This week on Pop Life we meet veteran music journalist Lisa Robinson, Her new book “Nobody Ever Asked Me About the Girls: Women, Music, and Fame,” pulls from four-and-a-half decades of interviews with music’s most famous women — from Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks to Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé. In our interview Robinson reflects on her own career as a pioneering female music writer and editor of Music Scene Magazine.
Then, Robinson joins the “Pop Life” panel, Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s, the first all-female band to have a #1 album in the U.S and Rookz Eastmond an entrepreneur and producer who specializes in urban music, to talk about being a woman in the world of music.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Bob Geldof, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
On this week’s encore episode of “Pop Life” we meet singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer Josh Groban. We talk about his new album “Harmony,” which include his renditions of Kenny Loggins’ “Celebrate Me Home,” Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” — a duet with Sara Bareilles — plus Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never,” plus two new songs. We also get into singing in the shower, recording during the pandemic and the effect of COVID on the music industry.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Bob Geldof, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
Richard speaks to “CTV News at Six” anchor Andria Case about television and movies to watch during the pandemic including “Dads,” a new doc directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, just in time for Father’s Day, the new Kevin Bacon thriller “You Should Have Left” and the music documentary series “Laurel Canyon.”
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Transformers: the Last Night,” “The Hero’s” tale of redemption and the underwater terror of “47 Metres Down.”
Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris has travelled the world chronicling the famous and infamous. To find the subject for his latest film “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography” he looked closer to home. Next door in fact, to the home of his friend, portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman.
It’s a film as simple and unpretentious as its subject. In 76 quick minutes Morris lets Dorfman narrate the story in her thick Massachusetts accent. A friendship with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg opened the door for her to take photos of many literary and music stars, including W.H. Auden, Anais Nin, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Local heroes like Jonathan Richman also found their way before her camera but it is the pictures of her family and friends that define her work. “What you’re wearing is OK,” she says. “Who you are is OK. You don’t have to be cosmetized.” It is, she says, an acceptance of “everydayness.”
Much of “The B-Side” takes place in Elsa’s cluttered archive. “A lot of these are mistakes but because they are 20×24 they are too expensive to throw away,” she says. “The ones they don’t take I call the B-side.”
In 1980 she found a format that came to define her work, the Polaroid Land 20×24 camera. Producing large-scale photos became her trademark, although by her own assessment her straightforward approach never brought her fame or media attention.
Perhaps its because the pictures aren’t slick and neither is Elsa. Her work is almost folk art, an outsiders look at the world. She captured her subjects as they are the moment they stood in front of her camera. No touch ups or after effects. The pictures are documents of moments in time, plain and simple. “I am really interested in the surfaces of people,” she says. “I am totally not interest in capturing your soul. I am only interested in how they seem.” Her method was effective. In one newspaper article the mother of a subject raves, “It looks more like Faye than Faye herself.”
“The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography” is a quiet look at Dorfman and the art and life she created. “I was lucky in a way to find the cameras and to like it,” she says. “It’s a real way of being a quote artist and having an offbeat life. Inventing a way of living that is comfortable. It worked. I feel very grateful that it worked.”
This week on Pop Life we meet veteran music journalist Lisa Robinson, Her new book “Nobody Ever Asked Me About the Girls: Women, Music, and Fame,” pulls from four-and-a-half decades of interviews with music’s most famous women — from Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks to Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé. In our interview Robinson reflects on her own career as a pioneering female music writer and editor of Music Scene Magazine.
