News

MK2 Films has pulled out of “Louis Armstrong: The Cause of Happiness,” after the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation said they were not collaborators on the project, as previously indicated.

MK2 Films announced on June 23 during the virtual Cannes market that it was handling international sales on the film. The documentary feature, produced by Fanny Glissant (“Slavery Routes”) and Gaël Leiblang (“Maria By Callas”), was presented as an event documentary made with the backing of the Louis Armstrong Foundation to mark the 50th anniversary of Armstrong’s death.

However, the New York-based org has now come forward stating they were not, in fact, involved in “Louis Armstrong: The Cause of Happiness,” and already have an exclusive partnership in place with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Documentaries, which is working on another film about the American singer and trumpeter.

In a statement sent to Variety on June 24, the Louis Armstrong...

MK2 Films has come on board “Louis Armstrong: The Cause of Happiness,” a feature documentary exploring the many faces of the jazz music icon, and set against the backdrop of the social, cultural and political milestones of U.S. 20th century history.

Now in pre-production, “Louis Armstrong: The Cause of Happiness” is directed by Thibaut de Longeville, whose credits include the documentaries “Just for Kicks” and “The Art of Blending” with The Roots and Q-Tip. The film is co-written by Emmanuel Parent, author of “Great Black Music” and “Jazz Power.”

The documentary is being made in collaboration with the Louis Armstrong Foundation to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. As such, it will include hundreds of hours of exclusive material, including Armstrong’s personal audio recordings about his life and times, which he recorded in the privacy of his own home and on the road over the last 15 years of his life.

Launched just over 50 years ago by Marin Karmitz and now headed by his sons, Nathanael and Elisha, Paris-based MK2 films accomplished a double deed at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Not only does it have five movies playing in competition for the second consecutive year, it represents in international markets three of the four female-directed films competing, Mati Diop with “Atlantics,” Justine Triet’s “Sybil” and Celine Sciamma with “Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire.”

Aside from the competition, MK2 also has Monia Chokri’s “A Brother’s Love” and Danielle Lessovitz’s “Port Authority” playing in Un Certain Regard.

Nathanael Karmitz and Juliette Schrameck, the managing director of MK2, said the company was not following any quota or positive discrimination to ramp up their roster of female-directed films but were simply drawn to the originality and quality of the projects.

“Three of the four women directors in...

Theatrical documentaries are a risky financial proposition at best. Few have major theatrical runs. However, 2018 saw several exceptional releases garner multimillion-dollar grosses domestically, demonstrating the genre’s cyclical ability to appeal and compete in a crowded field.

Five documentaries are among 2018’s top 100 box office grossers: Focus Features’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” ($22.6 million), Magnolia Pictures’ “Rbg” ($14 million), Neon’s “Three Identical Strangers” ($12.3 million), Briarcliff Entertainment’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” ($6.3 million) and the still-in-release “Free Solo” ($3.6 million) from National Geographic Documentary Film.

“In 1986, when I began in the business, I felt like I’d missed the parade,” says Davis Guggenheim (Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth”), producer of the 2018 Sundance documentary Grand Jury prizewinner “The Price of Free,” which chronicles Indian Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s crusade against child labor and slavery.

The film was co-financed through his Concordia Studio shingle and Participant Media and picked up by YouTube Originals. “I...

A total of 166 films have been submitted for consideration in the documentary feature category for the 91st Academy Awards.

Notable titles up for the gold include “Rbg,” “Three Identical Strangers,” “Free Solo” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” — which have performed strongly at the box office. Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” has grossed $22.6 million domestically.

Nine of the 10 titles named as finalists for the International Documentary Association’s top feature are on the list, including “Crime + Punishment,” “Dark Money,” “Free Solo,” “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” “Minding the Gap,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” “The Silence of Others,” “United Skates” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences noted that several of the 166 films have not yet had their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying runs. A shortlist of 15 movies will be announced on Dec. 17.

