Elvis (Movie)

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      Watch Austin Butler Cause Hysteria in ‘Elvis’

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      The director Baz Luhrmann narrates a sequence in which Elvis gives an early performance that stirs up the audience.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.It was the hip swivel that changed a generation. And it is at the heart of this scene in the biopic “Elvis” that introduces the musician to the world.In the sequence, Elvis (Austin Butler) is giving one of his first performances in front of an audience while Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), the man who would become his manager, watches on.While historically Elvis’s first big introduction was said to be at Sun Records, performing for its owner, Sam Phillips, the film takes a different route.The director Baz Luhrmann wanted that moment to take place in front of a crowd, showcasing all of the pieces that came together when the rocker performed.“Elvis wasn’t just about what he sang,” Luhrmann said, narrating the scene. “It was as much about how he looked and how he moved. But most importantly, it was his effect upon the audience.And boy, what an effect here. As Elvis sings and moves his hips, he seems to prompt almost uncontrollable screams from the women in the audience. That builds to a kind of infectious hysteria that feels as shocking as it does organic.Luhrmann worked with Butler (and some very airy trousers) to get the moves right. But the key to the scene was the extras. The moment may seem chaotic, but it was heavily designed. A movement coach and choreographer, Polly Bennett, worked with a team of performers they called the scream queens. These women had training in producing hysterical movements and also in high-pitched keening that solidified the action of the sequence.Read the “Elvis” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      The Best Actors to Play Elvis Onscreen

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      In honor of Austin Butler’s performance in the Baz Luhrmann biopic, we ranked 10 of the best — and worst — Presleys to grace the silver screen.Kurt Russell had the hip swivel down cold. Val Kilmer nailed the sincere, soulful voice. And Michael Shannon … well, the credits identified him as Elvis Presley, so that was the character he must have been playing in “Elvis & Nixon,” right?Since the King’s death in 1977, at 42, more than a dozen actors — and one space alien — have portrayed his walk, talk and famous charm in dozens of films and TV shows. Now one more has joined their ranks — Austin Butler, whose on-point hip gyrations are at the heart of Baz Luhrmann’s new “Elvis.”So how does Butler’s sultry, baby-faced King stack up against Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s Golden Globe-winning crooner or Harvey Keitel’s over-the-hill rocker? We offer our rankings. 1979Kurt Russell, ‘Elvis’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸The perfectly coifed pouf, the raw, emotive voice, the frenzied hip thrusts, the gleaming, skintight rhinestone jumpsuit … blink, and you could easily believe, thanks to this near-flawless portrayal in a 1979 TV movie, that Kurt Russell is Elvis. Sure, Russell doesn’t actually sing — that was all the country artist Ronnie McDowell — but that speaking voice is spot-on. Buy it on Amazon.2005Jonathan Rhys Meyers, ‘Elvis: The Miniseries’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸The two-part show, which tackles Presley’s rise from high school in Mississippi to international superstardom, is a showcase for Rhys Meyers’s heart-pounding leg pumps (with memorable supporting turns from Randy Quaid as Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s manager, and Rose McGowan as the actress Ann-Margret, with whom Presley was rumored to have had an affair). Like Russell, Rhys Meyers doesn’t do his own singing, but he lip-syncs flawlessly to an even better option: the real thing. (This was the first biopic that the Presley estate allowed to use the master recordings.)Rent it on DVD.com.2005Tyler Hilton, ‘Walk the Line’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸Hilton pops up in four scenes of this Johnny Cash biopic as a young Elvis, opposite a young Joaquin Phoenix as Cash. It was one of Hilton’s first forays into acting — he considered himself more of a musician at the time — but he nails Presley’s slurred vocal style and the deeply felt conviction of his singing.Stream it on