_{Eh, you buyin’ dis watch? I don’ see no watch wit better quality den dis, so you must be buying dis watch.}

Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino are suing Tutima watches and a distributor using their likenesses without permission for Tutima ads linked to Righteous Kill.

“De Niro’s and Pacino’s policies concerning commercial endorsements and tie-ins are common knowledge in the entertainment industry,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants’ actions have damaged De Niro’s and Pacino’s valuable reputations and diminished the commercial value of their name and images.”
Both men were very careful about product endorsement, the lawsuit said, with De Niro only endorsing a product or service “under very specific and compelling circumstances.”
“Pacino, over the course of his lengthy career, has never commercially endorsed any product or service in the United States,” the lawsuit said. [THR]

Their case would be a lot more believable if the movie hadn’t been Righteous Kill.  At that point you might as well just do a commercial.  At least that might be less predictable.  Ooh, I wonder if these watches are good.

When The Hollywood Reporter was calling tired cop drama Righteous Kill a “consensus favorite” to top the box office the same weekend a Coen Brothers and Tyler Perry movie opened, I was wondering what they were smoking.  The consensus favorite is “dicks”.  Said the studio Friday:

“We targeted the older male audience, and it looks like they’re going to come,” Overture marketing chief Peter Adee said. “From the tracking, it looks like the younger males are going to come as well.”

Reported Nikki Finke on Sunday: Overture Films only paid $10 million to acquire North American rights to Righteous Kill, which earned 3rd place and $16.5 million for the weekend. Stars Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino attracted just a one-quadrant older male audience. The problem is that neither actor has starred in a decent drama lately, including this hackneyed script.

Gosh, what’s the world coming to when you can’t make money on a movie that looks like something we’ve already seen twelve times?  People love that shit.  Top five after the jump.

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The upside of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro doing a really crappy movie like Righteous Kill (sample review quote: “Righteous Kill is so average that the standard bell curve can’t calculate just how general it is.” -Popmatters) is that they have to work their asses off to promote it.  Here they are presenting the top ten list on Letterman, “The Top Ten Reasons I Like Being An Actor”.  I won’t ruin it, but a couple highlights:

9.  Every time I go to work, I get to ask myself, “I wonder if I’ll see Harvey Keitel naked?”
7.  If you do a scene where you eat pudding, they often let you keep the pudding.

See?  Every turd has a silver lining.  (leaning over to whisper in your ear) I eat nickles.

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Ugh…

Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro sat down with the Today Show’s Brian Williams to be interviewed together for the first time in history. I can’t believe that what finally brought these guys together was a festering pool of yak jizz like Righteous Kill. It’s a travesty. And waitress, does this sandwich have crust on it? I specifically said no crust. This is an outrage. Jesus, what is the world coming to.
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After the jump, I’ve got the new red-band trailer for Righteous Kill, from critically acclaimed 88 Minutes director Jon Avnet.  For a second there I was worried this would be just a cheap attempt to cash in on Pacino and De Niro’s past glories.  But when Bobby D called someone a “fuckin’ mutt” twice in the same trailer, I realized that this would truly be a film unlike any other.  It explores the idea that cops and serial killers might be two sides of the same coin you see.