Maria Callas died forty-one years ago but “Maria By Callas,” a new documentary from Tom Volf, allows one of classical music’s best-known vocalist’s story to be told in her own words.
“Maria By Callas” is not a typical music doc. Volf, who has authored several books on the singer, forgoes the usual biographical timeline, instead focussing on more speculative interests regarding fame and her relationship to public life. Pushed on stage by her mother—“Destiny forced me into this career,” she says.—she lived in the glare of the spotlight, both on stage and off. Apart from her voice, her fame was the thing that defined her. The press, who delighted in reporting on the dramatic aspects of her life, couldn’t get enough of her and documented her every move, including a relationship with shipping magnate Ari Onassis. Volf spends time on this, probably the most sensational tabloid expose offered by the film, allowing her to comment on it via contemporary television print interviews and recently found letters (read by Joyce DiDonato).
The interviews aren’t particularly revealing. Callas, or La Divina as fans knew her, talks about wanting to have a normal life, as a wife and mother, but it feels like lip service rather than insight.
Volf pieces the story together using a collection of rare footage, unseen photographs, personal Super 8 films and live recordings. It is the latter that gives the movie its spark. “Music is the only language I really know,” Callas says, and it is through the long, uninterrupted performance pieces that we truly her voice, both her bel canto technique and inner voice. Her stage work reveals her passion, natural stage presence and her mastery of the music. These sequences are more enlightening than any of the spoken material.
“Maria By Callas” will likely appeal to opera lovers more than casual viewers, but nonetheless provides an interesting portrait of a person who is still one of classical music’s best-selling vocalists decades after her death. “If one really tries to listen to me seriously,” she says of her singing, “one will find all of myself in there.”
Watch the full episode of “Pop Life” from Saturday October 20, 2018. This week speaks to singer, songwriter, actor Josh Groban who opens up about all the projects he is working on and how he manages it all. Then the “Pop Life” the panel, sports psychologist Dana Sinclair, comedian Jus Reign and aerospace engineer Natalie Panek, share their take on what it means to be successful and how that differs depending on your industry.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including musician Josh Groban, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
This week on “Pop Life” the panel, sports psychologist Dana Sinclair, comedian Jus Reign and aerospace engineer Natalie Panek, share their take on what it means to be successful and how that differs depending on your industry.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including musician Josh Groban, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
This week on “Pop Life” Richard speaks to singer, songwriter, actor Josh Groban who opens up about all the projects he is working on and how he manages it all.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including musician Josh Groban, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
From TV, eh’s interview with Richard by writer Greg David: “Richard Crouse has made a career out of interviewing people. The veteran film critic is a regular contributor to CTV News Channel, CP24 and hosts The Richard Crouse Show on Newstalk 1010. He’s a staple of TIFF and asks the questions we want answers to when it comes to actors, actresses, directors and anyone else involved in the entertainment business…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Did you love “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”? Wipe it from your memory. What about “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”? Fuhgeddaboudit. How about “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” or any of the other masked killer films that came after John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic? They don’t exist. When you lay down money for a ticket to the new “Halloween” you are erasing four decades of slashing and dashing and seeing a direct follow-up to the original film.
Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, the resourceful babysitter who, forty years ago, bravely stood up to masked killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle). The intervening years have seen her raise her now estranged daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and live in a home fortified with booby-traps in case Myers should reappear. “He’s waited for this night,” she says. “I’ve waited for him.”
At the beginning of the film Myers—known as ‘The Shape’ in the first movie—is still paying the price for killing his teenage sister Judith and the subsequent slaughter of four others. Tucked away in Smith’s Grove Sanatorium he is silent, a man who hasn’t spoken since committing his first murder at the age of six.
When Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall) and Dana Haines (Rhian Rees), two British true crime podcasters, try to pry and interview out of Myers they arrive just before the Bogeyman escapes on October 31, 2018, put on the famous mask and reboot his killing career with an eye toward the one victim who got away all those years ago.
The 1978 and 2018 movies share more than a title and a leading lady. They share structural DNA and frights galore. The 2018 film feels fresh, timely and like a throwback to the moody low-fi scares of the original slasher flicks.
Castle is as eerie as always but it is Curtis who steals the show. Strode is grown up, suffers from PTSD and by her own words is “a basket case.” What she is not is broken. “I prayed every night for him to escape,” she says, “so I could kill him.” The trauma of 40 years ago has hardened her but she’s a warrior and a survivor who uses the great personal price Myers extracted from her as fuel to keep going. It’s tremendous stuff and in the #MeToo era the kind of heroine reclaiming her power that should make audiences cheer.
“Halloween” is both a reboot and a bloody love letter to the director who started it all, John Carpenter.
Low key and amiable, “The Old Man and the Gun” is a crime drama about the nicest bank robber ever. Robert Redford, age 82, plays a stick-up man whose victims gush about how polite and well-mannered he was as he relieved them of their cash.
