Venice Film Festival lineup features Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Emma Stone and Dwayne Johnson
Two years after launching 'Poor Things' at Venice, Yorgos Lanthimos and Stone are returning with 'Bugonia,' an English language remake of the South Korean sci-fi comedy 'Save the Green Planet!' that is among the 21 films playing in the main competition. Clooney will also be back as star of Noah Baumbach's 'Jay Kelly,' in which he plays a famous actor on a trip through Europe with his longtime manager (Sandler).
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Toronto Sun
12 hours ago
- Toronto Sun
Cleo Laine, singer, actress and British ‘national treasure,' dies at 97
Published Jul 25, 2025 • 7 minute read Cleo Laine performs at the Jazz Festival at Confederation Park in Ottawa is this file photo. Photo by file photo / Postmedia Network Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Cleo Laine, an English singer who moved easily among musical genres with a dazzling vocal range of almost five octaves and who nurtured a dual career as an actress, performing in musicals and dramatic roles during a career of more than six decades, died July 24. She was 97. Her death was announced in a statement from Monica Ferguson, the chief executive and artistic director of the Stables, a British arts centre founded by Laine and her husband, John Dankworth. Laine began performing in London jazz clubs in the early 1950s, working alongside Dankworth, a saxophonist. After they married, they formed Britain's royal couple of jazz, winning acclaim for performances that combined bebop with baroque music and the blues. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Nothing if not eclectic, Laine remains the only female singer to be nominated for Grammy Awards in the pop, classical and jazz categories, which she accomplished in successive years in the 1970s. She was the first – and still the only – British singer to receive a Grammy for best jazz vocal performance, when she won for her 1983 album 'Cleo at Carnegie: The 10th Anniversary Concert.' Her repertoire encompassed the saucy lyrics of British playwright and composer Noël Coward, the poetry of John Donne and T.S. Eliot, standards by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, and even Shakespeare's sonnets, which were worked into jazz compositions by Dankworth. A concert by Laine was likely to have a 19th-century German art song by Robert Schumann followed by a tune by Stephen Sondheim or Fats Waller. Laine, who rarely appeared without Dankworth at her side as her musical director, made dozens of recordings, including albums with classical guitarist John Williams and flutist James Galway. She recorded songs from 'Porgy and Bess' with Ray Charles. Her parallel career as a theatre actress informed the dramatic flair she brought to her singing. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I'm a cabaret singer wherever I am,' she once told The Washington Post . 'I think it's a part of me that the words are very important, much more so than improvisation. I think that the drama of a song is a lot more important than oobly-shoobling all over the place.' In 1961, she had a song in the Top 5 on the British pop chart ('You'll Answer to Me'), appeared as a nightclub singer in the film 'The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone' and received glowing reviews for her performance at an Edinburgh arts festival when she filled in at the last minute for Lotte Lenya in 'The Seven Deadly Sins,' a theatrical piece with music and dance by Lenya's husband, Kurt Weill. The following year, Laine – who identified herself as Black and biracial – appeared in two plays on the London stage, including in Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin's 'Cindy-Ella, or I Gotta Shoe,' an all-Black musical based on the Cinderella story. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. She had dramatic roles in other British productions, including a modern adaptation of Euripides's 'The Trojan Women,' Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and the title role in a 1970 staging of Henrik Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler.' Laine had a showstopping role in a long-running 1971-1972 London revival of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's 'Show Boat,' playing Julie, a mixed-race singer whose story ends in tragedy. Her songs, including 'Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man' and 'Bill,' invariably brought the audience to its feet. In 1972, after Laine made her New York debut at Alice Tully Hall, New York Times jazz critic John S. Wilson called her one of Britain's 'national treasures … with a remarkable voice that ranges from an exotically dark, breathy quality to high-note-topping exclamation.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Despite her undeniable vocal dexterity, other reviewers were unmoved by the commanding theatricality she brought to the concert stage. 'She has a frighteningly accurate ear and a teasingly infallible sense of rhythm,' Times music critic John Rockwell wrote in 1974 of Laine's performance at New York's Carnegie Hall. 'But for this listener, admiration stops a good deal short of real affection. Miss Laine strikes me as a calculating singer, one whose highly perfected artifice continually blocks communicative feeling. To me, she has all the personality of a carp. But then, obviously, I'm just a cold fish.' Nonetheless, Laine maintained a large and loyal following for both her singing and her theatrical work. Dankworth wrote a musical play for her, based on the life of the French writer Colette, that premiered in 1979 and later moved to London's West End. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In 1985, Laine developed the role of Princess Puffer in the original Broadway production of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' (later called 'Drood'), based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens, and earned a Tony Award nomination for best actress in a musical. In 2000, she played a singer in 'The Last of the Blonde Bombshells,' a joint U.S.