Can Pacino & De Niro On Single Screen Cure Market Blues?

We end this week with the latest wave of the credit crunch washing over us. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over on Sunday, and as we look forward it’s going to get darker. Lehman Brothers bankruptcy is looming, as is a potential deal where Merrill Lynch gets taken over. And AIG is also teetering. So as you head into the weekend, perhaps you need some entertainment to take your mind off of market disaster. But if you want to avoid disaster, skip the new Al Pacino/Robert De Niro movie. Putting these two on the same screen is sacred, and this new movie is blaspheme—as Newsweek analyzes in genius fashion.

They were both in The Godfather II, but never on screen together. The only time was in Michael Mann’s Heat, which is arguably the best crime movie of all time … in which Pacino is a detective prowling after De Niro and his crew of ultra-savvy capers. As Newsweek points out, when they are on screen together as cop and criminal talking about whether they’d ever meet in the heat of the moment “There’s no music, no plot, no fancy camera tricks. Just six minutes of pure acting…if De Niro and Pacino had any sense—any fingertips for the meta-universe of movies, where such collisions are so powerful precisely because they are so rare—they would have left it that way.” Which is why if you need to escape, then skip the new movie and watch or re-watch Heat this weekend. The same-screen scene in particular will remind you that as heated as the markets get, you don’t know how to do anything else … don’t much want to either.

And for true Heat (and music) aficionados, you might also be interested to know some music trivia about the movie. In the scene just before the legendary coffee shop scene where Pacino’s helicopter is tracking De Niro’s Cadillac on the freeway, the music is not only pitch-perfect for the intensity of the story, but it’s also just plain good listening day to day—it’s sure to give you the adrenaline boost you need to get through the days. The song is New Dawn Fades by Moby, and it’s a Joy Division cover. Sample both versions using the player on the right. And then you can either click there to download from Amazon, or use these links:

Moby: New Dawn Fades (Amazon | iTunes)

Joy Division: New Dawn Fades (Amazon | iTunes)