Zellweger, Renee

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    The Vocal Coach Who Helped Timothée Chalamet and Other Stars Sing Onscreen

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    “Help” is a word that the vocal coach Eric Vetro uses often to describe his contributions to the careers of celebrities. This season alone, he’s helped several actors with the musical demands of roles as varied as Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie in “Maria”), Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown”) and a young Good Witch of the West (Ariana Grande in “Wicked”). He also worked with Monica Barbaro to honor Joan Baez’s vibrato in “A Complete Unknown” and Nicholas Galitzine to become a boy-band dreamboat in “The Idea of You.”During a recent video interview, Vetro’s high-profile résumé came into sharp focus. The memorabilia behind him in his Los Angeles home, which was unaffected by the recent fires, included a guitar that Shawn Mendes had given him. He proudly pointed to platinum records from the Recording Industry Association of America certifying a million in sales for Ariana Grande’s single “The Way” and Rosalía’s album “Motomami.” Then he turned to a wall of selfies with his famous students: “There is Katy Perry. Camila Cabello and Sabrina Carpenter are right here.”He explained that his clients’ technical and emotional needs vary, and that holding their hands through the psychological ups and downs of being a famous talent is a big part of his work. So many jobs “rest on this one person’s success,” Vetro, 68, explained. “That’s a tremendous amount of pressure.”Vetro helped both Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Timothée Chalamet bring out their characters’ signature sound in “A Complete Unknown.”Searchlight PicturesWhile growing up in upstate New York there were early signs that Vetro was more into behind-the-scenes guidance than stardom. He would correct a cousin while they sang Christmas carols and lend a hand to friends learning songs for musicals. As early as fifth grade, when a fellow student who was popular and athletic asked him for assistance with a song, Vetro remembered, “We just bonded. And that made me think, ‘I have something special here. This is my identity.’”His parents were skeptical, especially his father. “He would say things like, ‘What makes you think that anybody of note would want to work with you?’” when as a boy he would bring up stars like Bette Midler as examples of people he wanted to work with.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

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      ‘Down With Love’ 20 Years Later: Celebrating the Phoniness of Rom-Coms

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      The 2003 box office flop has been embraced by a younger generation that understands the role-playing nature of courtship.Twenty years ago, before the retro-chic sex comedy “Down With Love” was released in American theaters, the anticipation was high. The Tribeca Film Festival, then in its second year, made the film its flashy opening-night selection. Cheeky promotional images of its two stars were ubiquitous: Renée Zellweger was a bona fide It Girl following the success of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001) and “Chicago” (2002); and Ewan McGregor was riding high after the one-two punch of “Moulin Rouge” (2001) and “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones” (2002).Then the film flopped.Directed by Peyton Reed with a script by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, “Down With Love” (available to rent on most major streaming platforms) is quite unlike the rom-coms of the time. It is a postmodern throwback to the midcentury sex farce: namely, “Pillow Talk” (1959) and “Lover Come Back” (1961), saucy battles of the sexes starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Roger Ebert approved of the new comedy, but most critics shrugged at what they considered a fluffy homage to a much better thing.Day and Hudson in “Pillow Talk.” Critics compared “Down With Love” unfavorably with the earlier comedy.Universal PicturesAudiences in the United States didn’t show up either, proving that the bedroom of yore meant little to the average 21st-century spectator. The film cost $35 million to make and ended its domestic run with about $20 million. By contrast “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” another rom-com released that year, received $105 million; “Something’s Gotta Give,” $124 million.In 2003, the golden age of the rom-com was in flux. The heavyweight titles of the previous decade, a chunk of them directed by Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail”) or led by Julia Roberts (“Pretty Woman,” “Notting Hill”), balanced realism and fantasy, injecting modern sensibilities and gloriously messy women into the cheesy happily-ever-after formula. With these, the studios hit pay dirt, and (per usual), they reacted by increasing their output through the aughts.