-British TV movie about a latter-day reunion of an all-female band from the Second World War, also starring Judi Dench, Olympia Dukakis and Ian Holm. 'Whatever I'm doing at the time is my favourite thing,' Laine told The Post . 'A lot of people would say I'm too eclectic, diversifying far too much, but I think that because of that I've worked longer and had a much more interesting life.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Clementina Dinah Campbell was born Oct. 28, 1927, in the Southall district of London. She had a Black Jamaican father and a White English mother who were not married to each other when their daughter was born. In a 1994 autobiography, Laine called her mother 'a bigamist' who had not obtained a divorce before marrying Laine's father. The family moved frequently, and her parents held a variety of jobs, including running a cafe and boardinghouse. Her father also worked in construction and 'would sing at the drop of a hat,' Laine told The Post . 'He was a busker, singing on street corners in the Depression,' she said. 'It was a matter of need, dire need, in those days. Being Black, it was difficult for him to get work, so he busked. I wasn't really aware of this until much later, when I realized that he used to bring a lot of pennies home and count them.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Young Clementina was strongly influenced by her father's interest in jazz and was encouraged by her mother to study music and acting. She left school at 14 and became an apprentice hairdresser, always hoping to break into show business. 'I would sit in the cinema,' she later told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, 'watching Lena Horne and Judy Garland and think: 'I want that for me.'' At 19, she married George Langridge, a roofer, and had a son. Five years later, in 1951, Laine had a tryout with Dankworth, then emerging as one of England's leading jazz musicians. 'I think she's got something, don't you?' he told his bandmates after the audition. 'Something?,' a trumpeter answered. 'I think she's got everything.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Her name at the time was Clementina – or Clem – Campbell Langridge. After some brainstorming, the band members decided to call her Cleo Laine. 'They decided my real name was too long and sounded like a cowboy,' she told the Chicago Sun-Times. Her sister raised her son while Laine devoted herself to her career. She impressed Dankworth and his band not just with her voice but with her ability to match them, glass for glass, in drinking ale during their tours of British nightclubs. By the mid-1950s, Laine was anointed Britain's top jazz singer by critics and music magazines. She divorced her first husband, from whom she had grown apart, and she married Dankworth in 1958. They had two children, who were raised by nannies and attended boarding schools while their parents were on tour. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. They lived about 50 miles from London in the village of Wavendon, where they established a theatre and an educational foundation. In the 'show must go on' tradition, Laine gave a performance at Wavendon on Feb. 6, 2010. Only at the end did she announce that Dankworth had died earlier that day. Dankworth was presented with a fellowship of the Royal Academy in 1973 and the following year appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was knighted in 2006, the first British jazz musician to receive this honour. Survivors include a son from her first marriage, Stuart Langridge; two children from her second marriage, singer Jacqui Dankworth and jazz bassist and composer Alec Dankworth; and several grandchildren. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Laine wrote two volumes of memoirs and received the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1997. Her voice remained supple and precise well into her 80s. In 1983, she told The Post how she sought to connect with her listeners: 'I like to imagine when I'm singing that it's not thousands of people but one person, and a love affair can be created that way. I ignore my husband in the background: This is a love affair going on.' Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances. Hockey Sports Toronto & GTA Toronto & GTA Columnists
National Post
a day ago
- National Post
Travis Kelce channels Pretty Woman, calls himself 'NFL hooker'
Travis Kelce can identify with Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman, the NFL star said this week. Article content Talking on his New Heights podcast with brother Jason Kelce, Kelce said: 'I'm just an NFL stripper, that's it. I'm just an NFL hooker, man.' Article content The Kelces watched the film, which also starred Richard Gere and was released in theatres in 1990. Article content Travis Kelce said: 'We need to make 'Pretty Man,' and we need to have a CEO billionaire woman be so high class that she doesn't know where she's going, she doesn't know how to drive a car.' Article content At that point, older brother Jason mentioned the Taylor Swift angle, according to Page Six. Article content 'You're living Pretty Woman right now (by dating Swift). You are Pretty Man. You're living your own Julia Roberts' (moment).' Article content That caused Travis to laugh, before responding Article content 'I'm wearing nothing but a tie when Taylor comes home,' he said. Article content 'That's why … when I met Julia it felt like we were the same person. It was so cool. She spoke to me in this movie.' Article content The three-time Super Bowl winner previously gushed over meeting Roberts during a July 2024 podcast episode. Article content Travis Kelce and Swift have been dating since 2023. Article content Article content
Toronto Star
2 days ago
- Toronto Star
Why Ozzy Osbourne was the prince not just of darkness but of pop culture
