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Irish Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Modigliani: Three Days on the Wing of Madness review – Is Johnny Depp's film a dud or a masterpiece? Prepare for disappointing news
Modigliani: Three Days on the Wing of Madness Director : Johnny Depp Cert : 15A Starring : Riccardo Scamarcio, Antonia Desplat, Bruno Gouery, Ryan McParland, Al Pacino, Stephen Graham, Luisa Ranieri Running Time : 1 hr 48 mins Large portions of the online population are, no doubt, greatly invested in Johnny Depp 's study of Amedeo Modigliani turning out to be a rampaging dud. Just as many – the section that tweeted swooning support during that court case – will have already decided it's the greatest masterpiece this side of Battleship Potemkin. I have disappointing news for both factions: the film will just about do. Three Days on the Wing of Madness (the title alone had me fanning a sweaty brow before the titles rolled) certainly has its moment of adolescent indulgence. Yes, there is a scene in which the artist takes loads of drugs – booze laced with hash and mushrooms – in a graveyard while fireworks clatter overhead. But brief research confirms that Modì, as he was to pals, did indeed indulge in what the Garda calls cannabis resin. True, Depp does manage to insinuate The Black Angel's Death Song, by The Velvet Underground, on to the soundtrack. But everyone does that sort of thing these days. It's 20 years since Sofia Coppola had Marie Antoinette promenade to New Order. So Three Days is no great shakes, but it is rarely embarrassing either. Adapted from a play by Dennis McIntyre – one that the movie's costar Al Pacino has been seeking to film for 50 years – the feature goes among Modigliani and his pals in an idealised Paris at the height of the first World War. READ MORE Riccardo Scamarcio , a big star in Italy, is well cast as a charmer whose self-belief is as much a professional handicap as it is an artistic accelerant. When Pacino's grand art dealer scorns Modì's paintings but offers a small fortune for a sculptured head, the dissolute genius turns him down flat. Not for sale. [ 'As Johnny Depp says, if Pacino comes to you and says do something it's better you do it' Opens in new window ] Ryan McParland is gaunt as Modì's friend and rival Chaïm Soutine. (The two painted well-known portraits of each other.) Stephen Graham has gruff fun with the influential dealer Léopold Zborowski. Antonia Desplat just about makes Beatrice Hastings, the English-born writer, poet and lover to Modì, come alive, despite underwritten dialogue. The more it goes on the clearer it becomes that, though Depp no doubt admires Modigliani's work, his real passion here is for the eternally intoxicating fantasy of Parisian bohemia. Scamarcio could be any of the thousand geniuses whose absinthe consumption condemned them to early death in the tenements of Montmartre. But that myth remains attractive for a reason. The romance still has purchase even in an entertainment as slight as this. In cinemas from Friday, July 11th
New York Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
When the New York Avant-Garde Started a Revolution
EVERYTHING IS NOW: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde — Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop, by J. Hoberman Yayoi Kusama. Andy Warhol. Amiri Baraka. Allen Ginsberg. Jack Smith. The Velvet Underground. Edie Sedgwick. The Last Poets. Ornette Coleman. Abbie Hoffman. Rip Torn. Judith Malina. Richard Foreman. Taylor Mead. Lenny Bruce. Jackie Curtis. Barbara Rubin. Charlotte Moorman. A dizzying roll call of sometimes famous, often infamous characters populates 'Everything Is Now,' a completist guide to arguably the most inventive scene of a tumultuous decade. Its densely packed pages offer vivid and timely anecdotal lessons on the impact, suppression and self-obliteration of radical art. The book unfolds chronologically, starting in the late 1950s with the popularization of Beat poetry and folk music, the rise of underground movies and the birth of happenings, and ending in the early '70s with Weathermen detonations, underground porn and Yoko Ono (the author praises her album 'Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band' as 'the past decade's quintessential artwork'). A child of the '60s himself, J. Hoberman writes authoritatively on harmolodic jazz, censored comedians, the Fluxus art movement, experimental film, immersive theater, political protest and the birth of rap. Some of these stories — the emergence of Bob Dylan, for instance — are oft told. But our guide through this subterranean blues knows all the craziest, twisted tales, and where the bodies are buried: The underground newspaper taken over by its female staffers. The midnight screenings shut down by the police. The jazz pioneer found drowned in a river. 