version of their industrial rock track “Teeth” — which interpolates New Order’s “Blue Monday” via Rihanna’s “Shut Up And Drive” — adding even more grit and electricity to it. The bassline running through “Teeth — Live From The Vault” fuses with piercing drum stabs and range-challenging vocals in what culminates as a celebration of the complete transformation a song can make when its focus locks in on the interconnection of its instrumentation.
8. “Disconnected” (She Looks So Perfect EP, 2014)
While 5SOS were making their mark singing about arrow-heart tattoos and American Apparel underwear on their debut major label single “She Looks So Perfect,” the song’s accompanying EP was hiding pop gold in plain sight. Co-written with John Feldmann (The Used, Good Charlotte) and All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, “Disconnected” expertly channeled the brand of long-winded rhythmic pop that The 1975 were inching closer to perfecting around the same time. Everything fell perfectly into place — from the backing ad-libs and the attention-demanding performance from the rhythm section to the tender sentiment: “You are my getaway, you are my favorite place.”
7. “Bad Omens” (5SOS5, 2022)
On “Bad Omens,” 5SOS delivers a cautionary tale about the danger of ignoring glaring red flags, something their discography suggests they’ve had quite a few run-ins with. Still, when it comes to love, they never learn their lesson. The layers of harmonies that swell at the end of the track alongside an angelic string section were recorded all at once, rather than pieced together in layers later on. As it builds to a climax, the ensemble performance drives home the force behind their willingness to go to the ends of the earth for someone, no matter how poorly it may end: “That’s what you do when you love somebody.”
6. “Ghost of You — Live” (Meet You There Tour Live, 2018)
5SOS’ live show rests at the core of their identity as a band. On “Ghost Of You — Live,” recorded in 2018 during the Meet You There tour, eerie piano notes lead into a transformative rendition of the chilling breakup ballad from Youngblood. Flashlights raised, the audience quickly takes on a collaborative role as thousands of emotion-packed voices blend together with the band’s pristine performance. “So I drown it out like I always do / Dancing through our house with the ghost of you,” Hemmings sings on the final verse, driving home one of the band’s most heart-wrenching lyrics with the help of the roaring crowd: “And I’ll chase it down, with a shot of truth / That my feet don’t dance like they did with you.”
5. “2011” (2021)
Commemorating their 10-year anniversary in December 2021, 5SOS shared “2011,” a nostalgia-drenched return to form. “I miss the days when we were young and not so wise,” Hood offers. “Only doing what felt right, with open hearts and open eyes.” In between the highs and lows of their career, 5SOS became somewhat jaded by their own success. But as the first song written and produced solely by 5SOS — Clifford helming the latter responsibility with pop-punk flare — “2011” carried with it an air of optimism. When the band chants “back to the days when the days were better” over slamming percussion, they aren’t exactly clicking their heels together wishing to go back in time. Instead, they arrive at a realization that the youthful, bright-eyed feeling doesn’t have to be gone forever – and they don’t need anyone but each other to get it back.
4. “If You Don’t Know” (Don’t Stop EP, 2014)
Over the years, 5SOS has developed a reputation for delegating some of their best songs to the fate of becoming b-sides and rarities. “If You Don’t Know” is one such fallen soldier. An essential snapshot from their early career, the record captures all of the potential they have come to reach and further explore as established pop artists in the years that followed. While delivering some of their sharpest lyrics to date, the band had never sounded more in sync — from Clifford’s anxiety-inducing guitar riffs reflecting the impending doom of the relationship to Irwin’s backing vocals holding the entire production together. It’s a breakup song that fights for a happy ending — if the flame was going to burn out, anyway, 5SOS were going to exhaust themselves pleading for one final chance at making it work.
3. “Close As Strangers” (5 Seconds Of Summer, 2014)
5SOS was adamant early in their career that they didn’t want to be called a boyband, or draw too many comparisons to One Direction, despite their closely linked fanbase. But teaming up with the group’s frequent collaborator Steve Robson, 5SOS made it clear that if they wanted to dominate in the pop lane (they would later prove on Youngblood, they could do so with ease). Listening to “Close As Strangers” feels like reading years-old love letters abandoned in a drawer and experiencing all of the same emotions. Another song left to collect dust in the depths of 5SOS’ discography, it’s a classic story of a musician on the road, straining to maintain a sense of connection. But 5SOS changes their fate, singing over soothing guitars and shimmering percussion: “Living dreams in fluorescent lights while you and I are running out of time, but you know that I’ll always wait for you.”
