Love Pacino? Here's your boxed set
It's time to rediscover one of the greats with Pacino: An Actor's Vision, a four-disc boxed set that contains three of Pacino's most personal films and a one-hour chat about his career since his fledgling first days with the Actor's Studio.
It's time to rediscover one of the greats with
Pacino: An Actor's Vision
, a four-disc boxed set that contains three of Pacino's most personal films and a one-hour chat about his career since his fledgling first days with the Actor's Studio.
The 20th Century Fox release is nicely supplemented by the separate release of two of Al Pacino's early films: Panic in Needle Park, an extraordinary, almost-forgotten gem from 1971; and 1981's comedy about art, family and most of all, neurosis, Author! Author!
Pacino: An Actor's Vision includes a re-release of his directorial debut, Looking for Richard. A deconstructive take on Shakespeare's Richard III, the film beautifully interweaves fragments of Pacino's stage production, real-life scenes as cast members discuss the play, interviews with Shakespearean experts - and even a field trip to the Bard's birthplace.
The other two films are small, intimate pieces that Pacino never publicly released. Chinese Coffee, co-starring Jerry Orbach, is an adaptation of Ira Lewis' play that feels more like an actors' exercise than a feature. It's about an unsuccessful, middle-aged writer Harry Levine (Pacino) who asks his friend Jake (Orbach) to give him feedback on his third novel, only to be accused of basing the play on his friend's private affairs.
The third film, The Local Stigmatic, is an amazing find. Based on a 1964 play by Brit writer Heathcote Williams, it is a prophetic exploration of the destructive effects of our obsession with celebrity.
It features Pacino as Graham, a vicious, working-class predator whose obsession with the famous is fueled by resentment and envy. The disturbing film follows Graham and his friend Ray (Paul Guilfoyle) as they hunt for a celeb to victimize. (It takes some time to get used to Pacino's decent-enough attempt at speaking cockney, but the film is well worth patient viewing.)
Two separate releases take us back to Pacino's earlier work. To watch these films is to be seduced all over again by the now 67-year-old maestro, but not because of his emotional fire-power or his trademark thunderous soliloquies and on-screen rages we all know so well.
It's quite the opposite: Throughout the 1970s, Pacino imbued his characters with a disarming, almost impish playfulness. He interacted with other characters with a lightness and agility that has hardened over the years and been covered with sometimes self-referential irony.
The most compelling release next to Stigmata is The Panic in Needle Park, a grim, ultra-realistic drug melodrama about a couple whose love is forged through their shared addiction to heroin.
But, soon enough, their lives begin to unravel, and streetwise Bobby (Pacino) and the once-innocent Helen (Kitty Winn) find themselves robbing, hooking and hustling their way into despair.
The domestic comedy Author! Author! takes Pacino to a lighter side of Manhattan. Pacino is at his most playful and wacky as Travalian, a successful playwright who's unable to write because of his crazy, abandoning wife Gloria (Tuesday Weld), the couple's noisome kids - not to mention the sexy actress Alice Detroit (Dyan Cannon), the leading lady in Travalian's new play and also his mistress.
Al Pacino
Here is a list of newly-released DVDs starring Al Pacino. Information: www.foxhome.com.
Pacino: An Actor's Vision
Four-disc set features Looking for Richard, Pacino's 1996 take on the Bard's Richard III; Chinese Coffee, a 90-minute feature about failed middle-aged artists that costars Jerry Orbach; The Local Stigmatic, an adaptation of a shocking 1964 play about celebrity worship costarring Paul Guilfoyle; Babbleonia: A Documentary with Pacino rapping on his life and career. All films contain extensive director's commentary, some also feature a foreword and explanatory afterword by Pacino. $34.99
Author! Author!
Arthur Hiller's 1982 screwball comedy stars Pacino as a playwright unable to work because he feels under siege by his wife, his kids and his mistress. It costars Dyan Cannon, Tuesday Weld and Bob Dishy. $14.98
The Panic in Needle Park
Jerry Schatzberg's harrowing 1971 drama about drug addiction tells the story of two lovers who are bound - only then to be unraveled - by heroin. It costars Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, and Richard Bright and was penned by the formidable writing team of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. $14.95
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