Nominations...

A whopping 166 documentary features have been submitted to the academy for consideration at the 2019 Oscars. That is down by four from last year’s record 170 submissions. Among these contenders are all of the highest grossing documentaries of the year including “Free Solo,” “Rbg” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

To winnow the entries down to the 15 semi-finalists that will be announced on December 17, the academy is sending monthly packages of the newly eligible documentary feature screeners to all 400 or so members of the documentary branch. While all members are encouraged to watch as many of these as they can, one-fifth of the voters are assigned each title. In late November, each branch member will submit a preferential ballot listing their top 15 choices.

See 2019 Oscars: Foreign-language film entries from A (Afghanistan) to Y (Yemen)

All of these ballots will be collated to determine the 15 semi-finalists. Branch members will then be...

So far this fall’s specialized box office is performing better than last year. The string of strong openings continues with another initial limited release: Joel Edgerton’s “Boy Erased” (Focus Features) showed significant initial interest in its first three cities. The thoughtful gay conversion drama is the latest of several above-average openings drawing a diverse range of independent audiences. And it comes when several of the top wide releases also are competing for the same moviegoers.

“A Private War” (Aviron) and “Maria By Callas” (Sony Pictures Classics) also pulled decent initial reactions. The real mark of success is what happens as films expand, so it remains to be seen how these will translate ahead.

For example, last week’s strong two-theater opener “Suspiria” (Amazon) went to several hundred locations with mixed results, including a steep second-day fall. On the other hand, four initially limited films — “The Hate U Give...

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is heading for a rhapsodic debut from 4,000 North American locations with an estimated $46 million.

The Fox biopic starring Rami Malek as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury earned $18.4 million Friday. Bryan Singer directed the film from Anthony McCarten’s screenplay. Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, and Mike Myers also star.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is sitting at a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an A CinemaScore.

Christmastime pic “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” should debut in second with about $18 million from 3,766 domestic sites. That marks a disappointing start for the Disney film, which stars Keira Knightley and has an estimated production budget of well over $100 million.

Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston directed the film, with Ashleigh Powell writing the script. Mackenzie Foy, Eugenio Derbez, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Misty Copeland, Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman also star. “Nutcracker” follows a young girl who must...

There was once a more mysterious version of celebrity. The wall that separated a famous artist’s performance from that same artist’s private life was more difficult to scale. Popular singers didn’t routinely executive produce advertorials stuffed with behind-the-scenes footage of themselves: no rehearsal time laid bare, no banal shopping trips, no nervous visit to their personal ear, nose, and throat specialist. Fans didn’t have the immediate access provided by the internet; a star was more or less allowed to keep the public at arm’s length.

Filmmaker Tom Volf reaches into the past to change that in “Maria by Callas,” a lovingly assembled documentary about the life and career of American opera legend Maria Callas, whose voice is considered to be among the greatest of the 20th century. Here, the private Callas is made public.

Curated from live performance footage, television interviews, the singer’s own...

Another day, another fawning documentary about a famous musician. But Tom Volf’s “Maria by Callas” — an obsessive tribute to (and sympathetic examination of) the late opera legend Maria Callas — is of a somewhat different breed than the usual sort. Entirely composed of archival newsreel footage, performance recordings, and rare interview excerpts from when the great “diva” sat down with journalist David Frost in 1970, the film unfolds like a second-hand sketch of a phantom who continues to haunt its director.

Volf highlights Callas’ sentiment that her memoirs “are in the music [she] interprets, the only language [she] really knows,” and he respects that feeling to a fault. This was a woman who was hounded by reporters all over the world, and defined by her relationship with the press; here, she finally gets a chance to speak in her own words. And yet, it would seem as though she only has one thing...