Tubi; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1993Val Kilmer, ‘True Romance’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸This romantic crime drama written by Quentin Tarantino centers not on the King, but on an Elvis fanatic (Christian Slater) and his new wife on the run from mobsters. But Kilmer’s apparition of Elvis, complete with gold lamé suit, might just be the most memorable part. (That’s saying something in a film that also featured Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and a young Brad Pitt.) Kilmer’s appearance tops out at around two minutes and he’s credited only as “Mentor.” But the suave voice whispering murderous thoughts into Slater’s ear is unmistakably intended to be the King’s, and Kilmer aces it.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1998Harvey Keitel, ‘Finding Graceland’ 🎸🎸🎸OK, so strictly speaking, Harvey Keitel is not Elvis but “Elvis,” a fictional older — and very much alive — version of Presley who faked his death in 1977 after becoming overwhelmed by the pressures of fame. Keitel nails the melted-chocolate quality of the rocker’s voice and delivers a full-throated portrayal of an over-the-hill King, complete with hip thrusts and shoulder shimmies. (The film was produced by Elvis’s ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, and scenes were actually filmed inside the Graceland mansion in Memphis.)Buy it on Amazon.2003Bruce Campbell, ‘Bubba Ho-Tep’ 🎸🎸🎸In this R-rated comedy-horror flick, Bruce Campbell is an aged Elvis impersonator in a nursing home, Ossie Davis is a fellow resident who claims to be President John F. Kennedy, they fight an Egyptian mummy sucking out residents’ souls through their butts, and, just trust us, it works. Campbell brings an endearingly crusty charisma to the part, and his self-deprecating hospital-bed monologues about growing old are surprisingly moving.Stream it on Tubi or Amazon Prime; rent or buy it on Apple TV or Vudu.1988David Keith, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ 🎸🎸🎸“Heartbreak Hotel” sounds, from the title, like an Elvis-adjacent chick flick, but it’s actually a comedy written and directed by Chris Columbus about a teenage boy who kidnaps Elvis as a present for his mother when she’s recovering from a car crash. (Elvis happens to be his mom’s favorite singer.) Critics — and the public — gave Keith’s portrayal a rather tepid reception, with Rita Kempley of The Washington Post concluding in her scalpelesque pan that “Playing Elvis is like playing a Kennedy, nearly impossible.” At least someone liked it: Keith’s King, who was fatherly, clean-cut and drug-free, did get the blessing of the Presley estate and Elvis’s national fan club.Buy it on Amazon.1981Don Johnson, ‘Elvis and the Beauty Queen’ 🎸🎸This made-for-TV movie focused on the end of Elvis’s life and his relationship with the beauty-pageant contestant Linda Thompson, whom he was romantically involved with after the end of his six-year marriage to Priscilla Presley. To judge by YouTube clips, Johnson rocked a jumpsuit as a zonked-out Elvis, yes, but his high-pitched speaking voice was better suited for a “Saturday Night Live” sketch than a seduction scene, and his bushy black wig was downright hokey — and that was before the heavy eyeliner and mascara.2016Michael Shannon, ‘Elvis & Nixon’🎸If you didn’t hear a security guard say, “It’s Elvis Presley!” you wouldn’t know Michael Shannon’s careworn, sullen Elvis was supposed to be the King. His craggy face is at odds with the King’s smooth features, and, combined with a voluminous black wig, his Elvis smacks of Michael Crawford in “Dance of the Vampires.” The film, a historical comedy, focused on a 1970 meeting between Presley and President Richard Nixon (played by Kevin Spacey, who also does not resemble his real-lie counterpart). Shannon is a great character actor, but he can’t overcome this confoundingly bad casting, despite the gleaming gold belt buckle, tinted glasses, high-collared shirt and flashing rings.Stream it on Amazon Prime; rent it on DVD.com.2002Bonus: Stitch in ‘Lilo & Stitch’He ain’t nothin’ but a hound alien. In this animated comedy, Experiment 626 — a.k.a. Stitch — uses a black wig, white jumpsuit and ukulele to indulge Lilo as she tries to teach him to be a model citizen. And honestly, based on the number of beachgoers who swooned when they got one of his flirtatious winks, we’d have to crown him the hip-swivel champion.Stream it on Disney+; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube. More

