On Monday, Netflix announced it will start streaming Pablo Larraín's biopic Maria - starring Angelina Jolie as the legendary opera singer Maria Callas - on December 11 after hitting select US theaters on November 27.But first, the 49-year-old Oscar winner will reunite with the 48-year-old Chilean filmmaker for a post-screening Q&A at Alice Tully Hall in Manhattan during the New York Film Festival next Sunday and Monday.The 122-minute movie - which received an eight-minute standing ovation in Venice on August 29 - will then screen at film festivals in the Hamptons, London, Chicago, and Los Angeles.Maria currently has a 75% critic approval rating (out of 44 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes.It marks the third and final film in Pablo's trilogy of iconic women, succeeding Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021), which scored both Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart Oscar nominations.Angelina has already received Academy Award buzz for her portrayal of the New York-born Greek belter, who rehearses for an imagined performance that never comes to be as a camera crew led by Stranger Things star Kodi Smit-McPhee films her.Jolie - who had never sung onscreen or in public - spent seven months training with vocal coach Eric Vetro; whose clients include Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, John Legend, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes, Rosalía, and Charlie Puth.And while Maria is mostly set in the seventies, the former Hollywood wild child appears to recreate Callas' (born Kalogeropoulos) 1958 performance at a Paris gala, which was broadcast through Eurovision.
Two-time Oscar-nominated prosthetics designer Arjen Tuiten was hired to transform Angelina's face, but she still appears to have her own tiny nose rather than the characteristically large one Maria had in real life.The Maria ensemble cast also includes Valeria Golino, Haluk Bilginer, Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Alessandro Bressanello.Callas' powerful soprano pipes had three distinct registers and measured just short of three octaves, and she performed her final concert in 1965 following a 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.It marks Jolie's first acting role since Chloé Zhao's dismally-reviewed 2021 MCU flick Eternals.The Tony-winning producer has similarly scored a 33% critic approval rating (out of 12 reviews) for her fifth feature directorial effort Without Blood following its September 8th world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
source : Daily mail