from the Oregonian

It's not very often the BOBSTAR's name pops up in movie reviews..Though it's just a sentence, I brought the entire thang over here:




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Reaching for a deeper kind of truth

Friday, March 04, 2005

MARC MOHAN


Viewers unfamiliar with the life of Maria Callas could be excused for mistaking the film "Callas Forever" for a literal re-creation of the last months in the opera diva's life. In fact, the movie seems to be elaborate wish fulfillment on the part of director Franco Zeffirelli -- both a valentine to his close friend Callas and an excuse to make a film with her by proxy that he never had the chance to do with the singer herself.

That proxy, fortunately, is the radiant French actress Fanny Ardant, who captures Callas in all her vain, mercurial, fragile, pathetic glory. The year is 1977, and the 53-year-old soprano is a recluse in her sumptuous Paris apartment following a disastrous Japanese tour and the death in 1975 of her former flame Aristotle Onassis. Her voice is in tatters, and the one-time prima donna assoluta wallows in self-pity and pops pills.
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Into this sad existence comes Larry Kelly, Callas' fictional former manager who has given up on opera and now manages a punk rock bank called Bad Dreams. The gay, British Kelly is played by Jeremy Irons, whose high forehead and groomed ponytail make him the leading candidate to play Bob Weir in the Grateful Dead Story. The role is quite similar to the one Irons plays in the recent "Being Julia": the desperate, nearly parasitical driving force behind a middle-aged diva's artistic comeback.

Kelly's idea is for Callas to star in a film version of "Carmen" using as the soundtrack a recording she made 20 years earlier. By lip-syncing to her younger self, she can leave a lasting document of a performance that was never captured on film. She's initially dismissive, in typical diva fashion: "Did Icarus have a second chance?" But the nudges of a trusted journalist confidante (Joan Plowright) persuade her to give it a go.

Zeffirelli has committed numerous operas to film, and the most gripping scenes in "Callas Forever" feature the surging crowds and passionate performances of Georges Bizet's classic, as captured by the camera of fictional Spanish filmmaker Esteban Gomez (Manuel de Blas). Here Ardant, like Jamie Foxx in "Ray," excels at capturing the essence of a performer through performance. Less stellar is the tacked-on subplot of Larry's romance with a hearing-impaired, male model-esque painter (Jay Rodan).

Of course, none of this happened; Callas died in September 1977 without being preserved forever as Carmen. But as a way to share her magnetism and talent with future generations, as well as an intriguing essay on art and artifice, "Callas Forever" justifies its dismissal of factual truth in favor of a deeper sort. REGENT RELEASING FANNY ARDANT In "Callas Forever"

Okay, now I do love Jeremy Irons quite a bit but am just coming off a Colin Firth film fest..Colin has been all over my television this month..Late last night, there he was looking young and without much charactor in 'Valmont'....Earlier in the day there he was in "Love Actually" looking cute but Bill Nighey ran away with my heart in that one...A few nights back there was Colin as Vermeer in "Girl with Pearl Earring"...My favorite Colin is Mr Darcy..I even bought dvds of "Pride & Prejudice" For a long time I was a nut for Jane Austen...One favorite memory from UKdog was in our van- which was all girls (except for Scott) Someone brought up whether we were going through Jane Austen country and without missing a beat we all sighed "Mr Darcy!!"