"An artist develops. You do things by instinct, but we learn, we suffer, we mature. I have to feel what I do." Sony Pictures Classics has released an official Us trailer for a documentary titled Maria by Callas, set to open in Us theaters in November after showing at the New York Film Festival. The film is an intimate look at the life & work of Greek-American opera singer Maria Callas, as told in her own words. "Assembling the material for the film took director Volf four years of painstaking research, which included personal outreach to dozens of Callas's closest friends and associates, who allowed him to share their personal memorabilia in the film. When recordings of Callas's voice aren't available, Joyce Didonato, one of contemporary opera's biggest stars, reads her words." This looks like another fascinating, insightful doc about a truly great artist. Here's the official Us trailer (+ poster) for...

“Maria by Callas,” an adoring profile of the Greek-American opera legend, is a one-sided documentary, using Callas’ own words in journals, letters and interview appearances to narrate her personal history. Yet this is not meant as criticism; it’s only fair that Callas’ voice finally gets heard off the stage, given how much the tabloids reinforced her image as a tempestuous diva, when the real person was much more complicated. First-time director Tom Volf plainly adores Callas — sometimes to a fault — but his film stands as a necessary corrective to decades of bad press. It’s an unalloyed tribute to her as a musical genius who gave all of herself to the public. Opera aficionados will be first in line when Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in early November, but the doc doubles as an accessible primer for the less schooled, too, with an abundance of classic recordings on the soundtrack.

Friday, August 24

– The Camden International Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 14th edition, including opening-night selection “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.” Morgan Neville’s documentary on Orson Welles kicks off the fest, which takes place September 13–16 and concludes with the Us premiere of the sailing drama “Maiden.”

The full slate is comprised of 37 features, 43 shorts, one episodic series, and 20 virtual-reality and immersive experiences; half of the lineup was directed or co-directed by women. Other standouts include Kahlil Hudson and Alex Jablonski’s “Young Men and Fire,” Lana Wilson’s series “The Cure for Fear,” Jane Gillooly’s “Where the Pavement Ends,” “Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes,” “What Is Democracy,” “The Truth About Killer Robots,” Locarno winner “Fausto,” and Karlovy Vary winners “Walden” and “Putin’s Witnesses.” Take a look at the full slate at https://pointsnorthinstitute.org.

Wednesday, August 22

– Today Sffilm announced...

The La Film Festival will hold the world premiere of holiday-season comedy “The Oath,” starring Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz, on Sept. 25 at the ArcLight Hollywood.

“The Oath,” Barinholtz’s directorial debut, centers on a couple whose Thanksgiving takes a turn for the worse when two federal agents wind up being held captive in their living room. Barinholtz also wrote the script. The film also stars John Cho, Carrie Brownstein, Billy Magnussen, Meredith Hagner, Barinholtz’s brother Jon Barinholtz, Nora Dunn, and Chris Ellis.

Roadside Attractions will open “The Oath” on Oct. 12. The movie was one of four gala screenings unveiled Wednesday by the festival, which also announced it will hold the West Coast premiere of Eva Vives’ “All About Nina” on Sept. 23 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts; the Los Angeles premiere of Rupert Everett’s “The Happy Prince” on Sept. 25 at the Annenberg; and the...

Title: Maria by Callas Director: Tom Volf Genre: Documentary Tom Volf’s ‘Maria by Callas’ documentary is the most enthralling and powerful portrait of the 20th century opera diva. Footage of the singer intertwines with voice overs, where Callas’ letters are read by Fanny Ardant. This narrative device grants the chance to the legendary Greek American […]

The post Maria by Callas Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

The new documentary Maria by Callas: In Her Own Words, tells the life story of the famous Greek-American soprano forty years after her death. First-time filmmaker Tom Volf poured over her archives to reconstruct her story with TV interviews, photographs and letters, all in Callas’ own words. The documentary had its world premiere at Rome Film Fest.

While numerous books have been written about the tumultuous life of Callas, Volf largely focuses on a story showing the positive aspects of her life, one he thinks she herself would have approved.

Volf said that he had the blessing of the two...