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      How Alton Mason Went from ‘Male Model of the Year’ to ‘Elvis’

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      Once known for doing back flips on the runway, the 24-year-old makes his acting debut playing Little Richard.Name: Alton MasonAge: 24Hometown: PhoenixNow Lives: A hotel room on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, although he is usually traveling. “I live in Terminal 2 in Delta,” he said, jokingly. “It’s just me and my suitcase!”Claim to Fame: Mr. Mason is an actor, filmmaker and model known for doing back flips and other acrobatic moves down the runway for Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Versace, Valentino and other major labels. In addition to being named Model of the Year by Models.com for four years in a row, Mr. Mason was the first Black male model to walk in a Chanel show. “Now, I represent so many people that may identify with my story, my vision, my culture and me,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be able to open doors.”Mr. Mason did a backflip at the Louis Vuitton men’s wear show in Paris in 2019. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesBig Break: Mr. Mason was studying acting at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles and interning for the choreographer Laurieann Gibson when he was discovered by a modeling agent on Instagram in 2015. He went to New York City for the first time that year and landed a major show: Yeezy Season 3, held at Madison Square Garden. “This show felt transcendental,” he said. “I left that show, got a dollar slice of pizza, and flew back to L.A. with a clearer vision of levels I could reach.”Latest Project: In January, Mr. Mason walked in Virgil Abloh’s final collection for Louis Vuitton in Paris. “Virgil was like a brother to me in this industry,” he said. “He gave a platform for me to shine and believed in me, and being in that tribute really hit home.” Mr. Mason recalled how Mr. Abloh encouraged him to perform his signature runway move at a 2019 show in Paris. “Backstage, after I got off the runway, he came up to me and said, ‘I want you to go out there and do something,’” Mr. Mason said. Dressed in a purple silk suit, he executed a series of back flips. “Virgil walked back in and said, ‘You killed that!’”A scene from “Elvis,” in which Mr. Mason plays Little Richard.Warner Bros.Next Thing: Mr. Mason makes his acting debut in the Baz Luhrmann biopic “Elvis,” in which he plays Little Richard. Mr. Luhrmann met Mr. Mason at a 2019 GQ Australia awards show, where Mr. Mason gave a speech that impressed the director. They struck up a conversation at the after-party and Mr. Mason was soon cast in the movie. “I’m paying tribute to such a legend, such an icon — someone that I embody the essence of,” he said.Moves Like Michael Jackson: “I grew up with a bunch of Black cousins in the South and we would always be in the living room dancing and watching Michael Jackson,” he said. “A lot of the moments you see me moving on the runway are really spontaneous; it’s improvised, never choreographed. These are just feelings that come to me and I let them all free.” More

