Acquired Tastes: Bill Simmons and Entertainment

Now that I have successfully discharged my filial duties by making sure that my son Juan's 2nd birthday was not the unmitigated disaster that his mother and I feared it would be, I can once again give unsolicited advice about what to read over the World Wide Web.

First, let's go back to an old standby, ESPN2's Bill Simmons, who posted a fairly provocative (albeit clique-ish) article on two Boston sports legends, Larry Bird and Big Papi. If you don't follow either NBA Basketball or the Boston Red Sox, I wouldn't recommend clicking on this link.

However, Simmons' Boston legends article does reference an older article that he did comparing these two Hollywood legends, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino.
To offer you a small taste of what the two aforementioned links have in store for even the casual Hollywood fan, allow me to quote from the wonderfully inventive pop culture wit of the people at Fametracker:


"It's some kind of testament to De Niro's -- what? Longevity? Reputation? Savvy? Greed? -- that he's managed to make more bad movies in the last decade than most actors have made movies, period. And we know what you're thinking: Those movies weren't terrible, with the exception of Showtime, 15 Minutes, and a few others. Meet the Parents? Funny. Heat? Thrilling-ish. Ronin? Downright serviceable.
Yes, sure, fine. We concede that. We like to see an urn full of someone's mom's ashes smashed in the fireplace and then sniffed at by a fuzzy cat as much as anyone.
But don't you remember when Robert De Niro showing up in a movie was an event? When it meant something? We're not even talking about his heyday as a live wire in the '70s, when he crackled with such committed intensity that he fried every other actor on the set. (Joe Pesci has a made a whole career out of the simple ability to appear onscreen with De Niro and not get sizzled to charcoal.)
We're talking about the 1980s. Hell, even the early '90s. We're talking about a time not that long ago. Back when you'd hear about a film like, say, The Untouchables, and think, "Hmmm." Then you'd hear De Niro was playing Capone -- and packing on the pounds and shaving back his hairline to do it -- and you'd think, "Hey! De Niro! Now that's the stamp of quality!"
Robert De Niro is no longer the stamp of quality."

"One of the more curious footnotes to the career of Al Pacino is that he was offered, and turned down, the part of Han Solo in 1977's Star Wars.
Now take a moment to imagine this: the young, pouchy-eyed Pacino reclining in the captain's seat of the Millennium Falcon, enjoying a moment with Chewie. Or the young, pouchy-eyed Pacino shouting "Hoo-wah!" as he zips like a frenetic elf up the ramp of the Falcon, trading blaster shots with attacking stormtroopers. Or the young, pouchy-eyed Pacino flying in like the cavalry in the film's climactic battle and, just before sending Vader's TIE fighter spinning madly into space, screaming, "Shay jello to my wittle vrend!"
Now, we're not saying that this would have been a better movie. But it sure would have been a more interesting one."


Second, also by way of Simmons, let me crib from his more accessible mailbox article where he presents, in his estimation, the six best renditions of the national anthem in sports. Incidentally, Simmons just might have one of the best jobs on the planet. Who else gets paid to sift through YouTube looking for this sort of stuff? This is not a rhetorical question. I'd really like to know, just in case things don't pan out in the academe, he he.