“We always knew it was going to be a bit of a marketing challenge,” Reed told me in a video interview about “Down With Love.” He added, “The whole point of it was that it wasn’t supposed to feel like every other contemporary romantic comedy. So we leaned into that difference with the distinctive sets and the built-in artificiality.”Before “Down With Love,” Reed had directed the cheerleading competition comedy “Bring It On,” a sleeper hit that was playfully but thoughtfully constructed: the routines featured Busby Berkeley-style choreography, and one sequence involving a pill-guzzling dance instructor referenced Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz.” No wonder that when Reed came across Ahlert and Drake’s script, he was immediately drawn to its throwback spirit and visual specificity. “Without making a musical, I loved the idea of this very stylized comedy, where the camera and the production design and the wardrobe shapes the humor,” he said.“Down With Love” takes its beats from the Hudson-Day comedies, but it winks back at dozens of cinematic confections from that period. Like Natalie Wood in “Sex and the Single Girl” (1964), Zellweger’s Barbara Novak pens a global best seller urging women to treat sex cavalierly, as men do, and forget about the ring. McGregor’s Catcher Block — the “James Bond of men’s journalism” — enjoys a packed schedule of booty calls. He makes his dashing first appearance by chopper, descending upon the Know magazine headquarters straight from his latest champagne-fueled all-nighter. His breed of manly man is imperiled by Novak’s treatise, so, in the guise of a prudish astronaut from Texas, he courts the enemy to fuel a hit piece proving that her feminism is a front.Sarah Paulson, left, and Zellweger in just a few of the looks that made the film snap. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox and Regency EnterprisesThe film is a ’60s period piece bound up in a bawdier, more sexually explicit package than that of its predecessors, with Novak and her chainsmoking agent-cum-bestie, Vikki (Sarah Paulson) canoodling around town like the ladies of “Sex and the City.” And the clothes! Ah, the clothes are marvelous. It’s a glamorous parade of kitten heels and kooky hats, fringe dresses and fur-trimmed silk robes. The costumes change at the speedy clip of the film itself, which takes Barbara, Catcher, Vikki and Catcher’s lovesick editor, Peter (David Hyde Pierce), through a series of switcheroos and prankish plot reversals that give the ladies the edge. While the film’s sexual innuendo-laden banter and exuberant color schemes seem to recall Austin Powers movies, well, this has more grace and bubbly femininity than those crude parodies.“Down With Love” followed another old Hollywood-meets-new production, “Far From Heaven” (2002), Todd Haynes’s ode to the Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk. Before “Mad Men” landed on television in 2007, offering up a seductively slick skewering of the American dream, “Down With Love” and “Far From Heaven” both employed lush nostalgic aesthetics while questioning American culture’s sentimental relationship to the past. Haynes’s film was rightfully lauded; “Down With Love,” as we know, was not. Like another misunderstood and promptly derided rom-com from that year, Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Intolerable Cruelty” — a Hepburn-Tracy-like screwball revenge-romp — its style too radically broke with the mold of a genre beloved for its consistency.Reed’s bubble-gum tribute is all snappy wordplay and tongue-in-cheek jabs, but there’s an extravagant phoniness to it all, too, that calls attention to its imaginary trappings. Cartoonish rear projections of the Manhattan skyline, split-screen phone calls that mirror sex acts, and routine breaks of the fourth wall give the film the feel of a pop product that understands its own game, and throws it into a state of hyperreality.There’s an extravagant phoniness to the film that calls attention to its imaginary trappings.Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox and Regency EnterprisesMischievously self-aware, it points to the contrivances that uphold modern romance, the games of scheming and flirting that we find so pleasurable and easy to play along with, despite their phony and potentially regressive underpinnings. The film pokes fun at retrograde ideas about sex and sexuality. Peter, for instance, a softy who yearns to be, essentially, a stay-at-home dad, is repeatedly mocked for being a closeted gay man. He’s not, but the gag is that everyone around him can’t make sense of a man who doesn’t fit the role he’s supposed to play.