'Everything Is Now' draws on published accounts in the press of the time, both underground and mainstream — particularly from The Village Voice, and its writers Jill Johnston and Jonas Mekas (themselves also creative characters). Hoberman himself began writing about movies for The Voice in 1972 and continued until 2012, a stunning run that made him one of the most important critics of the time. (I worked at The Voice as a contributor and editor from 1988 to 1996. I knew the author then as a colleague but not socially.) Along with the interviews he conducted for this book he draws extensively on memoirs, biographies and other books, including his own: He has previously written about the filmmaker Jack Smith, performance art and underground cinema. 'Everything' has everyone — Hoberman is encyclopedic in his recounting of the breakthroughs, breakdowns and bombings. It's a performer- and performance-driven narrative, vividly told. Kenneth Bernard's play 'The Moke-Eater,' the author informs us, was a 'malicious spectacle of an obnoxious all-American glad-hander trapped in a nightmare all-American town, tortured by a gibbering band of garishly made-up cannibal ghouls led by a mercurial dominatrix.' Ah, the '60s! But one key figure is elusive. Every now and then Hoberman breaks the fourth wall with a wry parenthetical or a confessional memory, but overall the author remains doggedly offstage: a historian who was occasionally a witness. It's a strangely objective, master-narrator stance for a milieu that was about dismantling barriers, prosceniums and structures, and centering collaboration. When he does interject, Hoberman conveys paragraphs in just a few words. Quoting a Sun Ra Arkestra review wherein the critic Michael Zwerin describes the 'polka-dot shirts,' 'African robes' and 'air of raunchiness,' then observes, 'They stared at us without enthusiasm,' Hoberman deadpans, 'One wonders why.' Unfortunately, though, the forest often gets lost for the trees. Without a strong narrative providing critical context, it's hard to keep track of all the players and their acts. As compelling as the tales are, sometimes I reeled from information overload. The wildly visual subjects also beg for photos, which are minimal. Actually, 'Everything Is Now' begs for a multimedia exhibition, where you could watch the films, view the artwork, hear the music and maybe even participate in the bacchanalia of 'Paradise Now,' a Living Theater production where the cast and audience mixed in 'an orgy of animal madness.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Wall Street Journal
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Pavements' Review: Alex Ross Perry's Aptly Ironic Tribute
Director Alex Ross Perry's new movie is about, according to an opening title, 'The world's most important and influential band.' The Beatles? Nay. The Beach Boys? Of course not. The Velvet Underground? Wrong again! No, the band in question is the '90s slacker-rock outfit Pavement. No, Mr. Perry isn't serious. Or maybe he is? His film, 'Pavements,' is a Möbius strip of a music documentary, at once ardent in its affections and devilishly ironic in how it treats the norms of paying tribute. It's an approach fit for the subjects, punky and critically beloved Gen Xers with a horror of selling out who would as soon do a DraftKings commercial as be the focus of a silver-screen hagiography. And so one of the more plainly satirical elements here is the production of just such a burnished biopic. We get a behind-the-scenes look at the (fake) film, 'Range Life,' directed by Mr. Perry and starring, in the role of frontman Stephen Malkmus, the 'Stranger Things' actor Joe Keery, digging deep in search of Oscar gold.
