Robert De Niro is so much the star of this year’s Tribeca Festival, which he co-founded in 2002, that a special De Niro Con will show 13 of the star’s movies.
“Mean Streets” will screen on its 50th anniversary, June 15, at the Beacon Theater, followed by a Q&A with director Martin Scorsese and De Niro led by Queens rapper Nas. De Niro went to the rapper’s 50th birthday party last year.
Also, 300 curated tchotchkes from De Niro’s attic are on display. Wait, there’s more: Max Cady’s prison tattoo parlor from “Cape Fear” will be recreated and you can get tats. I’m passing.
Chazz Palminteri, who was discovered by De Niro, will premiere a special he filmed at Paramount Theater in Huntington called “A Bronx Tale: The Original One Man Show.”
“He’s done it over 1,000 times so it’s probably not too shabby,” said PBS film critic Bill McCuddy. “He knows all the lines.”
Palminteri tells McCuddy, “The show has been selling out for years but now they’re going to see it really up close and personal, every nuance.”
Palminteri’s producer Jason Nower said, “Chazz wanted to show the world the version De Niro originally saw and inspired him to star in and direct the film. Anyone’s story with heart can be meaningful.”
More details at TribecaFilm.com/denirocon. You lookin’ at him? You lookin’ at him? Yes, we are. Go in a large Cadillac convertible and double park.
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Lupita Nyong’o, who won an Oscar for “12 Years a Slave,” has finally gotten over her breakup with ESPN commentator Selema Masekela after dating him for nearly a year.
The “Black Panther” star was recently spotted wrapped around “Dawson’s Creek” actor Joshua Jackson in Los Angeles and in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, before the actor went to Montreal to film “Karate Kid” alongside Jackie Chan. Jackson split with his ex-wife, Jodie Turner-Smith, around the same time Nyong’o and Masekela ended their relationship.
Lupita has confided that Jackson helped her recover from the “season of heartbreak” that she described on her Instagram following the split from Masekela last year.
Lupita is back on the big screen starring in “A Quiet Place: Day One,” the prequel to John Krasinski’s blockbuster he starred in with his wife Emily Blunt in 2018.
Her co stars in the horror film, out June 28, include Alex Wolff of “Oppenheimer” and Joseph Quinn of “Stranger Things.”
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David Fortune won a pitch competition at last year’s Tribeca Festival. He was given $1 million by Untold Stories, which provides resources and mentorship to systemically underrepresented filmmakers to produce their films.
The result is “Color Book,” about a devoted father who, after his wife’s passing, is learning to raise his son with Down Syndrome (Jeremiah Daniels) as a single parent.
Fortune, who finished filming in Atlanta in four months, said directing Daniels was a pleasure.
“There wasn’t much coaching on my end,” Fortune tells me. “He’s just being himself. That’s the performance I wanted.”
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Chantal Nchako, who grew up speaking French in Cameroon in Africa, got an instant reaction from her family when she told them she had a role in “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.”
“My people don’t know who’s who in Hollywood, but they sure know who Eddie Murphy is. They don’t have to look him up,” Nchako told me.
She plays a police officer, “a thorn in Alex Foley’s side,” in the film now on Netflix. “It’s a lovely unforgettable scene.”
Nchako spends much of the year in Sicily, where she teaches acting at the Silva Arte e Danza, and she’s fluent in Italian.
She speaks English flawlessly having been trained by speech coaches. “You have to lose your accent,” she said.
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Haute Living magazine exec April Irene Donelson celebrated her birthday with a bash on Crab Island, off the coast of Destin, Florida.
The resort has plenty of celebrity visitors, including Britney Spears, John Grisham and Sheryl Crow.
Guests flew in from around the country and boarded a two-story party boat, including Destin mayor Bobby Wagner, who is young and handsome.
Donelson, a fit blonde from Victoria, in the Lone Star State, said, “I am a Texan. We know how to have a good time.”
El Christiano Tequila was flowing freely, there were two generators and several DJs.
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DJ Prince Hakim, the son of Kool and the Gang co-founder Robert Bell, is following in his father’s footsteps.
Hakim just spun his latest single “I’m Good” for VIPs including Chelsea Clinton at the Social Innovation Summit in Chicago (on June 5.)
He’ll host The Kool Kids Foundation’s celebrity golf tournament with golfers including Ja Rule, Charles Oakley, and Chris Tucker at the Cedar Hill Country Club in New Jersey on July 16.
The tournament’s proceeds will help provide musical instruments to talented young people while steering them away from the challenges of the streets.
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It’s hard to believe it’s been 41 years since guitarist Vernon Reid and Living Colour burst on the scene with their album “Vivid” in 1983.
In honor of the group’s longevity, Reid and Living Colour are celebrating Juneteenth with an intimate performance at Hard Rock Cafe NYC on June 19.
Rolling Stone has Reid at No. 42 in their Top 250 Guitarists of All Time. And the group’s classic “Cult of Personality” is listed as the 12th all time Best Metal Song.
Living Colour continue their world tour with Extreme this September.
