Her Master’s Voice, YouTube
Her Master’s Voice by British ventroloquist Nina Conti explores grief through what happens to the puppets of dead ventriloquists.journeyman tv/Supplied
Taking a two-week break from screen time in Montreal this summer, I got to see the master British ventriloquist and improviser Nina Conti live on stage at the resurrected Just for Laughs festival – and found myself mesmerized by her craft and doubled over with laughter. (Her startling innovations to the ancient, disturbing art form involve putting masks on audience members and turning them into her dummies.)
I’ve since gone down a rabbit hole of Conti content online – and was particularly taken by this 2013 documentary executive-produced by Christopher Guest. In it, Conti travels with six bereaved puppets that belonged to her late mentor and lover Ken Campbell (another off-beat but deeply influential British stage legend) to a ventriloquist convention in Kentucky, planning to donate one of them to the Vent Haven Museum.
The brilliant short film is a celebration of a form of stagecraft that most imagine is dead – and a touching (and bonkers) exploration of what it means to lose those who helped us find our voices. You’ll find Her Master’s Voice with ads on YouTube or for purchase or rent for $6.99 through Apple TV.
Timon of Athens, Stratfest@Home
Joseph Ziegler passed away this summer at 71. He’s considered a Canadian stage giant and played the title character in Timon of Athens.Cylla von Tiedemann/Supplied
Joseph Ziegler, a Canadian stage giant being grieved this summer after dying at age 71, had a long and distinguished and diverse career, acting and directing everywhere but most regularly at Ontario’s three (then) classical theatres – the Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival and Soulpepper, which he co-founded.
It’s happenstance what gets captured by cameras in a life in the theatre – but Ziegler’s third, late-life stint at Shakespeare’s plays at Stratford was mostly recorded and is available to watch on the Festival’s indispensable Stratfest@Home streaming service. Timon of Athens (2017; director Stephen Ouimette), a proto-absurdist oddity about a rich, profligate Athenian who turns miser, would be my top recommendation there.
Ziegler ably wrestled with the title character, who has the opposite arc of the Scrooge he played on stage at Christmas in Toronto off and on for years: from generosity to misanthropy. I rewatched his performance this week and caught glimpses of two of my favourite of his unrecorded Soulpepper ones within it: the unselfish bar patron Joe in William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life; and the belligerent, bleeding Hamm in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame.
Marc Maron: Panicked, Crave
Topics in Marc Maron’s HBO special spans from politics and the state of democracy to fleeing his Los Angeles with three cats and much more.Karolina Wojtasik/HBO / Crave
With his trend-starting interview podcast WTF with Marc Maron winding down this fall after 16 years, the introspectively cranky comic has been making the rounds having farewell conversations in which he rues what such comic-hosted gabfests have wrought on America.
So, too, begins his latest HBO special (streaming on Crave in Canada): He sarcastically congratulates his colleagues who were single-issue voters (anti-woke) and who can now “bravely speak power to truth” in a democracy in decline. But after re-establishing his leftish bonafides with this rant, Maron calls in progressives: “You do realize we annoyed the average American into fascism.”
There’s some simply entertaining sections too; Maron’s hilarious account of trying to flee his home in Los Angeles with three cats is a masterful monologue.
Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, Apple TV+
The marketing of “Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical” says it’s the first Peanuts musical in nearly four decades.Apple TV+
This new animated special is being marketed as the first Peanuts musical in 37 years – and, perhaps fittingly given the source comic strip’s obsession with disappointments of life, is a bit of a letdown.
An excited Charlie Brown and his trepidatious young sister Sally head off to sleep-away camp called Cloverhill Ranch – only to discover that it’s in danger of being shut down. Beagle Snoopy, meanwhile, sets off on a treasure hunt with a flock of Woodstocks.
Though less than an hour long, the cartoon features tunes by two separate teams of songwriters: Three are by Ben Folds (and enjoyable, Look Up, Charlie Brown especially); the rest by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, the pair behind the Broadway flop First Date, and Jeff Morrow. The music is poorly integrated into a script that feels only sketched in by Charles M. Schulz descendants Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz with Cornelius Uliano.
A Summer Musical (out Aug. 14) is worth watching only for those (like me) fond of Folds, and proud of him for taking a stand and quitting his job at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after it was taken over by President Donald Trump.
Amores Perros, Prime Video
The 2000 film is now added to Prime Video and is credited to launching the international career of director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu as well as its star Gael Garcia Bernal.Lionsgate
Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2000 film, which connects three separate storylines in a Mexico City car crash, launched the international careers of both its director (Birdman) and its charismatic star Gael Garcia Bernal – who plays Octavio, who gets involved in dogfighting as part of a plan to make money to run away with his sister-in-law. (Another longterm effect of the film: Co-star Vanessa Bauche became a prominent supporter of a Mexican anti-dogfighting campaign that resulted the practice being outlawed in 2017.)
After winning over critics at Cannes, Amores Perros – the punny title translates to Love’s a Bitch in English – had its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 25 years ago; Mark Peranson penned the short review in The Globe and Mail, calling it a” bloody, brutal Mexican version of Pulp Fiction for adults.”
He concluded: “While it often meanders, Amores perros is nevertheless an accomplished first film, very well acted, and, unlike its American progenitor, packing many well-earned emotional wallops.”
The film’s now added to Prime Video’s library of movies.
