On this week’s Richard Crouse Show we tell you about “Elvis,” the new film about the King of Rock and Roll from Moulin Rouge director Baz Lurhmann. The movie covers the twenty-ish years in the lives of Elvis and his manager Colonel Tim Parker. Through the birth of rock ‘n roll of the late 1950s and the cheesy Hollywood years to the legendary 1968 Comeback Special and the Las Vegas rise and fall, Elvis and the Colonel shimmied and shook their way to the top of the charts and into the history books.
I caught up with director Baz Lurhmann and his stars Austin Butler, who hands in a terrific performance as Elvis and Olivia DeJonge who plays Elvis’ wife, Priscilla. We talked about what the story of Elvis’s life can tell us about America, Priscilla’s role in the singer’s life and mushc more.
Then, Nyla Innuksuk, director of “Slash/Back,” a cool new coming of age story with an Indigenous and sci fiction twist, and a message about friendship and what it means to fight for community, stops by to tell us about the challenges of taking a crew of 50 people to Baffin Island in the summer of 2019, to make this film.
Finally meet writer Cian Cruise. He has a degree in film studies and philosophy and is a new dad. He combines all those avenues from his life in his new book, “Dad Bod: Portraits of Pop Culture Papas.”
A clever collection of essays about father figures in popular culture, he has a look at everyone from Gandalf to Homer Simpson, to unpack the qualities that inform our collective image of fatherhood. Stick around and find out what he says Rambo, as seen in First Blood, can teach us about the behaviour of toddlers.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
Marilyn Monroe is one of the most documented movie stars of all time. Her time on earth inspired hundreds of thousands of posthumous column inches, hundreds of books and a slew of biopics and documentaries, the first, narrated by Rock Hudson, coming out less than a year after her 1962 death. There is a Broadway musical and even videos games bearing her likeness.
It begs the question, What is left to learn about this Hollywood icon in 2022?
If a new movie, “Blonde,” with Ana de Armas as the “Some Like It Hot” star, and now playing in theatres before it moves to Netflix, is any indication, not much.
The film begins its 166-minute journey with Norma Jeane Mortenson’s (Lily Fisher) unstable single mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson) gifting her child with a surprise, a battered photograph of a prosperous looking man in a fedora. That’s your father, the little girl is told. He is a very important man.
Thus begins, according to director Andrew Dominik, a Freudian lifelong search for a father figure, that would see her cycle through famous husbands like Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody), both of whom she calls daddy in an annoying baby-doll voice.
In Hollywood, now known as Marilyn Monroe, she makes a splash working as a model before being sucked into the studio system in a flurry of casting couches, emotional auditions and the creation of her bombshell image, a look that sold movie tickets but didn’t resonate with Norma Jeane. “She is pretty I guess,” she says, “but it isn’t me.” At one point, she yells, “Marilyn is not here,” during a contentious call with her studio boss.
As her life spirals downward, accelerated by alcohol and pills, depression caused by everyone’s inability to look past the blonde dye job to see who she really is and career dissatisfaction, her life and career begin to fall apart. “She is not a well girl,” her make-up artist (Toby Huss) says. “If she could be, she would be.”
“Blonde” is an art house biography. Fragmented and often impressionistic, it attempts to take you, not just inside Marilyn’s life, but also her psyche and body. Dominik’s camera does offer never-before-seen views of Monroe, from the considerable nudity to literally travelling inside her womb.
But to what effect? The insights into Monroe’s life and career, that she was, essentially, two sides of the same coin, Norma Jean on one, Marilyn on the other, aren’t original, even if their daring presentation is. The film’s advertising tagline, “Watched by all, seen by none,” sums up most of the film’s message in a much more powerful, and mercifully succinct, way.
Dominik does create memorable moments, a nightmarish red carpet walk at the “Some Like It Hot” premier, for instance, visually conjures up the horror Marilyn must have felt as a reluctant superstar constantly in demand by people who wanted to use her. Less successful is footage of a missile launch to emulate the goings-on during a sex scene—most definitely not love scene—between Marilyn and JFK (Caspar Phillipson).