Forest Tucker (Redford), career criminal and all round nice guy, is part of a gang the press would later name the Over-The-Hill-Gang. All north of seventy the thieves (Danny Glover and Tom Waits) rob rural banks, usually making off with hundreds, not thousands of dollars. Calm and collected, they get in and out quickly. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Tucker says to the tellers. “I wouldn’t want to have to hurt you ‘cuz I like you. Don’t break my heart.” For Tucker it’s not about the cash, it’s about the rush.
Driving the get-a-way car after one bank job Tucker stops to assist a stranded motorist. As the police whiz by he gives Jewel (Sissy Spacek) a line of chat that charms her enough to agree to go for a cup of coffee. The pair hit it off and begin a friendship that borders on the romantic.
Meanwhile Tucker and crew are robbing banks, sometimes more than one a day, a streak that draws the attention of detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck) and the FBI.
The mostly true story of Tucker and his life of crime and passion is a low-key affair anchored by the easy charms of Redford and Spacek.
Redford made a career playing rascally anti-heroes like the leads in “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Here there is a wistfulness in the character that comes with age and the realization that the end of the road is just around the bend.
Spacek plays Jewel as a woman of strength; a person who has seen it all but is still open to finding something new. Together the pair bring life experiences that create a lived-in chemistry that is never less than watchable.
Add to that a scene-stealing performance from Tom Waits—every line of his dialogue sounds like a line from one of his songs—and you have a new take on an American staple, the charismatic scoundrel.
“Beautiful Boy” is a story about the unrelenting grip of addiction. Based on the memoirs “Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak” by David and Nic Sheff, the film stars Steve Carell as a father desperate to save his son, played by Timothée Chalamet, from a life with a needle stuck in his arm.
The non-linear story begins with David admitting he no longer knows his son. “There are moments when I look at him, this kid I raised, that I thought I knew inside and out, and I don’t recognize him. He’s on drugs. Crystal meth.”
Then a mix of contemporary and flashback scenes tells the story of a young man who says crystal math “takes the edge off reality. When I tried it I felt better than I ever had,“ he continues, “so I just kept doing it.“
The film follows David’s attempt to rescue his son, paying for stints in a rehab and spending time searching for Nic on a rainy streets and in back alleys.
It’s a study on how one person’s addiction can have a ripple effect through many people’s lives. Nic’s drug use affects himself and David and his mother (Amy Ryan), stepmother Karen (Maura Tierney) and two younger siblings (Christian Convery and Oakley Bull).
There are many touching moments in “Beautiful Boy.” The look of devastation on Carell‘s face as he drops Nic off at a long-term care facility is subtle but effective. Imagine sending your brilliant 18-year-old—he was accepted to six universities—to rehab, knowing his fate is out of your hands. Carell also nicely plays the frustration of not understanding why his “beautiful boy“ just can’t say no to drugs. That “relapse is part of the program.“ That the son he thought he knew has a secret, dangerous and unhappy life. It’s strong work coupled by Chalamet’s performance as a charismatic but troubled young man who idolizes Charles Bukowski take on the dark side of life. “I’m attracted to craziness,“ Nic says to his dad, “and you don’t like who I am now.“
Much of “Beautiful Boy” works but—and there is a big but—I never felt overly moved by the story. It should be heartbreaking to watch Nick throw his life away but we never learn enough about him to feel deeply for his plight. We know he was a cute kid, tight with his father, that he loves his siblings and is very smart but those are broad strokes that don’t paint a detailed enough picture.
“Beautiful Boy” is a little too structured, a little too clean to hit the gut as a story of Nic’s descent into depravity.
“Sharkwater Extinction” begins with the story told in voiceover by documentarian, photographer, and conservationist Rob Stuart, about getting lost during a dive. “I can’t give up. If I do I die.” It’s a metaphor for Stewart’s work protecting sharks but it’s also a poignant reminder that while he died during the production of the film his work hasn’t stopped.
The film is a companion piece to “Sharkwater,” the 2006 investigative documentary that first gave voice to Stewart’s message of shark preservation. That movie exposed the cruel practice of “finning,” catching sharks, removing their fins and dumping them back into the sea to die a slow, painful death. The new film aims to continue the story. In locations ranging from Costa Rica and Florida to the Bahamian Cat Island and Panama, Stewart and his team update the details from the first film adding colour in the form of locals—one fisherman tells the story of a fin trader who makes millions but declines to name names for his own safety—facts and figures—we’re told 80,000,000 sharks are killed every year illegally—beautiful underwater photography and heartfelt commentary from Stewart. “I want people to fall in love with sharks,” he says, “to see their intelligence, their soft eye and maybe a bit of ourselves in them.”
Because Stewart passed away in January of 2017 while making the film “Sharkwater Extinction” is part call to action and part tribute to the man and his work. The film itself doesn’t feel entirely finished—there are many loose ends—but Stewart’s essential warning that we may lose a vital species to our way of life if corruption and the pirate shark industry continue rings through loud and clear. His work, the film makes clear, isn’t done. In fact, it has only just begun.
