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Review: Angelina Jolie glides through 'Maria' like an iceberg, but a chilly Callas isn't enough

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Review: Angelina Jolie glides through 'Maria' like an iceberg, but a chilly Callas isn't enough

Maria Callas seized fame as the voice of Tosca, Medea and Carmen, opera’s eternally doomed heroines. If opera still commands audiences a century from now, perhaps it will sing of Callas, a fighter who survived the Nazi occupation of Greece, a heckling at La Scala, a media hazing on multiple continents and a humiliating public affair only to be hobbled by her own coping tools: sedatives and starvation.

“Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie, is director Pablo Larraín’s latest effort to build his own canon of 20th-century tragediennes. His previous melodramas “Jackie” and “Spencer” were fables about two painfully self-aware celebrities at their nadirs: Larraín peeked behind Jacqueline Kennedy‘s and Princess Diana’s facades less to humanize them than to expose their wounds. Callas, however, was infamous for her fits, so Larraín, perversely and underwhelmingly, chooses to respect her imperious veneer. If she’s the big boss-level diva he’s been working up to, Larraín lets her win.

This is Callas at the end of her life. Her corpse is the first thing we see onscreen, although cinematographer Edward Lachman has such a dazzling trick of cramming chandeliers into the frame that it takes a minute to spot her body. In the flashbacks that follow, Callas attempts to grandly dismiss liver disease as though it were spoiled wine. She spends most of the film doped up on Quaaludes, which in ’70s Paris were sold under the brand name Mandrax. Screenwriter Steven Knight even has her stroll around with an imaginary character named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a TV reporter she’s hallucinated into existence in order to feel important. Mandrax tosses her softball questions. She swats them down.

If you’ve seen any old interviews with Callas, you know that actual journalists tended to be rude with her. First, they’d ask Callas if she was a monster. Then they’d needle her about spending nine years with Aristotle Onassis only to get dumped for the future Jackie O. They needed to prick the goddess to see if she bled.

Early on, Callas parried these inquisitions with humor. Accused of hurtling a bottle of brandy at a director, she replied: “I wish I did. It would be a shame for the bottle.” As Callas got older, though, she got stiffer, and that’s the version we’re staring at here. Regal, guarded and stubborn, Jolie plays Callas as a lonely 50-something who rejected love, fame, joy and music and won’t fight that hard to get them back. Her character arc is just a blueprint plan of one; from scene to scene, you’re never sure whether she’s going to take action. Callas wants to be adored but she doesn’t want to be known. Her exhausted housekeepers Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) speak volumes with every silent, fearful look, and when they get too personal with her, Callas commands them to move the piano as punishment.

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Larraín makes a half-hearted attempt to recast Callas as a feminist martyr, alleging, as obliquely as possible, that she was once forced to trade her body to soldiers for cash and food. Biographical dots are unapologetically skipped, including her marriage to a man who doesn’t even merit a name before he’s ditched for Onassis (Haluk Bilginer). Adding to the disorientation, young Callas (Aggelina Papadopoulou) looks nothing like Jolie — not her lips, eyes, nose, jaw, frame, nothing. Yet the casting choice highlights how Callas recast herself in the 1950s, shedding a third of her body mass to transform from a zaftig soprano cliché into a high-fashion sylph (and in the process, sacrificing a bit of her oomph).

Callas could fold herself in a cloak and force an audience to focus on her. Her stillness was magnetic. All the emotions flooded out through her eyes and throat. Jolie trained in opera for seven months to prepare for the role and, according to Larraín, did her own singing on set. What we’re hearing is her voice blended into the real one at concentrations that range from 1% to 70% — the latter, I assume, in the scenes when a retired Callas tests her own vocal strength. To my ears, Jolie sounds fantastic, the kind of voice that would knock ’em dead on karaoke night. But peak Callas hits the senses like a lightning strike. Larraín tries to capture that power in his first close-up of Jolie, shoulders bare, singing at the camera in bold black and white. But the starkness of the shot works against him, giving us too much time to notice that Jolie’s throat barely seems to move, to wonder if her eyes shouldn’t have more passion.

Angelina Jolie in the movie “Maria.”