2. “Best Years” (CALM, 2020)
As we’ve seen, 5SOS does heartbreak extremely well — maybe even a little too well. But “Best Years” makes an undeniable case that 5SOS does all-consuming romance even better. It’s a modern pop ballad on par with Ariana Grande’s “POV” or The Weeknd’s “Die For You” and a public declaration of love that would bring even the most cynical anti-romantic to their knees. “Best Years” succeeds in its refusal to take the easy way out by celebrating a love without hiccups or detours. “I wanna hold your hair when you drink too much / And carry you home when you cannot stand up,” Hemmings offers as dazzling synths subside to the background. “You did all these things for me when I was half a man for you / I wanna hold your hand while we’re growing up.” There’s a depth to the track’s all-encompassing production that carefully matches the weight of its content without overpowering it.
1. “Youngblood” (Youngblood, 2018)
When 5SOS launched into their third album era in 2018, there was no better declaration of the band they had become in the three years since their last album than the title track “Youngblood.” Their newfound maturity reintroduced the four-piece as artists with a catalog-defining collection of live instrument-driven pop songs up their sleeve and nothing left to prove. 5SOS established themselves as key players in the genre’s ever-competitive arena with unsuspecting production twists and progressions as the single dominated radio, years ahead of pop’s guitar revival. During their time off gathering life experiences, the band made an essential transformation through the realization that they didn’t have to overcompensate for anyone’s expectations. Their first song to surpass a billion streams, “Youngblood” captured the essence of 5SOS in under three and a half minutes, signifying a defining turning point for the band as both songwriters and performers.
Charlie Puth is letting it all out in the lead-up to this third studio album, Charlie, but his latest single finds him in a moment of quiet introspection. “Charlie Be Quiet!” was first teased by Puth on TikTok in late August. The 47-second snippet walked fans through the creation of the song, adding bass, hi-hat, and guitars in real time. (The “See You Again” star has been transparently tracking his progress on Charlie via TikTok.)
The polished product arrived Friday (September 30), one week ahead of Charlie‘s October 7 release. “Charlie Be Quiet!” begins with, well, Charlie being quiet. “Charlie, be quiet, don’t make a sound,” Puth sings softly in the intro. “You got to lower the noise a little bit now / If she knows you’re in love, she’s gonna run, run away.”
As the song progressively gets louder, Puth’s insecurities get stronger. He promises to act cool and pretend he doesn’t care because he refuses to “make the same mistake” of “putting my heart on display.”
Charlie is Puth’s first album since 2018’s Grammy-nominated Voicenotes. The 30-year-old pop star confirmed the album in July, writing on Instagram: “This album was born on the internet, and I’ve had so much fun making it in front of all of you this past year. 2019 me used to think that in order to be an artist, you had to hide away and talk to nobody about your art. Turns out you make MUCH better art when you involve millions of people in the process. (For me at least.) I hope you scream cry every word when I sing these songs on tour because they wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you.”
Tickets went on sale Friday for the European leg of Puth’s One Night Only tour. He unveiled North American dates earlier this month. The run begins October 23 in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Robert De Niro has appeared in virtually every sort of film imaginable but none so frequently as movies about cops, gangsters, thieves, and other criminal types. Part of what makes looking at De Niro’s crime movie work as a whole is the way it reflects his versatility as an actor. Drop him in the part of a by-the-book cop and he can give a stock character dimension and life that it might not have had on the page. His breakthrough came playing an out-of-control low-life but he’s just as skilled at depicting a life of crime as a profession like any other (with the occasional armored car robbery thrown in now and then).
Below you’ll find 15 of De Niro’s most memorable crime movies but consider the order of this list somewhat arbitrary. Of course, they’re up on top, but do you really need anyone else telling you thatGoodfellasand Heatare great movies? You already know that. So read this instead as a kind of survey of De Niro’s life of crime that advances from supporting roles in ensemble pieces and low-key gems you might have mentioned through to the aforementioned landmarks.
If you’ve missed any of these, they’re all worth your time, both for De Niro’s performances and other qualities. And if you haven’t seen the towering classics in a while, consider this a reminder that they’re classics for a reason.
