The Capitalist As Gangster N His Exciting First Three Films, Writer-Director J.C
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lifestyle WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2014 Music & Movies Indian maestro seeks harmony with Vienna New Year’s Concert ndian maestro Zubin Mehta will seek to inject music marking the 650th birthday of Vienna became a much-loved, regular event in the classical what he says is some much-needed harmony into University as well as the 200th of the Austrian capi- music calendar. In the 1980s after the 25-concert Ithe world when he conducts the illustrious Vienna tal’s Technical University and the 150th of Vienna’s reign of Austrian Willi Boskovsky and six-times New Year’s Concert on January 1. “All over the world grand Ringstrasse boulevard. These include for American successor Lorin Maazel-who died this year- there are people who hate each other,” Mehta, 78, example “Accelerationen” (“Accelerations”) and the it was decided to have a different conductor each who is holding the baton for a fifth time at the annu- “Elektro-magnetische Polka” by Johann Strauss jun- year. These have included such greats as Herbert von al waltz fest beamed live to 50 million people world- ior, as well as his “Studenten-Polka” (“Students’ Karajan, Claudio Abbado-who also passed away in wide, told Austrian daily Die Presse. “This music can Polka”). Non-Strauss pieces include the “Champagne 2014 — and Mehta in 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2007. at least bring people together for two and a half Galop” by 19th century Danish composer Hans The Mumbai-born conductor, who first came to hours,” he said. Christian Lumbye-which starts with the pop of a Vienna to study in 1954 and whose posts have Indeed, the 90 or so countries able to watch champagne cork. included music director of the New York Thursday’s concert live include for the first time con- Certain works such as “Wein, Weib und Gesang” Philharmonic, said though that he was “just as excit- flict-riven Ukraine, as well as other newcomers as far (“Wine, women and song”) will be accompanied by ed” as before his debut 24 years ago. “I can think of afield as the Bahamas, Armenia and Mehta’s native ballet performances by Vienna State Ballet soloists no greater (honour),” he said. “When I walk from the India, organizers said. The Vienna Philharmonic’s choreographed by Italian Davide Bombana. “Certain Imperial (hotel) towards the Konzerthaus of the annual “Neujahrskonzert” ringing in the new year traditions give people a feeling of safety,” said Musikverein, it’s like I was in my living room. I feel so from Golden Hall of the exalted Musikverein is devot- Andreas Grossbauer, the Vienna Philharmonic’s new at home here.” — AFP ed largely to the kings of 19th century waltz, the chairman. “Bedtime stories, birthday cakes-and per- Strauss family. Each year has some variety, however. haps also the New Year’s Concert.” A picture taken on December 27, Last year, alongside favorites like “The Blue Danube” 2014 shows Indian conducter and “The Radetzky March”, with Daniel Barenboim Dark beginnings Zubin Mehta rehearsing with the conducting, the program included works commem- The event started life on December 31, 1939, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra orating the centenary of the start of World War I. under the Nazis but in the subsequent years these for the 2015 New Year’s Concert This time the occasion is a happier one, with dark beginnings were forgotten and it gradually in Vienna. — AFP Review In ‘A Most Violent Year,’ the capitalist as gangster n his exciting first three films, writer-director J.C. pressuring him to take more drastically illegal steps even Chandor, the son of a Merrill Lynch investment banker, while the suspicious local district attorney (David Oyelowo) Ihas proven to be a canny, clear-eyed studier of capital- is investigating. ism, sensitive to its strivers and alert to its ethical storms. His debut, “Margin Call,” plunged into the board rooms of a Gritty marketplace Wall Street firm in crisis. He followed that with “All Is Lost,” a These pressures enflame the film’s slow-burn, never metaphorical survival film about a man (Robert Redford) igniting with the fury the film’s title promises, but adding literally wrecked by the global economy. In “A Most Violent up to a lean, always absorbing examination of what suc- Year,” Chandor widens his scope, fusing a solemn medita- cess takes in a gritty marketplace ruled by raw power. “We In this July 29, 1999 file photo, actress Luise Rainer poses in her central London apart- tion on the American Dream with a ‘70s-styled gangster are so weak now,” laments Morales at a moment of lever- ment. — AP flick. Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales, the young head of a age. The performance by Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) is Brooklyn heating company. With a risky bit of lending, he’s commanding. His restrained businessman and aspiring trying to expand his business while at the same time fend- immigrant clearly evokes Pacino’s Michael Corleone, and ing off mysterious hijackings of his trucks. It’s 1981 New it’s a testament to Isaac that he can get even within a mile Double Oscar winning actress York, one of the city’s most crime-ridden years, and vio- of that comparison. lence crackles in the streets. If there’s something that holds back Chandor’s films, it’s Luise Rainer dies at 104 The atmosphere is exceedingly rich. The greatest pleas- their conceptual neatness and their hard-to-miss allusions. ures of “A Most Violent Year,” vividly shot by the excellent (A tragic side story involving a driver in Morales’ fleet is this ollywood actress Luise Rainer, who screen test). At Paramount in 1942 she did a up-and-coming cinematographer Bradford Young (who film’s most glaring misstep.) But his control is impressive won back-to-back Oscars in the 1930s, screen test for “For Whom the Bell Tolls” but also lenses “Selma”), are the earthy browns and yellows of enough to make me want to him to - like Morales - get a lit- Hhas died at the age of 104. Until her the part went to Ingrid Bergman. In 1943 she its moody period details: Morales’ beige overcoat, the bare tle dirty. “A Most Violent Year,” an A24 release, is rated PG-13 death, she was the oldest living Oscar winner. appeared in the Par war film “Hostages” with winter trees of its suburban Westchester, the electric wide by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language Rainer won her twin best actress Oscars for William Bendix and Paul Lukas. It was her last shots of New York highways. Where we are can’t be mistak- and some violence.” Running time: 124 minutes. Three stars 1936 biopic “The Great Ziegfeld,” drawing the bigscreen appearance until 1997 Dostoevsky en. This is Sidney Lumet territory: street-level New York, out of four. MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 nod despite a fairly small role as impresario adaptation “The Gambler.” alive with corruption, danger and moral quandary. It’s a requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. — AP Florenz Ziegfeld’s first wife, and 1937’s “The street corner of cinema Lumet so definitively staked out Good Earth,” an adaptation of the novel by Television work that, though Chandor is far from his direct descendent, Pearl S. Buck in which the heavily, if charming- She appeared onstage in England and Lumet’s spirit can’t help but loom over “A Most Violent Year,” ly, accented Austrian-German actress played a then in J.M. Barrie’s “A Kiss for Cinderella” on set in the year his “Prince of the City” blazed across mar- humble Chinese peasant. Broadway in 1942. Bertolt Brecht wrote a play quees. The high expectations generated by her in which Rainer was to star but they had a Oscar achievements did not, however lead to falling out. In 1947 she toured the US in a pro- Clever adaptation much further success in Hollywood. Some say duction of Maxwell Anderson’s “Joan of The movie is doted by the standby scenes of gangster the death of her producer at MGM, Irving Lorraine”; Rainer played Joan of Arc several films: the clandestine gathering of rival family businesses, Thalberg, as well as bad advice from her hus- times over the course of her career. During the the shootout (handsomely done on the 59th Street Bridge), band, the playwright Clifford Odets, con- late 1940s and 1950s she did some television the sudden police raid of the boss’s home. The film’s excel- tributed to the precipitous decline in her work in the US and UK, including appearances lent chase sequence leads irrevocably to the era’s great career. Her first movie was “Escapade,” with on “Schlitz Playhouse” and “Lux Video Theatre”; icon of decay: a graffiti-covered subway. That “A Most William Powell. The film was a remake of one much later, in 1983, she made the seemingly Violent Year” builds all of this not on the usual glamorized of Rainer’s Austrian films, but she received the obligatory appearance on “The Love Boat.” misdeeds but on the residential oil business - a line of work part only after Myrna Loy gave up the role. Federico Fellini almost lured her back for a whose terrors usually only come monthly by mail - is both Rainer had impressed Powell on bigscreen appearance in 1960’s “La dolce slightly reaching and a clever adaptation of the crime “Escapade”; he told a newspaper reporter, vita”-she traveled to Rome for the part but thriller. This is about the dirty work of mainstream “She is an extremely sensitive organism and pulled out before shooting.