Telegraph
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
John Cale, Royal Festival Hall, review: a finely crafted last goodbye from art-rock's underground hero
Even after turning 83 earlier this month, Welsh-born rocker John Cale showed no signs of relaxing his high-art principles in a rare London appearance at the Royal Festival Hall. From a background in classical and avant-garde minimalism, Cale helped revolutionise pop music in the late 1960s in The Velvet Underground, the radical New York City ensemble bankrolled by Pop Artist Andy Warhol, where he wrought sonic havoc on the songs of Lou Reed with his droning viola and uncompromising aesthetics. His relationship with that music, long since enshrined in rock history's uppermost pantheon, has always been prickly at best. Though he has characterised his collaboration with Reed as 'that once-in-a-lifetime perfect fit', an early-1990s Velvets reunion proved fractious, and fleeting. While it arguably kickstarted 'heritage rock', Cale himself has never hidden his contempt for lazy nostalgia. He has remained cravenly forward-facing, and expectation-refuting, and it would have been a shock if he'd suddenly started showboating on this latest tour, which, of course, may prove to be his last. Not for him an album-in-full jaunt à la Patti Smith, who tours this coming autumn with Horses, the 1975 proto-punk classic that Cale himself produced. When the octogenarian avant-classical sage first materialised onstage, he stood at the front with an electric guitar – rarely, if ever, his favoured instrument – applying a textural strum to Shark-Shark from last year's POPtical Illusion, the second of two albums whittled down from some 80 songs that he composed during the pandemic. While garish floor-to-ceiling movies blitzed behind, he soon settled at a Kurzweil keyboard and led his three-piece trio through a 100-minute set-list, voicing with a keening mid-Atlantic tenor and peering through school-masterly spectacles to pick out deliberate chords. Where, say, Bob Dylan expresses his showbiz disdain with nightly mutilations of his most popular tunes, Cale simply bypasses his in favour of 'deep cuts' in lively new renderings. Earlier in the evening, there was The Endless Plain of Fortune from 1973's Paris 1919, its skipping piano construction emblematic of this restless creative's mission to break free of rock cliché. There followed his near-comically deconstructed stab at Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel, and heads-down, often improv-leaning nuggets such as My Maria, its original chunky riffing from Roxy Music's Chris Spedding subjected to a 'shredding' makeover by this trio's guitarist, Dustin Boyer. The highlight, possibly, was Frozen Warnings from The Marble Index, the torrid 1968 collaborative masterpiece he made with his fellow Velvet Underground alumna, Nico. It drifted by in a sublimely dreamy haze, with bassist Joey Maramba eliciting a low-end drone with a violin bow that mirrored Cale's methods of old, but without emotive reminiscence about another fallen associate. Soon, Cale was hustling his trio off the stage, and, as the audience perhaps sensed that this may be goodbye rather than au revoir, the Festival Hall filled with urgent cries for an oft-aired encore of the Velvets's I'm Waiting for the Man. Then, the lights went up, and Cale's austere vision of artistry remained intact to the last.
The Independent
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Celebrity birthdays for the week of March 15