Recently, I came across a bit of screenwriting advice that goes something like this: all endings should be both surprising and inevitable. These words crept to mind on Tuesday, when I learned of the passing of Ozzy Osbourne at age 76. News of the death of Osbourne, a pioneering heavy metal singer who redefined pop culture (at least twice over and maybe three times), brought a sense of a shock and acceptance. Ozzy lived both hard and well. He too was surprising and inevitable. Born in 1948 in the English industrial town of Birmingham as John Michael Osbourne, Ozzy's beginnings were inauspicious. As a working class 'Brummie,' his career prospects were limited to tool maker, meat packer or car-horn tuner — the latter being about as close as someone of his stock could imagine to a career in the music biz. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW An encounter with the Beatles changed that. A teenage Osbourne hooked up with local musicians Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Terrance 'Geezer' Butler to found the group Black Sabbath — and heavy metal itself. Pulling equally from the paranormal and the predominant English blues rock sound — new listeners to the band's 1970 debut might be surprised to hear just how much honking harmonica it contains — Sabbath turned the flower power vibes of '60s rock upside down. Peace, love and smiling on one's brother were replaced by doom, gloom and a sinister vibe that (at least in hindsight) offered a more honest appraisal of the nuclear era. They were counter-counterculture. 'Who gave a dog's arse about what people were doing in San Francisco, anyway?' Osbourne wrote in his 2009 memoir 'I Am Ozzy.' 'I hated those hippy-dippy songs, man.' With Ozzy's wailing, urgent lyrics juxtaposed against Iommi and Butler's heavy riffing, Black Sabbath set a new template for rock 'n' roll. They were the fathers of heavy metal, whether they liked it or not (Osbourne himself rejected the term). The form was harder, weightier and altogether darker. It was further honed in the U.K. by bands like Witchfinder General, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and in America by the likes of Metallica, Slayer and Pantera. Ozzy sang (or howled) about the apocalypse, drug abuse and shadowy figures lurking at the edge of the bedside — topics that inspired generations of heavy metal fans and practitioners, and raised the ire of just as many generations of concerned parents and church groups. Osbourne himself would long hold the moniker 'Prince of Darkness,' a nickname he shared with no less than Lucifer himself. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Ozzy was arguably as legendary for his music as the antics surrounding it. A prodigious consumer of alcohol and illegal narcotics, his erratic behaviour drove tension in the group. By 1979, Osbourne was dismissed from Sabbath. Undaunted, he began a lucrative solo career. If Sabbath defined the sound of '70s heavy metal, Osbourne's solo band brought it into the '80s: bleached hair, dive-bomb guitar solos and all. The music made Osbourne a superstar of the MTV era and one of the select few artists to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, alongside his heroes, the Beatles. Naturally, this new fame bred more controversy. In 1982, Ozzy drew headlines after biting the head off a bat while performing onstage. In '85, he and his label were sued by grieving parents, who claimed their 19-year-old son took his own life after listening to Osbourne's 'Suicide Solution' (a judge ruled that the lyrics were protected speech under the U.S. First Amendment). An appearance in the 1988 documentary 'The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years,' showed a jittery Osbourne, wide-eyed and wiped out, struggling to make breakfast in his kitchen. Ozzy's chemical dependencies would become the stuff of not only heavy metal myth, but pop culture fodder. In 2002, MTV premiered 'The Osbournes,' an early reality-TV hit that followed Ozzy and his family: wife (and manager) Sharon, daughter Kelly and son Jack. (Sharon and Ozzy's eldest daughter refused to participate.) A smash, the show offered a fly-on-the-wall look at the Prince of Darkness's relatively humdrum life. Here was the debauched metal icon who bit the head off a bat struggling with the satellite remote. Even judging by the standards of a debased medium like reality television, 'The Osbournes' seems gallingly exploitative today. His music made Ozzy an icon. The TV show made him a punchline. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Such ignominies did little to diminish Osbourne's reputation in musical circles, however. Ozzy eventually committed to sobriety. For years he had suffered tremors, which were written off as the effects of alcohol abuse. As it turned out, they were likely symptoms of Parkinson's disease, a diagnosis he revealed in 2020. Just a few weeks ago, Black Sabbath reunited for a final show in Birmingham, joined by a cohort of heavy metal and hard rock icons — members of Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, the Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Guns N' Roses and more — who paid their respects to the group. It was billed as a final farewell. Now it seems like a living wake. Onstage at Birmingham's Villa Park Stadium, a considerably diminished Osbourne sat in a throne befitting rock 'n' roll royalty, performing several solo songs and numbers with his Sabbath bandmates. He closed the concert — and, as it would turn out, his storied musical career — with 'Paranoid' from Sabbath's 1970 album of the same. Listening to it now, the track is at once urgent and sorrowful, surprising and inevitable. Its final lines ring like a cri de coeur from an artist whose altogether untimely passing is betrayed by the fact that he lived, in his 76 years, the lifetimes of several more men: And so as you hear these words Telling you now of my state I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could, but it's too late