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      ‘Elvis’ Review: Shocking the King Back to Life

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      Austin Butler plays the singer, with Tom Hanks as his devilish manager, in Baz Luhrmann’s operatic, chaotic anti-biopic.My first and strongest memory of Elvis Presley is of his death. He was only 42 but he already seemed, in 1977, to belong to a much older world. In the 45 years since, his celebrity has become almost entirely necrological. Graceland is a pilgrimage spot and a mausoleum.Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” — a biopic in the sense that “Heartbreak Hotel” is a Yelp review — works mightily to dispel this funerary gloom. Luhrmann, whose relationship to the past has always been irreverent and anti-nostalgic, wants to shock Elvis back to life, to imagine who he was in his own time and what he might mean in ours.The soundtrack shakes up the expected playlist with jolts of hip-hop (extended into a suite over the final credits), slivers of techno and slatherings of synthetic film-score schmaltz. (The composer and executive music producer is Elliott Wheeler.) The sonic message — and the film’s strongest argument for its subject’s relevance — is that Presley’s blend of blues, gospel, pop and country continues to mutate and pollinate in the musical present. There’s still a whole lot of shaking going on.As a movie, though, “Elvis” lurches and wobbles, caught in a trap only partly of its own devising. Its rendering of a quintessentially American tale of race, sex, religion and money teeters between glib revisionism and zombie mythology, unsure if it wants to be a lavish pop fable or a tragic melodrama.The ghoulish, garish production design, by Catherine Martin (Luhrmann’s wife and longtime creative partner) and Karen Murphy, is full of carnival sleaze and Vegas vulgarity. All that satin and rhinestone, filtered through Mandy Walker’s pulpy, red-dominated cinematography, conjures an atmosphere of lurid, frenzied eroticism. You might mistake this for a vampire movie.It wouldn’t entirely be a mistake. The central plot casts Elvis (Austin Butler) as the victim of a powerful and devious bloodsucking fiend. That would be Col. Tom Parker, who supplies voice-over narration and is played by Tom Hanks with a mountain of prosthetic goo, a bizarre accent and a yes-it’s-really-me twinkle in his eyes. Parker was Presley’s manager for most of his career, and Hanks portrays him as part small-time grifter, part full-blown Mephistopheles.“I didn’t kill Elvis,” Parker says, though the movie implies otherwise. “I made Elvis.” In the Colonel’s mind, they were “the showman and the snowman,” equal partners in a supremely lucrative long con.Luhrmann’s last feature was an exuberant, candy-colored — and, I thought, generally underrated — adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” and the Colonel is in some ways a Gatsbyesque character. He’s a self-invented man, an arriviste on the American scene, a “mister nobody from nowhere” trading in the unstable currencies of wishing and seeming. He isn’t a colonel (Elvis likes to call him “admiral”) and his real name isn’t Tom Parker. The mystery of his origins is invoked to sinister effect but not fully resolved. If we paid too much attention to him, he might take over the movie, something that almost happens anyway.Luhrmann seems more interested in the huckster than in the artist. But he himself is the kind of huckster who understands the power of art, and is enough of an artist to make use of that power.Butler with Tom Hanks, left, as Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s manager. The film depicts him as a small-time grifter and full-time Mephistopheles.Warner Bros.As a Presley biography, “Elvis” is not especially illuminating. The basic stuff is all there, as it would be on Wikipedia. Elvis is haunted by the death of his twin brother, Jesse, and devoted to his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). Relations with his father, Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), are more complicated. The boy grows up poor in Tupelo, Miss., and Memphis, finds his way into the Sun Records recording studio at the age of 19, and proceeds to set the world on fire. Then there’s the Army, marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), Hollywood, a comeback broadcast in 1968, a long residency in Las Vegas, divorce from Priscilla and the sad, bloated spectacle of his last years.Butler is fine in the few moments of offstage drama that the script allows, but most of the emotional action is telegraphed in Luhrmann’s usual emphatic, breathless style. The actor seems most fully Elvis — as Elvis, the film suggests, was most truly himself — in front of an audience. Those hips don’t lie, and Butler captures the smoldering physicality of Elvis the performer, as well as the playfulness and vulnerability that drove the crowds wild. The voice can’t be imitated, and the movie wisely doesn’t try, remixing actual Elvis recordings rather than trying to replicate them.At his first big performance, in a dance hall in Texarkana, Ark., where he shares a bill with Hank Snow (David Wenham), Snow’s son, Jimmie (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and other country acts, Elvis steps out in a bright pink suit, heavy eye makeup and glistening pompadour. A guy in the audience shouts a homophobic slur, but after a few bars that guy’s date and every other woman in the room is screaming her lungs out, “having feelings she’s not sure she should enjoy,” as the Colonel puts it. Gladys is terrified, and the scene carries a heavy charge of sexualized danger. Elvis is a modern Orpheus, and these maenads are about to tear him to pieces. In another scene, back in Memphis, Elvis watches Little Richard (Alton Mason) tearing up “Tutti Frutti” (a song he would later cover) and sees a kindred spirit.The sexual anarchy and gender nonconformity of early rock ’n’ roll is very much in Luhrmann’s aesthetic wheelhouse. Its racial complications less so. “Elvis” puts its hero in the presence of Black musicians including Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) and B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who offers career advice. An early montage — repeated so often that it becomes a motif — finds the boy Elvis (Chaydon Jay) simultaneously peeking into a juke joint where Arthur Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) plays “That’s All Right Mama” and catching the spirit at a tent revival.There’s no doubt that Elvis, like many white Southerners of his class and generation, loved blues and gospel. (He loved country and western, too, a genre the film mostly dismisses.) He also profited from the work of Black musicians and from industry apartheid, and a movie that won’t grapple with the dialectic of love and theft that lies at the heart of American popular music can’t hope to tell the whole story.In the early days, Elvis’s nemesis is the segregationist Mississippi senator James Eastland (Nicholas Bell), whose fulminations against sex, race-mixing and rock ’n’ roll are intercut with a galvanic performance of “Trouble.” Later, Elvis is devastated by the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was killed “just three miles from Graceland”) and Robert F. Kennedy. These moments, which try to connect Elvis with the politics of his era, are really episodes in his relationship with Colonel Parker, who wants to keep his cash cow away from controversy.Alton Mason as Little Richard in the film. Early rock’s sexual anarchy and gender nonconformity are in Luhrmann’s wheelhouse, our critic writes, but the music’s racial complications are not.Kane Skennar/Warner Bros.When Elvis defies the Colonel — breaking out in full hip-shaking gyrations when he’s been told “not to wiggle so much as a finger”; turning a network Christmas special into a sweaty, intimate, raucous return to form — the movie wants us to see his conscience at work, as well as his desire for creative independence. But Luhrmann’s sense of history is too muddled and sentimental to give the gestures that kind of weight.And Elvis himself remains a cipher, a symbol, more myth than flesh and blood. His relationships with Vernon, Priscilla and the entourage known as “the Memphis mafia” receive cursory treatment. His appetites for food, sex and drugs barely get that much.Who was he? The movie doesn’t provide much of an answer. But younger viewers, whose firsthand experience of the King is even thinner than mine, might come away from “Elvis” with at least an inkling of why they should care. In the end, this isn’t a biopic or a horror movie or a cautionary parable: It’s a musical, and the music is great. Remixed, yes, and full of sounds that purists might find anachronistic. But there was never anything pure about Elvis Presley, except maybe his voice, and hearing it in all its aching, swaggering glory, you understand how it set off an earthquake.Like a lot of people who write about American popular culture — or who just grew up in the second half of the 20th century — I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Elvis. “Elvis,” for all its flaws and compromises, made me want to listen to him, as if for the first time.ElvisRated PG-13. Rock ’n’ roll, sex, drugs. Running time: 2 hours 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How Elvis Measured His Success: With Watches

