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Angelina Jolie breaks down in tears amid Brad Pitt divorce war as she is overwhelmed by epic standing ovation at Venice Film Festival

         Angelina Jolie was moved to tears after receiving an eight-minute standing ovation at the premiere of her biopic Maria at Venice Film Festival in Italy on Thursday. The Changeling star, 49, looked visibly emotional and was seen wiping away tears after the audience at Sala Grande stood up to applaud her.In another touching display the actress — who plays the legendary opera singer Maria Callas in the film — momentarily covered her mouth with her hand. Jolie, who's currently in the throes of a protracted divorce from Brad Pitt, 60, was pictured being escorted down the stairs by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, 48, as the crowd continued to clap for her.She spoke about the project during a press conference held Thursday afternoon before the screening, and revealed that she spent approximately seven months preparing for the demanding role.  She worked with opera singers and coaches to master the correct posture, breathing, and movement techniques.She added that immersing herself in the world of opera provided 'therapy I didn't know I needed.''I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out. So the challenge wasn't the technical, it was an emotional experience to find my voice, to be in my body, to express. You have to give every single part of yourself.'She also shared that the part of Callas she most related to was 'the part of her that's extremely soft and doesn’t have room in the world to be as soft as she truly was — as emotionally open as she truly was. I share her vulnerability more than anything.'Earlier on the red carpet, Angelina managed to smile, despite recently hinting at the heavy emotional toll which her divorce from Pitt has taken on her, saying she has been through 'despair' and 'pain.'The beauty split from her film star husband after a disputed incident on a plane in 2016.She has said in court documents that he assaulted her and some of their six children and poured wine and beer on the family in a rage. He has always denied being violent towards her or the family.When asked about her musical tastes Angelina said: 'I was more of a punk and I loved all music but I probably listened to The Clash more than most.' 'As I have gotten older I have listened to classical music and opera. I think I still love the music I did when I was younger, I would still listen to The Clash.'But I think when you have felt a certain level of despair, of pain, of love at a certain point there are only certain sounds that can match that feeling and to me the immensity of the feeling encapsulated in the sounds of opera - there is nothing like it.'That feeling that would move all of us if we were to hear it would be the only sound that would explain that pain, so I have leant more towards it now.'
         The couple's split has also affected their six children. Earlier this month their daughter Shiloh, 18, legally dropped her father's surname.Shiloh, who hired and paid for her own lawyer when she filed to drop the Pitt name on her 18th birthday in May, filed to change her name from Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie.There have been long custody battles which ended eventually in a victory for Pitt, who got 50-50 custody in 2021 only to have it overturned on appeal.The current situation has seen the children - Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, and Knox and Vivienne, 16 - form a tight group of seven with his former wife.This comes amid recent claims that Pitt and Jolie's divorce - which has now dragged on for eight years - is still ongoing as neither of the stars can 'let it go.'A source told People 'their disagreements took over' in the relationship, adding that things 'turned nasty and it was not a good situation for anyone.''All the bitterness is partly why the divorce has dragged on for so many years. Neither will let it go. You’d think they would be over it and just settle.' Another source of recent stress for the actress has