Dominik, who adapted the script from the fictionalized and controversial Joyce Carol Oates novel “Blonde,” does craft some interesting dialogue to bring Marilyn’s state-of-mind in focus—”Marilyn doesn’t have any well-being” she says, “she has a career.”—but he also includes some absolute clunkers, like the unintentionally hilarious, “I like to watch myself in the mirror. I like to watch myself on the toilet,” uttered by Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams). That is “Mommy Dearest” level writing.
As Marilyn, de Armas is fearless, and does inhabit Monroe’s vulnerability and intellect, and looks enough like her to complete the illusion. My only quibble is that sometimes de Armas sounds like Marilyn and sometimes sounds like Marilyn doing an impression of de Armas.
I’m sure “Blonde” won’t be the last Marilyn Monroe biopic, but it will be the last one I devote three hours to watching. Not because it is definitive, but because I think that everything that needs to be said about the later movie star has already been said.
“Elvis,” the new King of Rock ‘n Roll biopic from maximalist director Baz Luhrmann, begins with a sparkling, bedazzled Warner Bros logo and gets flashier and gaudier from there.
The movie is told from the point of view of Elvis’s (Austin Butler) manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks under an inch or two of makeup), a huckster with a flair for spotting talent and a gift for manipulation.
Working on the carnival circuit taught Parker that a great act “gave the audience feelings they weren’t sure if they should enjoy,” a standard the early, hip-shaking Elvis met and exceeded.
Their partnership is one of the best known, and well documented success stories of the twentieth century. For twenty years, through the birth of rock ‘n roll of the late 1950s and the cheesy Hollywood years to the legendary 1968 Comeback Special and the Las Vegas rise and fall, Elvis and the Colonel shimmied and shook their way to the top of the charts and into the history books.
“Elvis” covers a lot of ground. From young Elvis (Chaydon Jay) discovering his love of music from the Black rhythm and blues artists and Mississippi church music he absorbed as a kid to his final white jumpsuit days in Vegas, Luhrmann shakes, rattles and rolls throughout in a blur of images and spectacular sound design.
It entertains the eye but feels akin to skipping a stone on a lake. If you hold the stone just right and throw it across the still water at the correct angle, it will skim along for what seems like forever without ever piercing the surface.
“Elvis” is a great looking movie. A pop art explosion that vividly essays the story’s various time frames and styles, it makes an impact visually and sonically. Unfortunately, Luhrmann is content to make your eyeballs dance, your gold TCB chains rattle and simply skim across the surface.
We do learn that Elvis was the sum of his country music and R’n’B experiences and influences, was fueled by the adoration of his audience and aware of the social change of the 1960s, but there is no excavation, no real exploration of what made the singer or his manager actually tick. It may seem fitting that a movie about a man who drove pink Cadillacs and wore phoenix embroidered jumpsuits and capes is over-the-top, but those images are so woven into the fabric of popular culture already that this feels clichéd, more like greatest hits album than a biography.
Butler is a charismatic performer, playing Elvis through several stages of his life, and despite the superficiality of the storytelling hands in a rounded performance that transcends impersonation of a man who spawned a generation (or two) of impersonators.
It’s rare to see Hanks play a character with no redeeming qualities. “I am the man who gave the world Elvis Presley,” he says, “and yet there are some who would make me out to be the villain of this story.” His take on Colonel Parker grates, with the theatrical Dutch accent and imperious, manipulative manner, he is certainly the villain of the piece. He’s a pantomime of the big, bad music manager, one who saw his client as a musical ATM machine and little more.
By the time the end credits roll “Elvis” emerges as an idealized look at the boy from Tupelo who became the King by paying tribute to the power of the music that made a legend.