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      The legend’s hips weren’t the only things keeping time, says Catherine Martin, the production designer for Baz Luhrmann’s new biopic.Of all the swagger and style that defined Elvis Presley — the gyrating hips, the clothes, the cars, the smirk of all smirks, that hair! — his collection of watches probably didn’t elicit giddy screaming across teen-dom in the late 1950s.But “Elvis,” a new biopic of the singer’s life, celebrates it all. Directed by Baz Luhrmann (with, one assumes, the same panache that all but turned the music and the dancing into characters in films like “Moulin Rouge!” and “Strictly Ballroom”), the movie is said to be a homage to a humble man whose love of collecting and trading watches was often overlooked during his all-too-brief 42 years.Elvis Presley in 1968. “He would swap watches with strangers whose watches he admired,” said Catherine Martin, the costume and production designer for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” biopic.Getty Images“Watches were a symbol of his success and a big part of his story, and he gathered more valuable watches as his career developed,” said Catherine Martin, the four-time-Oscar-winning costume and production designer for the film, in a phone interview from her home in her native Australia. “They were a status symbol, and yet Elvis traded and gave watches away. He would swap watches with strangers whose watches he admired. It was crazy.”Ms. Martin, who also is a producer on the film and is married to Mr. Luhrmann, said she saw Presley’s love of watches as essential to telling his story: The way he wore and collected and traded watches reflects the image he created for himself as “the King,” but blended with his folksy roots.“Elvis was an absolutely iconoclastic dresser, and he was always accessorizing watches,” Ms. Martin said. “He reinvented himself constantly throughout his career. We don’t think of him as shocking now, but in the ’50s it was like he was a member of the Sex Pistols.”That radical transformation of Presley, played by Austin Butler in the film, provides much of the story line for “Elvis,” including his tumultuous relationship with his manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who discovered the singer in 1955.Watches are an ever-present, if not obvious, element in many of the film’s scenes, Ms. Martin said, particularly because Presley always put a great deal of thought into how he wore and accessorized timepieces.“Even in the 1968 TV special, in his black leather outfit, he had a custom leather wristband made for a Bulova Accutron Astronaut,” she said, referring to Presley’s famous televised comeback concert. “A lot of the watches he wore were about technological style advances. He was always interested in what the latest watches were.”The watch that started it all was one he owned just as he was hitting it big: the triangular Hamilton Ventura, created by the American industrial designer Robert Arbib and known as the world’s first battery-powered watch. It became a signature for Presley — showing up in a gold version in his 1961 film “Blue Hawaii” — and for the watch company, which reintroduced the “Elvis watch” in 2015 to mark what would have been his 80th birthday. (It also was seen in all four “Men in Black” movies.)The “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann with the Oscar-winning costume and production designer Catherine Martin, who is his wife, at the Met Gala in May. Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It just happened that we didn’t end up with the ‘Elvis watch’ because it’s such an iconic watch and so well known that we didn’t want it to be a main part of the story,” Ms. Martin said. “There is so much more to tell over 40 years. I don’t want to deny that this watch was super important in the Elvis story, but watches were in general.”One example would be the Omega Constellation he wore while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960. Made of pink gold with a black “sniper” dial, it was one of the originals in the Constellation line. Presley later gave it to Charlie Hodge, a friend and fellow musician.Antiquorum auctioned the timepiece in June 2012, expecting it to fetch $10,000 to $20,000; it sold for $52,500.And there was a second Omega Constellation, given to Presley in 1961 by his record company, RCA. The 33-millimeter white gold watch has a silver dial, with 44 round diamonds accenting the bezel, and a case back that is engraved, “To Elvis, 75 Million Records, RCA Victor, 12-25-60.” Lettering beneath the Omega logo shows that RCA purchased the watch from Tiffany & Company.Legend has it that Presley swapped it for a fan’s watch, and the fan’s nephew put the watch up for auction with Phillips in 2018. It sold for 1.8 million Swiss francs (about $1.87 million today), making it at the time the most expensive Omega ever sold. The highest bidder: Omega itself, which added the watch to its museum collection in Bienne, Switzerland.“The character arc of Elvis is fascinating, as is the fact that he was an extraordinary stylist who created his own look,” said Ms. Martin, who oversaw Mr. Butler’s watches in the new film. “He became super famous super fast, and watches were important to him to show that he had made it.”Warner Bros.One watch that was prominent late in Elvis’s career was the Rolex King Midas, which has an asymmetrical case with a wide integrated bracelet and was designed by Gerald Genta, the name behind such legendary watches as the Royal Oak and the Nautilus. Concert promoters gave the Midas to Presley in 1970 for performing six days of sold-out concerts, and it is now on permanent display at Graceland, Presley’s home in Memphis, where he died in 1977.“The King Midas is a very unusual shape, and Baz happens to own one, so Austin Butler wore that in the movie,” Ms. Martin said. “Some watches were borrowed or purchased online. Some were so valuable that it was impossible to have them on set, so we had duplicates made.”The subject of the film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month, certainly falls into the larger-than-life category that Mr. Luhrmann and Ms. Martin seem drawn to in filmmaking (like their 2013 version of “The Great Gatsby”).“The character arc of Elvis is fascinating, as is the fact that he was an extraordinary stylist who created his own look,” Ms. Martin said. “He became super famous super fast, and watches were important to him to show that he had made it.” More

