Robert De Niro Returns to Sicily for first time since Godfather and is not exciting

An either bored, seriously jetlagged or both Robert de Niro was met today by an enthusiastic Sicilian audience in the packed grand meeting hall of the Taormina conference center.
This was only de Niro's fourth visit to an island that seems to have determined so much of his "mafioso" roles, and his first since he made "Godfather", which was - yeah - now a long time ago.
The start of de Niro's "Master Class" was delayed by the fifteen minutes it took to clear out the alleys and front of the stage of worrysome-for-the-firemen audience members.
Once things got started off, de Niro chose to keep it bland - intelligence movies (like "The Good Shepherd") are "fascinating" to him as well as "great stuff" and directing is a "nightmare" - who would have thought?
The more interesting stuff came near the end - de Niro and Scorcese are working on what he described as "Goodfellas" like project based on a book called "I heard you paint Houses". Half of the script is done, the other one is still in development, and IMDB gives a release date of 2011. So another gangster based story. De Niro described the project as "ambitious" so it seems there's still a lot of work to do.
De Niro also half-way admitted that the comedies he did in recent years require a little less work for him than his usual character-acting-based dramatic personae, although he was quick to catching himself by saying that "they are not that easy".
(check out the transcript)