“This would be really hard to make now. Rom-coms are supposed to be cheap and this had a high production value — $35 million? Studios don’t make these films at that price point anymore,” Reed added.Indeed, the screwball spirit is in short supply these days. The lifeless “Ticket to Paradise” failed to resurrect the punchy him-against-her dynamic of rom-coms past, and, for the first half-hour at least, the Lindsay Lohan vehicle “Falling for Christmas” takes on the flamboyantly fake style and deliciously ludicrous plotting of a fizzy farce from the ’30s before beelining into tedious moralizing.No wonder “Down With Love” has become something of a cult item, its meta-referential charms perhaps more apparent to a younger, queerer generation that better understands the role-playing nature of gender and romantic courtship. I recall seeing the film projected without sound at a bar-turned-dance club in Washington, D.C. In February, at a packed Valentine’s Day-themed screening of the film in Brooklyn, the giddy audience was uninhibited with their oohs and aahs.The film mocks, but it also transports with its eye-candy visuals and coy performances, reminding us that a suspension of reason is required to perform gender, to be sucked into a rom-com and, even, to fall in love. More

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      12 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2022

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      ‘Better Call Saul’ returns, Cecily Strong stars in a one-woman show, and Faith Ringgold gets an overdue retrospective.As a new year begins in uncertain times (again), our critics highlight the TV, movies, music, art, theater, dance and comedy that promise a welcome distraction.Margaret LyonsThe End of ‘Better Call Saul’Bob Odenkirk stars as Jimmy McGill in AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” which returns for its final season this spring.Greg Lewis/AMC, via Associated PressI’ll be sad forever when “Better Call Saul” is over, so part of me is actually dreading the sixth and final season. I never want to say goodbye to Jimmy or Kim — but man, am I dying to see them again. By the time “Saul” returns on AMC this spring, it will have been off the air for two full years. (Bob Odenkirk, its star, recovered from a heart attack that occurred on set this year.) If there was ever a show that knew how to think about endgames, it’s this one, among the most carefully woven dramas of our time. Of course, thanks to “Breaking Bad,” we know exactly where some of these characters are headed but not how they get there or how they feel about it or whom they’ll hurt along the way. Hurry back! But also, go slow.Salamishah TilletA ‘Downton Abbey’ Sequel Travels to FranceThe sequel “Downton Abbey: A New Era” is partly set in the South of France; from left, Harry Hadden-Paton, Laura Carmichael, Tuppence Middleton and Allen Leech.Ben Blackall/Focus FeaturesOK, so yes, it was weird that my friends Sherri-Ann and Amber and I were the only Black people in the theater when we saw the movie “Downton Abbey” in 2019. At the time, we agreed that despite the absence of people of color in the theater and onscreen, we still found delight in the grandeur — the clothing, the castle, the cast of characters, especially the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Crawley, marvelously played by Dame Maggie Smith. Now that we’ve set our calendars to March 18, 2022, for the sequel, “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” I’m looking forward to seeing how the franchise tries to reinvent itself on the cusp of a new era, the 1930s, and how it fares in the current racial moment. (A Black female face pops up in a trailer.) Partly set in the South of France after the Dowager Countess learns she has inherited a villa there, the movie sends the upstairs Crawley clan and their downstairs employees off on another adventure, with another wedding. While Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton,” has a new show, “The Gilded Age,” premiering on HBO in January — which seems to be a bit more thoughtful in its take on race, class and identity — here’s hoping that this sequel to “Downton” takes a bow in grand Grantham style.Jesse GreenCecily Strong in a One-Woman ShowCecily Strong, left, and the director Leigh Silverman; Strong is starring in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” at the Shed.Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesJane Wagner’s 1985 play “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” was custom-made for the chameleonic gifts of her life partner (and, later, wife), Lily Tomlin. Who else could have inhabited its 12 highly distinct characters — among them a runaway punk, a bored one-percenter and a trio of disillusioned feminists — with such sardonic sympathy? When Tomlin won a 1986 Tony Award for her work, it seemed to seal the idea that the performer and the play were forever one. But in the kind of casting that makes you smack your head with delight, Cecily Strong takes up Tomlin’s mantle in a revival directed by Leigh Silverman at the Shed, expected to open on Jan. 11. Strong — whose “Saturday Night Live” characters include Jeanine Pirro, the Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party and, most recently, Goober the Clown Who Had an Abortion When She Was 23 — seems like another custom fit, nearly four decades later.Jon ParelesAfrofuturism at Carnegie HallSun Ra Arkestra will perform its galactic jazz as part of the Afrofuturism festival that starts in February.Nate Palmer for The New York TimesStepping outside its own history as a bastion of Western classical music, Carnegie Hall will be the hub of a citywide, multidisciplinary festival of Afrofuturism: the visionary, tech-savvy ways that African-diaspora culture has imagined alternate paths forward. Carnegie’s series is expected to start Feb. 12 with the quick-cutting, sometimes head-spinning electronic musician Flying Lotus. (One challenge might be the main hall’s acoustics.) Shows at Zankel Hall include the galactic jazz of the Sun Ra Arkestra with the cellist and singer Kelsey Lu and the spoken-word insurgent Moor Mother (Feb. 17); the flutist Nicole Mitchell leading her Black Earth Ensemble; and the clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid with her Autophysiopsychic Millennium (Feb. 24); the African-rooted hip-hop duo Chimurenga Renaissance and the Malian songwriter Fatoumata Diawara (March 4); and the D.J., composer and techno pioneer Carl Craig leading his Synthesizer Ensemble (March 19). There’s far more: five dozen other cultural organizations will have festival events.Anthony TommasiniThe Metropolitan Opera Rethinks VerdiThe set model for a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” which is expected to open at the Metropolitan Opera in February.Metropolitan OperaVerdi’s “Don Carlos” may not be a flawless opera. But it’s a profound work; I think of it as Verdi’s “Hamlet.” Written for the Paris Opera, it nodded to the French grand style and included epic scenes and massed choruses. But at its 1867 premiere, it was deemed overly long and ineffective. Verdi revised the opera several times, making cuts, translating the French libretto into Italian, leaving a confused legacy of revisions. The Metropolitan Opera is giving audiences a chance to hear the work as originally conceived in its five-act French version, which many consider the best. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has led superb Met performances of the Italian adaptation, will be in this pit for this new production by David McVicar. The starry cast, headed by the tenor Matthew Polenzani in the title role, includes Sonya Yoncheva, Elina Garanca, Etienne Dupuis, Eric Owens and John Relyea. When performances begin on Feb. 28, be prepared for a five-hour show with two intermissions; I can’t wait.Mike HaleTrue-Crime, Starring Renée ZellwegerRenée Zellweger is starring in the true-crime mini-series “The Thing About Pam,” premiering March 8 on NBC.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesThis winter brings more than the usual number of big stars taking time out for the small screen, like Uma Thurman (“Suspicion”), Christopher Walken (“Severance”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray”). The one that piques my interest the most is Renée Zellweger, taking on only her second lead television role in “The Thing About Pam,” premiering March 8 on NBC. Zellweger can be hit or miss, but her hits — “The Whole Wide World,” “Chicago,” “Judy” — keep her in the very top rank of American actresses. Here she plays Pam Hupp, who is implicated in multiple deaths and is currently serving a life sentence for one of them, in a true-crime mini-series whose showrunner, Jenny Klein, was a producer on solid TV offerings like “The Witcher” and “Jessica Jones.”Jason FaragoAt 91, Faith Ringgold Gets a RetrospectiveA retrospective of the work of Faith Ringgold opens at the New Museum in February and will include “Dancing at the Louvre: The French Collection Part I, #1,” from 1991. Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY and DACS, London, via ACA GalleriesWhen the Museum of Modern Art opened its expanded home in 2019, its most important Picasso suddenly found itself with a new companion: a tumultuous, panoramic painting of American violence that Faith Ringgold painted in 1967. Ringgold, born 91 years ago in Harlem, has never been an obscure figure: Her art was displayed in the Clinton White House as well as most of New York’s museums; her children’s books have won prizes and reached best-seller lists. But she has had to wait too long for a career-spanning retrospective in her hometown. The one at the New Museum, which opens Feb. 17, will reveal how Ringgold intertwined the political and the personal: first in her rigorously composed “American People” paintings, which channeled the civil rights movement into gridded, repeating, syncopated forms; and then