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      Which Cannes Films Have the Best Oscar Odds?

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      Movies from Park Chan-wook, Lukas Dhont and Hirokazu Kore-eda could be what academy voters are looking for. But don’t count out “Top Gun: Maverick.”CANNES, France — Last year at the Cannes Film Festival, there was one question on everybody’s lips: “What’s the next ‘Parasite’?” You can see why people wondered, since that Bong Joon Ho film had used its Palme d’Or win to jump-start a historic Oscar campaign.But if last year’s festival had an heir to “Parasite,” it proved to be a very unlikely one.Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s talky drama “Drive My Car” didn’t win the Palme d’Or (it settled for a best-screenplay honor) and wasn’t anyone’s idea of the biggest contender coming out of Cannes. Still, after year-end critics’ groups went for it in a major way, “Drive My Car” picked up huge Oscar nominations for picture, directing and adapted screenplay in addition to one for best international film, the category it won.So as this year’s Cannes nears its end with no one film standing head and shoulders above the rest, I think that rather than searching for the next “Parasite,” it would be wiser to ask: What’s the next “Drive My Car”? In other words, which movie from this year’s Cannes crop could keep on building buzz and capitalize on the academy’s growing international user base to snag major Oscar nominations?I see three notable contenders. Foremost among them is “Close,” which is hotly tipped to pick up a major award at the fest on Saturday. It’s the second feature from the Belgian director Lukas Dhont, and it follows two 13-year-old boys as their intense friendship begins to unravel. Some crucial reviews in Variety and IndieWire have been notably mixed, calling out one of the film’s melodramatic plot twists, but Oscar voters have never minded melodrama — in fact, they often crave it, and the most ardent fans of “Close” consider it to be the four-hankie entry of the festival. A24 bought the film on the eve of its premiere, so expect a robust fall push.The South Korean director Park Chan-wook deserved Oscar notice for his twisty 2016 masterpiece “The Handmaiden,” and though his new Cannes film “Decision to Leave” isn’t quite on that level, it’s still a well-directed affair that could see plenty of awards attention. A Hitchcockian romantic thriller, “Decision to Leave” stars Park Hae-il as a detective investigating a murdered man’s widow (Tang Wei) who, in her own femme fatale way, seems to welcome the stakeout. After the explicit sex scenes of “The Handmaiden,” it’s surprising how chaste the director’s follow-up is, but that may actually work to the movie’s favor with older Oscar voters.Our Coverage of the Cannes Film Festival 2022The Cannes Film Festival returns with its typical glitz, glamour and red-carpet looks, and with nearly 50 movies projected for the event.Politics and Grace: In Cannes, politics and polemics are always part of the movie mix. But there is still room for scenes of lyrical beauty.Oscar Odds: Which movie from the Cannes crop could capitalize on the academy’s growing international user base to snag major nominations? There are three top contenders.David Cronenberg: The body-horror auteur shared some thoughts on aging and his new film “Crimes of the Future,” which premiered at the festival.‘Elvis’: Baz Luhrmann brought the King to Cannes with a hyperventilated, fitfully entertaining and thoroughly deranged biopic.Ask a Cameraman: The festival is known for its elongated standing ovations. One of the men tasked with filming them explained what it takes to capture those moments.Hirokazu Kore-eda scored the Palme d’Or in 2018 for his sensitive drama “Shoplifters,” which went on to compete for the international-film Oscar; though it lost to the Netflix-funded juggernaut “Roma,” I suspect a film like “Shoplifters” would play better today and contend for more nominations across different categories. Keep an eye on Kore-eda’s “Broker,” then: This affectionate character study stars “Parasite” lead Song Kang Ho as one of two good-natured criminals who try to sell an abandoned baby. At times, the movie is so sweet that it verges on gooey, but I doubt the “CODA” wing of the academy will complain.Some other Cannes entries could pop up throughout awards season, including “Armageddon Time,” from the director James Gray, about a middle-class Jewish family whose progressive attitudes mask a willingness to climb a few rungs at the expense of those less privileged. Gray is well-liked in France and may pick up a trophy here, but Oscar voters have yet to break for him in any significant way. Stars Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins will at least attract attention.Vicky Krieps should already have one Oscar nomination under her belt for “Phantom Thread”: since she was snubbed then, perhaps voters could make it up to her for “Corsage,” in which she’s fun and spiky as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. I’d also be pleased if critics’ groups rally behind Léa Seydoux as a single mother attempting a tricky romance in Mia Hansen-Love’s “One Fine Morning,” my favorite entry of the festival.Seydoux is also quite good in David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” where she stars opposite Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart, but the film may prove too out-there for awards voters; ditto “Triangle of Sadness,” from “The Square” director Ruben Ostlund, though that class comedy does provide some of the most gonzo gross-out sequences of the year and contains a memorable supporting turn from Woody Harrelson.Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen in “Crimes of the Future.”Nikos Nikolopoulos/NeonWhat about the expensive Hollywood movies that premiered at Cannes? “Elvis” hails from the director Baz Luhrmann, who managed an Oscar breakthrough with “Moulin Rouge” but whose last film, “The Great Gatsby,” earned nominations only for its costumes and production design. The glittery “Elvis” seems likely to continue that trend: Reviews have been polarizing, and though up-and-comer Austin Butler impresses as Elvis Presley, young hunks usually face an uphill battle in the lead-actor category. (And the less said about the misbegotten supporting performance from Tom Hanks as Elvis’s manager, the better.)The last time George Miller was at Cannes, he premiered “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which went on to earn 10 Oscar nominations (including picture and director) and ultimately picked up six statuettes. Action movies rarely fare that well with Oscar, but Miller broke the mold, and he’s made something else unique with “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” his new film about a djinn (Idris Elba), a scholar (Tilda Swinton) and the unique love that blooms between them. It’s got drama, fantasy, romance, comedy … and you’ll either thrill to all of that, or find it a bit overstuffed. The tech elements of the film deserve notice, but other categories could be a long shot.And then there’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” which launched on the Croisette with a flyby from fighter jets and an opaque conversation with star Tom Cruise. This long-in-the-making sequel is earning stellar reviews and it’s expertly directed. If the academy really wants to push well-done blockbuster material into the best picture race, this could be the summer’s strongest hope. “Drive My Fighter Jet,” anyone? More