been her son Pax's terrifying bike crash, which left him hospitalized.Pax was released from ICU earlier this month, after being treated for crashing his electric bike into the back of a car stopped for a red light on Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles on July 29.He now begins the long road of recovery and physical therapy - and Angelina has been there every step of the way.Meanwhile Brad reportedly feels completely helpless his son is still refusing to have any contact with him as he recovers.According to sources, Pax 'doesn't want any well wishes' from his 'distraught dad' Brad even though the 'heartbroken' Hollywood actor is determined to help out in any way possible.An insider exclusively told DailyMail.com that Brad also wishes his family dynamic wasn't divided and that he wasn't getting 'radio silence' about his son's health.
         Angelina's latest film is a biographical drama. It stars Angelina in the title role as Maria, with Valeria Golino as her sister Yakinthi, and Haluk Bilginer as Aristotle Onassis.'I take very seriously the responsibility to Maria's life and legacy,' Angelina said previously in a statement. 'I will give all I can to meet the challenge.'The Tomb Raider star also mentioned the film's director, Pablo, whom she said she 'long admired.' The mother of six added: 'To be allowed the chance to tell more of Maria's story with him, and with a script by Steven Knight, is a dream.'Angelina had never sung onscreen - or in public - before she signed on to star as the legendary opera singer.'Everybody here knows, I was terribly nervous,' the Oscar winner told reporters at a press conference.'I spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo you can't do anything by half. He demands, in the most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.'Angelina enlisted vocal coach Eric Vetro - whose clients include Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, John Legend, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes, Rosalía, and Charlie Puth.'My first time singing I remember being so nervous. My sons were there and they helped lock the door so that nobody else was coming in, and I was shaky. I was frightened,' described Jolie.'Pablo, in his decency, started me in a small room and ended me in [the Paris opera house] La Scala. So he gave me time to grow.'The former Hollywood wild child said her biggest 'fear' would be to 'disappoint' the ardent fanbase of Maria: 'I really came to care for her, so I didn't want to do a disservice to this woman.'And while the film is mostly set in the seventies, Angelina appears to recreate Callas' (born Kalogeropoulos) 1958 performance at a Paris gala, which was broadcast through Eurovision.The New York-born Greek belter's powerful soprano pipes had three distinct registers and measured just short of three octaves, and she performed her final concert in 1965 following a vocal decline blamed on everything from dermatomyositis, to early onset menopause, to her extreme 80lb weight loss in 1954. Maria - who had an affair with Aristotle Onassis while he was married to former FLOTUS Jacqueline Kennedy - spent her last 11 years living in Paris after renouncing her American citizenship, and she died at age 53, from a heart attack in 1977.Angelina is lucky enough to wear some of Callas' real clothes in the film, including vintage fur items from Massimo Cantini Parrini’s archive collection. The film will cover her life story and finish with her sad death in Paris after suffering from vision problems that left her almost blind.The director, who is best known for the bio pictures Jackie (about Jackie Kennedy, played by Natalie Portman) and Spencer (about Princess Diana, played by Kristen Stewart), said: 'Having the chance to combine my two most deep and personal passions, cinema and opera, has been a long-awaited dream.''To do this with Angelina, a supremely brave and curious artist, is a fascinating opportunity. A true gift.'The actress has played famous people before: In 1998 she starred as tragic supermodel Gia Carangi in Gia and in 2007 she starred as Mariana Pearl in the film A Mighty Heart.