in pieced-fabric “story quilts” depicting Michael Jackson or Aunt Jemima, and geometric abstractions inspired by Tibetan silks and embroideries. The show comes with a major chance for rediscovery: the first outing in over two decades of her “French Collection,” a 12-quilt cycle that recasts the history of Paris in the 1920s through the eyes of a fictional African-American artist and model.Maya PhillipsA Viking Prince Seeks RevengeAlexander Skarsgård in a scene from “The Northman,” a story about a Viking prince who seeks revenge for his murdered father, directed by Robert Eggers.Focus FeaturesRobert Eggers has directed only two feature films, and yet he’s already known as a maker of beautifully strange, critically acclaimed movies. “The Witch,” from 2016, was followed three years later by the grim and perplexing “The Lighthouse.” Both established Eggers as a stylistic descendant of the Brothers Grimm, a crafter of macabre fables that descend into torrents of madness. Which is why I’m excited to see his third feature film, “The Northman,” expected to premiere on April 22, about a Viking prince who seeks revenge for his murdered father. Steeped in Icelandic mythology, the story is based on the tale of Amleth, the inspiration for Prince Hamlet, my favorite sad boy of English literature. Eggers wrote the screenplay with the Icelandic poet Sjón, so we can surely expect an epic with epic writing to match. There’s also a stellar cast, including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe — and Björk as a witch. I’d watch for that alone.Gia KourlasTransformation, Via Tap and Modern DanceA still from Ayodele Casel’s “Chasing Magic”; from left, Anthony Morigerato, John Manzari, Casel and Naomi Funaki.Kurt CsolakThere are times, however rare, when a virtual dance can be just as stirring as a live one. Ayodele Casel’s joyful and galvanizing “Chasing Magic,” presented by the Joyce Theater in April, was just that. Now the tap dancer and choreographer unveils a new version of the work, directed by Torya Beard, for the stage — an actual one — starting Tuesday, barring any Covid cancellations. And the following month, “Four Quartets,” an ambitious evening-length work by the modern choreographer Pam Tanowitz, lands at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Feb. 10-12). Based on T.S. Eliot’s poems, the production features live narration by the actress Kathleen Chalfant, music by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and a set by Brice Marden; in it, Tanowitz continues her exploration of the relationship between emotion and form. It’s true that one is tap; the other, modern dance. What do they have in common? Both have much to say and to show about the transporting, transformative power of dance.Isabelia HerreraThe Rapper Saba Explores TraumaSaba, a rapper from Chicago, will release a new album, “Few Good Things,” on Feb. 4.Mat Hayward/Getty ImagesDiaristic and quietly intense, Saba, a rapper from Chicago, is the kind of artist who navigates grief with a cool solace. In 2018, his record “Care for Me” considered this theme in the aftermath of the murder of his cousin and collaborator, who was stabbed to death a year earlier. Out on Feb. 4, his next album, “Few Good Things,” confronts equally gutting life challenges: the anxiety of generational poverty and the depths of survivor’s guilt. It reprises Saba’s slithering and poetic flows, which breathe out a profound sense of narrative. The beats are still buttery, jazzy and meticulously arranged. But this time around, there is more wisdom — a recognition that living through trauma means finding gratitude and affirmation in the moments you can.Jason ZinomanComedian Taylor Tomlinson on TourThe comedian Taylor Tomlinson in her Netflix special “Quarter-Life Crisis,” from 2020; a new one is in the works.Allyson Riggs/Netflix“Quarter-Life Special,” the debut stand-up special from Taylor Tomlinson, introduced a young artist with real potential. Tomlinson tautly evoked a clear persona (cheerful but not the life of the party; more like, as she put it, “the faint pulse of the pot luck”) and told jokes marked by a diverse arsenal of act outs and manners of misdirection. She covered standard territory (dating, sex, parents, kids) with enough insight and dark shadings to get your attention. Most excitingly, every once in a while, she let her thought process spin out into deliriously unexpected directions, like the story that led her to imagine a test for sadness conducted by the police. “Instead of a breathalyzer,” she explained, “they have you sigh into a harmonica.” This Netflix special made a splash, but it would have probably been a bigger one if it didn’t come out in March 2020. One pandemic later, she has another hour ready, and another Netflix special on the way. She’s now performing it on tour, which is expected to stop in New York in January at Town Hall and then the Beacon Theater. More