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      Cannes 2022: ‘Elvis’ Iss Remixed by Baz Luhrmann

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      The super-splashy biopic presents the story of the King as told by a (fake) colonel, a narratively curious choice.CANNES, France — Close to the start of “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s hyperventilated, fitfully entertaining and thoroughly deranged highlight reel of the life and times of Elvis Presley, I wondered what I was watching. I kept wondering as Luhrmann split the screen, chopped it to bits, slowed the motion, splashed the color and turned Elvis not just into a king, but also a savior, a martyr and a transformational American civil-rights figure who — through his innocence, decency, music and gyrating hips — helped heal a nation.In conventional terms, “Elvis,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, can be classed as a biographical portrait, a cradle-to-grave (more or less) story of a little boy from Tupelo, Miss., who became a pop-culture sensation and sad cautionary tale — played as an adult by the appealing, hard-working Austin Butler — despite the evil man, a.k.a. Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who groomed him. But Luhrmann — whose films include “Moulin Rouge” and “The Great Gatsby” and, um, “Australia” — doesn’t do simple or ordinary. A visual maximalist, he likes to go big and then bigger, and he likes to go super-splashy. Most filmmakers just want to get the shot; the great ones strive for perfection. Luhrmann wants to bedazzle it.The movie’s narrative axis and, strangely, its most vividly realized character is Colonel Parker, whom Hanks embodies with an enormous, obviously false belly, flamboyant jowls, a nose that juts like the prow of a ship and a baffling accent. I would have loved to have listened in on Luhrmann and Hank’s conversations about their ideas for the character; if nothing else, it might have explained what in the world they were after here. I honestly haven’t a clue, although the image of Sydney Greenstreet looming menacingly in “The Maltese Falcon” repeatedly came to mind, with a dash of “Hogan’s Heroes.”Written by Luhrmann and several others, the movie traces Elvis’s trajectory through Parker, a curious choice given that the colonel is the villain of the piece. They meet when Elvis is a young unknown and still under the protective wing of his mother and father. As soon as the colonel sees Elvis perform — or rather, witnesses the euphoric reactions of the shrieking female audiences — he realizes that this kid is a gold mine. The colonel swoops in, seduces Elvis and puts him under his exploitative sway. The rest is history, one that Luhrmann tracks from obscurity to Graceland and finally Las Vegas.Even non-Elvis-ologists should recognize the outlines of this story, as it shifts from the beautiful boy to the sensational talent and the fallen idol. That said, those who don’t know much about the ugliness of Elvis’s life may be surprised by some of the ideas Luhrmann advances, particularly when it comes to the civil rights movement. A white musician who performed and helped popularize Black music for white America, Elvis was unquestionably a critically important crossover figure. What’s discomforting is the outsized role that Luhrmann gives Elvis in America’s excruciating racial history.In the gospel of Elvis that Luhrmann preaches here, the titular performer isn’t only an admirer or interpreter (much less exploiter) of Black music. He is instead a prophetic figure of change who — because of the time he spends in the Black church, Black juke joints and Black music clubs — will be able to bridge the divide between the races or at least make white people shake, rattle and roll. As a child, Elvis feels the spirit in the pulpit and beyond; later, he becomes an instrument for change by copying Black ecstasy and pumping his slim hips at white audiences, sending them into sexualized frenzy.As Elvis ascends and the colonel schemes, Luhrmann keeps the many parts whirring, pushing the story into overdrive. The 1950s give way to the ’60s and ’70s amid songs, pricey toys, assassinations, personal tragedies and the usual rest, though I don’t remember hearing the words Vietnam War. Family members enter and exit, tears are spilled, pills popped. There are significant gaps (no Ann-Margret or Richard M. Nixon), and, outside a nice scene in which the Las Vegas Elvis arranges a large ensemble of musicians, there’s also little about how Elvis actually made music. He listens to Black music and, almost by osmosis and sheer niceness, becomes the King of Rock ’n’ RollWhile Butler pouts, smolders and sweats, he has been tasked with what seems an impossible role. Elvis’s ravishing beauty, which remained intact even as his body turned to bloat, is one hurdle, and so too was his charisma and talent. Butler’s performance gains in power as Elvis ages, particularly when he hits Las Vegas. One insurmountable problem, though, is that Luhrmann never allows a single scene or song to play out without somehow fussing with it — cutting into it, tarting it up, turning the camera this way and that, pushing in and out — a frustrating, at times maddening habit that means he’s forever drawing attention to him him him and away from Butler, even when his willing young star is doing his very hardest to burn down the house. More