 

source : Daily mail 

Was Maria Callas really a whining, self-pitying, endlessly needy victim? Angelina Jolie stars as revered opera singer in a new biopic that projects little of her cultural stature, writes BRIAN VINER

           The late shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis would have approved of director Pablo Larrain’s trilogy of films about three of the most iconic women of the 21st century: he slept with two of them.Larrain’s swansong, following Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021), is Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the revered opera singer Maria Callas. It had its world premiere last night at the Venice Film Festival.An expert excavator of misery, Larrain likes to scrutinise his subjects at the most vulnerable times of their lives. Jackie focuses on Jacqueline Kennedy in the days following the assassination of her husband, President John F Kennedy, while Spencer unfolds over the Christmas of 1991, with Princess Diana at her unhappiest and most bulimic as she contemplates leaving the Royal Family.This film presents Callas in the last few days of her 53 years, seeing her dead lover Onassis in her torrid dreams and tormented attempts to rediscover her famous voice.It was a famously influential voice, too. Linda Ronstadt once called her the greatest ‘chick singer’ ever: listening to Maria Callas records taught her everything she needed to know, she said, about singing rock’n’roll.So Callas transcended the world of opera, yet Maria gives us disappointingly little sense of that. Yes, we know she’s a superstar, but Larrain, and screenwriter Steven (Peaky Blinders) Knight, never quite convey the magnitude of her cultural stature. In the 1970s, even as a North-of-England schoolboy who knew an awful lot more about George Best’s cars than Georges Bizet’s Carmen, I was fully aware of Callas and her predilection for pulling out of performances in distant cities such as Milan and New York. It wasn’t opera news. It was news.She had a personality to match her gigantic talent and was reputedly so formidable that - another choice quote - the pugnacious John Huston once said he’d rather go six rounds with the heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey than cross swords with her. How unfortunate it is, then, that she spends most of Maria’s two hours as a whining, self-pitying, endlessly needy victim, imperiously bossing around her household staff to be sure, and talking in neat epigrams (‘I took liberties all my life and the world took liberties with me’), but not otherwise demonstrating much of that dazzling charisma.In truth, she (itals) was (close itals) also a victim. Her mother bullied and blackmailed her, her husband stole from her, and Onassis beat and drugged her. But not much of that emerges either, except in a flashback to her Athens childhood, when her mother appears to be pimping her out to Nazi soldiers.All that said, Jolie gives one of the performances of her career. This might be a flawed depiction of Callas but not by her; wearing enough mascara to sink one of Onassis’s ships she is completely believable in the role and even does some of her own warbling alongside some top-class lip-synching to the real Callas, having reportedly trained for seven months until she was ready to perform in public for the first time. Admittedly I’m no expert but I couldn’t tell the difference. So hats off. There is already talk of an Oscar nod.The film begins with Callas’s death. In Paris, in her grand but stuffy mausoleum of an apartment, she simply conks out one day, killed by her addiction to pills and fame. She is discovered by her devoted housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) and butler (Pierfrancesco Favino), who has health problems of his own, a dodgy back caused by shunting a grand piano around until his mistress is satisfied that it’s in the right place, which it never is.From there we are whisked back a week, with Callas desperately searching for her high notes, and sometimes further, for instance to a monochrome 1959 when she first meets Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), and even to the celebrated birthday party for JFK, the one where he was serenaded by Marilyn Monroe, about whose singing voice Callas is predictably catty. A subsequent scene in a restaurant, where the mighty diva repels the US President’s flirtations, is presumably a piece of whimsy on Knight’s part.More whimsical still is the casting of Kodi Smit-McPhee as a human manifestation of Mandrax, the pill to which Callas was most in thrall. He takes the form of a TV interviewer, I suppose to conflate the two things that caused Callas’s demise: drug addiction and celebrity.Jolie’s ‘tour de force’ keeps all this watchable, and there is one fabulous line – when Callas berates the dying Onassis for marrying Jackie Kennedy. ‘Sometimes you get married because you have a free day,’ he replies. But Maria too often slumps when it should sizzle. I found it dreary, and longed for the end at least 20 minutes before it arrived. We all know that it’s not over until the fat lady (or in Jolie’s case the not-so-fat lady) sings, but she keeps us waiting rather too long.Maria is a Netflix film, with a release date yet to be announced.

 

source : Daily mail 

Angelina Jolie Is Coming to Netflix as Maria Callas

         Acclaimed director Pablo Larraín’s Maria will premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 29. Academy Award-winning actor Angelina Jolie will star as renowned opera singer Maria Callas in Maria, a new film from director Pablo Larraín. Jolie earned an Academy Award for her performance in Girl, Interrupted, and has displayed her incredible range in films like Changeling, The Good Shepherd, Maleficent, and Those Who Wish Me Dead. Renowned Chilean filmmaker Larraín is known for such films as Jackie, Spencer, No, Neruda, and 2023’s El Conde, which garnered a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination for Edward Lachman’s chiaroscuro work. Larraín says, “I’m excited to partner again with the Netflix team who care so passionately about movies. This film is my most personal work yet. It is a creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas who, after dedicating her life to performing for audiences around the world, decides finally to find her own voice, her own identity, and sing for herself. I’m deeply honored to tell this story and share it with audiences worldwide like Maria did with her life.” Maria marks a new collaboration between Larraín and Lachman, who was also nominated for Academy Awards for his work on Carol and Far From Heaven. And it’s the second Larraín film written by Steven Knight following their work together on Spencer; Knight was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay for his work on Dirty Pretty Things, and is the creator of Peaky Blinders. Academy Award nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Valeria Golino also star. Find out more about Maria below, and stay tuned as the film hits the Venice Film Festival and beyond.
         What is Maria about? As Larraín says, Maria is a “creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas,” one of the greatest opera singers of all time, during her final days in 1970s Paris. Callas, whose life spanned from the 1920s to the ’70s, was famous for her incredible voice — the film looks at a period in her life when she had lost her voice, and tries to regain it. After dedicating her life to audiences around the world, she “decides finally to find her own voice, her own identity, and sing for herself.” It marks the third film in Larraín’s work exploring iconic women at inflection points in their lives, following 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer.
         When will Maria premiere? Maria will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 29. The film will hit Netflix in the US at a later date. Keep checking Tudum for updates.

