All Entries Tagged With: "Al Pacino"
Scent of a Woman’s Ferrari Joy Ride
- Scent of a Woman’s Ferrari Scene
- Pacino’s pitch perfect performance in a 1992 Thanksgiving drama
- Don’t she purr?
By Gunnar Heinrich | Tap Link to Watch scene clip on YouTube >>>
“HOLD on Charlie, I think we got another gear here!”
The Ferrari scene in Scent of a Woman is one of the most thrilling automotive clips in cinematic history.
From behind the wheel of a tutto rosso Ferrari Mondial t cabriolet, blind retired lieutenant-colonel Frank Slade played perfectly by a boisterous Al Pacino -HOO-aahh!- finds life affirmation for a few brief shining minutes in Brooklyn.
Mr. Slade’s frightened co-pilot is the insecure-with-life prep school pupil named Charlie (Chris O’Donnell).
Charlie’s harrowing job is to shadow the blind veteran in New York during his Thanksgiving vacation and Mr. O’Donnell’s low-key performance proves the perfect foil to Mr. Pacino’s bravado.
We thrill as the tailored vet whips the Ferrari’s V8 into a singing froth and with Charlie’s yelp-for-instruction, executes a perfect powerslide into an adjacent street and then again.
SLADE: I love this! I love it! Shall we take it to the max?
CHARLIE: We are.
Just watch out for the yellow flag…
Watch It For The Rolling Stock: S1M0NE
Rachel Roberts as “Simone” with Alfa Romeo 2600.
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG S1M0NE (2002) via IMCDB.org
SOME movies are best watched just for the cars.
Ronin is an example of an action movie that was just an excuse to tie-in several really wild car chase scenes together in 122 minutes. It didn’t matter what the plot was, in fact, I can’t remember the plot. But I do recall the scenes where an Audi S8 repeatedly managed four wheel power slides through the streets of Paris.
S1M0NE is another such movie.
Released in 2002, directed by Andrew Niccol, and starring Al Pacino alongside the lovely Rachel Roberts the a sci-fi-ish S1M0NE is about a dried-up director (Pacino) who resorts to activating a dead fan’s fictional, graphically animated pop-icon – “Simone” (Roberts)- and manages then to fool the world into believing the program is a real person.
An intriguing concept, but in execution the film asks us to suspend our disbelief once too often in lots of scenes that rely on convenient framing to mask the obvious dubiousness of the film’s plot.
That said, let’s get back to the real reason that you’ll want to put S1M0NE in your Netflix cue – the continuous artful display of magnificent cars showcased in wildly color-corrected light.
Among the classics that play a significant role in the movie’s otherwise suspect plot are a Bentley S3 Continental “Chinese Eye” coupe, a Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman, a Jaguar XJ8 (X308), Citroen DS, and an Alfa Romeo 2600 Spider that you’ve seen in any number of Fellini films.
Unfortunately, the Chinese Eye Bentley meets a fender-bender in LA traffic in another dubious scene meant to convince us that the main characters are actually fooled by Pacino’s hoax.
But don’t let my quibbles throw you off the path to watching automotive art on the tube. For this, the movie’s well worth seeing. The black 600 on red leather interior alone should have its own star on the Hollywood walk of fame.
Five Hundred Million Is Impossible To Ignore
No badges on that Rover.
By Gunnar Heinrich
NIKOLAI “Niko” Bellic is the new Scarface. And true to inflationary form, his gig has already netted him (and his creators) far more dough than Tony Montana ever could imagine.
Starting this week, we can expect that dorm rooms and frat houses on college campuses around America will pin up large posters of this rags-to-riches video game antihero who’ll appear alongside Al Pacino’s omnipresent Cubano stoking mug.
Not a week old, Niko’s already made it to cult icon status.
Niko is the fictional protagonist in a third-person shooter game called Grand Theft Auto IV.
The game, developed by Rockstar Games and “published” by Take-Two Entertainment is part of an eight edition strong brand of console games that’s pushing the entertainment envelope off the proverbial table and blowing the gamer away with an uzi spray of physics simulations and gritty plot lines.
“Players can expect visible detail down to the weeds growing in the cracks in the sidewalk, cars and buildings of visibly different ages and a much greater level of verticality [huh?] in the buildings and bridges that they are able to explore as Niko moves through the city streets,” Amazon.com’s official reviewer enthused.
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
The auto industry, doubtless unprepared and beholden to political correctness, is already along for the ride in this carjacked vehicle of next wave interactive entertainment.
And there’s plenty of money to be made; The Financial Times hyperventelated that, “The Grand Theft Auto IV video game has stolen all entertainment records for an opening week, with global retail sales of about 6 [million] copies, or $500 [million].”
And yet none of the automobiles that appear in Grand Theft Auto IV are marque identifiable.
But like the game’s setting in fictional “Liberty City,” whose appearance is as eerily close to New York as the Jaguar XF’s profile is to the Lexus GS (ahem), there’s really no mistaking a Range Rover Sport HSE or a Ford Crown Vic for anything other than what they seem to be – but technically and legally aren’t.
Surely, you say, the auto industry will find a way around its collective P.C. inhibitions to cash in on this cow of new wave media gold.
Perhaps, though they’ll have to first contend with the likes of MADD, a militant Floridian lawyer, the skeptical Televised press, and governmental agencies like Gotham’s own City Hall who have all been busy vilifying (and rightfully so) the glamorized violence that the game’s content aims at the world’s impressionable 16-32 year olds.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
That said, the dollars generated by this surging enterprise is something a cash strapped Detroit nor a keen Stuttgart or Tokyo can afford to ignore.
There’s really only one question the automakers’ marketing departments are likely asking themselves: what’s the cost for cross-marketing with a malevolent new wave cult icon?
[Linked: FT | Wikipedia | Amazon | Rockstar Games]