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      in Music

      Cannes 2022: ‘Elvis’ Is Remixed by Baz Luhrmann

      by

      The super-splashy biopic presents the story of the King as told by a (fake) colonel, a narratively curious choice.CANNES, France — Close to the start of “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s hyperventilated, fitfully entertaining and thoroughly deranged highlight reel of the life and times of Elvis Presley, I wondered what I was watching. I kept wondering as Luhrmann split the screen, chopped it to bits, slowed the motion, splashed the color and turned Elvis not just into a king, but also a savior, a martyr and a transformational American civil-rights figure who — through his innocence, decency, music and gyrating hips — helped heal a nation.In conventional terms, “Elvis,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, can be classed as a biographical portrait, a cradle-to-grave (more or less) story of a little boy from Tupelo, Miss., who became a pop-culture sensation and sad cautionary tale — played as an adult by the appealing, hard-working Austin Butler — despite the evil man, a.k.a. Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who groomed him. But Luhrmann — whose films include “Moulin Rouge” and “The Great Gatsby” and, um, “Australia” — doesn’t do simple or ordinary. A visual maximalist, he likes to go big and then bigger, and he likes to go super-splashy. Most filmmakers just want to get the shot; the great ones strive for perfection. Luhrmann wants to bedazzle it.The movie’s narrative axis and, strangely, its most vividly realized character is Colonel Parker, whom Hanks embodies with an enormous, obviously false belly, flamboyant jowls, a nose that juts like the prow of a ship and a baffling accent. I would have loved to have listened in on Luhrmann and Hank’s conversations about their ideas for the character; if nothing else, it might have explained what in the world they were after here. I honestly haven’t a clue, although the image of Sydney Greenstreet looming menacingly in “The Maltese Falcon” repeatedly came to mind, with a dash of “Hogan’s Heroes.”Written by Luhrmann and several others, the movie traces Elvis’s trajectory through Parker, a curious choice given that the colonel is the villain of the piece. They meet when Elvis is a young unknown and still under the protective wing of his mother and father. As soon as the colonel sees Elvis perform — or rather, witnesses the euphoric reactions of the shrieking female audiences — he realizes that this kid is a gold mine. The colonel swoops in, seduces Elvis and puts him under his exploitative sway. The rest is history, one that Luhrmann tracks from obscurity to Graceland and finally Las Vegas.Even non-Elvis-ologists should recognize the outlines of this story, as it shifts from the beautiful boy to the sensational talent and the fallen idol. That said, those who don’t know much about the ugliness of Elvis’s life may be surprised by some of the ideas Luhrmann advances, particularly when it comes to the civil rights movement. A white musician who performed and helped popularize Black music for white America, Elvis was unquestionably a critically important crossover figure. What’s discomforting is the outsized role that Luhrmann gives Elvis in America’s excruciating racial history.In the gospel of Elvis that Luhrmann preaches here, the titular performer isn’t only an admirer or interpreter (much less exploiter) of Black music. He is instead a prophetic figure of change who — because of the time he spends in the Black church, Black juke joints and Black music clubs — will be able to bridge the divide between the races or at least make white people shake, rattle and roll. As a child, Elvis feels the spirit in the pulpit and beyond; later, he becomes an instrument for change by copying Black ecstasy and pumping his slim hips at white audiences, sending them into sexualized frenzy.As Elvis ascends and the colonel schemes, Luhrmann keeps the many parts whirring, pushing the story into overdrive. The 1950s give way to the ’60s and ’70s amid songs, pricey toys, assassinations, personal tragedies and the usual rest, though I don’t remember hearing the words Vietnam War. Family members enter and exit, tears are spilled, pills popped. There are significant gaps (no Ann-Margret or Richard M. Nixon), and, outside a nice scene in which the Las Vegas Elvis arranges a large ensemble of musicians, there’s also little about how Elvis actually made music. He listens to Black music and, almost by osmosis and sheer niceness, becomes the King of Rock ’n’ RollWhile Butler pouts, smolders and sweats, he has been tasked with what seems an impossible role. Elvis’s ravishing beauty, which remained intact even as his body turned to bloat, is one hurdle, and so too was his charisma and talent. Butler’s performance gains in power as Elvis ages, particularly when he hits Las Vegas. One insurmountable problem, though, is that Luhrmann never allows a single scene or song to play out without somehow fussing with it — cutting into it, tarting it up, turning the camera this way and that, pushing in and out — a frustrating, at times maddening habit that means he’s forever drawing attention to him him him and away from Butler, even when his willing young star is doing his very hardest to burn down the house. More