 

source : Netflix  

Venice Film Festival welcomes its first stars as Angelina Jolie arrives ahead of Maria premiere alongside Jenna Ortega and Golden Lion winner Sigourney Weaver... but Winona Ryder goes undercover

         Angelina Jolie, Jenna Ortega and Sigourney Weaver have arrived in Venice ahead of the city's annual Film Festival which begins on Wednesday.Actress Angelina, 49, looked as chic as ever in a beige trench coat ahead of the screening for her new film Maria - a biographical drama film about opera singer Maria Callas.Her ex-husband Brad Pitt is also expected to be at the festival later in the week for his new film Wolfs which he stars in with George Clooney.  Jenna, 21, who stars in the Beetlejuice sequel which will open the festival, looked gorgeous in a pleated miniskirt and checked blazer as she arrived ahead of the 81st Venice Film Festival.Her onscreen mother in the movie Winona Ryder, 52, who reprises her role as Lydia, was also spotted arriving but hid her face under a visor hat and was sporting a bizarre chin strap.Sigourney meanwhile happily greeted fans, whilst looking chic in a pair of white wide-legged trousers and a boater hat. Maria is an upcoming biographical drama film about opera singer Maria Callas. It is directed by Pablo Larraín, written by Steven Knight, produced by Fremantle, and stars Angelina Jolie in the title role, with Valeria Golino as her sister Yakinthi, and Haluk Bilginer as Aristotle Onassis.Meanwhile Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will open the festival on August 28.Jenna recently opened up about what it was like meeting Winona Ryder for the first time on the set of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.The Wednesday star plays Astrid Deetz, the daughter of Ryder's character Lydia Deetz in the film. 'She was so warm and welcoming and kind and inviting right from the jump, and I couldn't be more grateful,' Ortega explained in an interview with the New York Times.'It was at a time where my career was taking a different turn, and I didn't realize that I needed that from somebody who could relate, but I did,' she said, adding that she was in a 'transformative' period in her life after shooting to overnight superstardom on Netflix's Wednesday. (…)

 

source : Daily mail  youtube

Maria Callas Biopic ‘Maria’ to Compete at Venice Film Festival

        The Venice Film Festival has announced that “Maria,” the Maria Callas biopic by Pablo Larraín will premiere in competition this September.The film stars Angelina Jolie as the famed diva alongside Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, and Kodi Smit-McPhee.According to IMDB, “Maria” follows the life story of the world’s greatest opera singer, Maria Callas, during her final days in 1970s Paris.This is the latest Larrain film to open at Venice following “El Conde” where he won Best Screenplay, “Spencer” starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, and “Jackie” with Natalie Portman as Kennedy Onassis debuted in Venice. All three films went on to obtain at least one Oscar nomination.“Maria” will compete against other high-profile films such as “The Room Next Door” by Pedro Almodovar, Joker 2: Folie à Deux” by Todd Phillips,  “Queer” by Luca Guadagnino, and “The Order” by Justin Kurzel.“Maria” is still seeking distribution. The film was produced by Juan de Dios Larraín for Fabula Pictures, Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment Pictures, a Fremantle Company, and Jonas Dornbach for Komlizen Film.

 

source : OperaWire 

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