Celebrity birthdays for the week of March 9-14: March 9: Actor Joyce Van Patten is 91. Actor Trish Van Devere is 84. Singer John Cale (The Velvet Underground) is 83. Singer Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders is 83. TV anchor Charles Gibson is 82. Guitarist Robin Trower (Procol Harum) is 80. Guitarist Jimmie Fadden of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is 77. Singer Jeffrey Osborne is 77. Actor Linda Fiorentino ('Men In Black') is 67. Actor Tom Amandes ('Eli Stone,' ″Parenthood') is 66. Guitarist Rusty Hendrix of Confederate Railroad is 65. Actor Juliette Binoche ('Chocolat,' ″The English Patient') is 61. Bassist Robert Sledge of Ben Folds Five is 57. Drummer Shannon Leto of 30 Seconds To Mars is 55. Actor Emmanuel Lewis ('Webster') is 54. Actor Jean Louisa Kelly ('Yes, Dear,' ″Mr. Holland's Opus') is 53. Actor Kerr Smith ('Life Unexpected,' ″Dawson's Creek') is 53. Actor Oscar Isaac ('Star Wars: The Force Awakens') is 46. Comedian Jordan Klepper ('The Daily Show') is 46. Rapper Chingy is 45. Actor Matthew Gray Gubler ('Criminal Minds') is 45. Guitarist Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory is 44. Keyboardist Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes is 42. Actor Brittany Snow ('American Dreams,' ″Hairspray') is 39. Rapper Bow Wow is 38. Rapper YG is 35. Actor Luis Armand Garcia ('George Lopez') is 33. Actor Cierra Ramirez ('The Fosters') is 30. March 10: Bluegrass musician Norman Blake is 87. Actor Chuck Norris is 85. Singer Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean is 85. Actor Katharine Houghton ('Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?') is 83. Actor Richard Gant is 81. Guitarist Tom Scholz of Boston is 78. TV personality/businesswoman Barbara Corcoran ('Shark Tank') is 76. Actor Aloma Wright ('Scrubs') is 75. Singer-guitarist Gary Louris of The Jayhawks is 70. Actor Shannon Tweed is 68. Actor Sharon Stone is 67. Bassist Gail Greenwood of L7 (and of Belly) is 65. Magician Lance Burton is 65. Actor Jasmine Guy is 63. Bassist Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam is 62. Music producer Rick Rubin is 62. Singer Edie Brickell is 59. Actor Stephen Mailer ('Reversal of Fortune') is 59. Actor Philip Anthony-Rodriguez ('Grimm') is 57. Actor Paget ('Criminal Minds') is 56. Actor Jon Hamm ('Mad Men') is 54. Rapper-producer Timbaland is 53. Actor Cristian de la Fuente is 51. Guitarist Jerry Horton of Papa Roach is 50. Actor Jeff Branson ('The Young and the Restless') is 48. Singer Robin Thicke is 48. Actor Bree Turner ('Grimm') is 48. Singer Michael Barnes of Red is 46. Actor Edi Gathegi ('Twilight' films) is 46. Actor Thomas Middleditch ('Silicon Valley') is 43. Singer Carrie Underwood is 42. Actor Olivia Wilde is 41. Singer Emeli Sande is 38. Country singer Rachel Reinert is 36. Keyboardist Jared Hampton of LANCO is 34. Actor Emily Osment ('Hannah Montana') is 33. March 11: TV journalist Sam Donaldson is 91. Accordionist Flaco Jimenez of Texas Tornadoes is 86. Actor Tricia O'Neil ('Genghis Khan') is 80. Actor Mark Metcalf ('Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' 'Animal House') is 79. Singer Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge is 78. Singer Bobby McFerrin is 75. Movie director Jerry Zucker ('Airplane!' ″Ghost') is 75. Singer Cheryl Lynn is 74. Actor Susan Richardson ('Eight Is Enough') is 73. Recording executive Jimmy Iovine ('American Idol') is 72. Country singer Jimmy Fortune of The Statler Brothers is 70. Singer Nina Hagen is 70. Actor Elias Koteas ('Chicago P.D.') is 64. Actor Peter Berg ('Chicago Hope') is 63. Actor Jeffrey Nordling ('Desperate Housewives') is 63. Actor Alex Kingston ('ER') is 62. Actor Wallace Langham ('CSI') is 60. Actor John Barrowman ('Arrow') is 58. Singer Lisa Loeb is 57. Keyboardist Al Gamble of St. Paul and the Broken Bones is 56. Singer Pete Droge is 56. Actor Terrence Howard ('Empire') is 56. Keyboardist Rami Jaffee of Foo Fighters (and of The Wallflowers) is 56. Actor Johnny Knoxville is 54. Musicians Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte are 46. Actor David Anders ('iZombie,' ″The Vampire Diaries') is 43. Singer LeToya Luckett (Destiny's Child) is 43. Actor Thora Birch ('Ghost World,' ″American Beauty') is 43. TV personality Melissa Rycroft is 42. Actor Rob Brown ('Blindspot,''Treme') is 41. Actor Jodie Comer ('Killing Eve') is 32. March 12: Actor Barbara Feldon ('Get Smart') is 92. Actor-singer Liza Minnelli is 79. Singer-songwriter James Taylor is 77. Singer Bill Payne of Little Feat is 76. Actor Jon Provost (TV: 'Lassie') is 75. Bassist Steve Harris of Iron Maiden is 