Porter, Dawn

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares152 Views

    Luther Vandross Is Transformational in the Documentary ‘Never Too Much’

    by

    He was hounded by a fat-phobic press, but as Dawn Porter’s new documentary shows, he was a transformational presence from the start.Beginning in the late 1970s, while making the transition from background singer to phenomenal solo act, Luther Vandross shaped the sound of commercialism as much as he shaped the sound of modern American music. He recorded lucrative jingles for Juicy Fruit, Miller beer and even Gino’s pizza. During the Gino’s session, he was asked to personify a sizzling hot pie coming from the oven, and he improvised by quickly dropping his tenor into the hadal zone of his body and retrieving it, like a free diver collecting pearls.“I could see the control room just jumping up and clapping,” he says in one of the interviews laced throughout “Luther: Never Too Much,” a new documentary by Dawn Porter (in theaters).It was a genius stroke. He developed a signature as recognizable as Whitney Houston’s record-length notes or Mariah Carey’s fluted crystalline range. Vandross’s musical intelligence predated what is obvious in the era of TikTok: A distinct sound is worth the price of gold.Vandross left a full, rich archive, yet there’s still an emptiness at the heart of it that manages to come through in Porter’s engrossing work. She starts her chronology with Vandross’s second birth. In an interview clip early in the film, Oprah asks Vandross when he knew he could sing. He answers that he decided to sing after seeing Dionne Warwick perform in 1963 in Brooklyn. “I wanted to be able to affect people the way she affected me that day,” he explains. Notice how he didn’t specify a date. Notice how he knew the voice was always there. He just chose the way he wanted to use it.Vandross with Dionne Warwick. He saw her sing in 1963 and decided he should sing as well. Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesIn the film, a white interviewer asks Vandross, who grew up in the Alfred E. Smith Houses on the Lower East Side, if he was poor then. His response is earnest if not amused. “My impression of life growing up was great.” He knew something that she did not: Money is only one kind of wealth.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net’ Review: How the Magic Happens

      by

      This documentary chronicles the reboot and reopening in Las Vegas of the acrobatic show “O,” which shutdown during the pandemic.Conventional wisdom once held, snootily, that circus folk were quirky, superstitious, given to idiosyncratic behavior. Whether that was ever really true or not, the members of the rather unconventional Cirque du Soleil, as portrayed in the new documentary “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net,” happen to be rather remarkably levelheaded.In scenes of conception, rehearsal and more, nobody raises a voice, storms off, indulges in Machiavellian scheming or displays anything vaguely resembling diva or divo behavior. One acrobat expresses a hope to bring a new trick to a revived show. When she can’t make it work, she reverts to her rehearsed routine and resolves to come up with something some other time. No drama.The movie is not boring or dry, though, as “Without a Net,” directed by Dawn Porter, chronicles a critical period in the organization’s history: the remounting of a show after the pandemic shutdowns. (It had dozens of shows playing around the world before the pandemic. The virus shut them down within 48 hours in March 2020, and 95 percent of the company’s staff was laid off.) Over a year later, the company began remounting “O,” its popular Las Vegas show. The title is a pun: This spectacle features acrobats performing without a net above an ingeniously engineered pool of water — as in “eau,” the French word for water.Porter’s inquisitive camera gives the viewer enticing detail on how everything comes together — for instance, unbeknown to the audience, the pool is constantly monitored by rescue divers in scuba gear who also serve as prop people — while holding in suitable awe the actual magic all this work eventually yields.Cirque du Soleil: Without a NetRated PG-13 for some strong language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Lady Bird Diaries’ Review: A 1960s First Lady Speaks

      by

      Lady Bird Johnson proves an engrossing narrator to her own story and that of a roiling nation.“The Lady Bird Diaries” opens with images of a drizzly November day in Fort Worth, and the voice of Claudia Alta Johnson. Lady Bird Johnson — a nickname she acquired as child growing up in Texas — is recounting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.Her cadence is measured, her account riveting. But it is a sliver of wrenching poetry that distinguishes the memory and hints that the subject of this documentary, directed by Dawn Porter, will be a singular and deeply observant guide to her own — and the nation’s — story. As their car sped off — a secret service agent physically covering her husband, the vice president, to protect him — Johnson looks back and sees, “a bundle of pink, like a drift blossom, lying in the back seat. It was Mrs. Kennedy lying over the president’s body.”Shortly after Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in on Air Force One, the new first lady began recording her thoughts. Those 123 hours of audiotape became a trove for the journalist Julia E. Sweig’s best-selling biography “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” which makes a persuasive argument that the first lady was the president’s go-to adviser for good reason. Based on Sweig’s book as well as her subsequent podcast, the documentary cements that reappraisal with first-person force.Many of the archival images Porter so fluidly employs will be familiar, but they gain fresh energy and timely urgency from Johnson’s absorbing narration and her often stirring observations about Lyndon Johnson, their political partnership, the environment and the two events she so presciently knew would shape us for decades to come: the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.The Lady Bird DiariesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and on Hulu. More