Playing an internal affairs cop doing his best within some pretty strict limitations, De Niro’s an essential part of the sprawling ensemble assembled for James Mangold’s drama about corrupt New York cops and the New Jersey town they call home. De Niro’s narration opens the film and explains the rules of the game to Freddy Heflin (Sylvester Stallone), the hearing impaired cop who might be the key to bringing down the bad guys. By 1997 De Niro had played a dizzying array of roles but his history with movies about crime in New York — even if he more often played characters on the other side of the law — let him easily slip into the part of a frustrated honest cop grown jaded by experience but not willing to surrender. The mustache helped.
Cop Land wasn’t the first movie to turn De Niro’s history of playing outlaws on its head. He’d played a bounty hunter in Midnight Run (look for that a little later on this list) and had a memorable, if brief, role in Backdraft as an arson investigator. But none played against his skills embodying tough guy gangsters quite as dramatically as this darkly comic romance in which he plays Wayne “Mad Dog” Dobie, an introverted crime scene photographer who saves the life of a gangster (Bill Murray) and receives the company of the beautiful Glory (Uma Thurman) as a “gift.” Directed by John McNaughton from a script by Richard Price, it finds De Niro playing a character struggling to find the strength he bottled away years ago — and worries he might have lost for good.
De Niro made his directorial debut with this well-observed expansion of Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical coming-of-age story, which Palmintieri first staged as a one-man show. Here he plays Sonny, a neighborhood gang boss who takes a liking to the son of a local bus driver (De Niro) that effectively develops into a battle for the kid’s soul. De Niro gives himself the less flashy role and serves as the story’s moral center, but only up to a point. That his character isn’t always right, particularly about race, gives the film a richness a simpler morality tale wouldn’t have. Sometimes the devils and angels on our shoulders swap places making them hard to tell apart.
Other stars might have been hesitant to take on supporting parts after achieving the level of acclaim and demand De Niro reached in the ’90s. And while he didn’t lack big roles in that decade, De Niro could just as often be seen showing up for a memorable scene or two in films like Marvin’s Room and Sleepers. He found one of his most memorable supporting roles in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction follow-up, an Elmore Leonard adaptation in which he plays a just-out-of-prison criminal who might have lost a step or two over the years (and might end up paying the price for it).
De Niro will undoubtedly be remembered as one of his era’s greatest dramatic actors, but he’s amassed an impressive list of comedy credits over the years too (and some not-so-impressive ones, but let’s focus on the positive). Directed by Harold Ramis, Analyze This hands De Niro the plum part of a mafia don whose panic attacks lead him to seek the help of a psychiatrist (Billy Crystal). Yes, this premiered the same year as The Sopranos but the similarities end with the premise. Ramis specialized in comedies about men in crisis and that specialty — to say nothing of De Niro and Crystal’s winning rapport — serves him well here.
Martin Scorsese’s second collaboration with journalist and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi plays like an expansive companion piece to their first team-up, Goodfellas, with De Niro again playing a character who treats organized crime as just a more openly violent variation on American capitalism. This time it’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a buttoned-up oddsmaker given control of the Tangiers Casino by the Chicago mob. But once there he finds the casino business — even with its carefully implemented methods of security and control — offers too many x-factors for anyone to predict (including Sharon Stone as the self-destructive femme fatale with whom Rothstein falls in love). There’s a lot going on in the movie, but it’s Rothstein’s descent from a cool, calculated card shark to a whale throwing good money after bad that gives the film its shape.
De Niro is as much a force of nature as he is a man in Scorsese’s remake of a 1962 thriller in which he plays Max Cade, a convicted criminal hellbent on vengeance on the public defender Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) who intentionally botched his trial. Barbaric but single-minded with a brain and body honed by his years in prison, he focuses on destroying Bowden’s family by first tearing it apart. He’s like a storm, finding weak spots as he batters away, then letting the fullness of his fury burst forth.
It’s hard to get the balance right when making an action-comedy but the best make it look easy. Midnight Run works in part because almost everyone around Charles Grodin, who stars opposite De Niro as the wily on-the-lam mob accountant Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas, doesn’t play the material for laughs. De Niro’s Jack Walsh, a determinedly professional bounty hunter, is the movie’s tough guy and ultimate straight man, a character whose terse, no-nonsense attitude meets one challenge after another from a hyper-verbal, all-nonsense antagonist. De Niro never looks like he’s having fun and that’s half of what makes the movie so funny.
Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough movie does a lot to tell you who De Niro’s “Johnny Boy” is by the way it surrounds him as he enters the movie. The action slows down, the lighting turns ominous, and the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” fills the soundtrack. But it’s De Niro’s wordless work in that moment that tells viewers who he is, from the wildness in his eyes to his slouching posture as he walks with a woman on both arms. This guy is trouble. And that’s the part he plays so memorably in the film, which doubled as De Niro’s own breakthrough.
Spaghetti western master Sergio Leone’s final film is a decades-spanning, elegiac mood piece about squandered opportunities and lost lives in the form of a lush gangster film. The film often asks for sympathy for the devil. De Niro’s Noodles is a romantic but also a rapist and abuser. The film ultimately plays like a long descent into hell against the backdrop of a changing America, however many layers of gauzy nostalgia Leone wraps around it.
De Niro’s early performances were defined by a feeling of lived-in intensity as if he were building a character from the inside out. (He told Sergio Leone he wasn’t sure about taking a part in Once Upon a Time in America because he needed a year to prepare for every role.) With The Untouchables he seemingly found a different way of working, playing the infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone as a man of grand (sometimes violent) gestures and outsized passion. It’s a big performance, but never a cartoonish one. When Capone cries at the opera he looks like a monster who’s not quite gotten rid of his human heart.
De Niro’s late-career filmography is, put charitably, a bit inconsistent in quality but the bright spots sometimes shine even brighter when surrounded by titles like The War with Grandpa. With The Irishman, however, he found the sort of autumnal role that had eluded him for much of the ’00s and ’10s, reuniting with Martin Scorsese for the story of Frank Sheeran, who claimed (somewhat questionably) to have been the mob hitman who killed Jimmy Hoffa. The facts matter less, however than the film’s depiction as a man who, only at the end, sees how hollowed-out his existence has become by a life of violence in the service of powerful men. The film offers a sweeping alternate history of decades of American history in high Scorsese style, but it’s the gutting, funereal final stretch that makes it extraordinary.
For Francis Ford Coppola’s sequel to The Godfather, De Niro had the unenviable task of playing a role originated by Marlon Brando. De Niro makes some nods to Brando’s work with his mannerisms and delivery, but his performance never feels like an impersonation. It’s a portrait of the don as a young man, an origin story whose golden hues serve as an ironic contrast to its bloodshed and the knowledge that all of Vito Corleone’s dreams will disappear and his rise will lead to his family’s fall.
De Niro’s Jimmy “The Gent” Conway is rarely the focus of Scorsese’s gangland epic and that fits both the character and De Niro’s approach to the role. De Niro plays Conway as a man who stays alive by staying quiet and keeping cool, content largely to remain in the background while his flashier companions live the high life. It’s not a flashy performance and that’s the point. He’s a man who understands the system and, ultimately, a man who will do whatever it takes to keep the system from breaking down.
With Michael Mann’s Heat De Niro found an opportunity to expand on the idea of a criminal whose identity mirrors his occupation as Neil McCauley, a thief whose commitment to avoiding attachment approaches zen-like extremes. His code is simple: “allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner” and the cool detachment of De Niro’s performance — one deepened by its flickers of passion and regret — perfectly match Mann’s filmmaking style. It’s an instance of a director and star being locked into their material to an almost scary degree. And, really, that could just as easily be said of everyone else in the cast from co-star Al Pacino on down, but it’s De Niro’s work that gives the film its haunted heart.
Ahead of the release of their upcoming album The Car, Arctic Monkeys dropped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night. The band debuted the first live TV performance of their next single, “Body Paint.” Lead singer Alex Turner takes viewers on a nearly five-minute sonic roller coaster ride, as he dons sunglasses under the stage’s yellow lighting. “If you’re thinking of me, I’m probably thinking of you,” he sings, before a brief guitar and piano instrumental transforms the song. By the song’s end, the audience erupts in cheers.
After performing a teaser of the song during their NYC concert last week, which had a strict no-phones policy, Arctic Monkeys dropped “Body Paint” earlier this week. The release comes complete with a music video that was directed by Brook Linder and was filmed between London and Missouri. Turner serves as solo writing credits for the song — which James Ford produced.
According to a press release (via Rolling Stone), their new album has Arctic Monkeys “running wild in a new and sumptuous musical landscape” and “contains some of the richest and most rewarding vocal performances of Alex Turner’s career.” The rock group recorded their seventh record between London’s RAK Studios, Suffolk’s Butley Priory, and Paris’ La Frette.
Watch Arctic Monkeys perform “Body Paint” above.
The Car is out 10/21 via Domino. Pre-order it here.
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