69. Actor Lesley Manville ('Phantom Thread') is 69. Singer Marlon Jackson of The Jackson Five is 68. Actor Jerry Levine ('Teen Wolf,' 'Will and Grace') is 68. Actor Jason Beghe ('Chicago P.D.') is 66. Actor Courtney B. Vance is 65. Actor Titus Welliver ('Deadwood') is 63. Actor Julia Campbell ('Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion') is 62. Actor Jake Weber (TV's 'Medium,' film's 'Dawn of the Dead') is 62. Actor Aaron Eckhart ('The Dark Knight') is 57. Guitarist Graham Coxon of Blur is 56. Drummer Tommy Bales of Flynnville Train is 52. Actor Rhys Coiro ('Hostages,' 'Entourage') is 46. Country singer Holly Williams is 44. Actor Samm Levine ('Freaks and Geeks') is 43. Actor Jaimie Alexander (TV's 'Blindspot') is 41. Actor Tyler Patrick Jones ('Ghost Whisperer') is 31. Actor Kendall Applegate ('Desperate Housewives') is 26. March 13: Songwriter Mike Stoller is 92. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka is 86. Singer Candi Staton is 85. Actor William H. Macy is 75. Comedian Robin Duke is 71. Actor Dana Delany ('Body of Proof' ″China Beach') is 69. Bassist Adam Clayton of U2 is 65. Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard is 63. Actor Christopher Collet ('The Manhattan Project') is 57. Drummer Matt McDonough of Mudvayne is 56. Actor Annabeth Gish ('The West Wing,' ″The X-Files') is 54. Actor Tracy Wells ('Mr. Belvedere') is 54. Rapper Common is 53. Rapper Khujo of Goodie Mob is 53. Singer Glenn Lewis is 50. Actor Danny Masterson ('That '70s Show') is 49. Musicians Natalie and Nicole Albino of Nina Sky are 41. Actor Noel Fisher ('Shameless') is 41. Actor Emile Hirsch ('Into the Wild') is 40. March 14: Actor Michael Caine is 92. Country singer Michael Martin Murphey is 80. Former Chicago sax player Walt Parazaider is 80. Actor Steve Kanaly ('Dallas') is 79. Comedian Billy Crystal is 77. TV and radio personality Rick Dees is 74. Country singer Jann Browne is 71. Actor Adrian Zmed is 71. Actor Tamara Tunie ('Law and Order: SVU') is 66. Actor Elise Neal ('All of Us') is 59. Actor Gary Anthony Williams ('Boston Legal,' ″Malcolm in the Middle') is 59. Actor Megan Follows ('Reign') is 57. Drummer Michael Bland of Soul Asylum is 56. Singer Kristian Bush of Sugarland is 55. Actor Betsy Brandt ('Breaking Bad') is 52. Actor Grace Park ('Hawaii Five-0,' ″Battlestar Galactica') is 51. Actor Daniel Gillies ('The Originals,' ″Vampire Diaries') is 49. Actor Corey Stoll ('House of Cards' ″The Bourne Legacy') is 49. Actor Chris Klein is 48. Actor Ryan Cartwright ('Kevin Can Wait') is 44. Actor Kate Maberly ('Finding Neverland') is 43. Singer-keyboardist Taylor Hanson of Hanson is 42. Actor Jamie Bell ('Billy Elliot') is 39. Bassist Este Haim of Haim is 39. Actor Ansel Elgort ('Insurgent,' 'The Fault in Our Stars') is 31. March 15: Actor Judd Hirsch is 90. Jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd is 87. Singer Mike Love of the Beach Boys is 84. Singer-keyboardist Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone is 82. Guitarist Howard Scott (War) is 79. Rock guitarist Ry Cooder is 78. Actor Frances Conroy ('American Horror Story,' ″Six Feet Under') is 72. Actor Craig Wasson ('Body Double') is 71. Singer Dee Snider of Twisted Sister is 70. Actor Joaquim de Almeida (film's 'Clear and Present Danger,' TV's '24') is 68. Actor Park Overall ('Empty Nest') is 68. Model Fabio is 64. Singer Sananda Maitreya (Terence Trent D'Arby) is 63. Singer Bret Michaels of Poison is 62. Singer Rockwell is 61. Actor Chris Bruno ('The Fosters') is 59. Actor Kim Raver ('Grey's Anatomy') is 58. Singer Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray is 57. Bassist Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 and of Plus-44 is 53. Singer-guitarist Matt Thomas of Parmalee is 51. Actor Eva Longoria ('Desperate Housewives') is 50. Musician of Black Eyed Peas is 50. DJ Joseph Hahn of Linkin Park is 48. Rapper Young Buck is 44. Bassist Ethan Mentzer of The Click Five is 43. Actor Kellan Lutz ('The Legend of Hercules,' 'Twilight' films) is 40. Actor Caitlin Wachs (WAKS) ('Profiler') is 36.
