Elvis

Saturday

Anthony Whitehead

The glorious silliness of tribute band names

Seeing a tribute band can be a strange experience. There are your heroes on stage once more, magically rejuvenated and playing the music of your youth. You too feel briefly young again – until you notice everyone else at the gig is also at least 57. But as often as not the band is brilliant. They have lovingly tracked down the right guitars, effect pedals and amp settings in search of the perfect sound. They have styled their hair just so, applied the requisite tattoos and, at some obvious expense, commissioned perfect replicas of signature stage outfits. See Björn Again and the girls might come complete with the purple capes worn for ABBA’s 1980 world tour before changing into the white-booted “SOS” look.

tribute

Thursday

Christopher Sandford

Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous book exposes the horrors of celebrity

The title of this book may offer a clue to its prevailing tone. There’s a certain amount of showbiz gossip involved, but it is essentially a protracted rumination of the “What’s it all about, Alfie?” variety, with plenty of unflinching discourse on matters such as spirituality, depression, addiction and the precariousness of the human condition. “I wondered how many times a heart can break,” the authors write near the end of their tale of untold material privilege and wrenching emotional grief. All too often, is the inescapable answer. The book is freighted with a certain amount of woe from the start, because its principal author, Elvis Presley’s only child, herself tragically died in January 2023, aged fifty-four, due to weight-loss surgery complications.

Lisa Marie

Friday

Alexander Larman

In search of a credible Elvis movie

Baz Luhrmann’s latest exercise in excess, a new biopic of Elvis Presley, called simply Elvis, opens across American theaters this weekend. As ever with Luhrmann, it’s a mixture of sensory-popping provocation, cartoonish performances (Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker is written and played as if he’s walked out of a Snidely Whiplash short), an eclectic soundtrack and, once the sturm und drang settles, a surprisingly conventional account of a decidedly unconventional man. Played with chutzpah and charisma by Austin Butler in what must be a star-making performance, Luhrmann’s Elvis is less the bloated, drug-addicted behemoth of latter days than a youthful, hip-swivellin’, groin-thrustin’ icon.

Tuesday

Robert Jackman

Hollywood loves to self mythologise

From our UK edition

Hollywood can appear self-satisfied and insular at the best of times, but it's been a rough few months even by Tinseltown standards. Judging by the slew of trailers that have dropped in recent weeks, this season in cinema land will centre on only one thing: biopics. From Madonna and Marilyn Monroe to Elvis (and even Hillary Rodham Clinton) it’s time for a barrage of films in which big stars play bigger stars – in return for your adoration.  Hollywood’s fixation on global fame might not be entirely new – Ben Kingsley’s turn in Gandhi is about to reach its 40th birthday, incidentally – but there’s no getting away from the fact that it has stepped up a gear in recent years.

Friday

Stephen Arnell

The tricky business of music biopics

From our UK edition

Along with films about real life authors, poets, comedians and artists, biographies of musicians are notoriously difficult to translate successfully to the cinema screen. Why? Writing and painting aren’t inherently cinematic; live music has more visual potential (hence the greater number of motion pictures). But the challenges of lip-synching and the existence in most cases of plenty of original concert footage raise the stakes for any actor prepared to take on such a role. There's a real danger of performances falling into pastiche and mimicry. Directors face an even greater predicament when music rights are refused, as was the case with the recent Stardust (2021) where actor/musician Johnny Flynn had to come up with songs in the style of David Bowie.