(Netflix)

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Blazing passion used to be Jolie’s whole thing. I could close my eyes right now and see the wicked grin that made her a star in 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted.” But having endured her own tabloid scrutiny, she too has emerged too tightly controlled. Here, there’s only one second in one montage when, during a performance of Medea, Jolie unleashes a hot glare. The moment is so electric that you wish the whole film had that juice. We don’t see Callas that vibrant again until the end credits, and then, it’s archival footage of the real thing flashing a mischievous smile.

“A song should never be perfect,” Callas insists. I agree. Some critics called her singing ugly. Not in the factual sense, because that would be crazy, but closer to how fashionistas know to add one discordant accessory. The clash keeps things interesting. Jolie, however, uses perfection as armor, so no matter how much her Callas insists that opera is intoxicating, no matter how intoxicated her character actually is, her performance is a sober take on madness.

Larraín allows himself the occasional visual thrill, say a throng of Parisians suddenly assembling into a chorus. Otherwise, we’re so deep inside Callas’ delusions that things just feel flat. “What is real and what is not real is my business,” she pronounces, having bent the world to her will.

Oddly, after swooning along with giant aria after giant aria, I left the theater fixating on one of Larraín’s smallest sound-design choices. It comes when Callas, resplendent even in a bathrobe, glides into the kitchen to sing at Bruna while the poor deary cooks her an omelet. The solo goes on forever, long enough to make the point that, yes, Callas had fans clamoring outside the Metropolitan Opera, but she could also be a bit of a bore. And then, mid-song, Larraín adds a tiny clang — the sound of the spatula hitting the pan — to let us know that even in the prima donna’s fiercely protected bubble, her ego doesn’t always trump a plate of eggs.

I wish Larraín had cut Callas down to size more. He’s too protective of his fellow artist to slosh around in the fury that fueled her art. Callas could sing three octaves, but the film is mostly one note.

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‘Maria’

In English and Greek, with subtitles

Rated: R, for some language including a sexual reference

Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes

Playing: In limited release, Nov. 27

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Universal Music invests $80 million in Bollywood production company

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Universal Music invests  million in Bollywood production company

Universal Music Group is investing $80 million for a stake in one of India’s biggest Bollywood production companies, Excel Entertainment Pvt.

Universal Music India, a division of Universal Music Group, will acquire a 30% equity interest in the Mumbai-based movie studio. In the deal, announced Monday, the companies will work together on forthcoming films, series, music and emerging formats.

While getting involved in India’s local film industry, Universal Music will also now receive global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks attached to projects produced or owned by Excel. There are also future plans for the companies to launch an Excel-linked music label that will allow UMG and Universal Music India artists to appear in various Excel titles.

The investment underscores the rapid growth in the Indian entertainment industry.

India is the 15th-largest recorded-music market globally.

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Founded by producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in 1999, Excel is responsible for making over 40 different films and scripted shows. Its most popular titles include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Don” and “Talaash.” The company is currently valued at approximately $290 million.

“India’s entertainment landscape continues to grow from strength to strength, and this is the perfect moment to build meaningful global collaborations,” said Sidhwani and Akhtar in a joint statement. “Together, we aim to take culturally rooted stories to the world.”

Universal Music Group, with its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands and another office in Santa Monica, was founded in 1996. The music giant behind artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish is valued at roughly $48 billion on the U.S. stock market, with shares selling around $25.80.

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UNTIL DAWN Review

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UNTIL DAWN Review
UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats. One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town implied to be in Pennsylvania. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they’re murdered again and again. They must work together to survive without losing themselves in the never-ending time loop of gruesome murder.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot of UNTIL DAWN puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

(HH, Pa, C, O, Ho, LLL, VVV, S, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong humanist worldview that twists the concept of modern psychology into a supernatural hellscape with unexplained time loops and reoccurring nightmarish horror filled with excessive violence and gore, but with unexplained pagan supernatural elements (such as a storm circling a house, the appearance of more buildings, the time loop itself, and many more), the time loop perverts the laws of mortality and implies that the consequences of violence, murder, suicide, etc., don’t apply, the psychologist controlling the time loop discusses the situation with modern psychology in vague circles meant to confuse and disorient the nature of the reality in which the victims are trapped, religion or God is not explicitly discussed, but there’s an unexplained cross in front of a house that isn’t explained and a character references the belief that a possessed person cannot become possessed through contact but rather weakness of faith, and some occult content where one woman is a self-described psychic and is into “woo-woo” stuff as another character describes it, she tries to amplify her psychic abilities with help from the others by holding hands and meditation, and she often has strong feelings and seems to have a sense the others do not have, but no worship or symbols are shown, plus a girl dating a guy is said to have previously dated a girl as well as other men;

