Pacino packs his bags for Fallsview Casino

Legendary actor Al Pacino is coming to the Niagara Fallsview Casino in June.

The Oscar-winning star of classics like The Godfather, Serpico and Scarface will spend two chatty nights with fans June 2 and 3. The interview format will include an interactive Q & A with the audience in the Avalon Ballroom.

Pacino won the 1992 Best Actor Oscar for Scent of a Woman, and appears in this year's police thriller The Son of No One.

"Having Al Pacino in our Avalon Ballroom is a great privilege," says Larry Gregson, the casino's vice-president of marketing. "Our audiences get to see one of the greatest actors in history in our intimate setting and may even get the opportunity to ask him a question."

Tickets start at $90 and go on sale noon Friday at the casino box office and all Ticketmaster outlets.

Pacino takes us on a journey as he unravels and re-interprets Oscar Wilde's once banned and most controversial work SALOME, a scintillating tale of lust, greed and one woman's scorn.

Working in the same style as his acclaimed LOOKING FOR RICHARD, Pacino uses an uncanny mix of documentary, fiction and improvisation to get to the root of WILDE SALOME.

From Barry Navidi, the Producer of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and Robert Fox, the Producer of THE HOURS, with gorgeous cinematography from Benoit Delomme (THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and THE PROPOSITION) WILDE SALOME promises to be a profound vision of religion, politics, violence and sexuality, from one of the greatest artists of our time.

Academy Award-winning actor Al Pacino will depart Venice for France. Variety reports that the current Merchant of Venice star will take on French artist Henri Matisse in a new independent film.

Deepa Mehta will direct "Masterpiece," which has a script by Donald Martin. The work will explore the modern painter and sculptor's relationship with his nurse and muse, Monique Bourgeois.

As Scorsese revealed recently, "The Irishman" is still on track, with financing currently coming together with an eye toward starting production next year. Based on the novel "I Heard You Paint Houses," the story follows a World War II vet-turned-mob hitman with rumored ties to the assassinations of President Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa. In the same conversation, De Niro confirmed that Al Pacino and Joe Pesci will also be taking part in the first film.

"[W]e do have the one that we're definitely doing. Me, Joe Pesci, Pacino and Marty Scorsese directing," he said.

Laura Bickford ("Traffic") and Brian Young ("The Runaways") are exec producing the pic.     "Arbitrage" stars Pacino as a hedge fund magnate who is in over his head and desperate to complete the sale of his trading empire to a major bank before his fraud is revealed. But an unexpected, bloody error forces him to turn to the most unlikely corner for help.

Foreign buyers have shown keen interest in financial dramas in the wake of the economic collapse of late 2008. Myriad Pictures has seen brisk sales for Kevin Spacey-Jeremy Irons-Zachary Quinto topliner "Margin Call," which will also be at AFM.

Three Hollywood legends — actually four if you count the publicist involved, the venerable Pat Kingsley — are working to bring Philip Roth’s most recent novel to the multiplex. Al Pacino has bought the movie rights to “The Humbling,” about an aging and irrelevant stage actor who finds hope of renewal through a younger woman. Mr. Pacino, who has never optioned a book before, will play the lead, according to Ms. Kingsley. In the director’s chair, she said, will be Barry Levinson, who won an Oscar for “Rain Man” and was nominated for “Bugsy.” (More recently, he has been producing television, including the gritty HBO prison series “Oz.”) Buck Henry, who just turned 79, is writing the screenplay, Ms. Kingsley said. Among Mr. Henry’s writing credits are “The Graduate,” the original “Get Smart” television series and to “To Die For,” which starred Nicole Kidman.

“The book is perfect for him” — Mr. Pacino — “because he has a love of the stage and, although he has never personally experienced these feelings, he understands them,” Ms. Kingsley said. No studio is involved yet. Although “The Humbling” received mixed critical notices, Mr. Roth has won pretty much every writing honor available (except the Nobel Prize), including the National Book Award — twice — and a Pulitzer Prize.

By Variety article dated 2/4/09

Al Pacino and Michael Radford, who previously collaborated on a film version of Bill Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice", are teaming for a celluloid take on the Bard's "King Lear".

While Pacino has played many Shakespearean characters, he has never played King Lear, the aging monarch who selects his successor by parsing his kingdom in three parts, ruled by his trio of daughters. Two of them are scheming connivers who flatter their father, while the one loving daughter, Cordelia, refuses to play that game and is exiled. The king ultimately loses everything.

"King Lear" has been filmed several times with Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles and Paul Scofield among those in the title role, says Variety.

Radford will shoot the picture entirely in Europe, starting later this year. Pic is being financed out of the U.K. and Northern Ireland.

"Al has been offered this role many times over the years, but didn't feel ready," Navidi said. "He's ready now. The film will be true to its period, very similar to the classical look of 'Merchant of Venice.' Michael came up with the most brilliant adaptation and Al and I flipped for it."

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