A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks at Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in the biopic “Judy,” and the animated Yeti movie “Abominable” and the music doc “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Linda Ronstadt was one of the voices of the latter part of the twentieth century. The pure, gorgeous vocals that were once a staple at the top of the Billboard charts has been silenced by Parkinson’s disease but a new documentary, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” serves as a reminder of a pioneer who danced to the beat of a different drum.
The Arizona-born singer made headlines as much for her off-stage life as much as for her on-stage work, but the film wisely focusses on her legacy, the music that made her a superstar. The story begins at home with a family who played and sang all types of music from rock and roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, opera, country and mariachi. Later, those influences mixed and mingled in the folk-rock trio the Stone Poneys. Their biggest success, a cover of Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum,” became Ronstadt’s first and only hit with the band and she soon left to forge a solo career that would see her become the first female rock star and the first woman to have five platinum albums in a row. “Linda was the queen,” says Bonnie Raitt. “She was like what Beyoncé is now.”
At the peak of her fame she grew tired of selling out arenas and the constant grind of being on the road. Looking for new challenges she took to the Broadway, appearing in “Pirates of Penzance” on stage opposite Kevin Kline. “Gilbert and Sullivan? Can you imagine another rock star who has the guts to go out there and do that kind of musical comedy?” says Jackson Browne. “To her it was a mountain to climb.”
From operetta she went on to explore the American songbook, interpreting the songs of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald among others. “I didn’t think it was a good idea, not because she couldn’t do it,” says Warner bros executive Joe Smith, “but because we had this run going with rock and roll and country rock records.”
The portrait painted of Ronstadt is one of an artist more concerned with music than her career. She was once the highest paid women in music but left that behind in favour of following her passions, whether it’s making a record of traditional Mexican songs (which became the largest selling Spanish-language record in history to that date), roots rock or singing with her pals Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
The film closes on an emotional note with the revelation that Parkinson’s disease has robbed her of her instrument. “I still sing in mind my but I can’t do it physically,” she says.
Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman use archival footage, mixed with new interviews with many of the singer’s friends and colleagues, to complete the picture. It’s wonderful to hear the music, to be reminded of the width and breadth of Ronstadt’s daring and talent, but the commentary tends toward the “She was the best singer I’ve ever heard,” style rather than providing much insight into what makes the singer tick. At the end, however, it doesn’t matter much, as the music, in all its variation and strength, tells the story in a way that suits Ronstadt best.
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan have a look at the weekend’s big releases including “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” “X-Men: Dark Phoenix,” the indie drama “Mouthpiece” and the rockumentary “Echo in the Canyon.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” and the indie drama “Mouthpiece.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Laurel Canyon, a nexus of 60s counterculture located in the Hollywood Hills, was home to a generation of singer-songwriters who shaped the music that dominated the baby boomer heyday of commercial radio. “It was the one place you could live that was the antithesis of the plastic straight world you saw on television,” says longtime resident Jackson Browne. “It was always a hangout for bohemians,” says Mamas and Papas singer Michele Phillips and now it is the subject of an entertaining documentary, “Echo in the Canyon.”
The movie’s framework comes from a 2015 tribute concert featuring songs made famous by Laurel Canyon acts like Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. “The music that came out of the Laurel Canyon scene in the 60’s was not only inspiring to other bands at that time,” says Jakob Dylan, “but also became inspiring to my generation. Tonight is an opportunity, like folk music, to pass it on to a new generation and keep the echoes of that music going.”
Between live performances from artists like Beck, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor and Norah Jones, Dylan interviews a who’s who of California Sound-era superstars like David Crosby and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills, Michelle Phillips, producer Lou Adler and Brian Wilson, about whom Tom Petty, in his last filmed interview, says, “I don’t see anything in Mozart that is better than Brian Wilson.” Other accounts of those times come from John Sebastian and Eric Clapton.
They often say if you can remember the 60s you weren’t really there, but the talking heads here seem to have no trouble recalling the details of the Canyon’s early days. Adler remembers exactly where the musicians sat during the Mamas and the Papas’s first recording session and Ringo Starr says the Byrds turned the Beatles on to a “hallucinogenic situation” when they first met. A mix of contemporary sounds and nostalgia, it paints an apolitical (you would never know that Vietnam was raging during the time documented) picture of a creative collaboration that saw artists competing with one another to expand the limits of what rock music could be. “You can listen to the records,” says Stephen Stills, “and you can hear the cross-pollination.”
Ultimately this isn’t a history of a generation but an enjoyable look at a brief period that still echoes in the imaginations and ears of many fans. “These records came like an avalanche,” Beck says of LPs like “Pet Sounds,” “and there was nothing like them before.”