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Foul Language:

At least 101 obscenities (including 62 “f” words), two strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and four light profanities;

Violence:

Very severe violence and gratuitous blood and gore throughout including but not limited to dead bodies, monsters, scarred masked psychopath, stabbing, beating, and people spontaneously exploding;

Sex:

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No sex shown, but a person puts on a VHS tape and a pornographic movie is heard playing briefly but not shown, and a woman is said to date a lot of people and one time dated another woman;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

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Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A psychologist is a callous antagonist whose motives are relatively unknown beyond having a morbid curiosity that led to awful experiments and playing games with other people, he purposely keeps people trapped for no known reason other than his sick and twisted observations that end in gruesome murder and unnecessary torture.

UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats.
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One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they will be murdered again and again.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances, but it has a strong humanist worldview overall with some occult elements is filled with gruesome violence, gore, lots of strong foul language, and a time loop that leads to an increasing amount of horrific murder and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

The movie begins with a woman named Melanie clawing her way through the dirt with an unknown monster chasing after her. Digging her way out, she looks up to a masked psychopath standing over her with a scythe. She begs him, “No! Please not again. I can’t!” He fatally stabs her without a thought. It cuts to the main title, and an hourglass is shown with a ticking clock sound and unsettling music.

Cut to a group pf people in a red car driving up a winding mountain, an obvious nod to THE SHINING. It’s been one year after Clover’s sister Melanie vanished without a trace. The group consists of Max, Nina, Megan, Abe, and Clover. Shortly after their mother died, Melanie had decided to start a new life in New York. Clover decided to stay, which created tension between the sisters before Melanie left.

Clover and her friends are looking for more information about her disappearance. Their last stop is the last place she was seen in a video message taken in front of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. Megan, a proclaimed psychic, wants to join hands outside and see if they can feel any mystical energy regarding Melanie. Their attempt is cut short when an RV blares its horn and almost hits them, scaring them all.

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Clover goes inside the gas station for a cup of coffee while the others talk outside. Clover asks the man behind the register if he worked here last year. After confirming he’s been working there for years, she shows him a picture of Melanie from the video. He asks if she was missing and clarifies saying that Clover is not the first to come asking. When she asks if many people around here go missing, he says people “get in trouble” in Glore Valley. As their only lead, the group decides to go there and stick together.

Nervously driving to the valley in an increasingly dangerous storm, the group begins to question what they are doing. Suddenly the storm stops but is still raging behind them. They park in front of a house with a “Welcome Center” sign, with the storm circling around the area but leaving the house dry. Confused, they get out of the car and look around. Nina decides to see if there’s anyone inside so they can come up with a plan. Everyone goes in except Clover, who walks up to the strange rain wall.

Inside the house, they find a dated and dusty interior. The power and water don’t work, and they conclude that they are the first people to come there in years. There is a strange hourglass with a skull on the wall. Checking the guest book, Nina finds Melanie’s name signed multiple times, with increasingly shaky handwriting. In another room, Abe finds many missing posters with faces on a bulletin board and finds poster with Melanie’s face.

Outside, Clover thinks she sees a person in the rain. She also hears Melanie’s voice and runs after it. Concerned, Max calls after her and he pulls her back in. As Nina signs the guestbook, the sun suddenly sets and the clock starts ticking.

Inside the house now with the hourglass turned over, they try to understand what’s happening. The car is out in the rain now with someone revving the engine threateningly. Some of them go to the dark basement, where the lights don’t work. There is an eerie sense of dread as Abe goes to check out a noise, and Nina finds a scarred and masked psychopath standing in a room as the top half of Abe’s body falls to the ground.

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Hearing the commotion upstairs, the others go to see what happened and Max spots the killer. They run to hide, and the apparently invincible psychopath horrifically stabs each of them as they try to fight back. The sand in the hourglass runs back, as each character returns to where they were when Nina originally signed the book (she now signs it a second time). They remember what had just taken place, and how they were all murdered. Clearly stuck in this time loop escape room situation, they will now have to figure out how to escape this terrifying hellscape as the situations get worse with every loop.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

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