Whit Stillman has made just five films since his 1990 debut Metropolitan, but those movies, despite being set in various countries and time periods, are remarkably consistent in theme. Fascinated by privilege, he has chronicled the lives of young, beautiful rich people in art house movies like “Barcelona,” “The Last Days of Disco” and “Damsels in Distress.”
His latest film, “Love & Friendship,” fits snugly beside the others. Based on the Jane Austen novella “Lady Susan” it is places the action in the 1790s, but the subversive glimpse at upper class society is pure Stillman.
Kate Beckinsale is Lady Susan Vernon, a broke, recently widowed aristocrat whose scandalous behaviour in London has whittled down opportunities for social advancement for her and her daughter Federica (Morfydd Clark). “We don’t live,” she says, “we visit, entirely at the convenience of our relatives.” An acid-tongued schemer, Lady Susan survives on the kindness of her former sister-in-law Catherine Vernon (Emma Greenwell). Opening the doors of her country estate to Susan only exposes the hostess to the widow’s Machiavellian dealings, the attempted seduction of Catherine’s brother Reginald de Courcy (Xavier Samuel) and a plan to marry off Frederica to the wealthy but di-witted Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett).
“Love & Friendship” is a comedy of manipulation and ill-manners that must be the funniest Austen adaptation since “Clueless.” Stillman regular Beckinsale (she appeared in “Last Days of Disco”) is letter perfect as the seductively icy, pennilessly haughty Lady Susan, “the most accomplished flirt in England.” Rattling off the breezy dialogue with ease, she’s an anti-heroine who at one point admonishes a man for approaching her on the street, threatening to have him whipped if he says another word. “I know him well,” she says to her American confidante Alicia (Chloe Sevigny, another “The Last Days of Disco” alum), “I would never speak to a stranger like that.” She’s fantastically unrepentant, a paragon of self-absorption who looks down on everyone.
A uniformly strong cast—including the scene stealing Tom Bennett whop hands in one of the great comedic performances of the year—help Stillman bring the world to life. The set decoration and costuming is very “Masterpiece Theatre,” but the feeling of the piece is very modern.
HollywoodNews.com: From the beginning of this interview with Richard Crouse, one can tell that Xavier Samuel is not taking his role as the evil “Riley” in “Eclipse” lightly. His first comment is that “being a part of something of that magnitude, I just think it comes with a level of responsibility. You know, you want to pay tribute to these characters and really do the best job possible. Otherwise I don’t think I could sleep at night.”
So far, Samuel is fine with the level of attention he’s getting as Victoria’s cohort in “Eclipse”. Instead of seeing it as intrusive, he says that it can reveal a lot about who you are and he’s feeling okay about it. He’s just happy to see the support and level of passion from the fans.
Regarding the overall appeal of “Twilight” that’s created such a large fan base, Samuel believes the books and films evoke a feeling like falling in love. People can really identify with the books, “even though it’s about vampires and werewolves.”
Moving on to filming, Samuel had nothing but compliments for director David Slade, saying he “is a fiercely intelligent director and has a firm grip on the dark side of the film…you couldn’t pick a better man for the job.”
Samuel did, however, walk into the film a little wary of fitting in. The other actors were already “a family” and he came in as a newbie and a bad guy, so he had a fear of being ostracized. Luckily, the cast greeted him very warmly, as Jodelle Ferland (“Bree Tanner”) also commented in another interview.
Once part of the “Twilight” family, if only for one film, Samuel jumped right into the fitness regimen. As much of the cast has stated before, any time they weren’t shooting, they were working out or learning to fight. “Eclipse” is clearly the most action-packed and physical of the films.
On this week’s Richard Crouse Show we tell you about “Elvis,” the new film about the King of Rock and Roll from Moulin Rouge director Baz Lurhmann. The movie covers the twenty-ish years in the lives of Elvis and his manager Colonel Tim Parker. Through the birth of rock ‘n roll of the late 1950s and the cheesy Hollywood years to the legendary 1968 Comeback Special and the Las Vegas rise and fall, Elvis and the Colonel shimmied and shook their way to the top of the charts and into the history books.
